Every Man Has His Spider. (Best of Enemies)

CW: Discussion of abuse.

Hands...
Touching hands...
Reaching out...
Touching me...
Touching you!

I guess we should start with the ending, as that is where we find ourselves. Some of you might notice this is outside of the circle of October/November, 1987. As Clive Barker put in my favorite book “And this story, having no beginning, will have no end.” So too do circles. And so, to find the end of this story, we have to look at it from out its grasp. This is not the end of the blog though; I still need to talk about the Hunt after all. This is just a way of gaining some perspective on the matter.

But I’m getting distracted; we’re here to talk about the ending of JM DeMatteis’ Spider-Man: Spectacular Spider-Man #200. He would write more Spider-Man stories (though none would ever reach the heights of this one [however some would get close]), this is where the themes he was building upon since Kraven’s Last Hunt reached their climax, their breaking point. When ideas reach that point, the author has three choices: leave the story for new storytellers to tell (an example of this would be Grant Morrison’s Animal Man); change the idea you want to explore or explore a minor theme in more depth (Dan Slott’s Superior Spider-Man); or keep pushing the idea past its breaking point, gaining only diminishing returns (Spider-Man 3).

DeMatteis chose the second option, and all the better for it. But what was the theme that died at the end of his story (indeed dying is the correct term for a theme that reaches its climax. How else can it haunt the rest of the story if it’s still alive)? It’s found in the ending. (Why do I keep going off into tangents that have little to do with what I’m talking about? Do I just not want it to stop, for the story to have a to be continue? Or is it something different… The truth is, this isn’t an ending for me. This is where it all started. My library [or a library, I can’t seem to find it] had a trade that collected different stories of Harry Osborn as the Green Goblin. This was the first time I had ever knowingly read the work of DeMatteis, and I was enthralled by the images and the implications of the words. It wasn’t even the end of the trade.)

Fig. 1: Spider-Man
defeats the bad guy
(Spectacular Spider-Man #200
Written by JM DeMatteis,
art by Sal Buscema)

It’s a short sequence, only two pages long. There’s no dialogue, but we don’t need it. Panel One depicts an ambulance driving down the streets of New York, showing where the action takes place. Like with previous sequences within the issue, Panel Two is layered atop Panel One to show this is the next panel in the sequence. There are no more layered panels for the rest of the comic. Peter Parker, wearing his Spider-Man suit, is approaching Harry Osborn’s hold him. He reaches him in the next panel, and it is clear that Harry’s not going to make it. They both know it and, in the following panel, Harry clasps Peter’s hand. In return, Peter clasps Harry’s (we get a close up of these hands) and Harry dies.

The next page depicts the immediate aftermath of Harry’s death. Everyone’s sad and alone. The last panel is an image from happier times. But that’s not the important bit. For me, [fig. 1] is Spider-Man personified. Not that he’s about pain and sorrow and all that jazz, but rather he’s the kind of person who would be there for his best friend, even after all the horrible things Harry’s done to him. But why would Peter go through all that? Harry, after all, threatened not only Peter, but his family and friends as well (sure, Harry claims he will never hurt Mary Jane or Aunt May, but if Harry goes through with his threat of revealing Peter’s secret identity, they will be hurt by the countless other villains who don’t share Harry’s conflicted relationship with the Parker family).

Fig. 2: The lie of love
(Spectacular Spider-Man #200
Written by JM DeMatteis,
art by Sal Buscema)

