Spider-Man Comics: Making Soap Operas Acceptable To Men--And Other Thoughts

I decided to get rid of some of my comic books lately, so I found some Spider-Man comics that I didn't want anymore. I had tried to get into Spider-Man, I really had, but for some reason I never saw the appeal.
So I tried to give them one more chance. Most of my Spider-Man comics are from the 1990s, when it wasn't uncommon to have many-parted stories, even ones spanning up to five different series, so that you have to subscribe to five different series just to see how it ends. (Superman comics were really bad about this in the 90s, but Spider-Man apparently did this too.)
So I picked up a standalone comic (Web of Spider-Man 92, September 1992), thinking that I didn't have to worry about not catching up. But somehow, Peter Parker was still bothered, apparently, by something that happened in the last comic (probably in many previous comics). I had seen no indication on the cover that it was continued from the last issue of WOS, or from another series.
And yet I found myself thinking, "Who is Betty and why does she blame him for her husband's death?"
And then I remembered that this had been typical for any modern Spider-Man comics I had seen. Here are my thoughts on the character:

1) The Bold And The Bugbrain: He lives in a daytime drama.

 I realized that this was the problem with Spider-Man for me: He always had some shit to deal with. There was always something going on, I was always plunked down in the middle of an ongoing story, and if I recall right, it had been happening since the 1970s (in the comics; I was born in 1991).
 And I don't care for this approach to storytelling. I have my own shit to deal with, and now I have to deal with Spider-Man's? I like my peaceful life; why would I escape into one filled with interpersonal drama?
Sometimes his personal problems are related to his villains, sometimes they are not. And while superpowers, insanity, and accidents that drive people to evil corruption can sometimes make things much more interesting, underneath it all, it's still drama. With a big enough budget and a long enough run time, any soap opera series would go into every one of these plotlines. It's a glorified super-powered soap opera.

2) The count of his friends can rival Game Of Thrones (and it's just as bloody and complicated). 

What made the Winter Soldier storyline, in both the movie and the Captain America comic books, so addictive, wonderful, and heart-wrenching was the fact that it was Bucky who was corrupted. Bucky, Cap's sidekick from the beginning--the very beginning in 1942! This was a rare storyline to pursue for Cap, and it had so much history behind it.
It became great, because Captain America was treated like Spider-Man--only they did it rarely, and with so recognizable a character. Imagine if Uncle Ben came back from the dead as a brainwashed assassin that Spidey had to fight. Or Aunt May gets brainwashed, because that's actually someone we know better. How awesome would that be?
And yet Spider-Man has SO MANY friends, that it becomes hard to keep track of them all, or to care about any of them.

3) Flash Thompson was not a bully, he was preserving his own soul.

And when they're not being killed or kidnapped, they're turning evil at alarming rates. Doc Ock, the Lizard, Norman Osborn, Harry Osborn, even the parasitic alien goo that comprises half of Venom--I am not even a Spider-fan, and I could name five off the top of my head! Even if you're living tar from outer space, the minute you befriend Peter Parker is the first step in your downward spiral into madness, your first handshake the dreadful sign of your inevitable and inescapable corruption.
 Flash was perhaps afraid to get close to him, and perhaps he was onto something. He knew that Peter was the Horcrux of a tiny, radioactive, eight-legged Voldemort. (Voldemorachnid?) I would love to know if the evil spider who bit him had previously murdered Ant Man.
Spider-Man has so much going for him, especially all of the many, MANY silly and colorful villains. He is the Flash of Marvel. I should love him. And I do--when he isn't weighed down by his wife wanting a divorce or his aunt possibly having cancer or him feeling responsible for his girlfriend's death. And I have to go pretty far back to get the purely fun, colorful crimefighting of yesteryear. I think even in the 60s, there was still a bit of drama.
When Harry Osborn became the new Green Goblin, that was a great concept and storyline. But they did that kind of thing too much. Now everyone around him is either going to become a villain, or get mixed up with one.


4) He appeals to a victimhood mentality.

