Spider-Man
by
Stan Lee & Steve Ditko
Still distraught over the murder of his beloved Uncle Ben, Peter Parker throws his Spider-Man costume across the floor of his room; wishing he didn’t have to live with the incredible guilt of being partly responsible for his death. To make matters worse, when he comes down the stairs, he finds his Aunt May at the door with their landlord. With Ben dead, May has had trouble making ends meet and finds herself short of the month’s rent. He tells his Aunt that he will quit school to find a job, but May talks him out of it. His uncle had always dreamed of him graduating and becoming a scientist. As they sit down to breakfast, Peter briefly entertains the notion of using his newly obtained spider powers to rob banks for money, but realizes he couldn’t handle it if Aunt May found out he was a criminal. Instead, he will call his agent and book a performance as Spider-Man.
A few days later in chemistry class, Peter’s fellow students read about Spider-Man’s upcoming performance that night. When they all make plans to see him, Peter tells them to count him out, making them all continue to think he’s nothing but a square. That night, Spider-Man shows off his abilities before an awestruck audience. After the show, Spider-Man discusses his paycheck with the producer. The producer needs Spider-Man’s real name in order to make a legitimate check for tax purposes. Spider-Man refuses and has him make the check out to “Spider-Man.” But as predicted by the producer, when Spidey goes to cash his check at the bank, the teller refuses without proper identification.
In the offices of the newspaper publisher the “Daily Bugle,” the editor-in-chief, J. Jonah Jameson, is hammering furiously away at a typewriter. He is writing a scathing editorial to discredit Spider-Man. The next night when Spider-Man returns to the studio, the producer, who has read the article, says that Spider-Man is finished after this piece. As the days follow, Jonah continues his tirade against Spider-Man; performing a series of lectures around the city on how much of a menace this vigilante is, what a bad influence he is to children and that he should be outlawed. He proclaims that they should be respecting real heroes, like his own son astronaut/test-pilot John Jameson.
While public opinion turns on him, Peter picks up a paper in search of a part-time job that he can actually get paid for. While failing to pick any up due to his small stature, he notices Aunt May. He carefully trails her to see what she is up to. She arrives at a pawn shop where she pawns off several pieces of jewelry in order to get money for the month’s rent. Overhearing about John Jameson’s latest mission from a newsie, Peter finally snaps and starts pounding his fists against a building wall. Upset that he can’t help provide for the only family he has.
The next day, Peter decides to watch John Jameson’s latest test mission. Jonah appears to see his son off before he takes off for his next courageous endeavour inside a rocket capsule. The capsule successfully launches up into orbit. However, as soon as it hits orbit, a small piece of equipment that operates the forward guidance system breaks loose and floats away. Unable to control the flight, John Jameson’s capsule starts spinning in erratic patterns because it cannot maintain its orbit now. Jonah grows anxious at mission control as the ground team are alarmed to the situation. They determine that if John is not rescued, the capsule will just slowly sink back down and eventually crash into the earth. After the ground team attempt and fail to rescue John with a steel net, Peter (who has been witness to everything) realizes he has a responsibility and grabs his costume.
After donning his gear, Spider-Man sneaks into the control base. He quickly finds the office of the general in charge of the mission along with Jonah. Spider-Man swears to them that he will rescue John. While the general agrees to use Spider-Man’s help, Jonah berates him for just trying to gain publicity for himself. Spider-Man takes the unit and quickly leaps back out the window.
Outside on the base, Spider-Man shuts an alarmed guard up with his web as he races to the runway. He commandeers a plane and a pilot to take him up towards John’s careening capsule. When they reach the right altitude, Spider-Man climbs out of the plane and braces himself on the nose as the capsule comes towards them. As it passes by, Spider-Man times his webbing perfectly, snagging the capsule and letting it pull him away from the plane. Now dangling from his webbing, Spidey climbs the web rope to reach the metal hull. The capsule starts to drastically drop in altitude as soon as Spider-Man sticks to its side, leaving Spider-Man to wonder if he has time to pull this rescue off before they are both killed.
