12 Reasons Why I Hate Spider-Man by KD Bryan The first comic book I ever read was Spectacular Spider-Man #106, guest-starring The Wasp, Starfox and Paladin. I was in the middle of an interminably long road trip with my family and it was either Spidey or a comic book about someone I think was Conan The Barbarian or at least an analogue of sorts (possibly Krull The Conqueror). He was long-haired and held a sword, flexing in place. Spider-Man on the other hand, was in a cool creepy mask and held a strange insect woman while lightning flashed behind him. Spider-Man just looked so damn weird and cool that I used $2 of my allowance to buy the comic. I got hooked immediately and needed more, ruining my vacation to the Colorado Sand Dunes as I was obsessed with learning more about this weird Spider guy, not some stupid piles of sand.



Worse yet, the problem didn't stop there. Spider-Man was a gateway drug and soon I was deep into the X-Men, the Avengers and on my way to mainlining the hard stuff. I'm still an addict as of my writing this. That one Spider-Man comic book has cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars due to a lifelong habit getting its hooks in me. I still cherish Wednesday as the day new comics arrive. I am a complete nerd and proud of it, God help me.



In reading earlier issues of Spider-Man, I came across his classic mantra of "With Great Power, Comes Great Responsibility." The one time the guy goofs off and gets full of himself, his father figure gets shot. As a son of two Catholics, I really didn't need any further social guilt about doing the right thing but there he was, the armpit-webbed son of a bitch, making sure that a good kid stayed even closer to the straight and narrow. More on that later.



And along the same lines, Spider-Man didn't drink because it would be irresponsible for someone with superpowers to get hammered just because his life sucked. Guess who didn't drink until the very day he turned 21? And was phobic of being drunk for years after that? That blasted wall-crawling menace ruined college for me. I don't know how many kegstands and drunken parties Peter Parker and his stupid Aunt May kept me from attending but I bet it was in at least the dozens.



Spider-Man's girlfriend was Mary Jane Watson, smoking hot model and actress. His previous girlfriend, Gwen Stacy, was also gorgeous. The lithe cat burglar named Felicia Hardy he saw when he wasn't dating Mary Jane? Also, stunning. Mind you, Peter was a skinny brown-eyed, brown-haired nerd just like I was as a kid. As a result, my expectations about dating and my own attractiveness were just a bit off the mark when I grew up. Just a skosh, mind you.



Spider-Man always made jokes whenever he was fighting for his life, thus distracting and irritating his foes while simultaneously lightening his mood. Emulating this strategy caused a few different problems in my life, which I shall list right now:



Without the proportional strength, agility and speed of a spider, mocking the bully who is hitting you only makes him hit you harder. And repeatedly.



Without the rapier wit and goofy charm of Spider-Man, a default reaction of making jokes when someone - like say an ex-girlfriend - is pissed off at you does not lead anywhere good. Okay, rarely, it works but mostly? You just sound like an asshole.



Thinking everything Spider-Man said was funny, even if I didn't understand it at the tender age of 9, led to some awkward moments. Some jokes worked, sure, but for the record? A kid trying to be funny by asking his Auntie Marges if "That's a shotgun in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?" creates a very awkward silence.



I am now an incurable smart-ass, even if I have learned to keep my inner monologue "inner". Thank God for thought bubbles.



I hit my head repeatedly growing up while trying to see just how far I could walk up my bedroom wall. Some people might say that the end result of these head injuries gained during attempts to "Wall-crawl" is clearly obvious.



Spider-Man was always lucky in one way but the rules of storytelling demanded that he be S.O.L. in some other aspect of his life. If he stopped a supervillain, he'd have to miss a date with a gorgeous model. If he got the money to get his beloved elderly Aunt May medicine, it was by giving pictures to the publisher who would slander Spider-Man. I subsequently assumed that happiness was an either/or proposition until I was 19 years old. To this day, I always react to all good news with an impatient look over my shoulder for the other red and black shoe. This irritates many people, most of all myself.



Roughly 80% of Spider-Man's Rogues Gallery are named after animals - The Lizard, The Vulture, The Scorpion, The Grizzly, The Rhino, and so on and so forth. His first comic was the only refuge I had during a terrible camping trip to a place full of sand. End result? Despite growing up in woodsy Colorado, I violently hate the outdoors.



Coincidence? I think not.



Spider-Man and his eventual wife, the vivacious redheaded model Mary Jane Watson-Parker, set the standard of what love meant to me as a kid. It crystallized my idea of what a loving relationship should mean before I'd even imagined kissing a girl. I learned what dating was by watching Peter Parker duck out of dates again and again to go fight the bad guy. I even went so far as to blog about Spider-Man and Mary Jane's fictional relationship near Valentine's Day on my embarrassingly nerdy comic book blog (please refer back to Problem #1 if you are somehow surprised that I have a blog about comic books).



As a result, I grew up thinking all beautiful girls would have unlimited patience, find neuroses oddly endearing and have flighty facades that masked tremendous inner depth. Naturally, the reality of dating smashed that ship upon the shore pretty damn quickly. Of course, I admit that part of this lies with the idealized depiction of the marriage of two fictional characters and the other part lies with me being a storybook romantic from even farther back. Still, Spider-Man wasn't real and I should have realized that. So, clearly, the lesson to learn here is this - I also hate storybooks. Especially if they instill in me an unshakable belief in true love, no matter how many times I get my heart broken.



