Weblines: THE J. MICHAEL STRACZYNSKI RUN – Part V.

“Myths are true in different senses. Every mythology has to do with the wisdom of life as related to a specific culture at a specific time. It integrates the individual into his society and the society into the field of nature. It unites the field of nature with my nature. It’s a harmonizing force. Our own mythology, for example, is based on the idea of duality: good and evil, heaven and hell. And so our religions tend to be ethical in their accent. Sin and atonement. Right and wrong.”
– Joseph Campbell.

Such duality is not only applied in religions but also in another mediatic format that channels the sheer concept of good vs. evil through the modern mythological symbology: superhero comic books. This format hasn’t become one of the strongest elements in popular culture only because of its colorful characters, but also because it depicts the cultural evolution of how morality is perceived through them who, bestowed with incredible abilities and powers, have to make hard choices and sacrifice their personal lives for something greater than themselves. These are works of fiction that teach us about all of those inherent moral human values – just like Homer’s Odyssey, Shakespeare’s Hamlet; Tolkien’s The Lord of The Rings, Orwell’s 1984, K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and many more.

Comic books are not an evolution of books, but an evolved form of physical storytelling in a compiled paper, embedded with visual art in a sequential fashion to present a story. At the dawn of the 20th century, as new technological and imaginative boundaries were constantly broken, Myths of old were not enough to feed the hungry minds who observed their reality structurally changing. Due to the influence of literary works of science fiction, myths evolved as well, creating a new arena for the never-ending battle of good vs. evil – fought by different characters conceived by many writers and artists who, marveled by the new possibilities and discoveries of science and technology, extrapolated new truths about power, morality, justice, evil, mortality, and violence in a world whose collective consciousness has become – to this day – increasingly needful to distill and comprehend such concepts. Superhero comic books offer such perspective, in a positive way.

And every time the cultural landscape evolved, it needed harbingers to do ignite the change. In the comic book industry, Stan Lee, Steve Ditko, and Jack Kirby rank as legends, because from these creators’ minds (and hearts) those new myths evolved in every way imaginable, therefore to be placed in a mold that is constantly reshaped but never – ever – broken.

And that is the legacy of such men, by using the principle of art and literature, they ended up changing forever the world’s popular culture, because their conceptual and visual ideas surpassed the constrained borders of paper.
And that is why (modern) mythology will always be an important factor to question the principles of morality and invite curious minds to the quest of self-knowledge – the wisdom in which our lives are in constant need of in order to make us evolve as species: inside-out, individual, social and spiritual-wise.

(In your face, Bill Maher)

---

THE LIFE AND DEATH OF SPIDERS – ASM#46-48/vol.2 (December 2002 – February 2003):
(Covers by Frank Cho)

The Amazing Spider-Man comic book has been depicting the adventures of Peter Parker, the character whose mold became the norm of how a superhero should have his private life directly affected by the power he possesses and the responsibility embedded in it, as shown in his very first story. Technically and literally, he stands alone in the concept, because at the end of the day, after his first battle (as a superhero) he loses it. Until then, that has never been done before in the history of superhero comic books. Instant classic. From then onwards, Spider-Man showed to the world that superheroes could also be like any other human being: flawed; imperfect; human, and more: young, and destined to grow up alone without superhero mentoring. Everything that happens in his personal life with or without the mask, has a consequence. The story of his life has a chronology – another inherent quality he possesses as a character that all the others are attempting really hard to emulate.
And that has been going on for nearly sixty years, thanks to the creative minds of Stan Lee, Steve Ditko with John Romita, and all the creators who contributed to his growth. Not only from a teenager into a man but also as a man who learns about the world and gains more experience every time he fights antagonistic forces of evil. Peter Parker’s life as Spider-Man is the ultimate version of the hero’s journey in modern mythology represented by superhero comic books.

