#weird like it is in canon vs ashley just being very traumatized and developing a personality disorder bc of her trauma lmao)

[non4ry]

just two partners relaxing after a mission <3

[hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger]

I got some things to say about Child Within and Death of Vermin

Back when ASM v5 #2 got released I had problems with how Peter and the Lizard were characterized, specifically due to the shadow of Shed and it’s infanticide cannibalism. To dive deeper I looked at the Child Within and Death of Vermin story arcs by DeMatteis. My thinking was we are discussing Spider-Man’s reactions to a character who was a man mutated into an animal hybrid who engaged in cannibalism and well, there was already a precedent for that in Vermin.

 However in diving into the stories there were other things I wanted to say about the stories more generally.

 The big thing I should qualify is that these are good storylines but those come with certain qualifyers.

 They are not badly written on a craftsmanship level per se but that is dependent upon whether you look at the stories in isolation vs. within the broader context of Spider-Man’s history or from the which particular character’s perspective.

 The thing is DeMatteis who authored both stories (as well as KLH which Child Within is a pseudo sequel to) created Vermin and he was plainly an author’s pet character. I dunno from where DeMatteis’ affection for Vermin comes from but it’s plainly obvious from KLH, Child Within, Death of Vermin and his Captain America run from which Vermin originated.

 And that’s the big deal when it comes to Death of Vermin. The Death of Vermin is kind of a Vermin and Ashley Kafka story first and a Spider-Man story second. It isn’t that Spider-Man doesn’t appear, or is passive within the story or unimportant. Its more like it’s not his story, it’s Vermin’s and Ashley Kafka’s. Whilst DeMatteis’ later invention of Judas Traveller was an example of an author indulging themselves most of the Traveller stories still were rooted in their focus upon Peter and/or Ben Reilly’s characters and used Traveller as an opponent or plot device for exploration of said characters. Death of Vermin provides a weird reversal wherein it is better written than...well every scene Traveller showed up in, possibly better written than every story featuring Traveller (except stories where he appears only briefly, e.g. ASM #400). And yet it places the majority of focus upon characters other than Spider-Man himself.

In truth the story could be regarded more as a wrap up arc for Captain America than a Spider-Man story, but even that’d not be wholly accurate. There is greater resonance offered to Spider-Man’s presence via his connection to Ashley Kafka via Child Within and to Vermin via Kraven’s Last Hunt. However Cap could’ve arguably had resonance with Vermin too from his interactions with him and of course Zemo’s presence in the arc makes much more sense if this was Captain America.

Possibly the solution would’ve been if Death of Vermin was a mini-series/crossover that featured both heroes. But in truth either way it just underscores the fact that this wasn’t truly Spider-Man’s story, nor Cap’s. It was Zemo’s (a non-Spider-Man character), Ashley Kafka’s (a then very new addition to Spidey’s word) and most of all Vermin’s (a Captain America character then recently adopted into Spider-Man).

So in truth Death of Vermin was...a DeMatteis pet project arc.

And hey if you like Kafka, if you like Vermin, if you like Zemo and if you liked Dematteis Cap run then this is for you. Problem is apart from those last two I don’t think the audience for those first two was big enough or enthusiastic enough to warrant a story like this. More poignantly if you are telling a multi-part story arc within the pages of a main monthly Spider-Man title...shouldn’t Spider-Man himself be the main point? Shouldn’t aiming it for an audience who first and foremost want to see Spider-Man and important/notable Spider-Man characters get focus be the point?

All this in spite of the story again not being bad per se. It’s more that it’s bad from a certain point of view. But that point of view is from the pov of a Spider-Man fan/reader wanting to read about Spider-Man in a Spider-Man title.

That being said this was just one arc and at the time there were after all 3 other monthly Spider-Man titles to choose from. Perhaps the mentality at the time was that there was space to do more different stuff. If you didn’t want to read a story arc where Vermin and/or Ashley Kafka to all intents and purposes are the main characters and would rather read a story where it was in fact Spider-Man then you had the chance to do that every three weeks before or after the publication of any given part of Death of Vermin.

If you do feel it’s bad though or at least overly indulgent of DeMatteis remember that even the best writers make mistakes or are prone to that from time to time. Unlike with Slott DeMatteis didn’t do that stuff routinely, Vermin, Scrier and Judas Traveller were basically it. And for Ashley Kafka specifically it did add a lot of character development to her to be fair, character development pissed away by Slott when he killed her off.

Moving on we have Child Within.

Again...an incredibly mixed bag.

There are two major retcons to Child Within and one works great the other not so great.

The gist of Child Within is that DeMatteis compares and contrasts Peter, Harry Osborn and Vermin in terms of them coming face-to-face with traumatic childhood memories they’ve been repressing.

For Vermin this is the realization that he was sexually abused by his father. This is another example of DeMatteis wanting to develop Vermin because he loves the character but in context of the story it works as effectively as the ways in which Kraven and Peter and Mary Jane are contrasted against one another along with Vermin in KLH.