And everyone is inevitably going to get mad at Pete for something that isn't his fault. (He's such a "nice guy," after all.) He's sometimes the avatar for a certain kind of male. The kind of male that the internet first called "nice guys," then called "neckbeards," and now I believe they're called "fuckboys." But whatever you call them, these are the guys (usually young, but they can be into their thirties and beyond) who are always a victim. Something is always happening to them, and it's always someone else' fault.
The most famous and common example is that the women they like "always pick the assholes." (I once misread that phrase, and thought someone was complaining that so many women were literally picking THEIR OWN ASSHOLES, like someone would pick their own nose. I was horrified, for one very long and unpleasant minute.)
Or that the woman they are currently with, is somehow ruining their life, and why can't these women just treat them right, because they're nice guys, after all? Apparently not hitting women is enough in their minds.
Usually, these men are blaming women for either not being attracted to them, or once they are with them, not giving them enough sex or making reasonable requests to help with the children or household tasks.
Spider-Man himself is not a professional victim--he tries to help those who cause him harm, not blame them. But I think he appeals to these types of men, because something is always happening to him that is not his fault. It's always someone else who is evil or reckless with their experiments or carrying their emotions of grief too far. It is very rare that anything is his fault. (And let's be real--do we really expect him to give up fighting crime to spend more time with Mary Jane? MJ is meant to be seen as unreasonable. The only time I really saw any fault with him is when he lied too much in one issue, and learned he had a problem.)
I have personally heard a Spider-Man fan or two describe themselves as a "nice guy" unironically. But Spider-Man sets an excellent example for how to deal with--how to try to help--those who cause you grief through no real fault of their own. Yet the danger is that he's too perfect, and everyone around him is unreasonable. And that "everyone around me is unreasonable" is what fanboys will ultimately take from it.

5) He has a rare mother figure.

He also has a mother figure sometimes mentoring him, which is so rare for a male superhero. Most of the time he has the mindset of trying to take care of the helpless little woman (even when he was a teenager). But occasionally Aunt May dispenses advice which is unintentionally useful in his crimefighting.
I am tired of seeing male superheroes obsessed with their dead fathers. Especially Superman, who never even knew his biological father (his sperm donor), but obsesses over him, even comically arguing and taking advice from a computer simulation of his ghost--but cares nothing for his dead birth mother (egg donor). He never knew her, but he never knew his sperm donor, either. And  he constantly shits on his adoptive family by not acknowledging them as his parents, when they raised him from a baby! They weren't abusive or neglectful, so why aren't they his parents?
And there's also Batman, who also seems to worship his father an inordinate amount compared to his mother--and he knew both of them until he was about ten.
So, even though Spider-Man obsesses over Uncle Ben, when Aunt May is still alive and ready to dispense wisdom and good advice, it's refreshing that he has a "mother." And it's very rare in comics that any female would not be a young, pretty love interest (yes, I've heard of those gross movies)--even though he seems to have to take care of her when she should be taking care of him.
(Even when he is still a boy, and she seems elderly but able-bodied--because he has a penis, I guess.  And she can cook and clean a large house, but cannot even be a part-time receptionist, because she lost all job skills upon her marriage.)
At least in the beginning, Aunt May played a much bigger role than either Martha Kent or Aunt Harriet. (In the comics, at least--does anyone even remember Aunt Harriet, other than in the 1960s Batman TV show?) I just wish that he would have consistently looked up to her as the mentor figure she could have been, rather than obsessing over one short sentence uttered by his dead uncle. (Because other than that, what do we really know of Uncle Ben, anyway?) Uncle Ben may have been the reason he became Spider-Man, but the living Aunt May should have been the reason that he continued fighting evil.

My relationship with the character of Spider-Man is...complicated. I wish I could just tell him to lighten up, to stop feeling so responsible for taking on other people's drama. Any time he has a simple, angst-free superhero storyline, I gobble that shit up. But unfortunately, that excludes most of his comic book history. I'm limited, basically, to anything done for little kids--though I don't mind terribly, but it would be nice to have grownup storylines without teenage angst. We need a mixture of light and dark, not all dark all the time.
I realize I'm generalizing very much here. I can't read all of the Spider-Man comic books ever published, or even most of them. All of his adventures could be crammed into ten very busy human lifetimes. He's like a friend that I like as a person, but don't like to be around because I don't want to take on his burdens and constant life drama.
I hope for all of our sakes that Spider-Man is allowed to retire his Midas Touch of Evilness when meeting new friends, has a happy marriage, doesn't have to worry about his elderly aunt, and also fights challenging bad guys against insurmountable odds.
Maybe some people actually like that his inner demons make him more "relatable," but it just makes me want to avoid him so that I don't have to hear about his depressing life--while not even being able to help him.
Spidey deserves to be happy for a while, in his personal life. And we deserve to see him happy.