Throughout all the time his stories have been published, though most of them show his betterment as a hero and maturement as a man, none approached the nature of the Spider which bestowed him with his powers. J. Michael Straczynski, John Romita Jr., and Scott Hanna not only offered this perspective to his origin but recontextualized it, by opening a new door into the essence of what it means for Peter to be (a) Spider-Man. Ever since these creators came on board the title, they took the hero to uncharted territory. He’s been led to question his own essence: the Spider within himself as a totemic element and as a force to be reckoned with. In a phase where he turned a new leaf by becoming a more responsible adult working as a science teacher, he’s become a student of his own nature. But nevertheless, it’s an aspect he had never even the chance to examine: his undiscovered self. He has been forced to acknowledge the fact he must relearn how to crawl; not as an infant man, but as a Spider should. A truth he barely uncovered about the spiritual force of the Spider, in issue #42 (vol.2) and highlighted in the third post of  this series:

To Peter, by leaving the path in the Astral Plane he was strictly foretold not to and letting himself be guided to the totemic and spiritual representation of the Spider, brought a serious consequence upon him: he unlocked the Spider-force within himself by being there and also exposed his Spider-nature to everything in it; he was in his astral/spiritual form – the pure essence of his self, realizing he might be part of something bigger than his mind can grasp.

He learned about those facts from  Doctor Strange – whose insertion into the story not only grants an extension into the believability (according to the dimensional laws of the Marvel Universe) of what is about to come but also shows a scenario rarely depicted: Peter’s dreamscape. In it, Strange reminded him how he failed to remain in the designed path to chase The Shade; so he was acknowledged by the natural enemies of the Spider also present in the Astral Plane.

Straczynski is not strange (no pun intended) to the good Doctor; he was given the opportunity to retell the origin of the Master of Mystic Arts in the great Strange: Beginnings & Endings miniseries, with great artwork provided by Brandon Peterson; besides being more than familiar with the concept of arcane concepts, interdimensional travel, spirituality, and magic published in other great comics such as Midnight Nation, Ten Grand, Apocalypse Al, The Twilight Zone, and Dream Police, he has the knowledge to venture into science as well – a theme greatly explored in his Fantastic Four run, Before Watchmen: Dr. Manhattan, Terminator Salvation, and the unsurpassable Rising Stars. It is safe to assume that, from such a prolific body of work, he’s joined the ranks of Alan Moore, Warren Ellis, Neil Gaiman, and Garth Ennis as a writer who also possesses a great ability to join these themes together with great character construction and development.

It’s what has made his run on the Spider-Man so amazing. He reexamined the origins of the hero and his essence; he dared to ask the question of what the Spider is and means within the man, never forgetting to show his intimate insights. So when he learns about what is coming to him, his reaction couldn’t be more human than that:

This is where the Spider-totem plot threadline continues, as part of a well-crafted arc first presented in ASM #37 (vol.2) when he confronted the vampire of totems, Morlun. Now, the ante is upped, because his next challenge in this totemic gauntlet literally presents itself to him as the Spider-Wasp;  the entity is presented not as a big insect, but in the form of a woman devoid of any human consciousness. Her goal is not to cause chaos and mayhem to mankind. She just follows her instincts due to her own design – she’s a highly adaptable predator made to hunt and kill spiders.

Meet Shathra – the totemistic Spider-Wasp.

Due to her extrasensory smell, she tracks Spider-Man through his scent from the Astral Plane. It’s worth stressing out what she says to him in their first encounter:

“Little Spider. So far from home. So far from your mother.”

From this single line, it is suggested that he might be part of something bigger, and Shathra’s very existence confirms it because she knows more about his (Spider) essence than Peter himself. So he starts to take the concept more seriously. After their first encounter, which ended with Peter throwing a building under construction on her after learning about her superior speed and strength, a spider reveals itself next to him at his home – the first one during this arc.

Unbeknownst to him, Shathra survives unscathed and decides to change the rules of engagement to a more personal level: she plays with the Spider by taunting the man in the worst way possible – studying the intimate life of her prey and attacking it using one of the most common weapons of (human) society in this day and age: Fake News. By shapeshifting herself as “Sharon Keller”, she goes to the press and creates a web of lies to lure Spider-Man out, tarnishing his reputation. The news reaches national television. Fueled by rage after discovering Mary Jane’s reaction to it, he chases her down to the TV studio where another live interview was being broadcast. A violent physical battle ensues in which Peter unleashes his rage; he cares about MJ’s thoughts on him. He’s battling for himself, so the nature of the combat changes. And that’s what Shathra wants: before making him into her next meal, her intent is to unleash the Spider out of the man, his true nature, according to hers. And that’s what she gets: her prey is unveiled. Peter’s mind is nearly devoid of reason, making him act (and fight) in pure instinct, surrendering to the violent part of his Spider essence: he wants to kill her.

