Parker!?

I got my first comic book when I was in second or third grade. It was a reprint of the issue where Spider-Man returns from the Secret Wars with his black suit. I think the series was called Marvel Tales or something like that... It was basically The Amazing Spider-Man issues from the 80's being reprinted in succession. It was sort of a spur of the moment gas station purchase while I was with my mom. I just remember seeing it on the rack and thinking "Hey, that looks cool".

I purchased it, and read it many times, but that did not really start my comic obsession yet. So when people ask me what the first comic I bought was, I usually don't count that one unless we're getting technical. Both because it was a reprint, and because it didn't really get me into comics.

The "first comic" I usually cite, is Amazing Spider-Man #374.

A while after that Marvel Tales purchase, maybe even a year or so, I was on my way to a Boy Scouts camping trip with my father, and Dad stopped at, again, a gas station for some drinks and such. Upon glancing on the comic rack, I see this calling my name:

This was my first introduction to the character of Venom, who came about from the suit Spider-Man brought back in the aforementioned reprint comic. This issue started me collecting. Suddenly I could not get enough of these things. I was saving every dime I could scrape up from grass cutting and whatever else just to afford as many of the (then $1.25) books I could manage. Many opinions were solidified in me by these first readings of Spider-Man... Some of them are as follows:

• Venom was a pretty good villain, but was at his best as a slightly deranged anti-hero.
• It is perfectly acceptable for Peter Parker to be a married adult with adult problems instead of teenage ones. It does not take away from his character, it actually makes it much stronger.
• Mark Bagley was the best Spider-Man artist I ever saw.
• The black suit is still much much cooler than the red and blue.

Anyway, around this time in my life I was starting to ride the bus to my grandparents after school. I'm not sure if my grandmother saw an opportunity for me to become a better reader, or if she just wanted me to have something to look forward to after school, but for some reason she started buying me comics while she was out during the day and I was at school. And she was remarkable at it. One of my first days returning home from school I found this waiting for me:

Red foil cover and all. Who's Grandmother randomly buys something like that?! Mine. That's who. She did this for several years, and between that, and my own buying, I amassed quite a collection.

I branched out a little... I delved into Batman, Spawn, some of the X-books... But in the end I always came back to Spider-Man... Always followed Spider-Man... and he became quite an inspiration for me. I can honestly say that if Spider-Man hadn't been written the way he was back then, I might not be quite the person that I am today.

The reason I felt so close to this character, was the reason that we all become close to characters I think... I related to him. Social problems, relationship problems, family problems, guilt, uncertainty, guilt, guilt. This is Peter Parker. This is also me. From the time of my childhood, to my current adulthood, and I'm sure into my later life, I resonated perfectly with all of these concepts, and watching Peter Parker triumph over them all really did affect me in ways that I still feel today.

There were lots of differences, sure. I mean I didn't get anybody killed (though you'd think it sometimes). Also, the school bullies aren't always just misunderstood 'not so bad' guys, and the girls pretty much never actually like the nerd it seems. Also, I cant lift a car, or dodge machine gun fire...Yet. And as far as I know there are no super villains hunting me. But all in all, I felt like I knew Peter Parker, and I knew how he would think.

For several years I followed comics closely until something went wrong... Spider-Man lost.

I don't remember the exact and ridiculous storyline... But it went something like... Chameleon had replaced Peter's 'back from the dead' parents with robots right? And they were secretly stringing him along in some weird ass revenge scheme over the death of Kraven the hunter waaaaaaay back in the FANTASTIC "Kraven's Last Hunt". So finally the parents strike, and the father goes all T-1000 on Peter and tried to kill him, but mother robot had grown to love him so she sacrifices herself to destroy them both and save Peter. So Peter goes all dark and stuff? And he wants to hunt down Chameleon and kill that bastard. So there are a few books where he nearly beats some super villains to death trying to find the chameleon and finally he tracks him down, beats him to a pulp, but decides not to kill him... THEN he discovers that the REAL mastermind behind it all was none other than the already dead Harry Osborn, aka The Green Goblin!

Got all that?