For Harry, he realizes that his father was physically and verbally abusive towards him, even before he got the Goblin formula. Additionally Harry remembers Peter’s identity as Spider-Man and comes to grips with the fact that his father killed his friend Gwen Stacy.

For Peter he realizes that he’s always had a guilt complex even pre-dating Uncle Ben’s death stemming from the internalized blame and guilt he felt over his parents’ deaths. I also suspect this story choice was connected to the soon to be published return of Peter’s parents in ASM #365.

It is Harry and Peter’s revelations that are specifically retcons.

Ironically both (more or less) date back to the same moment from the same issue: ASM #39 (the first Romita Senior issue and reveal of Norman as the Goblin). In that issue Peter and Harry bond over their childhoods, with Harry telling Peter he and his father were pals up until a few years ago (the subtext being that his Dad changed due to the Goblin formula). Peter for his part claims he doesn’t even remember his father since he died when he was too young to remember.

Later stories would further explore Peter’s childhood with varying levels of contradictions. Half the time (such as when Howard Mackie or Paul Jenkins were writing the series) it seemed Peter was a young boy in the 4-7 age range when his parents died and he came to live with Ben and May. The other half the time Peter was a baby or a toddler when that happened.

Confusing matters more is the fact that even the stories that put Peter in roughly the same age range don’t jive with one another. Roberto Aguirre Sacasa and Stan Lee both wrote stories depicting Peter as a baby or a toddler but whilst Lee claimed that the Parkers died whilst Peter was in May and Ben’s care (prompting them to continue that as his guardians), Sacasa depicts them as picking Peter up from somewhere after the fact and resolving to raise him. Yet other writers (like Michelinie) depict Peter as not remembering his parents yet still apparently knowing certain details of his life with them.

As far as canon goes though I think it only really makes sense to side with Stan on this one. He established Peter as not remembering his parents in ASM #39 and his account of Peter’s early years from ASM Annual #5 was the first such account and jives with issue #39. Plus you know...he created Spider-Man.

DeMatteis’ retcons in Child Within thus contradict both peter and Harry’s established childhoods but whilst Harry’s is workable and enriching, Peter’s is nonsensical and reductive. DeMatteis is a superb writer and Spider-Scribe but like I said, nobody’s perfect. Even Stan and Steve had the odd faux pas with the characters.

With Harry Child Within was the start of DeMatteis’ character arc for him which would culminate in Spec #200, with the issue and arc over all regarded as the best Harry centric story of all time, and one of the best Spidey stories of all time to boot. The storyline developed Harry beautifully as a character, making him a complex yet sympathetic villain.

At the same time it’s contradictions to ASM #39 and what we thought we knew of Harry made sense. He was repressing all this stuff so of course there would be contradictions. More poignantly ASM #40 depicted flashbacks wherein Norman himself is clearly out of touch with the reality of his past relationship with his son and the picture they paint doesn’t exactly showcase Harry and Norman as pals either.

So there was already something of a precedent for Harry or the Osborns in general having major memory problems, drugs, goblin formulas or blows to the head or not.

And you know thematically this worked really well for Harry. Painting him as this messed up helped explain his outings prior to that as a villain, his initial antagonism towards Peter, his drug abuses and his devotion to his father and even his own family. After all he was a devoted father to his own son Normie. Could he perhaps have been seeking subconsciously a more positive relationship with his own son than he had with his father (a father who his son was named for)?

If you take Child Within in isolation the retcons to Peter’s own past and how Harry was key to awakening them work really beautifully in symmetry and contrast with Harry. These two friends inadvertently unearthed painful childhood memories connected to their parents which had subconsciously shaped them into who they were today. And in awakening those memories it had set them on a path towards their futures to. In Peter’s case it was a form of closure, or at least the start of a healing process wherein he could walk forwards in life more whole than he was before, more able to be a god family man. In Harry’s case it started him on a road to madness as self destruction that would scar his family. This is of course summed up in the closing pages of part 6 wherein we get complimenting splash pages of Peter brightly and triumphantly swinging away from his parents’ graves whilst Harry scared and sad flies away from his living wife and child.

Great writing. Beautiful writing.

In isolation.

The problems then arise when you put the story within the wider context of Spider-Man’s established history, the defining themes of the character and the genre considerations for a superhero series like Spider-Man.

See it is theoretically possible for Peter to have blamed himself for his parents’ deaths and then repressed that blame creating the examples of guilt we’d seen for 30 odd years by that point.

If he was old enough.

But as I said ASM #39 established Peter didn’t remember his parents because he was too young and the very next elaboration upon that we see is in ASM Annual #5 where Peter is at a humungous push maybe 3 years old tops. Both written by the same person before anyone else says anything about Peter’s early years and that same person happens to be the co-creator of Spider-Man himself.  

At which point you have to say “This makes no sense, of course he wouldn’t blame himself he wouldn’t be old enough for that to have happened.”