And that’s not even getting into Liz Allen. In this comic alone, it is clear that their relationship is an abusive one with Harry physically throttling her when she implies he’s weak because she’s concerned about his fever. Her body language is full of fake smiles and tense movements [fig. 2]. (In many regards, she’s a mirror to Mary Jane. For all she’s aware that she’s in an abusive relationship, Liz tries to act as if their relationship is just a bit bumpy. Mary Jane, who has had experience with abusers in the past, refuses to allow her to repress this aspect of the relationship. Indeed, her defining trait throughout the issue is a refusal of repression, be it Peter’s repressed fondness for Harry or Harry’s rose tinted view of the past. With Liz, Mary Jane directly confronts her with the reality of the situation. Liz responds by kicker her out of her house and claiming, “You’re as bad as he is, you know that? You’re as bad as Spider-Man!” [In an interesting turn, the last sentence is in a text box in the following panel and depicted crooked, implying that Liz doesn’t actually believe that about either Mary Jane or Spider-Man and is just saying that to keep up appearances. Another interesting note is Mary Jane’s word choice for Liz’s denial: cocoon. The implication is that though this is a painful experience, once she emerges, Liz will be a better person for it.])

So one wonders why Peter stays with Harry at the end. Is it because he’s the hero and that’s the role the hero plays?  One could argue that. After Harry abducts Mary Jane and takes her to the place where Gwen Stacy died to show how he isn’t going to hurt her, Peter describes his lot as “…the noble super hero” to Mary Jane and he “…couldn’t kill anyone—not even Harry.” He’s aware of the role he plays, and at times feels like it’d be better if he could just kill Harry. But this isn’t a cynical story about how heroes don’t exist and when push comes to shove, we’d kill each other. It believes in the genuine heroism of Peter as, when the final confrontation comes, Peter pleads with Harry that this violent confrontation isn’t getting them anywhere and they should just talk. The super hero, for all their nobility, tends to solve problems with their fists. Peter finds all this pounding a bit stupid.

Fig. 3: The moment Peter Parker
came out canonically as bisexual
(Spectacular Spider-Man #200
Written by JM DeMatteis,
art by Sal Buscema)

The real reason he does this is far more simpler than that: Peter loves Harry. Mary Jane flat out says it [fig. 3]: “We love you, Harry. For all the agony of these past months… We truly love you. You haven’t had an easy life… Neither have I… And, God knows, neither has Peter. But the one thing that holds any of us together… keeps us going—is out love for each other.” All along, JM DeMatteis has been telling us a love story. A tragic one certainly, but a love story nonetheless. It takes a while for Mary Jane to realize this. She thinks Harry’s going to kill her, the psychopathy that ruled Norman passed down to his son, and refuses to give him the satisfaction of begging or pleading. Instead, what Harry wanted out of her was to let her know it won’t go this far. He wanted to share the nostalgia of “Those long, lazy nights… just driving around together? You, me, Gwen… and Peter.”

Let’s turn the clock back to the last of those nights… the night Gwen Stacy died. Given the narrative presented before us, it can be read that it was a four-sided relationship and Gwen was the glue that kept them together. (The word “polyamory” has been one that the previous paragraph has jumped around. And the implication of emphasizing love as the crux of their relationship puts them into that word quite nicely, though [if sticking to "canon" is key for a text making sense {it isn't, but comics fans pretend it is}] the important part is that they had a close relationship and it fell apart.) When she died, everything collapsed. Sure, Mary Jane was able to emerge from her cocoon, but Peter went on a rampage of revenge that, when he got it, was found wanting. And Harry became an abusive, spiteful super villain, blaming his problems on Peter while misreading his father into someone caught in the crossfire of a cruel menace.

Fig. 4: Love, betrayed
(Amazing Spider-Man #122
Written by Gerry Conway,
art by Gil Kane)

In some regards, Harry’s right to blame Peter. Not for killing his father, it was clearly Norman Osborn who killed himself (while trying to kill Peter). Rather, that night after Gwen died, Peter abandoned Harry in his time of need [Fig. 4]. The night Gwen died, Harry was dealing with a bad trip (he had a history of drug addiction, called back to in the issue this story haunts by the new Goblin formula Harry’s been taking that kills him in the end). When searching for Norman at his house, all Peter finds is Harry and when deciding between revenge and helping his friend, he chose the obviously correct choice of vengeance. Peter’s been paying for that choice ever since.

