This Wednesday, Marvel comics releasesAmazing Spider-Man#1000. In honor of this truly landmark issue, our own Jonathan Waugh pays tribute to Spidey with a poignant personal essay.
Sometime in summer 1992, my mom returned home with a pile of things that would change my life. According to her, the local convenience store had a few comic books on sale to “try out,” and she grabbed them all at a deal. Knowing what I know about the industry at the time (and the fact that one of them was a copy of Spider-Man #5, which came out years earlier during Todd McFarlane’s start on the new volume), it was clearly an attempt by a convenience store owner to drive some new business into their store via comic prospecting.
Amidst that pile of books that contained Detective Comics, X-Men, and a bunch of other foil embossed beauties was Spider-Man #23: the comic that would lead to a life of nerdery and cause my poor parents endless trips to the comic stores wherever we lived.
That particular issue of Spider-Man probably isn’t anyone’s favorite. As the second stint of Erik Larson’s tenure on the character before he joined Image, it’s a placeholder story to find a replacement after Todd McFarlane left. As the finale of the “Revenge of the Sinister Six” story, it features more villains and heroes in it than the typical Spidey issue. For a five-year-old who was only experiencing these characters through the arcades and rented VHS tapes of the old cartoons, it was mind-blowing. Here was The Hulk, but speaking in full sentences! The Fantastic Four – I remember them from the Namor cartoon I rented! Deathlok, he’s a zombie with guns! AND WHO IS THIS FLAMING SKULL?!?!?!
My five-year-old self poured over the issue, and yet front and center in the middle of the special fold-out cover was Spider-Man. Leading the charge against his newly empowered enemies The Sinister Six, who were really the “Sinister Five” until this issue, which had Gog join the team and – you know what, I’m getting ahead of myself, that happens when I talk about Spidey, a character that has been with me throughout my entire life. As my life changed, Spider-Man changed in so many forms that it feels less like serendipity and more like fate.
I always struggled to make friends as a kid. I still kind of do as an adult to be honest. Moving from Massachusetts, away from my family and the few friends I had, to somewhat rural New Hampshire was a bit of an adjustment, but at least I had the one friend who didn’t leave my side: Spider-Man. Sure, this constant companionship was a little one-sided cause I had to buy his company every month, but having him there every trip to the grocery store was reassuring, even though it was the height of the “Clone Saga,” where I was told that all the adventures I had been reading with Peter Parker were a lie.
But here, too, was my hero dealing with an upending of his life that was partially out of his control. While I can look back on this time of Spidey history somewhat fondly as a byproduct of a simpler, gimmicky time in the industry, for a still budding comic nerd it fooled me! At the time I legitimately thought that Peter Parker was a clone and Ben Reilly, this new guy with blonde hair and a cut off hoodie over his costume was the “real Spider-Man” (to their credit, Marvel editorial really sold that idea to an eight year old).
Yet even with this upending of Peter Parker and my life, there was still a “classic” Spidey to fall back on. Thanks to the relatively cheap Essential collections, and the underrated Untold Tales of Spider-Man series, I was able to get a dose of “real” Spidey adventures that didn’t have a plethora of clones, holofoil covers, or a weird dude named Judas Traveller mucking up the adventures. The classic Spider-Man was there for me as I navigated a new school and new friends who shared a fraction of the things I was interested in; a theme in my life that has become such a constant that I’ve since learned how to navigate around it.
The initial meet-ups at friend’s houses would start off fine, but once they learned how deep my comic book nerdery went, either through conversation or just by seeing my room, the sense of peer pressure to not like that stuff would rear its ugly head again. It got to a point where it was just easier to keep that part of my personality to myself. Not unlike Peter’s secret identity, my love for comics and Spider-Man would remain a secret for only a few to know.
The author in his finest Spidey attire. (Yes, I would wear this today if it fit.)
Flash forward to the early 2000s, and my life with Spidey looks a bit different. High school has hit in full swing, complete with the hormones and awkwardness. And yet my guy has a full blown movie in theaters, with another on the way. People who never thought any of this was cool and would actively scoff at my Spider-Man shirts now would want to talk about the movie.
While I had some misgivings with the first film, the sheer fact that a Spider-Man movie existed, and was actually good, was quite mind-blowing. So many people seeing the origin of my hero feels like a window into the real me and why I connect with Peter Parker so much(that connection was a little more physical as well in this era, since I used his looks in Ultimate Spider-Man as a wardrobe guideline-yes, I was extremely popular, why do you ask?).
Around this time, I was also diagnosed with a blood disorder called hemochromatosis. For those uninitiated, it’s a big word for a genetic blood disorder that essentially means “iron overload.” In essence, my body produces too much iron for my body to use, and if left untreated, it can build up in my joints (not ideal), my heart (bad), or my liver (extremely bad). This also means I would make a killer henchman for Magneto, but I digress.
