God Is

A different article I wrote on the same issue is included in PanelXPanel #15.

When I’m not writing these reviews, I have a blog where I mostly write about Spider-Man comics (well, the psychocronographic landscape of a Spider-Man story, but still). In my research of Spider-Man stories, I’ve come to find interesting patterns emerge from the various stories told about the web swinger over the years. One such pattern is the usage of the nine-panel grid. And, since the themes of the blog aren’t likely to have me talk about that aspect, I might as well use this platform to do so.

The Nine Panel Grid isn’t an uncommon form within the comics medium. As Hassan notes, the row structure is pretty basic and akin to the structure of a joke (Set Up-Beat-Punchline [which is perhaps why it works so well with Spidey]). The form has been used in numerous influential pieces of comics literature including Watchmen, The Omega Men, and Justice League International to provide a formalistic structure to the narrative. At the same time, it can be seen as a cage (indeed, Omega Men’s final page leans into this interpretation), something keeping the ideas on the page from escaping into infinite possibility.

But there are other things a Nine Panel Grid can be. For this, let’s look at what Spider-Man stories do with the grid. As many people who have written about Spider-Man are immediately willing to note, his stories are, if you look past the jokes, somewhat grim with a supporting cast dying for the sake of drama (most notably Gwen Stacy). The nine-panel grid obliges this view via showing up in these moments of crisis. Be it in the climatic moments of Spectacular Spider-Man #200, throughout The Master Planner arc (Amazing Spider-Man #31-33), or in the Death of Gwen Stacy itself. (Indeed, the first instance of a nine panel Grid in a Spider-Man comic was when Peter was informed that his Uncle Ben was dead. The second was when he found out who killed him.)

But let’s look at that moment in Amazing Spider-Man #122. It’s the last page of the story (though it’s not a traditional nine panel grid has the panels in the first two rows shift around in width before coalescing into a more traditional three panel row. But the sequence does work within the context as highlighting the true nature of the grid within this comic and most other Spider-Man comics). The scene depicted isn’t of Peter killing Norman Osborn or Gwen dying in Peter’s arms or other typically grim events people tend to think Spidey’s all about (to the point where they miss all the blatant slapstick and puns). Rather it’s a moment of intimacy between him and Mary Jane Watson wherein Peter has collapsed into the grief and cruelty that typified the early Ditko era. Mary Jane responds by staying in the room, refusing to let things fall to that state again.

And so it is here that we realize the true nature of the Nine Panel Grid in Spider-Man comics: not of the pain and suffering that fans look to so they can avoid having to acknowledge the humor and silliness of the stories they like, but of change. Then again, change is core to the concept of Spider-Man. For what other superhero (who started out with their own book) has changed their concept as much as Spider-Man? He’s no longer a high school student (or even a student) working as a photographer at the Daily Bugle (note Chip Zdarsky’s Spectacular Spider-Man #6, where the nine panel grid opens the comic, highlights where the debate between Peter and Jonah truly begins, and precludes the issue’s ultimate moment of change) to pay for his aunt’s medical bills (and that’s not even getting into radical shifts to Spider-Man outside of Peter Parker like Miles Morales or Mattie Franklin). More than that, change can be anything. It can be the decision to change the layout of your home, the cruel memories you had with your Granny revealing a bit of love within, or your wife telling you that she’s pregnant. Change can be wonderful.

Then again, change can also be a cage. The death of your brother is also a change. As is the rise of fascism within a world, the discovery that someone who influenced your way of thinking was a sexual harasser, or even the fire that burns the corpses of your victims into ash. Change cares not for being pleasant or cruel. Change is a force of the universe, something that can be shaped by the people who are affected. But those who shape change do not always have your interests in mind.

Sometimes, those who shape change want the world to be better for others, and view exterminating the Jews, queers, intellectuals, and other undesirables to be a necessary change.

Why shouldn’t I commit suicide?

Others (who also want to change the world for the better) feel that protesting cruelty and defending the dispossessed from those who wish to see them die is a better methodology to change the world towards a more “utopian” capitalism (which is well and good, so long as you ignore the inherent cruelty baked into capitalism’s concept). And some shape change by committing suicide. In the end, change is not inherently good or evil or even something in-between.

Change is.

“All that you touch
You Change.
 All that you Change
Changes you.
 The only lasting truth
Is Change.
 God
Is Change”
-Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

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