In fact in Spec #254, DeMatteis does another psychedelic story in which Peter symbolically revisits the moment Uncle Ben informed him of his parents’ deaths and in said scene Peter is in a crib, which again would render him too young to remember his parents.

Spec #254

You could always explain this one away as a glorified dream sequence but it’s food for thought.

There is an even more pressing problem with the retcon though.

The retcon clearly leans hard upon the interpretation that Spider-Man is defined by guilt. That in fact guilt is the root of his motivations to be a hero. This story goes further as to essentially say up until now Peter has essentially been a hero due to...well....not getting enough therapy over the years.

Child Within inadvertently codifies that Spider-Man is Spider-Man not because Uncle Ben died so much as because Spider-Man has if not a mental illness then very serious unresolved childhood issues which have unhealthily manifested in his internalizing blame and guilt and alleviating those feelings by...risking his life all the time...

...er...can you see how this is something of a problem within the big picture of the series?

This isn’t saying Spider-Man is a hero in spite of some serious condition he has or he is able to take the unfortunate circumstances of an illness and use it to propel him into something positive.

This story essentially (though perhaps unintentionally) spelled out that Peter has been suffering with something very serious for the entire time we’ve known him and that is the actual reason he is a superhero. The idea being that if Peter was to treat this, was to make himself well or had been well the entire time he WOULDN’T have been a hero in the first place. Because he’d have lost the root of the thing that compelled him to be Spider-Man in the first place.

I adore DeMatteis but in this respect Child Within can be seen as his most reductive Spider-Man story.

This retcon invalidates/undermines Uncle Ben’s death and Spider-Man’s actual origin story and the central message of great power=great responsibility.

It presumes Spider-Man’s sense of responsibility is interchangeable with or stems from a inherent sense of guilt when this is just plain not the case and goes against the ‘rules’ of the superhero genre. Or at least the rules as they apply to a character like Spider-Man.

Spidey is supposed to be an everyman, someone to relate to and be inspired by. In this sense codifying his motivation and central message as one about learning to use the powers you have responsibility to help others makes sense and is powerful and resonant. When it’s actually nothing more than the by-product of a serious personal issue that he’s unhealthily left unresolved you seriously mess with the foundation and heart of the character.

It is the same kind of nonsense which presupposes Batman must be insane and traumatized and have unresolved issues to go about being a crime fighter in a bat costume, as opposed to someone who went through something bad and used his pain to safeguard innocent people from the source of that pain, using his costume as a (highly effective) battle tactic.

To be honest I think this change to Spider-Man’s early years and driving emotions came from again a place of indulgence on DeMatteis’ part. I have spoken at length about how Slott indulged himself so much during his run so I want to make it clear I don’t mean DeMatteis indulged himself in that sort of way.

Rather I think he was maybe putting a lot of himself or people he knew or stories he’d encountered which struck deep within him into Peter’s backstory as seen in Child Within. It was a sincere attempt to develop the character and dive into who he is and why, he just came at it from an ill considered and problematic angle.

Moreover the story talks at length about needing to admit to and deal with these repressed childhood memories and get help to cope with them.

But then...DeMatteis doesn’t depict Spider-Man doing that. There is no ongoing subplot of Spider-Man coping with this newfound knowledge that the root of his tendency to blame himself for everything stems from this messed up childhood trauma. It comes up a little bit in DeMatteis’ run as throwaway lines but it essentially goes uncommented upon in consequent Spider-Man stories in other titles and even within the same run by DeMatteis that established it. I don’t even recall it coming up much when his parents seemingly come back after being presumed dead, though I admit it’s been a long while since I checked those stories out.

Is that a faux pas on the part of later writers and editors. Kind of but this is also a case of something that really doesn’t belong in Spider-Man lore being essentially ignored because it has to be for the character to function properly. But if you buy into the Child Within retcon (which I do not advise you on doing) it paints the horrible picture that Spider-Man basically didn’t address this trauma and backslide into old habits of blaming himself and repressing the root of why that was the case.

To be honest, this is honestly why I always advise against doing stories with the main or highly recurring supporting characters who essentially show up every issue wherein you put them in situations where they’d need a lot of therapy over a long period of time. It’s just not practical to do a story like that when you got to put out a monthly (in this case basically weekly) action adventure series.

Mini-series like Lost Years with characters who exist for that story alone or with infrequently recurring villains like Vermin or less vital supporting characters ever, where you can park them and let us presume they will be getting better off panel, is fine.

But this just wasn’t practical at all for Spider-Man.

What compounds the issue is that we see in Death of Vermin the deep scars childhood trauma results in and how it takes a lot of time, effort and hardship to recover from them. But here Spider-Man is basically fine a few months (publishing time, less time in-universe) later just...over it.

Both stories are ultimate a gigantic testament to how great writers can still make missteps, even ones born out of good intentions and creative instincts, whilst the end results can still possess plenty of merit nevertheless.