In truth, the story, indeed the core of the DeMatteis era itself, ripples from that one decision. The choice of cruelty over love broke and mended our leads. Mary Jane has been exorcized of her demons by that night. The repression she typically uses to avoid situations of emotional extremity was pushed to its breaking point, and she decided to stop in favor of open dialogue. She thinks that if Peter and Harry were just open with one another, if they’d stop fighting and just talk. Peter, meanwhile, embraces repression as he does with a lot of his problems (indeed, for all his status within fandom as a whiner, he keeps a lot of his diatribes internal. If one were to ask a person in the Marvel Universe what Spider-Man’s like, they’d probably compare him to Bugs Bunny). Deep down, he knows this isn’t going to work out well for him, but he tries anyways (this theme of repression gets explored deeper in the second DeMatteis era, where Spider-Man tries and fails to repress Peter Parker). As for Harry, he doesn’t repress his emotions. He lashes out on everyone around him, despite his claims to the contrary. He hurts his wife (who he probably married due to being blonde like Gwen, and hates Liz for not being as he remembered Gwen being), his friends, even himself… all to cope with not being able to save Gwen Stacy… to save his father from the evil Spider-Man.

Fig. 5: Harry assumes
that we are fucked
(Spectacular Spider-Man #200
Written by JM DeMatteis,
art by Sal Buscema)

In the end, Harry realizes that he’s been hurting those he cares about deeply and decides that Peter’s wrong. They should both die [Fig. 5]. Like many of us can and have done… like I have done, Harry has fallen into a pit of pessimism and despair. A pit that tells you that the world is better off with you dead. Because you can’t change anything, let alone yourself. And you’re terrible. You don’t care about how other people feel; you hurt them just to prove you aren’t weak; you blame others when the problem is clearly you or someone you care about. You’re aware of these things, but you feel they’re inherent to who you are. So you decide to end it all rather than let the suffering of those you love go on.

But as Peter damn well knows, we change. Peter Parker’s story, after all, is about change. The Fantastic Four are the explorers of the unknown; the X-Men are an oppressed race trying to stay alive; the Avengers are the fighters for the status quo; but Spider-Man? Spider-Man started out as a teenage superhero, but then he graduated High School. Then he went to college, and graduated that too. He’s changed and evolved in the years since his debut. Spider-Man’s story is about change (which makes him a bit dangerous in a universe that runs on the illusion of change, but that’s a conversation for a different article).

Fig. 6: Harry Osborn, triumphant
(Spectacular Spider-Man #200
Written by JM DeMatteis,
art by Sal Buscema)

Fig. 7: Peter Parker, triumphant
(Amazing Spider-Man #33
Written by Stan Lee and
Steve Ditko, art by Steve
Ditko)

He doesn’t argue this point, as this is a thematic aspect of the character as opposed to a thing Peter consciously knows about. Instead, Peter goes for an argument that life is worth living, which, as many people with depression will tell you, doesn’t actually work. What does work however is the discovery that Mary Jane and Normie Osborn, Harry’s son, are going to die with them. Peter, in a position where he can’t save them, pleads with Harry to save them. And he overcomes his self-loathing (if only briefly) and saves them. (Note the similarities between [Fig. 6] and [Fig. 7]. Both are moments of ultimate personal triumph of their respective characters and both share the same declaration of “I Did It!” Both carry massive implications that reverberate to this very day).

But, when Mary Jane finds out that Peter’s still going to die, she pleads with Harry to save him. And he does so. He does so for the same reason he saved his son and Mary Jane. It’s as she said: Harry loves them. And it’s their love for one another that’s able to save them in the end. (I want to make this clear, this isn't redemption. Harry's cruelty towards the Parkers and Liz Allen isn't forgiven by him saving three people. Rather, it's the sign that redemption is possible. The tragedy is that it wasn't. [Another aside: I really hate the decision Post-One More Day Spider-Man writers made in regards to Harry Osborn. While I'm fine with bringing him back, they shouldn't have retconned away his abusive tendencies. Shame on them for that and especially for the numerous stories attempting to vilify Liz Allen.]) But it’s not enough to save Harry. Harry dies at the end. Because sometimes love isn’t enough. Or it’s too late to do anything. If Harry hadn’t pushed himself as far as he did, if Peter hadn’t been so bull headed about killing Norman, if Norman hadn’t killed Gwen (for those of you who argue Peter killed Gwen, no. Just no), if Mary Jane could’ve convinced them to talk sooner, maybe they would have lived happily ever after.