Anyway... Peter cracks under the pressure, and stopped being light hearted Spider-Man and started being grumbly, angry Bruce Wayne in a Spider-Man costume. It just didn't feel right anymore... but I kept reading... for a little while longer...

In marched the clone saga... And I kept reading... They brought out Ben Reilly, Peter's long lost clone, as a new Spider-Man... I kept reading. They decided to tell me that Ben was actually the original Peter, and the Peter I had been following for years was a clone... I kept reading. But finally, the last straw was when they said "Nevermind all that testing we did, Peter is real, and Ben is the clone." and then revealed Norman Osborn, the original Green Goblin who died in the 70's, to randomly be alive again, and behind the whole clone saga and everything. They basically took maybe one of the most significant deaths in comics history and erased it for the sake of tying up loose ends. I was, and still am, appalled.

But you may be surprised to hear what I think is the most disappointing thing about the clone saga. The most disappointing thing is that they could have given Peter Parker a happy ending, and they didn't. At the time, Mary Jane was pregnant with clone Peter's child, he had retired from being Spider-Man, and was letting Ben take over. They should have left it that way. At least for a while. Why not give the Marvel universe's favorite punching bag a few years of happiness? Maybe I was speaking for myself more than Peter at the time, but in any case I just couldn't keep reading this crap anymore.

I stopped buying comics, and have only in the last few years started picking up a few here and there. Mostly I just buy the trade paperbacks. I'm more interested in the stories than the collecting these days. But I've noticed a disturbing trend in comic books these days. Too much 'Major Event!!!!!!!'.

I don't know if it started with clone saga and Onslaught, and whatever else was happening around that time, because as I said, I stopped reading for about ten years... But somewhere along the line, comic companies decided the only way to sell their products was to have a major event every other week, and kill kill kill all the major characters in the most horrible ways possible, then inexplicably bring them back to life a few months to a year later.

In the last six years or so of comic reading, I have witnessed:

• Spider-Man dies 3 times (counting ultimate comics) all in STUPID STUPID STUPID STUPID STUPID STUPID STUPID STUPID STUPID WAYS. BADBADBADBADBADBAD.
• Peter Parker's marriage to Mary Jane is magically and stupidly erased by Mephisto because some mouth breather thought it made the character seem "too old".
• Captain America is assassinated with BULLETS that cause him to BLEED EVERYWHERE and then later we're told that they are magical bullets that just transported his soul back in time.
• Batman is killed by Darkseid and left as a fleshless corpse in a tattered costume but later we're told, again, his soul was just sent back in time, no biggie.
• The Aunt May who so memorably and poignantly passed on in Amazing Spider-Man #400 is revealed to have just been... you know... another clone, and god damn Norman Osborn had the real Aunt May locked in his fucking basement or something.
• DC comics killed and rebooted their whole universe like 14 times.

Also, a few other notables, there was also that whole thing where almost all of the mutants were depowered, Tony Stark became a government lackey, Norman Osborn (still fucking alive) runs a government organization, Thor is dead, Charles Xavier is dead, Cyclops is a villain, Gambit is/was a villain, Spider-Man had big blade thingys coming out of his arms there for a while, and suddenly Deadpool is everybody's favorite character ever, probably because he's the only one who can see how ridiculous this all is.

Showing my age here... But in the old days you didn't need all this. You could have one issue, and two issue stories... leading into one thing or another. Maybe a big event every few years. If you had a dark comic, you wrote a dark comic, with the occasional light moments. If you had a light comic, you wrote a light comic with occasional dark moments. And you killed or seriously injured characters WITH CARE, not seemingly every month. Kraven's Last Hunt was special. Knightfall was special. Killing Joke was special. You FELT those books.

But anyway, I guess somebody must be buying this crap because they keep making it for years and years. So what do I know... Just what I like I guess.

But even if I never pick up another Spider-Man book again, I will always carry the memories of coming home from school to find new books, and learning all I can from them. Much literacy and life lessons can be attributed to them and for that I will be forever thankful.

So, even though you're dead right now (again), thank you Peter Parker. Until next time.