Originally published September 8, 2000, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1399
Spider-Man Fans Up In Arms Over What’s Up with Spider-Man’s arms! Film at 2001!
I have learned to take, with a massive helping of salt, fan angst over news related to upcoming superhero films. My baptism of fire, so to speak, in that arena came at a convention when I was on a general Q&A panel with several other pros. We were asked, as a group, what we thought of the (then) news that director Tim Burton had cast Michael Keaton as Batman.
Others on the panel made it clear that, as far as they were concerned, any thoughts that Burton would produce a “serious” treatment of Batman had now fallen by the wayside. Not only was it bad enough that the film was in the hands of the director of Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, but it was going to star Mr. Mom. We were going to see another camp treatment. It was inevitable, a sure thing, take it to the bank. Throughout the room, fan heads bobbed in agreement.
And I said, “Uhm… I have no intrinsic problem with either Burton or Keaton. Just because Burton’s known primarily for comedy doesn’t mean he can’t do a serious take on Batman. And Keaton’s an actor. A comic actor can play something straight. The film might actually be pretty good because they’re both talented guys…”
It was the nearest I’ve ever come to being booed off a panel. I’ve never been barraged with that much hostility. Even some of the pros were looking at me as if I’d advocated using a dead baby seal to bludgeon the Pope.
Several years later I heard fans discussing the announced Batman Returns. And one of them said with utter conviction, “Well, it better be Burton directing and Keaton starring, or it’s gonna suck.” Once more fan heads bobbed in agreement. I just grinned.
So now word is out that director Sam Raimi, helming the Spider-Man movie, is incorporating a tweak on the webslinger that was conceived by James Cameron in his treatment. As we all know (but I’ll say it anyway) Peter Parker constructed the web fluid and shooters when he first developed “Spider-Man” as a wrestling persona. Basically, Peter took about three panels to adapt to the notion that he was now a freak and—once having adjusted—decided to have fun, fun, fun ’til the burglar took his uncle away. Cameron (and subsequently Raimi) opted more for the horrific approach, with Peter discovering (a la “The Fly”) the downside of a progressively weird mutation that transforms a human into a wallcrawler. To that end, he no longer constructs web fluid and shooters. Instead, he actually develops spinnerets on his forearms which produce a weblike secretion.
It’s the sort of dazzlingly original notion for which they pay directors big bucks (or for which they pay guys like me little bucks when I came up with the exact same concept eight years ago for Spider-Man 2099.) In the Cameron version, Parker subsequently develops the shooters for the purpose of regulating the webflow and being able to spray it wherever it’s needed.
And fans are flipping out.
There are—no exaggeration—entire websites devoted to the notion that biologically based webs are a terrible idea that will, no doubt about it, ruin the film. The response this announcement is generating is nothing less than the kind of reaction that makes many people roll their eyes when the words “fan mentality” are mentioned. How dare (we are told) the filmmakers screw around with a classic story that works so perfectly. How dare Sam Raimi paint a cinematic mustache on the equivalent of the Mona Lisa? How dare anyone tamper with perfection?
I dunno. Why do comic book companies feel the need to do so? But do it, they do. Superman came from an unnamed planet… no, he came from a place called Krypton, and his father was Jor-L… no, he was Jor-El, and it was a race of Supermen… no, it was a race of normal men under a red sun who got powers under a yellow sun, and he was the sole survivor… except for Supergirl… and Kandor… and the Phantom Zone villains… and when he was a kid, he was Superbaby, and then Superboy… no, wait, he wasn’t anymore because his body didn’t have enough solar energy built up…
Comic book companies routinely mess with the origins of the characters, updating and change “facts” and shifting tone as new audiences and new tastes emerge. Sometimes it’s done well, sometimes it’s done badly, but it’s done. And if Hollywood is capable of giving The Scarlet Letter a happy ending, what makes Spider-Man’s origin impervious to tweaking? Especially when that tweaking…
…hold on to your masks, true believers…
…makes more sense than the original.
Put down the pitchforks, tar and feathers and torches, and track with me on this.
With all the “fixing” of Spidey’s origin that we’ve seen in recent years, all the things that were addressed were really non-issues, while the real gaping hole in Spidey’s concept was left untouched. Let us put aside for this discussion the initial idiocy that Peter created a webshooter with no means of monitoring the web fluid level, so that he could run out at inconvenient times with no warning… kind of like building an automobile without a gas gauge. And that it happened to him time and again without him twigging to the fact that maybe, just maybe, he should stick in an indicator or maybe even a little buzzer… something, anything, before he found himself in mid-swing with no fluid and a thirty story drop. Let’s just ignore that for the present.