Alas, it does little to ponder what could have been. Love doesn’t last; it’s a fleeting sensation that we cling to until the bitter end. It’s wonderful, and important, but it’s not forever. And this theme of love and loss that started out with Peter coming back from the dead with Mary Jane’s name on his mind ends here. Sure, there’s the death of Aunt May and all, but DeMatteis goes in a different direction for the rest of the run, opting to explore other themes and ideas. This is where the theme reaches its natural conclusion. And all we have left of these painful, wonderful times… are memories:

Fig. 8: Love Everlasting.
(Spectacular Spider-Man #200
Written by JM DeMatteis,
art by Sal Buscema)

(Next Time: Did The Hand That Made The Lamb Make Thee?)

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[Photo: Blue is the Warmest Color by Julie Maroh]

I Love You. (Second National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights)

“Once upon a time… There was a world like this one but better. Ever so dolly. A world where everything was marvelous or frightening or strange. A world where everything was alive and significant. Some people caught glimpses of it and tried to bring back what they saw. They called it Oz, Wonderland, Never Never Land, Slumberland, and they were right but only partly. A world of wild adventures and wonderful cities and dark forests. But then it all fell apart. Don’t know why. Maybe it caught the sickness of the real world.”
-Grant Morrison

And I still can see Blue Velvet through my tears...

I came out as bisexual to my college roommates on Election Day 2016. I first came across the term when I was younger. It was on DeviantArt, of all places, and for a piece of fan art for a fandom I wasn’t a part of at the time (nor one that I am a part of now). It was just a brief simplified description of the sexuality, framing it within a binary set of genders (this was 2010 after all [come to think of it, the description didn’t even mention what bisexuality was, it just implied that it wasn’t just having sexual desires towards women]). The term didn’t so much strike a cord I could feel as haunt my subconscious until I came out to myself. I had the realization that I was bi for a few months now, I think late July/early August, but I hadn’t told anyone that I was until that day. It felt right to say it aloud at the time, though I don’t think they noticed or cared. It wasn’t for them really, I told them just to get it off my chest. And for a while, it felt good.

Then Donald Trump became President of the United States.

It was a harrowing experience, to say the least. I felt like I had left my own body and all that was left was a husk of a man who thought he was me. (I should preface that I wasn’t one of the people who immediately effected by Donald. I’m a relatively upper middle class, white guy from a slightly Christian background in New England. I also have compassion and can empathize with the plights of other people [or as best as someone on the autism spectrum can], so) I felt pale and terrified. I had to leave the common room my roommates were watching the results in just so I could breathe normally. I felt like the atmosphere was crushing me until I was nothing more than a fleck on the membrane of the Earth. I had to talk to someone, anyone really, or my thoughts would make me collapse into a pool of anxiety and paranoia.

I called my brother (or he called me, I forget which) and we chatted a bit about the election results (he voted for Jill Stein on account of “not wanting his hands dirty.” I voted for Clinton because Donald felt like a worst case scenario waiting to burn everything I hold dear [not the least of which due to his siding with the Alt-Right] and the democrats seemed like the best option to stop that, regardless of how I feel towards Clinton [not good but probably wouldn’t start World War III, which is how I feel about most candidates for President really]). He made some crass comments about how “Bernie would have won” or something like that.

