THE DUALITY OF
02
Apr. ‘13 EW.com
Amazing Spider-Man #1 hit shelves 50 years ago, on March 10, 1963. Since then, Spider-Man has spawned
four—soon to be five—big-budget movies, nine TV shows, a stage play, a radio drama partially masterminded by Brian Mays of Queen, a few dozen video games, and, of course, thousands of comic books and toys. He’s a major figure, and he deserves to be: Spider-Man redefined our idea of a hero by making superheroes a lot more relatable than they were before.
Peter Parker, Spider-man’s real identity, photographs for the Daily Bugal, a Newspaper that villifies the hero towards the beginning of his career.
04
Apr. ‘13 EW.com
Article: the duality of spider-man
To understand how revolutionary Spider-Man was, it helps to understand the most important hero who came before him: Superman. Created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster in 1932, Superman debuted in Action Comics #1 in 1938 as more force of nature than fully fleshed-out character. Rather than fighting the colorful super-villains that would later define him, Superman attacked a wife beater and rescued a
woman from being wrongfully executed by the government by storming a governor’s mansion with proof of innocence. The creation of Superman led to plenty of direct imitations—Captain Marvel being the most popular off-brand Superman, I believe— and eventually the complete dominance of superhero comics over most other genres in comics, a status quo that survives to today. In 1962, Steve Ditko and Stan Lee created Peter Parker, better known as
Spider-Man. Spider-Man was something different. Instead of growing out of a pulp tradition like Superman, Spider-Man’s forefathers were superheroes. He was a twist on a 20-year-old formula, but managed to become a paradigm shift at least as important as Superman. Both Superman and Spider-Man are heroes, but the differences between them are profound. Where Superman was a grown man, Peter Parker was a bullied teenager. Where Superman enjoyed the adoration and trust of those he protected, Spider-Man was regularly vilified in the press. Where Superman was motivated by his innate goodness, Spider-Man had to work to be a hero, and often fell short of