“For the first time in my life, I want to kill something. Because that’s what she is. A thing. Inhuman. Monstrous. I want to grind her bones to powder with my bare hands. Fighting on sheer instinct. Not thinking, just fighting. And it feels good.”

With this line of thought, Straczynski breaks new ground in the ASM title. It is unknown if this is either the Spider or the Man talking. Since his fight with Morlun, Peter has experienced a near mortal defeat. He knows Shathra is not a super-villain – she’s a manifestation of an ancient and astral force, whose only way to be defeated is by killing it. So fights this being to death on pure instinct for the sake of his own survival. But his moral code once again hits the survival wall: Shathra is not even human; should it be killed? As he ponders about the dilemma, Shathra fires a sharp stinger-like projectile, which hits him with a neural paralyzing agent.

Barely able to move, he moves on sheer instinct, trying to stay conscious and still escape, finally giving in, passing out inside a terrarium full of spiders in the Museum of Natural History. Since he accessed his spider-essence to fight, the same one guides him towards survival to rest among his own kind. And not since the 1st issue of the adjectiveless Spider-Man title, the character had been seen covered by spiders.

 

What follows next is a special occasion in the superhero comic book medium: an old mythological character has his story reintroduced in the 21st century through a modern myth – and what connects them both is the very nature of their abilities. In the cultural history of the world, Peter Parker is not the first Spider-Man.

The first male mythological character to be bestowed with such powers is Kwaku Anansi – the most important West African folktale character from the Akan people in the nation of Ghana, predating Peter Parker by hundreds of years – even more. Anansi is known to take the form of a spider and is also the spirit of all knowledge of stories. In the Akan language, Anansi is a word that means “spider”. His tales are told to children as moral stories or stories that teach resilience in harsh conditions – which serve the same purpose of any other mythological tale: to teach human moral values. Joseph Campbell emphasizes this personal truth:

“Myths are clues to the spiritual potentialities of human life.”

This issue is essential to the entire Spider-Totem arc because it provides a second and deeper perspective to the character conceived by Steve Ditko and Stan Lee – a reiteration from a mythological character. Anansi’s purpose as a myth was (as the first Spider-Man) to reach to the heavens and bring stories from gods to mankind so they could learn higher moral levels and reflect upon their thoughts, words, and actions. Mythological stories are important to self-understanding.

So there´s a poetic sense to this issue because a modern myth learns about the old one. It’s an extrapolation of realities within the realm of storytelling; cultural walls are being broken through time and space. And in the superhero realm of fiction, this Spider-Man learns that he had a predecessor. The relevance of this issue cannot be overstated enough: thanks to J. Michael Straczynski, Marvel has added another god to its rost of divine characters.

So what is old is new again. Myths are once more proven to be cyclical – because their existence goes far beyond the lifespan of a human generation, from Kwaku Anansi to Peter Parker.

In issue #48 (vol.2), J. Michael Straczynski and John Romita Jr. retell the Kwaku Anansi’s origin:

“While Anansi, who was both spider and man, became, even more, the spider in his service to the sky-god, both mother and father to the spiders of the world. Where they walk, he walks, and through their eyes, he sees the world he left behind. So there is little he does not see. And less still that happens by accident.  For while the spider’s gifts can be stolen, borrowed, or impersonated – only once were they given freely. In the intersection between science and the Spider. Science allowed it to happen. But science is new, and the Spider is old. The science was random. The placement in a room filled with possibilities, deliberate. There is no contradiction. You are a child of the Spider and a child of science. You are the product of neutrons and photons, of the dance of DNA and radiation, intertwining and exchanging information and intentions. But your voice is the voice of the Spider, a voice that is older than humankind itself – and to acknowledge one is to acknowledge the other.”

