by asbestos man » Fri Nov 14, 2008 10:21 am
37 Years Later...
A Spider-Man Tale
by J 'Asbestos Man' Thomas
Based on the characters and stories created by Stan Lee, Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway and other members of the Mighty Marvel Bullpen.
Book One: City of Ghosts
Chapter One: Meet The Mets
2008
On a gray overcast November afternoon a slim man stands in Rooseveldt Avenue, looking at Shea Stadium. He is wearing dark blue jeans, a plain baseball cap and a brown leather jacket, the collar turned up against the cold. A black rucksack is slung across his back. His face still remains youthful and only the wisps of gray in his hair and beard give a hint of his age.
“Has it really been almost 40 years since I left New York? I never thought I'd come back. Especially to this spot. Was it a mistake? No... I set out to exorcise some ghosts and this is as good a place to begin as any. They are tearing this place down now so I guess this was the last chance”
As he gazes up at the condemned structure, the memories come flooding back.
“Game 5 of the '69 Series. Looking back, that might have been the best time of all. Death, darkness and tragedy were right around the corner. Those memories will haunt me forever. But when I look for comfort amid the sea of ghosts, for a port in the storm, I often think of that day...”
1969
Peter Parker, Gwen Stacey, and Harry Osborn are in a crowded ballpark, sitting behind home plate. In front of them, Frank Robinson is taking batting practice, swatting linedrives into the stands.
Mary Jane: These seats are the living end Harry !
Harry: We've had them since the Mets started playing. My dad has been friends with the Sheas since before I was born...
Gwen: Look! Over there!. Coming out of the dugout!
PA Announcer: Tonights first pitch will be thrown by, living legend of World war II, Sentinel of Liberty, and Avenger Captain America!
Captain America trots out to the pitchers mound. He is wearing a Mets warmup jacket over his red white and blue costume.
Peter Parker starts snapping away with his camera.
Peter: The Bugle will love this!
MJ (to Gwen): He is gorgeous, look at those shoulders!
Flash Thompson: And old enough to be your father! If its a real American hero you're looking for ladies, you got one right here! I come bearing gifts!
Flash Thompson pushes past the crowd toward his friends. He is dressed in an army uniform, but has replaced his cap with a Mets hat. He is carrying sodas and hot dogs in both arms.
Flash Thompson (to Peter): Quit snapping away shutterbug! If you wanted to watch everything through your viewfinder you could have stayed with your TV back home!
“It was an incredible game of course. When Ron Swoboda drove in the winning run in the eighth, the place erupted. We were leaping out of our seats, laughing, hugging shouting. Gwen never looked more beautiful than on that day, her face flushed with excitement, the sun glinting off her golden hair. I have a mental snapshot of her that day, standing there with her arms raised, radiant in the moment.
And Harry. The Osborn name carried so much weight in New York back then. Harry actually managed to get us into the Mets front office party after the game. When I think of Harry now, I often think of what happened to him later. The drugs, the mental illness and the final tragic end. But on that day he was in his element. To a working class kid from queens like me, he looked like the hero in a Fitzgerald story as he strode through the sea of the beautiful and the famous shaking hands, telling jokes, every inch the Osborn heir. Flash Thompson was a kid in a candy store, bouncing around the room like a pinball and making me take pictures. Flash with Casey Stengel. Flash with Tom Seaver, Flash with Bill Shea. And of course Gwen and MJ charmed the whole place. I could have felt like a fish out of water but I was carried along on a wave of their enthusiasm. It was the one of the last times we were all happy and carefree together. A little while later Gwens father died, Flash went back to Viet Nam and Harry's drugs problems began.
But nothing can erase that perfect day.
Not even what happened here afterward...
On this very spot... "
1971
The Scene shifts, We are still in Shea but it is night time... Lying on the pitchers mound are two men in Spider-Man costumes... Tied to the Score board is the bound and gagged body of Bugle reporter Ned Leeds. A ticking bomb is strapped to his chest. Squatting in the stands is a man in a Jackal costume, cackling, fiendishly. And beside him... Gwen Stacey
It was a clone of course. 'Just a clone', an exact genetic double spawned from the Jackals lab, but real none the less. As flesh and blood as me, with all of Gwens memories intact.
And was Miles Warren under that rubber Jackal mask. My biology professor at ESU and insane as it turned out,. Also spare-time scientific genius. He realized what he had done in the end. The 'clone'... Gwen made him see what an evil monster he had become. Thats what saved Ned in the end. Meanwhile I was engaged in a fruitless slug-festwith my own clone on the pitching mound.
What is ironic is that for all his machinations, in the end Professor Warren just wanted to be loved... What bitter loneliness there must have been hidden under those layers of brilliance and madness. Like a modern day Pygmalion he built a woman to love him, a sculpture of mind body and soul. I can't imagine his final seconds of despair when he threw himself onto the bomb meant for Ned Leeds. When his own creation, the woman born to love him rejected him.
That day was the end for me. The end for Spider-Man really.
I remember back in my senior year of High school when Quentin Beck.-That nutcase with the fishbowl on his head calling himself Mysterio- tried to convince me I was insane. NOTHING in his bag of Hollywood tricks came close to 1971 for sheer craziness.
'71 finally made me turn my back on the insanity.. It was just too much...
My best friend overdosed on drugs... The was the beginning of the end for Harry if we'd only known it.
Could I have helped him? I don't know... Harry was driven by demons of his own long before he inherited those of his father...
Then the girl I loved died on the Washington Bridge... Murdered by the father of that same best friend. Maybe it was Norman the Goblin that pushed her but she was really killed by her connection to Spider-Man. To me. Normans poisonous legacy should have died with him right there after he was killed by his own Goblin glider but of course it was not to be.
Aunt May fell in love and almost married Otto Octavius... She was a sick lady by then although I refused to see it. I was on the verge of breakdown myself at that point. The doctors say that her condition would have been untreatable anyway. I can't help thinking though... What if I had noticed sooner? Could something have been done? If I had spoken to Reed Richards or Doctor Connors... who knows?
By the time Harry Osborn had another breakdown and came for me wearing the costume of his father and my girlfriends killer, my own sanity was hanging by a thin thread.
But Gwen...
Gwen coming back was the straw that broke the camels back...
To Be Continued...
Last edited by
asbestos man on Fri Nov 14, 2008 12:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.
![[smilie=spidey_thumbs.gif]](./images/smilies/spidey_thumbs.gif "spidey_thumbs")
![[smilie=spidey_clap.gif]](./images/smilies/spidey_clap.gif "spidey_clap")
![[smilie=spidey_welcome.gif]](./images/smilies/spidey_welcome.gif "spidey_welcome")