The way he talked about the election… it felt as if he saw Donald as a better alternative than Clinton, though he would claim both were equally bad. When he tried to reassure me in a tone of someone who doesn’t think my fears are anything at all, a thing that deserves to be belittled. I snapped at him, screaming profanities at him in a voice hoarse with fear. I hung up and let myself be consumed by an atmosphere of dread.

A few minutes later, my mom called me. Evidentially, my brother called her, worried about how I was doing after all that had happened. We talked for a bit and I was able to ground myself. I was still terrified, certainly, but I was able to stay afloat of my thoughts that said that Nuclear Armageddon was going to happen on the first day in office. She also pointed out that it was a bit rude of me to scream profanities when it was quiet hours and that I should apologize to my roommates. They’re good people, so I did.

The next day, I was still a shell of myself. I wouldn’t regain my full self until the end of the week, but I had enough self to keep it together for a few days. It was hard for me to do any writing at the time; I just kept looking at the computer screen and asked what the point of it all was. The essay I was working on was an examination of the comic From Hell from a psychogeographic and psychocronographic perspective. It was an optimistic piece, ending in the monster being caged by art, but I couldn’t bring myself to be an optimist at the moment. I had fallen deep into a pool of pessimism and despair.

I only had one professor who was openly supportive of Donald. He was a teacher in the film department and the kind of teacher who got what Paul Verhoeven was on about. I was taking his course in screenwriting at the time and I found it somewhat useful, teaching me how to structure and outline a screenplay, but not much else. I had him the day after the election results were announced, and he was elated. He’d boast about how Donald was the first politician who made him want to vote and how he was going to make America great again. And yet, there was a performativity to the way he presented his support. It felt a bit hollow, like he was just saying it (as opposed to believing it) to rile up a few of the students in the class. We got back at him by not being disgusted by the sex work in Showgirls.

He was an outlier of course. My teachers mostly didn’t bring up the election and the ones that did were a bit nerve wracked by the results. They were able to teach certainly, but they had a look of dread in their eyes unseen outside of the eyes of a middle school teacher. I’d have many conversations with my Internship supervisor about the way the world was going, and every one of them ended depressingly. And to top it all off, my grandfather died a few weeks before the inauguration. So cheery moods all around.

I bring this all up here because this is the context upon which my understanding of my sexuality is understood. It was always political for me. It was probably always political for everyone else too. Which brings us to the event that happened on October 11^th, 1987: The Second National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. Or, as it’s more commonly known, The Great March. So named because of the size of the event.

As with many queer issues of the day, it was primarily a protest against the Regan Administration for their failures in regards to the AIDS crisis. Additionally, there was the matter of Bowers V. Hardwick, which upheld the criminalization of sodomy between two consenting men, which was naturally considered to be a bad move on the administration’s part (and sadly, not the worst of their crimes) as well as a call for the end South Africa’s apartheid system, reproductive freedom, and more.

All told, it is reported that roughly 750,000 people attended the march. Among those, noted celebrities such as Jesse Jackson and Whoopi Goldberg led the marches and made speeches at the event. It is considered by many in the LGBTQIA movement to be a success, to the point where the first National Coming Out Day was created the very next year to continue the momentum. There were naturally flaws in the event (most notably the discussions amongst the organizers as to whether or not bisexuals and transpeople should be included in the event), but overall many see it as an important watershed moment within the LGBTQIA movement.

I wish I could say that I was as brave as these people. I wish I could say I went to marches like this one in the wake of Donald’s ascent into the presidency. Alas, that was not what happened. In truth, while I had desire to attend events like this one that were being held at my school, I just kept missing them or remembering they were happening at all. I had no drive to attend these events. I support causes like this one online, certainly, but I haven’t given money to the causes, attended any meetings or events.