This tale is told to Peter by Ezekiel Sims, who decided to step out of the shadows after watching Sharon Keller ruining Spider-Man’s reputation on national television. Ezekiel finds the hero unconscious in the spiders’ terrarium and takes him to Ghana. Home of Kwaku Anansi and the location of a sacred Spider-temple, old as Anansi’s myth; a place that transcends archeological suppositions, doesn’t have its origins explained and owned by Ezekiel. There, he explains to Peter the deeper meaning of the Spider’s nature which resides within them both.

Within the superhero comic book realm, myths can be extrapolated without having their concept tarnished. As a professional writer, Straczynski wisely applies The Hero’s Journey postulated by Joseph Campbell into Spider-Man’s life: after being guided by sage older men who possess a higher knowledge in the path (presented by Ezekiel and often guided by Dr. Strange) he is now experiencing, Peter – the hero – though far from home, is in this place of power, undergoing a psychological preparation before one of the most important battles of his life – for his life. He consciously unlocks the Spider-nature within himself in order to become the Spider and confront Shathra. A psychological shift is made to resource on another form of strength: not the guilt over Uncle Ben’s death (that has already been dealt with), but the essence of his powers.

The shift rules him over to the point in which his Spider-sense works on another level: Peter actually senses her coming. Shathra reveals herself and threatens the life of the man in the Spider and everyone he loves; it is what fuels him to engage her in combat for the third and final time. But now, Spider-man has the field advantage where he’s no longer the prey but the predator – and ready for the kill – nor being malevolent, neither revengeful; but proactively primal, for the sake of pure self-defense. As he unleashes his arachnid nature over Shathra, his consciousness seeks help from God, for he’s about to cross a line. His prey, though not human, it’s a life nonetheless. In the moment of truth, the Spiders come to his aid; however, not to conceal and rescue him, but to attack their common enemy.

The Spider-Wasp is overthrown and falls into the hole, ready to be fed to whatever dwells in the depths of the temple. Ezekiel states that the food chain, in this arena, runs in both directions.

Within Spider-man’s chronology, the Spider-totem concept can be harkened back to some stories such as the Kraven’s Last Hunt storyline, and the Spirits of The Earth Graphic Novel by Charles Vess –  in it, Peter talks to another sage: a witch named Dark Mairi of the Shore; she tells him the Earth has her own magic and though his scent is covered by the concrete and steel from the city, she senses a power akin to magic itself in him, beyond the emulation of his spider-like abilities. Like any other witch, she reads signs of life from nature and understands the balance of existence. What is perceived as “mystical” is just an ancient science which cannot be yet understood.

Since the coming of Ezekiel (which marks the beginning of this arc) Spider-Man’s battleground changed drastically and a new journey has been revealed. Doctor Strange tells him that it is not a coincidence – Spider-Man has been noticed by higher powers, and that left an indelible mark on him, which will be explored furthermore. It is as Ezekiel said before:

“Who and what you are bridges the gap between Spider and the Man. (…) “One type attracts another, similar type. Gods against gods, patriots against people who think they’re patriots, mutants against mutants. The kind of enemy you get tells someone a lot about the kind of person you are.”

To Spider-Man, Shathra and Morlun serve that function.

Straczynski’s goal is not to create something new to Spider-Man as previous writers attempted before, but to develop a part of his nature that had been just tapped but never deeply measured.

Peter Parker’s relentless willpower is translated into his inability to give up; but what are the limits of the Spider within himself, unleashed of all restrictions? Can Spider-Man evolve? Because the more he confronts challenges of such nature, the more the essence of his power is revealed. Just like the Ditko / Romita and Lee years, the character is back to a learning curve. And that is what makes the Straczynski / Romita Jr. / Hanna so unique.

These are not stories about Spider-Man fighting the villain of the week, but the reinsertion of The Hero’s Journey concept, the path of self-discovery.

From here onwards, the Spider is more connected to the man than ever before.

---

More about Kwaku Anansi can be read here.

This post is wholeheartedly dedicated to the works of Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, who in this year left this plane to rediscover others, which probably have been already presented to us before through their Strange and Amazing tales.