Spider-Man made me think that all superheroes had grammatically accurate names. Oh, how my lil' future English Major's heart broke when I first discovered Superman, Batman, Hawkgirl and so forth and so on. Sure, Aquaman (Established Prefix plus Noun), Iron Man (Adjective describing a Noun) and The Flash (Def. Article, Noun) restored my faith slightly but none of them were so properly, beautifully and accurately hyphenated. Spider-Man was the zesty Lemon-Lime of superheroes and nobody else was so grammatically refreshing. Once again, that blasted wallcrawler had set up an impossibly terrific example to follow that would lead me to repeated disappointment and heartbreak.



Oh, and in a confluence of problems 4 and 9, I am helpless before any attractive redheaded girl. It's a sickness, instilled by all those pin-ups of Mary Jane in my formative years. If I end up committing murder for a shapely redhead, I will blame Spider-Man (and noir, but that's an entirely different list of blame).



And you want to know the worst thing Spider-Man ever did to me? The thing that scarred me the most for the rest of my life? Be forewarned, it puts my swooning attraction to redheads, my smart mouth, my multitude of broken hearts and childhood head trauma to shame.



What was the worst thing Spider-Man ever did? He gave me an example.



Spider-Man provided me with an example of how a hero behaves growing up. A hero sacrifices everything for his loved ones or just to do what he knows is right. A hero doesn't quit, even if he's buried under a mountain of metal rubble. He keeps going if people need him. Even if that means he has to fight two dinosaur men while he has the flu or get stung by giant sentient Nazi bees and have the girl he likes think Peter Parker is a coward. Noble, right?



Well, guess who grew up to be a self-sacrificing glutton for punishment who puts his friends and family first? A guy who always stops to think about right, wrong and responsibility before acting? This sucker, that's who. And I blame that menace, Spider-Man.



Sure, sure, I had "parents" and "family" and "friends" growing up to guide me but it's all that accursed arachnid's fault that, whenever I think of how to be a hero, I think of his example. Stan Lee and Steve Ditko will deserve at least a quarter of the credit for my entire life's best decisions - an admission as true as it is embarrassing. For all the bad things, for all the unrealistic expectations, it's the basic stuff that got bonded to my core. Like, for instance . . .



Value your family. You never know when they might get gunned down or die in a shipwreck at sea (again, Spider-Man was crazy unlucky).





What other people say about you is rarely accurate and shouldn't matter - especially what cigar-chomping newspaper publishers with Hitler mustaches say.





And related to that last one, do things for yourself, not for the credit or glory. Action is your reward.





Never take the easy way out, no matter how many people stand against you. Six supervillains got you surrounded? Just grit your teeth, jump on the roller coaster and rescue the platinum blonde with the pistols. Luckily, I've never been in many actual fistfights or else this rule would have meant a lot of non-metaphorical broken bones.





Do the right thing, especially if it makes your life harder. I later learned in life that doing the right thing can actually make your life easier sometimes but I appreciated the more accurate series of events Spidey taught me.





High School is full of morons who don't see the real you and will mock you, even if you're a terrific person on the inside. When I actually made it to High School, it was really good to know this in advance.





Make sure to love and protect the people who love you. Aunt May's old and won't be around forever, you know.





And most importantly . . . never, ever forget to refill your web cartridges before you go jumping off the Empire State Building.



I sometimes want to write a letter to Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, the two men who created Spider-Man. Or craft a letter to Peter David, who wrote that first Spider-Man comic I picked up. I just want to tell them how one fictional character and his fictional life shaped my real world and actions, echoing in me to this day. Of course, I'm sure they've already gotten thousands of the same kind of letters.



Spider-Man's a hero, after all.



Just think - if I had just picked up that Conan the Barbarian comic book instead, I'm sure I'd be a much angrier, more muscular sword-using man who solves all his problems with decisive violence instead of thoughtfulness, kindness and sacrifice.



Of course, I'd still have the uncontrollable attraction to redheads what with Red Sonja and all but I guess some things are just unavoidable, no matter what comic books you read.



Dedicated with love and deep respect to Mr. Stan "The Man" Lee and to all the other heroes who have put the words in Spider-Man's speech bubbles.

I sometimes want to write a letter to Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, the two men who created Spider-Man. Or craft a letter to Peter David, who wrote that first Spider-Man comic I picked up. I just want to tell them how one fictional character and his fictional life shaped my real world and actions, echoing in me to this day. Of course, I'm sure they've already gotten thousands of the same kind of letters.Spider-Man's a hero, after all.Just think - if I had just picked up that Conan the Barbarian comic book instead, I'm sure I'd be a much angrier, more muscular sword-using man who solves all his problems with decisive violence instead of thoughtfulness, kindness and sacrifice.Of course, I'd still have the uncontrollable attraction to redheads what with Red Sonja and all but I guess some things are just unavoidable, no matter what comic books you read.

