I Was Magic. (Spider-Man: Hooky)

1/8: Life's a laugh and death's a joke, it's true.

We open on a bitter January evening. A trio of crooks are attempting to rob a building with a metal door for reasons the story never explicitly tells us. In truth, they’re more akin to the three stooges than a typical thief, as they are quick to argue and get into physical arguments. Even Spider-Man notes the connection once he reveals himself to the trio. Naturally, the four don’t get on and so they fight. While the fight is going on, the owner of the building the trio was attempting to rob watches. As he watches with disdain, he notices a clicking sound. He turns his head to find a camera Spider-Man webbed to the fire escape to take pictures of the fight.

Seeing the material worth of the camera, the man decides to steal it whilst Spidey’s preoccupied with the hoodlums. But just as he’s about to cut the camera free from the webs, a little girl throws a snowball right in his face. She doesn’t take kindly to thieves and, as her western attire implies, tells the “varmint” to leave the camera be. Just before the man is about to stab the little girl, Spider-Man shows up to take his camera back, telling the old man to just walk away and they won’t say a word. The old man agrees to this proposal.

As Spider-Man goes down to thank the little girl, she says it wasn’t a problem and that he should hug his Uncle Ben to make them even. Spidey, shocked by this revelation, tries to act as if he has no idea what she’s talking about but the little girl says his secret’s safe with her and that his aura stick out like a sore thumb. She introduces herself as Marandi “Mandi” Sjorokker, though admits he might not remember her, and claims to be picking up some stuff to fight the “Tordenkakerlakk.” As the police arrive, Mandi leaves the scene, telling Spidey it’s out of his league but if he wants to help, he should come back at 6:30 the next morning. Confused by what just happened, Spidey leaves without helping a single police officer in their inquiry.

He tries to figure out who this little girl is, how she knows him. He doesn’t know any 12 year old girls and isn’t quite sure if he knew any six year old ones when he was younger. Mandi mentioned knowing Dr. Strange, so Spidey decides that’s where he should head off to next. He calls up to see if Strange isn’t asleep, but Strange’s assistant Wong tells Spidey that he’s in some mystical dimension a few doors down from our reality. When he asks about the Tordenkakerlakk, Wong relays that he doesn’t know that word or anything about the girl who said it.

While dismayed, the conversation did make Spider-Man recall that there was a Norwegian family in the neighborhood he grew up in. A pity that Aunt May is out ‘til Sunday, or he could have asked her directly. But it gives him a starting point to look up the term “Tordenkakerlakk,” which is loosely translated from Norwegian to mean “Thunder Cockroach.” With no other choice, Peter decides to help the young girl in… whatever it is she’s planning.

For once, he’s the one left waiting for someone else while their running late, but Mandi does eventually arrive. It seems she needed to get some materials and her shopping list was six pages long. “For a world where magic isn’t much believed,” she says, “you can find a lot of powerful stuff if you know where to look.” Rather than stay in the cold, Mandi reveals to Spider-Man her portable door, which can take them to an alternate dimension. And when he looks inside, Spider-Man sees a strange new landscape, unlike any he could ever exist within.

As they travel through the door, Mandi reveals she used to deliver newspapers to the neighborhood Peter grew up in when he was five and that Uncle Ben was her favorite customer. When Peter questions how a 12 year old could have a paper route when she was only seven, she reveals that she’s actually centuries old, but hasn’t aged a day. Mandi tells Spider-Man that she believes the Tordenkakerlakk is the bane that was prophesized to happen, a sort of death curse. Hearing this and acknowledging this is outside of his wheelhouse, Spidey offers his assistance.

As they fly to their destination with their magic ponchos, Mandi explains her lack of hope in defeating the bane. She thinks Spidey will not be able to help her and the Tordenkakerlakk will only kill him if he tries. She just doesn’t want to die forgotten and alone. To get off the morbid subject, Mandi commends Spidey’s ability to learn quickly, just as his Uncle Ben said. When she asks how the old man is doing, Spidey replies that he died a few years back. He admits that its taken him and Aunt May a few years to adjust to the idea that Ben’s dead, but before he can finish that thought, Spidey gets flung by the jetstreams that allow the two of them to fly. To save him, Mandi makes a portal to another dimension with fluffy pillows and a harem of barely dressed ladies. Peter has to remind himself that he can’t just stay there while Mandi’s life is in danger, so he flies off to her world: Cloudsea.

While enjoying the wondrous sea of clouds that allow Spidey to fly, a fly like being called an Ephex tries to strangle the superhero and he is only barely able to survive. After that random encounter, they arrive to Mandi’s ship: The Nonesuch, which looks more like a canoe with a frog’s face than a traditional ship. While on the ship, Mandi explains that she spent the past couple of centuries exiled on Earth moving from family to family, getting an education, learning new things, and moves on when it becomes abundantly clear she isn’t aging. The reason this is occurring is because she comes from a line of unpopular (evil) wizards, her father being Kurudred the Blood Drinker.