Instead, I made a blog. It was sometime in July of last year that I came up with the idea of the blog, a small psychocronography (not to the scope of TARDIS Eruditorum’s 50 years, Vaka Rangi’s 28, or even My Little Po-Mo’s four, but rather a smaller scope of two months) to understand what was going on around me. I picked a story that I liked quite a bit and had enough of a following to gain some attention, though not enough of one that I’d be seen as a copycat (I always liked JM DeMatteis’ Spider-Man and indeed DeMatteis himself and felt he was quite underrated; the Ghost that haunts Albion, to invoke someone else’s comic project. As for Spider-Man, well to be quite frank I’m literally one of two people doing any critical analysis on the character within the realm of comics analysis and that’s just sad. So I figured, I always liked the character, maybe I have something to say about him. The fact that I’ve barely talked about the guy speaks volumes about my abilities at subtweeting). And then I wrote what felt right to write about-- about Charlottesville and my political history and all the other things that were happening around, in front of, and behind me. I wanted to understand what was going on, why I felt so heartbroken and defeated, why that feeling never went away.

I’m lucky, in many regards. I have friends online who I can talk to without anxieties (though I would like some more IRL friends. Not that I don’t have those, I just have some difficulties socializing with others beyond a general hello and some conversing in pop culture. I’d like to improve on these skills to form more lasting relationships). I have a family who’s supportive of my endeavors, though my anxieties tell me otherwise. And I do work that I like quite a bit. There are many who would be lucky to have what I have.

But I still feel a sense of dread in the air. Maybe it won’t go away until Donald is no longer President. Maybe it’ll take the slate of politics in America, as we know it, to change so completely and utterly that it becomes unrecognizable. Maybe it’ll never go away. Maybe it’s all just part of growing up and I should use my dread to make things better. I’d like to believe it’s not hopeless, that our actions no matter how small can change the world. And while I do genuinely believe that, I also know that it takes a lot of work and energy to do so. I know not everyone has that energy (hell, most days I don’t), but if we can help each other out, even a little, maybe we can make the world a better place. Or at the very least one that accepts the strangeness of others.

“Remember running
in between
the blazing trashcans
holding hands,
laughing above the sirens,
unafraid and pure? 

We knew
that freedom
could be won,
that nothing
could prevent it.”
-Alan Moore

(Next Time: J.M. DeMatties’ Spider-Man)

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[Photo: Blue Written and Directed by Derrick Jarman]

My Name Isss Vermin. (The Princess Bride)

“As soon as you’ve taken off the mask, all that remains is who you were originally. At least, we hope so. One can never be completely sure…”
-H.P. Lovecraft

The Dread Pirate Roberts (right) and The Princess Bride (left).

In many ways, The Princess Bride has haunted me since my childhood. It was always there in the background, waiting to be watched, but I never watched it. Oh sure, I had ample opportunity to watch the film, several long bus rides included someone bringing a copy for the kids to watch while the grownups were doing other things. But for whatever reason, I’d always fall asleep either shortly before it started or someway into the opening. The only bits I’d actually watch of the film were the third act (starting roughly around the point where Billy Crystal shows up) as well as a few assorted clips on YouTube.

Now that I’ve finally watched the film in its entirety, I can see what I’ve been missing. I should start with the thematically relevant parts before the film’s charms overwhelm me. For starters, at its core, The Princess Bride is a love story. This should be obvious what with the title invoking romance and what not, but the way the film goes about the romance is a bit off. Most films that tell stories of romance (even the ones with swords and magical creatures) have the relationship bloom over the course of the film.

The Princess Bride opts to not do that and instead have the falling in love happen over the course of a montage that can be summed up as “Buttercup orders Wesley around until she falls in love.” The quickness of this relationship and lack of set up beyond “man, Cary Elwes and Robin Wright are hot” would ordinarily be resolved by having them share romantic dialogue over the course of their adventure, but instead most of its bickering and “OH GOD, RODENTS OF UNUSUAL SIZE DO EXIST!” Sure, they declare their love for one another, and they do have chemistry with one another, but the way they act around each other seems as if they’re playing the parts of being in a committed relationship

Which, I suppose, is kind of the point. Even if you cut out the framing narrative of the story being read to the young boy, there’s a knowing artifice to the actions being shown on screen. The sets are a bit wobbly, despite the extremely well polished production design, the music is diegeticly extradiegetic (in that it only exists as part of the story and not in the “real” world), and the actors act extremely arch compared to other performances they have given. Not quite chewing the scenery (though Wallace Shawn does do that quite a bit), but rather they play into their archetypes. They’re quite aware that the story is a bit camp and flimsy.