At the end of Amazing Fantasy #15, Peter Parker learns that with great power comes great responsibility. Except… he doesn’t really learn that, because he possesses a power even more formidable than the spider powers he’s picked up in an unlikely accident. He has the power of his brain, his scientific wizardry. A power that could not only save hundreds of lives a year at a minimum, but also solve his endless financial worries.
Here’s a kid who—with absolutely no sweat—put together webshooters and a web formula. This invention alone should be enough to have him set for life. Yet all he used them for was fighting crime as Spider-Man.
A half-hearted attempt was made to address this in one early issue in which he endeavored to sell the web formula to a 3M-like company, only to be scoffed at when the executive learned that the adhesive was purely temporary and therefore of no use. Putting aside that this exec–with that kind of thinking–is unlikely to have been the guy to come up with Post-It Notes, it should reasonably take Parker about two seconds to determine exactly who the invention can and should be marketed to:
The police.
A non-lethal way of immobilizing perps? A way of stopping fleeing felons who, according to regs, can’t be shot at if they’re not shooting at the cops? A means of avoiding shoot outs wherein flying bullets can hit and kill passersby or people huddling inside their homes?
Granted, it was stated that only Spidey’s powers enable him to aim with pinpoint accuracy. But the average flatfoot doesn’t need to nail a flagpole so he can swing between skyscrapers. All he needs is something that’ll provide a wide spray so the bad guys are rendered powerless. If the shooters themselves are problematic, he can easily slap together a web gun that could slip right into the standard holster and have it do the same thing, right? Does anyone out there think that would be beyond him?
We’re not talking Bruce Wayne here, who chooses to fight crime hands-on even though he’s got the financial resources to handle hoodlums in other, more far reaching means. At least you could argue that young Bruce was unhinged in some manner, and therefore is psychologically driven to dress as a bat and punch people. Young Parker, however, is a teen with a guilt complex and bills to pay. Why shouldn’t he, sooner rather than later, turns his talents toward making big bucks while making the world safer for non-powered cops and innocent bystanders everywhere?
Because it’ll tip his identity? Puh-leeeze.
“Mr. Parker, this device seems fairly similar to Spider-Man’s webshooter…”
“Yes, I know, and that’s not coincidence. I approached him with the design early in his wrestling career and he agreed to field test it for me, to work out all the kinks.”
“Good thinking, Mr. Parker. Here’s a check for a million dollars as a down payment. The NYPD and PBA thank you, and hey, tell your aunt good luck with that operation…”
Wow, that was tough.
If Peter Parker has the kind of scientific wizardry that enables him to pull these devices out of his butt (as opposed to shooting webbing out of it), then there’s simply no way that he’s eking out a living snapping photos of himself while wondering how he’s going to have enough money to rub two nickels together. It’s just not going to happen. It makes no sense. Peter’s genetic spider-mutation causing biological webspinners to develop… that makes sense. Well… sense in a twisted pseudo-horror movie way.
My view of the entire matter is probably shaped by the fact that, when I was growing up, dramatizations of costumed comic characters were frequently camped up, treated for laughs. Batman comes to mind, and—even worse—those hideous Justice League specials. Oh, sure, there was The Incredible Hulk, but the show could just as easily have been called The Monster Within, have nothing to do with the Marvel character, and played exactly the same.
Yet now we have moviemakers who are making changes for the purpose of presenting a costumed hero in a more serious vein… and fans are complaining. Fans have become so spoiled by Batman, Superman, X-Men, that they’ve forgotten the wretchedness of so many earlier attempts (even Superman slipped into camp excess the moment that Luthor and Otis hit the screen.)
I’m on record: I’ve no problem with the biological spinnerets. And as for all those Spider-Man fans that decree that the movie will now stink (and would likely have been the same ones booing me at the convention regarding Keaton and Burton) I offer the following anecdote:
A writer was once asked whether he was upset over how a Hollywood adaptation of one of his novels had “ruined the book.”
To which the writer replied, “What do you mean, ruined it? It’s right there, safe and sound on the shelf, completely unharmed.”
Same deal. No movie can ruin the comic book character of Spider-Man because, whatever’s done in the Raimi film, the origin as published remains untouched. Hollywood cannot really screw with Spidey’s beginnings. Marvel can… and has… and no doubt will again… but not Hollywood.