Supergirl Pilot Episode Review: How To Make Jimmy Olsen Black

Not a lot of people know this about me, but I am a HUGE Jimmy Olsen fan. I literally have every issue of the golden, silver, and bronze age comic series, Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen. It took me a long time to collect all 163 issues from 1954 to 1974. (I quoted that statistic off the top of my head--look it up, I have that much confidence. I know I'm right.) But it was worth it.
I am obsessed with my favorite characters, of which he is one. I love the goofiness of the golden and silver ages, and the changes of the 1970s when he becomes "Mr. Action" and gets more politically involved. And I love that his disguises--including cross-dressing--have remained a part of his character since the very first issue.
And even though I chose not to collect the series when it became Superman Family at issue 164, folding in both the Lois Lane and Supergirl series also (again, off the top of my head), my Jimmy Olsen collection is one of my most prized possessions. Number one is not in Near Mint condition, but it is mine.
And I would never give up even one book in my collection, unless I had to feed myself, pay for a medical emergency, or get a degree for a dream job that I love more than Jimmy Olsen. (Ha!)

So it really upsets me when he is portrayed in movies and on TV as anything less than his magnificent, bright-orange-redheaded, freckled, bow-tie-wearing, Superman-worshipping, geeky self. And he is portrayed with brown hair literally every single fucking time.
These casting directors have absolutely no excuse. Rupert Grint exists. If you can find a Ron Weasely, you can find a Jimmy Olsen. But apparently since the 1930s, redheads have only existed in cartoons and comic books.

I also really love Supergirl, almost as much as I love her friend Mary Marvel. In fact, if Supergirl doesn't end up with Mary Marvel, Jimmy Olsen is my first choice. He is the only acceptable love interest, in my mind, for Hetero Supergirl. The only one.

So at first I was very unhappy, watching the first episode of CW's Supergirl, when the character introduced as "James Olsen" was a thirty-five-year-old, tall, muscular black man with no hair--not just non-red hair, no hair at all!
But then I realized, as a Jimmy Olsen/Supergirl super-fangirl, that, if they were going to change his appearance so drastically, the producers of the show could have had a lot more fun with it. In the pilot, he meets Kara (called her Kryptonian name in real life, apparently--if they didn't want to go with Linda, would it have killed them to shorten it to Lynne or something?), then right away hints at his friendship with Superman. She exclaims, "You're Jimmy Olsen!" and he corrects her--"James." Because apparently in a show called SuperGIRL, we have to be reminded that Jimmy Olsen is all grown up.
There is no iconic bow tie to be seen.
But they could have made it so much better. Consider this instead:

Throughout the first episode, Kara keeps running into the new guy from work--who is wearing a bow tie. Most people will not notice the bow tie at first, at least on a black man. He keeps trying to introduce himself, but they get interrupted every time.
Finally, at the very end of the episode, he gets the chance to say, "There you are. We haven't been formally introduced. I'm Jimmy Olsen."
"Oh!" she exclaims in surprise, glancing at his bow tie. "You're...not like I pictured you..."
"What do you mean?" he asks.
"I expected you be...you know...shorter," she answers sincerely.
He appears genuinely perplexed. "Yeah, for some reason, when people hear the name 'Jimmy Olsen,' they picture a skinny little white kid."

In this way, we can have fun with the change. We can take it seriously, because of Kara's sincere tone of voice when she says "shorter," as if she is not thinking of some other word. And his real confusion over why people think of him as white would avoid the "wink-wink" type of fourth wall break that thinks it is so clever, but which is severely overused (and which I can't stand).
But at the same time, we would give the audience a mystery to solve, and acknowledge the big change that is made. The exchange about him being shorter could easily be ruined with bad acting or bad direction to the actors, but if the actors are sincere--if the characters really believe that "shorter" is the most appropriate word--then it can be pulled off beautifully.
 (He also could have figured out on his own that Kara was Supergirl, making him look much smarter than if Superman had simply told him, as in the show. That reveal just makes him look like a real jerk for hinting at it throughout the episode, as if he wasn't trying to figure something out but rather just wanted to tease her and make her anxious about her secret identity.)
And he doesn't even have to wear a bow tie after the first episode. Just give us the pilot, have him say later that his other ties were dirty if you want. But Jimmy Olsen doesn't need a phallic symbol on his neck.

If you're going to change such a major and beloved character's appearance so much from the comic book--not just his race, but also his age, build, height, hair style, fashion sense, personality (more confident, less awkward, no gushing over Superman), and even the name he goes by--you're going to have to address that. While also taking the change seriously, so it doesn't look like you're making a black man, and your entire show, nothing more than a joke.
By making a mystery out of who this guy is--while providing a subtle visual clue--and addressing the change without getting overly jokey about it, we can do this. That is something this white, Jimmy-Olsen-purist, super-fan-girl can get behind.