While it’s not quite the same as “radioactive blood” like one Mr. Parker, it was enough of a genetic anomaly at the time for that singular weird lyric from the Spider-Man theme to stick out in my brain as another example of me and my hero’s life perpetually intertwining. While I can’t stick to walls, and I don’t have a supernatural warning of danger, I do get to have a pint of blood taken from me every six months or so, which is pretty much that same thing?
As high school wrapped up, and my hero was riding high in the public consciousness after the previous year’s Spider-Man 2, college loomed large. While I wasn’t attending Empire State University, the world of Waugh expanded ever so slightly at the University of New Hampshire, where I began the process of trying to figure out what kind of person I was outside of high school and the perception that my former classmates had made for me.
It was a time of “figuring things out,” and for Spidey, that was far more literal than what I was going through. Civil War was in full effect, and I made sure to be there on day one, taking two buses and walking a few miles to the only comic shop near campus to get a copy. One of the biggest seismic changes from that event was Peter revealing his identity to the world.
Even in college, I remained the coolest.
At the time I was pretty surprised by it and rolled with the punches of this strange idea, even trying to explain the importance of this to college roommates who gracefully let me geek out for a bit before returning to their lukewarm beers. Spidey’s soul searching and an effort to live up to his mistake had pretty disastrous consequences for both Peter Parker and the Spidey editorial offices at large, as the now infamous “One More Day” storyline saw one of the few permanent changes in comics happen and stick, with Peter Parker and Mary Jane’s marriage being supernaturally annulled by the demon Mephisto.
With the benefit of 20 years of hindsight (good god I’m old), the resulting “Brand New Day” era lead to some of the most creatively fruitful times of the modern Spidey era. It showed me that his (and the editorial team’s) mistakes wouldn’t define him, and that they shouldn’t define me. Sure, the self-doubt is integral to his character as a whole, but there’s a deep well of inner strength that Spidey can tap into, and struggling alongside him as he made his decisions and stuck with the consequences (as dumb as they were at times) made Peter feel even more human and relatable.
That reboot of the Spidey mythos with Brand New Day really hit me a few weeks ago. Perhaps it was because of the recent movie, and its return to form of a down-and-out Spidey, but it made clear a lot of the big changes in my life that have strengthened me as a person. From completing grad school and navigating post-college life trying to find a job in my own “Brand New Day” era, to changing my career after being sure of the one I thought I had during the “Superior” era, to spending ten years working in comics retail before burning out and leaving that for something else during my uh…..”Nick Spencer/Ryan Ottley era” (that one doesn’t have an overarching story theme, sue me).
Periods of Spider-Man’s life have always worked and found rhythm with mine in ways big and small. Peter Parker has changed and evolved over the years in comics, movies, and pop culture, and there’s now a Spider-Man for everyone, a fact that legitimately moves me to tears sometimes. He’s become so much more than “just a superhero.” He’s a beacon of learning from your mistakes, finding the strength to be better, and to help others.
I will be 40 next year (in January of 2027 to be exact, so that milestone is coming sooner than later for yours truly). I have been older than the canonically accepted ages of my heroes for longer than I can count. And yet, I still find new things to inspire and comfort me in my favorite character – because Peter Parker’s struggles are our struggles. The few times he’s been able to mentor other younger heroes, like Miles Morales and Spider-Gwen, I feel a sense of camaraderie with him all over again.
Meanwhile, Jonathan Hickman’s Ultimate Spider-Man was the most recent example of Peter Parker’s life hitting me like a Mack truck, as his story of an older guy looking back on the events on his life, acknowledging the good and yet also feeling like something was missing, spoke volumes to me as I take stock of what my life looks like on the eve of my big birthday.
If you squint really closely, you’ll see me on the cover of this issue of Amazing Spider-Man. Courtesy of Marvel.
Aside from that milestone, I’m also just on the edge of a full year of sobriety, something that honestly wouldn’t have been as easy as it was if our current live-action Spidey Tom Holland didn’t have his own non-alcoholic beer out, complete with a Spider-Man branded beer. Change isn’t easy, and I’ve always been a little private about certain things (which may come as a shock to those reading something as personal as this article). But I’ve found that in sharing my experiences, it’s helped others. It’s more insular and personal than saving a person from a burning building with webshooters, but the effect on a person’s soul is still there.
But as much as my life changes, Spidey has always been there for me, and it’s hard to think of anything really shaking that belief. Peter Parker’s life, his goals, his dreams, his desires….they’re eternal. They are what makes us human, regardless of your race, gender, or identity. He shows us with his struggles and beliefs that we can all be a hero in our own ways. We can show up for others even when we’re feeling down. We can lean on each other in trying times. We can give our time and energy to truly worthy causes.
We can be amazing.
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