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“I want to be a superhero
I've got a mask I've got a name
Your days calling me freak are numbered
Don't bother with surrender”
-Trocadero, Superhero
I do not remember much about the day the twin towers fell. There are flashes of memories here and there. I know I was six years old at Cos Cob Elementary. I know that we were taken to the gymnasium to watch it happen on a small television (the kind every classroom used to have that you could barely see a thing on unless you were in the front row). I remember being sent home. I remember going to Todd’s Point to watch it happen. (You can still see the New York skyline even today.) I remember my mom being worried about my cousin, who worked in the city at the time. (She’s ok. Just saw her last weekend.)
But I don’t remember how I was feeling at the time. I don’t remember if I was afraid or confused or happy or what. I was just six years old. I didn’t know much about the world. I didn’t know anything about the world. I probably still don’t.
Around this time (probably a few months later), I started getting into Spider-Man. I had already loved the Simpsons Comics on the shelves of the local CVS, Stop and Shop, and Walgreens. I’d check out the trades from the library and smile at the jokes. But next to those Simpsons Comics were other comic books. But I didn’t read the Spider-Man comics. Sure, I saw them on the shelves, but they never attracted my six year old brain.
The first Spider-Man comic I ever read properly was The Amazing Spider-Man #2. It was released as part of a promotional deal the New York Times (or maybe it was a different paper, I don’t fully remember) to advertise the new movie. If you bought one of their issues, you would get a copy of some Spider-Man comics for free. Those comic being the first three or four issues of The Amazing Spider-Man. I’ll admit, I skimmed through the first issue provided. I wasn’t quite hooked yet.
But that second issue, I have such vivid memories of falling in love with the idea. Specifically, it was the story of the Tinkerer that blew my mind. In it, Peter Parker is sent to get a radio for one of his teachers. Unbeknownst to him, a group of aliens are using the radios to spy on various people of importance. Peter figures out something fishy is going on and uncovers and foils the plot. Now that I’m older, I’m well aware that this was probably a reused script from the old Amazing Fantasy days repurposed to be a Spider-Man story. The kind of Cold War relic (like Invaders from Mars or my childhood favorite movie, Invasion of the Body Snatchers) that feared the outside influence under our nose. But as a kid, this blew my mind. I’ve always had a love for aliens and stories with aliens in them. That Spider-Man could be someone who would deal with aliens really made me want to read more.
And it’s not as if I didn’t like the other comics. They were perfectly fun Spider-Man stories. But that one story made me realize that Spider-Man could be about anything.
On the car ride to the movie theater where we ultimately saw the first Spider-Man movie, we listened to Radio Disney. I’m sure my mom would have preferred to listen to the news or a book, but being a kid meant getting to choose the radio station (except when my dad drove, then it was Anita Baker/Whitney Houston/Celine Dion forever and ever). But as we were approaching the theater, an advertisement for the National Guard began to play. In it, a college student was looking at the bills they would have to pay in order to afford to go to college. Their friend notes that, if they join the National Guard, then the government will pay for the college the student wants to go to. Hearing that ad, at the age of six, I suddenly became worried about how I was going to pay for college. It wasn’t a constant worry (again, I was six), but it was enough for me to think, for many years, that I would have to join the National Guard in order to go to college.
I’d hear that ad and many more like it in the years to come.
Spider-Man is a character I hold very near and dear to my heart. He is, in my opinion, the greatest superhero of them all. Better than Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Captain America, and Squirrel Girl. He is someone who cares for the people and the city he lives in. He’s kind of an asshole, sometimes a bit too bitter for his own good, and feral like the best of us. Peter’s compassionate, caring, and a barrel of laughs. And, perhaps most notable for the purposes of this article, he lived in New York City.
He was a child under twin towers, and like so many of them, 9/11 changed everything. It changed the landscape of the city. The shape it appeared to the world. How fitting, then, that Spider-Man would be the first Superhero to get a traditional film[1] based on his exploits in the wake of 9/11. How fitting that a hero inextricably tied to the City would be the hero to open the 21st century, the post-9/11 age.
What follows is an exploration of the implications of that sentence. How has the webslinger changed over the course of these twenty some odd years? How has the City? How has America? How has the Superhero? This is not a story where good triumphs over evil, where the heroes end up on top. It’s a question about the nature of a man. Who is Spider-Man in this brave new world?
[1] While Blade II predated Spider-Man, it does not fall into what one would call the traditional superhero film.
