Spider-Man works best when he’s placed in bizarre circumstances. Whether it’s helping Kraven against a bizarre alien gorilla or growing four extra arms; Spidey can handle weird. Most readers know that I’m an unabashed fans of Secret Wars I and II. These were some of the first superhero comics I ever read and The Beyonder still fascinates me to this day. Naturally, the main crossover issues I remember are where he turns a building into solid gold and forces Spider-Man to teach him how to poop. I was about 5 or 6 reading this and the idea of Spidey teaching an alien overload to poop blew my mind.

The Beyonder could’ve turned to anybody, but he ended up with Spider-Man. Much has been made of how Spider-Man is an arrested adolescent fantasy while also being a common man. But, do we cross a line when we have him teach an alien how to empty his stomach? That is the context of the scene. The Beyonder is in a new human body, but he doesn’t know how to stop his stomach from hurting. So, Spider-Man points him to the toilet and relays the mechanics of taking a dump. I’m still giggling over it and I’ve seen every Merchant Ivory film known to man. I’m supposed to be above this.

It would be on par with Q showing up on the Enterprise, walking up to Picard and saying “Gotta Shit Bad”. The fact that Marvel was willing to roll the dice and take a gamble on this is a testament to Jim Shooter’s iron clad grasp around their creative throats. Sure, he was the Editor-in-Chief, but somebody should’ve questioned it. That being said, I’m glad that we go to see this incredibly awkward moment. It forces Spider-Man to step outside of himself and realize that he’s just a super powered speck in a grand expanding universe.

Not much else is brought up about the second point of this visit. Basically, The Beyonder realizes that wealth inequity exists in the world. So, he decides to help Parker’s neighbors by turning a building into gold and letting the poor have their way. The problem with that is The Beyonder doesn’t think about weight distribution or the fact that he turned a multi-story building into something that will promote ghetto fighting. The Kingpin, the US Government, Iron Fist and Luke Cage get involved, as the building starts to buckle and collapse under its new found weight and pliability.

Ultimately, what does it mean to teach The Beyonder how to poop? It ties back into the identity politics that I want to reinforce about Parker. He doesn’t laugh, he doesn’t put it off anyone else; Parker steps up to the plate. The issue arises again when Parker has to wrestle with stealing some gold items from the collapsed golden building. He could steal a golden notebook and pay for Aunt May’s care for the rest of her days. He’s strong enough to steal more items and get himself out of a crappy apartment and job.

But, Peter can’t because of that mantra entrenched in his psyche. Hell, he doesn’t even try to do something when the Kingpin and the Government steal most of the stuff anyways. It wasn’t even the Kingpin’s direct property; but he cleaned up the mess. What does that mean for schlub like Peter? How can it stand to keep sitting around and abiding that kind of headache? As we enter the last half of this project, that is what we’ll examine. At what point, can you officially dump too much conflict and pain on Peter Parker?

I’ve been enjoying the surprise hit Venom recently. If you would’ve asked me if Flash Thompson would’ve became a hit leading character for Marvel, I would’ve laughed at you. Now, he’s playing the field like the true heir apparent to Captain America. What does that mean for this chapter? Well, Flash was always a character played as a bully for the Lee/Ditko years. As the Romita ran lead into the Gil Kane stint, we started to see Flash become deeper. Flash did some time in Vietnam, met a quality piece of ass and came back as a grown-up. After that point, he would later venture into conflicts as storylines and current political climates dictated.

But, it raises a larger issue. Flash was introduced as a football player dick. Eventually, his exposure to Spider-Man led him to become a hero of his own accord. But, the same is true for the villains. Ned Leeds was an older journalist at the Bugle who eventually was tricked into becoming one of the Hobgoblins. Phil Urich and Eddie Brock were rival photojournalists who ended becoming super villains. Hell, Sally Avril was just a high school student that dug on Peter and then got into a car wreck while trying to be the super heroine Bluebird.

Would these people have become super-powered without Spider-Man? After all, we do live in a world where the saturation of super powered people means that these guys would’ve had adversaries anyways. It’s just that Parker threw himself in the way indirectly. That is until someone attempts another John Byrne Chapter One style retcon to try and frame a new argument. But, that’s neither here nor there.

During the first 100 issues of Spider-Man, J. Jonah Jameson and a few scientists created a ton of problems for Spider-Man. Whether it’s Spider-Slayers, The Scorpion or anything Dr. Jonas Harrow crapped out; Jameson loved genetic tampering and robotics as much as cigars. Seriously, he had a decade long run where he was the Josef Mengele of yellow journalism. Eventually, Conway and Wein started pushing him away from that stuff. But, there’s a long history of killer robots, ex-cons in powered suits and genetic freaks being produced by a newspaper magnate.

Now, Jameson had to get out of papers for politics. I guess the guy saw the writing on the wall, but that period of Spidey history is so awkward. Very few people outside of some stray She-Hulk issues have ever tried to tie Jameson back to these misdeeds. Anyways, the now Mayor Jameson is so far removed from creating a villainous legacy for Spider-Man, that I see very few people trying to tread into that territory. Except for me, so Marvel needs to let me have a crack at the bat. But, who wants to read a storyline about everyone being called out for the involvement in super powered crime in the Marvel Universe?

Many villains decided to amplify their powers to match Spider-Man. I included the quick bit about how Mysterio attempted the effort, but it grows far more complex as the years rage on. Hell, Mysterio would later amplify himself again to pull the same sort of crap on Daredevil. But, let’s not talk about Kevin Smith’s comics during this discussion. If anything, the recent turns with The Superior Spider-Man further strengthens this point. The only way that Doctor Octopus could cheat death and beat Spider-Man would be to become Spider-Man. Amplification of a villain to the point that one sacrifices their identity. Here we go, back into that old hedge maze.