Just don’t let there be Skrulls in the origin of the Hulk movie…
(Peter David, writer of stuff, can be written to at Second Age, Inc., PO Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705. Here’s a scary thought: If the film Howard the Duck had first been made today, with the exact same script, but modern-day CGI replacing the midget in the duck suit, it’d probably be a hit. Because special effects have come just that far, and scripts have become just that bad.)
• 
And . . . everything old is new again with the Webb movies moving Spidey back to the artifical web shooters.
While I do concede that the biological spinnerets pose less problems from a “plot hole” point of view, it is fun nonetheless to, once again, see just how far people are willing to let that old suspension of disbelief go. After all, we have a kid jumping from building to building with spider powers and we get hung up over the plausability of artifical web shooters vs. natural spinnerets. Both have been just about fully explored in the comics by this point, and both have offered their own fun plot points on occasion.
Quite frankly, I like the idea of a biologically evolving Spider-Man, (with the obvious caveat that it be done skillfully). As such, I always liked the idea of him “evolving” from the artifical web shooters to the organic spinnerets later in his career. I often wonder if we’re ever going to see the return of those stingers that came out of his forearms that were developed during the Strazinski run. There’s some untapped storylines there that I’d like to see a skillful writer take a crack at.
We’ll see Peter and MJ married again before we see those stingers back.
“Same deal. No movie can ruin the comic book character of Spider-Man because, whatever’s done in the Raimi film, the origin as published remains untouched.”
Is it really as simple as all that? The comics are still being published so, in a way, the “original” is still in progress. Since comics seem to be all for letting the adaptations bleed back into the originals (Nick Fury, Jr.; the “class field trip” origin seems to have largely stuck in Spider-Man; etc.), a creative decision that you don’t care for in a movie can end up coming back and annoying you on a monthly basis.
[i]”Same deal. No movie can ruin the comic book character of Spider-Man because, whatever’s done in the Raimi film, the origin as published remains untouched. Hollywood cannot really screw with Spidey’s beginnings. Marvel can… and has… and no doubt will again… but not Hollywood.”[/i]
You know this comment gets made repeatedly when movies and such get brought up, and while I agree with it from a technical sense. I think the truth is these movies do matter very much.
It reminds of the old proverb, about a tree falling in the woods with no one to hear it. An icon like Spidey is recognized by BILLIONS of people around the world and quite frankly Id be surprised if what? Even 5% actually read moar than a handful of comics. Spidey lives on infamy thru the hearts and minds of those billion people and there definition of him is, for better or worse, defined by those movies. Same as the Nolan Batman or the Chris Reeves Superman.
Take Watchmen for instance. Its considered the pinnacle of what can be achieved thru the graphic novel medium. When the movie came out, this was supposed be the big geek uprising proving validation for our medium. I had tons of non-comic reading friends hyped to see this. And then… Zack Snyder puts out 3 hour long music video with disturbingly graphic slow-mo blood splatter. Yea the script was true to the book, but the filming, pacing, mood, and overall directorial vision reeked of sumthing else. And nao those friends have gone back to dismissing comics.
No its not fair, but perception becomes reality, and these things can take on a life of there own.
Also… I rly need to learn the coding for this place. Ugh.
In the end, there have been far worse crimes committed against comic book characters in the last 15 years in the movies based off them than what has happened with Spider-Man and his web shooters.
In college, I played in a Champions (superhero RPG) game, whose GM based his world off of Marvel, but wanted original characters. Mine was a police officer from 22nd-century New York (the northern end of East Coast City); he wore standard-issue Stark Interplanetary powered armor, and wielded both a sonic stunner and a Parker Industries webshooter (a standard police weapon of the 22nd century).
It seemed to me a logical development of the comics at the time (mid-’80s); I think Stark was still using the “secret identity” schtick at the time, but was publicly linked to the Iron Man suit. So in the future I constructed, he eventually incorporated a number of features into a “police armor” suit – not as powerful as Iron Man, obviously, but with neat features like built-in targeting software and systems to record all on-shift activity. And in his middle age, Peter Parker founded Parker Industries, turning his technologies and those of villains he’d defeated to civilian use – the webshooter was popular with both police and military forces, as a nonlethal weapon that actually was nonlethal.
Of course, in that story the X-Men were also being sponsored by the United Nations, as Earth’s best defense against various interstellar threats…