The last few days have seen Marvel fans go berserk. And rightfully so! The character we all loved, not just in the movies, but also in the comic book pages as well as the highly successful old animated series, has been sucked into a highly tangled legal web, thanks to Disney and Sony pictures.
The Spider-Man has suddenly come to remind us of a heroine caught in a love-triangle. One moment she’s with this guy and the next moment she’s with the second guy, and then the two guys fight over her, with one of them finally walking away. This imbroglio comes at a time when the Marvel Cinematic Universe built up the mightiest story arc with Endgame, and Spidey has had his own character arc in Spider-Man: Far from Home. What’ll happen to our favourite wall crawler? What about all those plot points which have been left unanswered, leading to more sequels? Only time will tell.
Spider-Man has been considered by many as one of the most important comic characters ever created. Sure, we have had Superman, Batman, Hulk and others doing all the heroic things that they do, but it was Peter Parker and his arachnid alter-ego who changed how we perceived superheroes. Created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, Spider-Man made his comic book debut in 1962, in the series, Amazing Fantasy. According to Stan Lee, the comic title wasn’t doing too well and the then editor was on the verge of drawing the curtains on it. Stan Lee had created Spider-Man some time earlier but apparently the idea was shot down by the editorial team saying that kids won’t like a superhero based on spiders, that’ll make him appear scary. And the fact that Lee had thought up Peter Parker to be a teenager didn’t go down too well with them either. Back in those days, teenagers were always shown as sidekicks to the main superheroes, much like Robin to Batman, Bucky to Captain America and so on. When Lee heard about the plug being pulled on Amazing Fantasy, he asked the editorial team if he could run Spidey in this issue, a full-fledged story along with a (now iconic) cover image. Lee mentioned in one of his interviews that since the issue was the last, no one really cared what went into it. But once the comic book hit the stands, its fortunes changed!
Spider-Man became a very popular character almost instantly. The very criticisms that were put up about the character earlier were suddenly considered strokes of genius. People loved the fact that there was a wall-crawling hero in comics now, and that he was just a teen. In fact, him being a teen immediately upped the relatability factor among the young readers. Peter Parker was no invincible hero; he has always had his share of problems — death of his uncle, issues with his girlfriend (Gwen Stacy), to internships, bullies in school, homework and even generic insecurities. No other larger-than-life hero or heroine was shown to be this vulnerable before. That’s the greatness of Stan Lee. He’s given us very real, flawed characters, who question themselves and never claim to be God-like, and Spidey definitely is among the top three of his creations.
Spider-Man has starred in an animated series which used to air on Doordarshan back when I was in my school. I remember tuning in religiously and humming the opening song of the show.... Spider-Man, Spider-Man, does whatever a spider can! Though there were attempts of making Spidey movies in the past, the real movie canon started in 2002 with the first movie trilogy starring Tobey Maguire. It was followed by the rebooted Amazing Spider-Man movies with Andrew Garfield in 2012 and 2014. These movies were made under the Sony Pictures banner, to which Marvel had sold the rights of the character to. Here was where the historic decisions were made, which are still the bones of contention.
Marvel wanted to license out their top billed characters like the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, the Hulk, etc to movie studios, so that they could tide off their financial issues. Then with Marvel deciding to make their own movies and thus starting the MCU, Spidey remains on a sticky wicket. Disney and Sony did manage a coup to get him into the MCU, but it looks like that was temporary.
As of now, Spidey is still one of the fans’ most loved characters on screen and even off it. We’d love to watch him in theatres telling his stories, no matter which banner he would feature under. In fact, it doesn’t matter at all. We just want some good ol’ web slingin’ and MJ to finally say, ‘Go get ’em Tiger!’
(The writer is a comic creator, illustrator and animator)