All of these issues surrounding Spider-Man are interconnected. For a character that was created as an after thought for the last issue of a dying comic, amazing things have appeared in the text. Some accuse the character of Catholic guilt, but that works better for Daredevil. Some state the character is an overdeveloped adolescent puberty fantasy. I find that the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Peter Parker was an orphaned child who only understood being working class poor. When the means of power were given to him, Peter acted out as Spider-Man. He became a pro wrestling sensation and conned his way into easy minute. Anything he wanted was at his finger tips, so why should he care?

In the end, Peter Parker made Spider-Man. The moment that Peter Parker decided to ignore crime, he framed every argument that would follow him for the rest of his life. Before there was a Spider-Man, there was Peter Parker. Peter Parker allowed crime to run rampant and he paid the price. The character hadn’t gone through any maturity rites, so he found a forced reason to grow up without any proper framework. Couple that with superhuman powers and you have a recipe for what should’ve been disaster.

Peter nearly kills Aunt May by giving her a blood transfusion. Luckily, his radioactive blood donation didn’t mutate the frail old lady. Most of the Lee/Ditko and Lee/Romita run is nothing more than a teenager faking his way through adulthood. Girls are new and exciting, while he tries to move out and form an identity. Parker finds himself relying excessively on the same people he endangers as Spider-Man. The snake just keeps eating its own tail, while Parker desperately tries to find some sort of validation as a person. Even to this day, he can’t go a year without some original sin over Uncle Ben.

No one has been unmasked in comics as much as Spider-Man. For awhile, Stan Lee was using it about once a year to up the stakes. The problem was that it did nothing. No one thought that puny Peter Parker could be Spider-Man or Spider-Man would somehow turn up elsewhere. Then, there was Flash Thompson’s prolonged bromance with Spider-Man cosplay. By the time that Ditko got pissed and quit over similar unmasking issues, one had to wonder…who cares? Below, you’ll see the scene that eventually broke up the Lee/Ditko partnership. Spider-Man co-creator Steve Ditko wanted the Green Goblin to be just some random guy off the street. He was getting tired of the Soap Opera theatrics of having every super villain tied back to Parker.

For some reason, the frequent unmasking and identity issues all revolve around Norman Osborn. Well, after the Ditko/Lee break-up. Before that, we had Flash trying to emulated Spidey. Hell, we even had issues with the Crime Master and Doctor Octopus causing Spider-Man to be unmasked. The constant threat of unmasking led to a weight being put on the act that is almost on par with Superhero emasculation. I say emasculation due to the lack of serious female penetration at that time in Marvel’s existence. The Golden Age had a handful of Marvel heroines and the Silver Age was getting better. But, it was always young men getting unmasked for the world to see.

It was part reader identification with the enabled human side of the Marvel heroes, but it served a greater point. Parker was an entrenched hero with ties to multiple soft targets that made it easy prey for greater villains. Norman Osborn killed Gwen Stacy. Harry made multiple attacks on Mary Jane Watson, Aunt May, Flash Thompson and Liz Allan. These attacks had very little to do with these people, but what they meant to Parker. Much has been made of the passive rape analogy to superhero unmasking, but I’m not going there.

What I’m saying is that Spider-Man gets exposed to this more often since his point of origin is naturally prone to an identity crisis. If it wasn’t, Marvel wouldn’t have hung a major crossover and the biggest retcon in the character’s history on preserving it. Spider-Man is an adolescent character created at a point in a young man’s life when he becomes a man. Parker had the accident on a field trip right around the age of 15-16, then he started to mature. Much is made of how small and wormy Parker was right before the accident. It’s super powered puberty at its finest with all of the bullshit that comes along with it.

Parker also had to deal with the fact that multiple people liked Spider-Man more than him. The most famous instance of this would have to be the short-lived romance between Parker and The Black Cat. When Peter finally showed her his identity, the Black Cat freaked out. The lady had no problems with Spidey roughing her up for the last two years of comics, but the minute she sees King Dork…she recoils in horror. There’s some terrible subtext there. If she does wrong, you can physically suppress her. Show her a little bit of loving affection and you’re a monster.

Peter can be kind of a White Knight, as he was when he returned to this state after saving Black Cat from nearly dying at Doc Ock’s tentacles. Then, there was his freakout after Captain Jean DeWolff’s death a few weeks later. This led to even more feeling like he had to protect women from being near him while Spidey. There was protecting Betty Brant after Ned Leeds got killed in Berlin. If that wasn’t enough, Mary Jane gets attacked by Spider Slayers and decides to take him up on a spontaneous marriage proposal after previously rejecting Peter.

The biggest moment involving unmasking Spider-Man has already been retconned. For the norms, retconning is practice where a later writer undermines the story crafted by a previous writer. It’s a necessary evil in long-form narratives that appears often in periodical fiction. In Marvel’s “Civil War”, Peter agreed to side with Tony Stark’s efforts to register all superhumans with the government. As a result, he unmasked himself on national television. The resulting whirlwind led to J. Jonah Jameson firing him from the Daily Bugle. Debra Whitman filed a lawsuit against Parker for causing her emotional distress and costing her advancement opportunities at Empire State University. Not to mention, she eventually wrote a tell-all book about her time with Spider-Man and Parker.

What is to be taken away from all of this? A superhero is the costume with the man underneath creating challenges for the greater ideal. Costumes are passed down and legacies preserved. But, the limitations of being a human trying to exist in a greater world will always cause pain and concern. The only time a costumed hero didn’t have to worry about this was Moore and Gibbon’s Rorschach. But, he was vaporized near the South Pole. Take a look at how they worked out for him.