Spidey quickly moves to the head of the capsule. Almost immediately, he finds the right place to attach the new unit. With the capsule finally back under John’s control, the astronaut launches the vessel’s parachute so he and Spider-Man drift back safely to earth. Ground control report the safety of his landing to Jonah, while Spider-Man makes himself scarce. Being a bit conceited with the successful rescue, Spider-Man worries about embarrassing himself in front of the adoring public. He bets even Mr. Jameson would hire him now.
The next day, Peter realizes he couldn’t be more wrong. Reading the day’s edition of the Daily Bugle, Peter finds out Jonah is now calling for Spider-Man’s arrest and prosecution. As he continues his lecture circuit, Jonah proclaims that the entire incident with his son and Spider-Man was perpetrated by the vigilante himself, in order to gain notoriety. J. Jonah Jameson declares Spider-Man a menace. As Peter walks home from school, he can’t help but overhear the resentment in the voice of the public towards Spider-man. Under pressure from the Daily Bugle, the FBI put out a notice for Spider-man’s capture. When Peter returns home, even his Aunt May is worried about that horrible Spider-Man. Peter is left more anxious than ever, wondering if he really should take up a life of crime if this is what everybody already thinks of Spider-Man.
Notes
The first Spider-Man ongoing series! Yay!
However, Spider-Man does display a tendency to become overly conceited when he succeeds at things. I think it smartly reflects his anti-social life as Peter Parker at this early stage in his life. Once he puts that mask on, he can be “Spider-Man.” I think over the course of Ditko’s run, it’s about Peter finding the right balance in his personality with the mask on and off because he starts gaining friends which culminates in him going to college and meeting the Osborns, Gwen Stacy and Mary Jane. Maybe a tad controversial, but I think it makes sense that around that time John Romita takes over the art, because Peter/Spider-Man largely becomes more comfortable with who he is. Things start looking a little more romantic, which is what Romita mainly brings to the book after his work in the teen romance genre.
Peter has what seems like a throwaway line about Jameson hiring him on page 13, but this becomes true in the next issue. And becomes a central part of the life of Peter Parker.
Peter feels the tug of power & responsibility when John’s capsule goes awry and he is spurred into action. It isn’t directly mentioned, but you can tell by the way his fist clenches his costume at the bottom of page 8. In the comics, Uncle Ben never actually says the “great power/great responsibility” line to Peter, it was in a caption box at the end of the origin story. It was only later in the 90’s cartoon series and then picked up in the Sam Raimi movies that it became a thing Ben had said. It may have been retconned later at some point that I am not aware of, but he definitely did not say it in the original origin.
John Jameson has a much different journey ahead of him. In the 70’s he travels to the moon, where he finds a strange moon rock that turns him into a werewolf and goes on an adventure in another dimension called Other-Realm as Man-Wolf. For those interested, look for Creatures on the Loose #30-37.
Review & Ranking
This is a pretty great place to start with Spider-Man if you are 60’s reader and missed his Amazing Fantasy #15 appearance & origin. If you are a new current day reader, have seen Spider-Man’s origin retold in so many places already you don’t care about seeing it yet again, this is a key place to start. There’s a lot of emotional depth here that we haven’t seen very much of in previous Marvel stories I’ve covered. The pacing is great and the plot is pretty simple. There are no stupid aliens or commies/crooks in this one to drag the story down. It’s just Spider-Man fixing an incident and then getting blamed for it. The characters are all well realized, interesting and it ties together in a neat little loop at the end where Peter is worse off than how he began.
For all of those reasons, plus the cool, paranoid artwork of Steve Ditko, I think this story takes the top spot from its predecessor, Amazing Fantasy #15.
Next Time: Spider-Man takes on the Fantastic Four and gets his very first supervillain!
No comments:
Post a Comment