|
Absent Friends
I was walking in an urban area. Old and peeling, some shops displaying the same faded merchandise that had been there for fifty years, others obviously newly purchased and being refurbished by the earnest young. A warren of narrow streets, a neighborhood pleasant to walk by day, more than a little intimidating by night. I've been in this neighborhood a dozen times, even though it looks like no part of any city I've ever seen.
I was greeted by two people from behind - people who greeted me as if they knew me. I turned around and there were Peter and Mary Jane Parker. Goodness, it had been ages, hadn't it? We continued down the street together, the three of us catching up on life details - whether they were going to move to another town and where, how everyone's job was going, and so forth.
I was apologetic for not seeing them more often - an apology I find myself making to my friends, over and over. I tried to make a joke about how I always seem to be caught up with "that millionaire, the crazy one," but it wasn't well received. Why should it have been? The only thing worse than admitting you neglect your friends is admitting that you prefer to spend time with a different friend. After that, as we walked up the next street, I don't recall they said anything. They smiled and didn't seem to mind my talking at them, but the tone of the conversation had changed.
I was going to have to leave their company around the next corner. They had already turned it, a little ahead of me. I wanted to tell Peter to be careful, and I wanted to tell Mary Jane to be glad. After all, her plane has crashed and she's presumed dead. If she was there on the street, then either it wasn't going to happen or she had survived it after all.
I turned the corner, opened my mouth - and realized the two people I had come up to were not Peter and Mary Jane. They were wearing similar clothes, and the woman resembled Mary Jane a little, but it definitely wasn't them. "Sorry," I said, to their bewildered faces. I turned and went the other way.
As I woke up with my eyes wet, I wondered: Had it not been them all along, just me babbling to two strangers for three blocks because I hallucinated they were old friends? Or had it really been them, and they only began to fade out because my brain started to call attention to the fact that they live in a comic book?
When Spider-Man first appeared, ages ago, I wonder how many readers realized that it wasn't his powers which made him so unusual. Stan Lee did, but then Lee knew what he was doing all along.
What was really special about Peter Parker is that he was an everyday guy, with real-world problems and a day job. Superheroes always seem to be independently wealthy, which makes life easier for the writer but makes them less real to the reader. Not Peter. He was always suffering some romantic breakup or unexpected medical bill, wondering where the money was going to come from and how long he could go roaming the streets at night and still be able to get up for work in the morning.
Spider-Man had background continuity. That is, Peter was allowed to fall in love or change jobs or even get married, and have it stay that way - have actual repercussions on the future of the storyline. Other comics have adopted this to some degree now, but for years they were treated like an old serial that "resets" every time a new episode comes on. Again, this makes life easier for the writers, but it makes the hero(ine) seem more detached from the world. How many times have you heard a superhero argue, "I must never fall in love," and wondered who he was protecting exactly?
This is the problem with Indiana Jones, by the by. He is basically taken from old thriller serials, and in those the normal practice is for the hero to Fall In Love Forever at the end of one episode, and be alone at the beginning of the next, ready to woo and win a new damsel. But I said "basically." Indy is more complex than those old heros, and Marion Ravenwood is not your average damsel-in-distress. When she was abandoned for new continuity in the second film, audiences had a hard time getting over the slap in the face. (By the third film, we were ready for it.)
As I say, comic books are getting better about this. I don't happen to think that Marvel books have a lot of back continuity, other than Spider-Man, which is why I don't read them - that, and I stopped following the X-Men when I couldn't keep track of who was in what title and suddenly there were, like, five series going. But on the DC side, they finally allowed Superman to get married - about damn time - and they've been keeping the continuity pretty strong there (although, again, both Superman and Batman suffer the split-across-multiple-titles problem - to me this is a transparent scam to sell more comic books).
Even the main Batman continuity has been allowed to keep a few permanent changes - notably the decision to keep Barbara Gordon in a wheelchair after the Joker shot through her spine (in a book, "The Killing Joke," which was not even part of the normal continuity when it came out). But Batman will never have a wife, or even a regular lover. It's not in his personality. Superman longs to be normal. Batman is married to his job.
That's why I seem a little wistful about my encounter with the Parkers - and not just because killing Mary Jane is a horrible thing to do (though not as bad as James Gordon seeing both his daughter crippled and his second wife killed by the same damn madman). The Parkers are nice people. You'd like to have them to dinner. They're more real than those other comic book people.
Yet I seem to spend all my time with Batman.
I don't buy comic books singly anymore - save for two titles I subscribe to - but I buy a lot of them when they're bound up into "graphic novels" containing entire storylines, which is how I prefer to read them. And over seventy-five percent of the "superhero" graphic novels I buy (stuff like Sandman doesn't count) feature the guy in the cowl.
I'm not sure I understand it. I mean, Batman is a hard person to like. He won't let anyone get close to him, he doesn't converse well, he's not especially warm, he has "no sense of humor that we're aware of," and in general it's like being around a more muscular version of Al Gore. Except when he's playing Bruce Wayne-the-socialite, when he's "onstage" - and, by the character's own admission as well as the writers', he plays Bruce less and less these days. It annoys him - he knows it's not really what he is.
I would say this is just a peculiarity of my personality, that I insist on loving this character that can't love back ... except it's not just me. Batman is arguably the most popular superhero in the world, and he is certainly the best-selling superhero in the United States. So what's the deal?
I always figured there were two attractions to Batman over, say, Superman. First, Batman doesn't have any powers. When he gets hurt, he gets hurt. He has only his wits, his body, and a few props to keep him from getting killed (especially since he Does Not Use Guns - a character trait I am happy to see writers stressing in recent years). Second, there's a certain train-wreck appeal. I mean, this guy has got to be more than a little bit nuts to do this every night (another trait I'm happy to see stressed, ever since Frank Miller blew the lid off in the late eighties and made it Okay To Admit That Batman's Crazy).
But now I have to add a third idea to these two. What if we prefer our heroes unapproachable? What if we need to put them on a pedestal, keep them a level above us? You can't do that with Peter Parker, who's just a schlub like everybody else. Maybe heroes aren't as useful to us as heroes if we acknowledge their mundane roots - we have to make them into myths.
It seems a pity, because then the small heroisms - and there are plenty - get neglected in favor of The Big Stunts. But who knows? This is all woolgathering, right? And about comic books, no less, a disreputable subject to many people.
Maybe I'm just feeling guilty because I don't talk to the Parkers more often.
© Columbine
|
|
