Monday, June 24, 2019

There's Always A Spider-Man, Even If That's Not What They Call Themselves

Spider-Man is a pretty popular character. Not exactly surprising anyone with that statement. Marvel is as aware of that as anyone, so they periodically try to create a new Spider-Man. That mixture of the superheroics with teenage angst. Money/job issues, school issues, relationship problems, and the way that trying to juggle it all plus be a costumed crimefighter creates even more problems. Too busy fighting Shocker to study for chemistry, so they flunk the test, and get their parents on their backs. Which then feeds into itself and creates more problems.

It's never quite worked as well. Lightning in a bottle being difficult to catch twice. Plus, people can kind of tell you're trying to do the same thing they've seen before. Even if they enjoyed it the first time (and enjoy the subsequent attempts), it still isn't likely to have the same impact.

I think Nova (Richard Rider) was the '70s version, Speedball the '80s version (I don't think it'd be Cloak and Dagger), and maybe Darkhawk was the '90s attempt. I'm not sure who it would be in the 2000s. Arana, maybe. (That was actually the original idea for this post, asking if anyone could think of a better choice for the 2000s representative that I was forgetting).

Kamala Khan's this decade's version - it's odd to think she's only existed for 5 years - and I feel like she has the best chance to be something close to an A-lister over the long haul. Maybe that's recency bias, or the fact she's not just another white guy*. Nova's mostly managed to hang around for over 40 years now. Kamala's got a long way to go to match that. She's only on her second writer now, so we'll see if the aspects that seem to resonate stick around or not. All it takes sometimes is one bad creative team to louse up the works, dig a hole so deep subsequent teams spend years trying to get out of it, But I don't remember the others getting on Avengers' rosters as quickly as she did (although for Darkhawk and Speedball the X-Men would have been the big franchise at the time, and neither of them meet the X-gene qualification to receive a call-up).

I don't know why it didn't work for the other three. Maybe because Spider-Man was still there, and even if he was in college by that time, or married, he was still working within the same formula. So why bother with the imitations? Or maybe they didn't change the window dressing enough. I feel like Darkhawk tried a bit (I've not read Nova's first series, or Ditko's Speedball work, so I can't comment). Chris Powell had a bunch of younger siblings to worry about, plus there was the long-running subplot about whether his missing cop dad was dirty or not. But maybe that wasn't enough, or it just didn't work because Spider-Man had changed the landscape and people needed to find new territory.

* The fact they lean into her being a superhero fangirl helps. Superheroes are thing in her world, people would be fans and want to imitate them like we do actors and athletes. She has an enthusiasm for it that encourages the audience to do so as well. It isn't just an escape from the everyday problems like it sometimes is for Spider-Man and the others.

3 comments:

thekelvingreen said...

He's not a Marvel character -- although he did get an issue of Marvel Team Up -- but Invincible is probably the closest we got to a Spider-Man in the 2000s. Yes in terms of powers he's more Superboy, and his story went off into workd-shaking, cosmic stuff, but the first few years were very reminiscent of classic high school Spidey.

CalvinPitt said...

I was trying to stick to Marvel, but even so, I'd completely forgotten about Invincible. I never read it, but based on what I remember hearing, that is a pretty good call.

It'd be more of a '90s pick, but I was thinking of Tim Drake as Robin, especially when Chuck Dixon was writing his solo book.

thekelvingreen said...

Well, Invincible did cross over with Marvel Team-Up when Kirkman was writing it, so you can count him on a technicality. ;)