I've been reading a lot of Spider-Man books recently. I'll get into why at some other point but for whatever reasons the character has just grabbed me lately. Grabbed me as a reader in a way he never did before.
One of the stories I've read lately (or re-read as I have probably gone through it about a dozen times in my life) is the origin story from Amazing Fantasy #15 (August 1962). Many people have written about what a groundbreaking origin story this was for a super-hero and frankly I agree with them. Looking at that story in the context of the times it was published it is an amazing leap forward for what can be described somewhat pretentiously as the super-hero genre. It was the next step after the Fantastic Four. The FF got their powers through an accident and immediately set about helping people with them. The fact that they bickered and that Sue Storm was actually a viable member of the team is what set them apart but in their first issue they all put their hands in and declared their intention to help mankind.
Spider-Man was different. Stan Lee and Steve Ditko took two pages to establish what a bookwork and outcast Peter Parker is, which may not sound like a lot of space but in the early sixties in an anthology book in an eleven page story that was a lot of time to devote to character development. He received his powers from an accident involving radiation (standard for the day and pretty much the next decade or so) and the first thing he did was test his powers out at a wrestling match, which went well enough for him to grab the attention of a TV producer. From there Peter designed and sewed the costume, developed the web fluid and shooters and went on television. Through the dialog you get the sense that Peter is kind of a bitter and angry young man and with the comments made by his classmates at the beginning of the story it is little wonder he felt this way.
Then it happens.
The thief runs by him after robbing...something. Peter doesn't stop him. The same thief ends up robbing the Parker household and killing his Uncle Ben. With great power comes great responsibility.
The origin has been re-told over and over again so many times in variety of mediums. If you read enough Spider-Man comics you see it again and again and again. So much so that after a while it kind of loses its power as an origin. You forget Peter being mocked by his classmates and the resentment he feels and the love Ben and May Parker had for their nephew. It's almost like Batman and the death of the Waynes. You see that enough and the concept that a little boy watched his parents die violently in front him gets forgotten. After awhile both origins are a means to an end.
That was one of the thoughts that ran through my head as I re-read Amazing Fantasy #15. Here's the other:
The origin of Spider-Man wasn't a super-hero story.
It was a science fiction story.
If you've ever read any of the horror and science fiction books put out by EC Comics in the fifties then you know that they follow a certain pattern. Establishing character development followed by something weird or horrific happening followed by twist ending. This is not to diminish those stories. I love them with the best being the ones in my opinion being the horror books, but the science fiction tales were great as well, but they did have a formula like most comics of the time had some kind of story engine. After the formation of the Comics Code EC was forced to find a new direction, which didn't work out and with the exception of Mad, which eventually shifted to magazine format, all of it's titles were canceled.
This didn't stop other publishers from copying the formula albeit in a watered down, code approved version. In 1961 the company that would become the Marvel Comics as we know it today put out a comic called Amazing Adventures, which was an anthology book that told monster and science fiction stories including an adventure character who dealt with the weird and wacky named Doctor Droom, who would be brought back later in the seventies as Doctor Druid. With the seventh issue the titled was changed to Amazing Adult Fantasy, that was supposed to be a more mature title brought home by the little caption on the cover that read, "The Magazine That Respects Your Intelligence."
Number fifteen was the title's last issue with yet another name change, this time to the simpler Amazing Fantasy. It was here that Stan published a concept that from all accounts was a bone of contention between Lee and his publisher, Martin Goodman. Goodman hated this concept of a super-hero who was not only a nerd but a teenager with problems and hang-ups. I don't know how apocryphal that story is. It's hard to tell what really happened and what made for a better story later, but in any case the concept was apparently looked down upon so Lee stuck it in this little anthology book that was going to be canceled anyway and thus a legend was born.
The thing is that if you read the story...I mean really read the story it fits perfectly within the format of the science fiction story with the twist ending. Ordinary kid who is mocked and ridiculed. Loving family. Suddenly he is involved in an accident that gives him the powers of a spider. He takes advantage of those abilities and tries to make money but doesn't step up to help when that help was needed because he was looking out for no one but himself. Then his Uncle Ben, a man he loved and who loved him, is killed by a robber and after cornering the man Peter discovers to his horror that it was the very same man who he failed to stop when he had the chance. The only thing that really separates it is the super-hero style costume, which is mocked at the beginning of the story with the little blurb that read, "Like costumed heroes? Confidentially we in the comic mag business refer to them as 'long underwear characters'!" Without that caption at the beginning this story would have been right at home in a science fiction anthology title.
And honestly if the strip hadn't proved successful it would have been just another story with a snap ending. Instead with retelling after retelling and over forty years of comic book stories, movies, television series and the rest it has become an archetypal origin story.
In any case it's still a solid little story. Sure times and sensibilities have changed but it still holds up surprisingly well.
Weird aside; two months before Amazing Fantasy #15 was published a Stan Lee/Steve Ditko story titled Goodbye to Linda Brown could be found in Strange Tales #97 (June 1962). The story concerned a young, wheelchair bound girl who lived with her uncle and aunt in a beach front setting. I won't give away the details of the story (though it was kind of neat) but there was one strange bit of business thrown in. The uncle and aunt were named Ben and May Parker. And they looked just like Peter's Aunt May and Uncle Ben.