So how does this tie into the relationship between Buttercup and Wesley? Well, their relationship is not so much out of love than it is longing. For large portions of the story one thinks the other is dead or their love must be sacrificed for the greater good. They have this ideal version of the other that is somewhat off of reality. We all have this of people we know, how we see them outside their heads. But we never get a sense of their interiority. It’s all from the distance of a young boy who doesn’t really care about the kissing bits and just wants to get to the swordplay already. It’s not so much that their true love is false, but that their true love is fictional.

I should probably bring up the original book at this time, as it does quite a bit to analyze the text of The Princess Bride. The frame of that story, rather than of a young boy being told a fairy tale by his grandfather while sick in bed, is about that same boy, now all grown up, looking back at that story from the perspective of an adult. It could be argued that there’s some similarity between my project and the original book. Certainly the actual comic I’m supposed to be talking about isn’t from my childhood, but Spider-Man was a major factor in it.

In many ways, Spider-Man was my gateway into comics. (Sure, I thought the films they made with him were fine, but I had an attachment to the character. I’m not entirely sure as to why Spider-Man as opposed to Batman or Superman, but whenever I was asked who my favorite superhero was, I’d always default to Spider-Man.) When I was in middle school, I would always go to the local library to hang out while my brother was at Karate. My parents probably just wanted an excuse to get me out of the house. When I was old enough, I would go to the Teen Section and pluck out a comic from the shelves. Sometime it’d be a Batman one or the X-Men, but the one that always caught my eye was this Spider-Man one.

It was a hardcover volume with a purple spine. It had this weird monster on the cover, this hulking black Spider-Man with his tongue sticking out like a tentacle. It was from a line called Ultimate Spider-Man, and it was called Venom. When I first read the story, I mostly skimmed the dialogue. I got the gist of what was happening, but I was really there for the fight scenes. But the images in the comic were so evocative: Peter’s dreamscape of murdering Uncle Ben, Venom electrocuting on the football field, that dark suit that seemed to be a never ending void.

I would reread the comic again and again, this time actually reading the story and finding it quite enjoyable for my mind. But more than that, I wanted to read more stories with Spider-Man and Venom. I would read the comics at random, based solely on where I saw them on the library shelf. Eventually, I got to this one story about Goblins that it took me a long time to realize was a huge influence on how I view Spider-Man. (But that’s for later.)

Eventually, I got around to looking up what people thought was the best Spider-Man story ever told. Indeed, CBR named it their number one Spidey story over the Ditko stuff that got me hooked in the first place. I’m of course talking about Kraven’s Last Hunt. (We still have a few more stops before we get there though, be we’re nearing that point.) The image that everyone would point to as the definitive image of the story was that of Peter crawling out of the grave. It would appear that he was only mostly dead.

This brings us back to The Princess Bride. In many ways, these works are cousins of one another. Both play the part of a different genre when, at their hearts, they’re love stories. Both feature a Rodent of Unsusual Size that tries to eat the main character. And they both ask us a very similar question: How Does One Become Only Mostly Dead? We could chalk it up to narrative conventions in the case of The Princess Bride. The hero outmaneuvers the villain’s dastardly schemes and, when all seems lost, overcomes all obstacles. But Spider-Man doesn’t have that luxury. He’s not the hero of Kraven’s Last Hunt. At most, he’s a deturagonist. Is there another way Wesley could be mostly dead, one that could apply to Peter?