He wanted to conquer the seven planets of Lemne, but Elmak the Light Shaper kept getting in his way. Eventually, Kurudred conjured a spell for eight days to melt Elmak’s citadel with him in it. He thought he could get away with it, but the League of Three Threes thought otherwise and killed both Kurudred and his brother. But, when it came to killing Marandi, the league was uncomfortable with the prospect of killing a little girl. To save his daughter, Kurudred used the last of his magic to keep Marandi from ever growing up. It was the curse of immortality and perpetual adolescence. With her story done, Mandi tells Spidey to get some sleep, as Roach Hunting is a morning task. They bond over the possibility of Spidey being in a harem with The Vision and David Lee Roth. But before either can get the sleep they need, the Tordenkakerlakk suddenly appears and attacks, living up to the “kakerlakk” part of the name. They’re able to lure it away with the ships sonar, though Mandi notes the same trick won’t work on it twice.

The next morning, Mandi explains that the Tordenkakerlakk is part of a prophecy told to her by an Oracle from Stoa Neroi, who claimed in the verse that many a prophecy uses that a wizard-spawned bane is trying to kill her she won’t be able to kill it until she “drink the doom it brings,” which Mandi interprets to mean “it won’t die until she dies.” When Spidey offers to help her retreat if things get too rough, Mandi says she’s sick of paper routes and adoption; she just wants this over with.

Eventually, the Tordenkakerlakk returns, right atop the Elmak’s ruin of a citadel. Mandi concludes from the bane’s current location that Elmak was the one who placed the bane on her as revenge for killing him. As Spidey fights the bane, his webs are able to web up the creature, but it quickly begins to metamorphosize into something less cockroach shaped and more akin to a hybrid between a cockroach and the bone thing from that episode of Hannibal where Will kills Randall Tier. Spidey tries to physically fight the creature, but it’s able to grab ahold of the costumed hero quickly. Thinking fast, Spidey blinds the creature and tries to fly long enough to escape back to the ship.

But the Tordenkakerlakk isn’t one to give up quickly, as it extends its neck to eat them both. When Spidey traps it with his webs, the bane transforms once more, now something more akin to an angry giant with pincers on its face. At this point, the Tordenkakerlakk is able to communicate, but it’s only able to say stuff along the lines of “DEATH TO THE CHILD!” and “DEATH! DEATH! DEATH!” among other things. After it throws Spidey to the other side of the ship, he notes that it’s in the Hulk’s weight class and since Mandi doesn’t know any spells to defeat the creature, Spider-Man has no choice but to keep fighting until he finds the anchor of the ship and stabs the bane with it.

During the respite as the bane regenerates, Peter notes the unlikelyhood that Elmak the Light Shaper would use his final breath to put a death curse on a litteral child, so he asks who could have done the spell. Mandi notes that the League of Three Threes died years before she went on the run and the power needed would have to be on her father’s level. There isn’t anyone in the spheres who could do such a thing. Spidey asks about people from Earth who could hold a grudge, but Mandi says she’s always careful and that she only knows Dr. Strange through passing. Everything else is just her and her interests in Vikings, Norse Mythology, and Clint Eastwood.

But before they can get any answers out of their discussion, the Tordenkakerlakk takes on a new form, this one more akin to John Carpenter’s The Thing. Mandi is too shocked to move, dreading the inevitability of her death. To get her out of it, Spidey sacrifices himself to the bane, not to die by its hand, but to show Mandi that it can be defeated. He webs it up faster than even he thought possible. But before they can escape to get help from Dr. Strange, the Tordenkakerlakk grabs ahold of Peter’s ankle and he tells Mandi to leave without him. When he returns to the ship, Peter finds the bane has now become a motherfucking dragon.

The dragon gives Spidey an ultimatum: Flee or Die. But at that moment, Spidey realizes something: the same method shouldn’t work twice. So why do his webs keep working? Even his Spider-Sense shorts out around the bane, but never his web fluids. He speculates that maybe the reality of the fluids is throwing the bane off, because they aren’t magical at all. To test this theory, the Dragon breaths fire at Spider-Man with only a web shield to protect him. (Since I cut out the bit that was going to have this, I should note that this is a scene where Spider-Man fights a dragon as drawn by Bernie motherfucking Wrightson! I love this comic!) Fortunately, it works. Spidey uses the last of his web fluids to clog up the Dragon’s mouth and it explodes.

Mandi returns alone to find Spidey knocked out and the Tordenkakerlakk still regenerating. Spider-Man doesn’t have the strength to fight the creature again, He suggests that maybe she should improvise the way an adult wizard could. Initially hesitant, Mandi eventually makes up a spell, declaring herself “Marandi the Loyal” and the Tordenkakerlakk is defeated. When she awakens, Spidey explains his theory that Kurudred’s spell to keep Mandi young wasn’t supposed to last forever, but until he thought it was safe for her to grow up (which is to say when the League of Three Threes was dead). The Tordenkakerlakk was a way to push Mandi towards the pain and terror of adulthood. The doom in the prophecy was in fact referring to the loss of her eternal childhood. Growing up is difficult, even terrifying at times. But if Spider-Man stories have taught me anything, it’s that it’s a necessary aspect of life and one that should be embraced. It’s painful, but without that pain we’re left in a stasis that never ends. There are so many corners of the world unseen by those who refuse to grow up.

They return to New York, and Spider-Man swings off to another adventure.

“There is much that remains untold. But let us end our story here."
-Hayao Miyazaki, 1994

            The End.

07/13/2017-03/22/2017

[Photo: The Last Jedi Written and Directed by Rian Johnson]

Long ago in an American autumn.