Certainly. Consider Montoya’s reaction to Wesley’s final death screams, the sound of ultimate suffering: “My heart made that sound when Rugen slaughtered my father.” The effects of the machine that caused those screams and subsequently his (almost) death don’t so much suck the life out of Wesley literally as they induce a state of emotional terror. The sensation one feels when someone close to you has been lost forever externalized into something that’s killing you. For Wesley, it was the machine externalizing his sense of hopelessness over finding Buttercup then losing her all over again. For Buttercup, it was her nightmares induced by her guilt over sacrificing herself to save Wesley culminating in an attempted suicide. For Peter, it was Kraven acting out his desire to die for killing a defenseless woman who wanted to die. And for them, the pair was too much, and they died.

And yet, these people held onto something, some sliver of hope, something that would push them to stay alive through their death. True Love. Peter climbs his way out of screaming “Mary Jane,” Wesley tells Miracle Max that he holds on because of True Love, and Buttercup doesn’t go through with her Jullietian fate because she hears the whisper of her love. This isn’t so much a case that love conquers all, love is fleeting after all. Rather, it’s the firmament through which our characters are able to change themselves through their trauma.

And what do they become once they get out of their Pit of Despairs? Well, I should save Peter’s for when I get to Kraven’s Last Hunt itself, but for Buttercup and Wesley, well they get to be a couple. Might seem like an anticlimax for some, they just run off into the sunset and live their lives together. No great change in personality, they just fought for their happy ending. Well, yeah. Sure the book says that they could all die at the hands of Humperdink’s men. And even if they do survive, the relationship was a bit flimsy and based more on lust than love.

But then, the read the author gives isn’t the actual text. It’s an abridged version of the book based on a father’s telling to a young lad who doesn’t think highly of the importance of kissing bits. So naturally the details about the relationship are skewed to fit such a mindset. Details that would be skimmed over to not alienate such a lad who would much rather watch sports than do his homework. Bits like the relationship seeming to go by so quickly as to skip over the important beats. Sure, some of the bits like the Queen packing and unpacking her bags are best left cut out of an abridged version, but the little details left out that imply bigger ideas, the things that make a story truly work, tend to be mistaken by many as things that ought to be cut to get to the fight scenes.

…If I actually saw this as a kid, I think I probably would have liked it quite a bit. It certainly itches the postmodernist/metafictional spot in my brain that flourished in my early teens, that even now influences my writing. But this film feels like the film I should have seen as a kid at some point or another. It’s the step I missed along the way of growing up. The influence that I never saw, but always knew was there… but always felt its presence.

No one chooses to be haunted, I know that much. And our ghosts take shapes and forms at once alien and familiar. I chose this film purely because it was one that I missed as a kid. I didn’t expect it to fill the themes of the subject matter so well. For at the heart of the romance between Spider-Man and Mary Jane, there too lies a knowing artifice. They play roles in their lives of Bugs Bunny-esque Trickster playing the part of a Superhero and the Party Girl who doesn't care about anything save her own excess. But unlike Buttercup and Wesley, we do know their interiority.

The masks they wear hide confused somewhat miserable people. Not broken by the world per say, but damaged nonetheless. We call the damage realistic, believing that’s all there is to them. And yet, more than that is a desire to move past from the damage. Their first instincts may be to repress, sure. But ultimately they try heal from what has happened to them, and come out the other end better than they were.

Some might say conclude from this that the mask isn’t real, but as an internet friend of mine once said “All fictions are equally fictional.” We’re all stories in the end; best we can do is to be one that helps someone be a better person than they once were. Even if that person is just us. Besides, they’re terribly comfortable. I imagine everyone wears them in the future. It would be inconceivable otherwise.

“I always feel afraid, just the same as you. But I wear this mask every single day. And it doesn’t take the fear away, but it makes it feel a bit better. I feel brave enough then to face the whole world and all the people. And now you will, too.”
-David Bowie

(Next Time: I’ve Walked Behind The Sky!)

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[Photo: Are You Serious?! Shocked at the Beach Wedding Panic! Directed by Katsuyoshi Yatabe Script by Hiroyuki Hoshiyama]