Spider-Man's impact on comics

I have been reading a lot of Spider-Man lately and it got me thinking about Spider-Man's impact on superhero comics. Spider-Man is without a doubt one of the most influential comic characters to exist, possibly the most influential with the only rivals being Superman and Batman. Spider-Man is one of my favorite characters of all time but that doesn't mean I consider his influence wholly positive. Truth be told there seems to me to be two points on influence Spider-Man had on comics that were bigger then all other points, one of which I consider immensely positive, and the other I consider immensely negative. Both of these points are somewhat controversial, not in that Spider-Man caused these influences but whether they were good. If you disagree, that's fine, this is just my opinions. I want to go over both influences starting with the negative, and explain my view of them and how Spidey caused them.

1: The emphasis on the civilian life

Before Spider-Man became so popular it was really clear that the superhero was the main identity and the civilian identity was a secret identity, an identity so they could deal with society without threatening their loved ones. The civilian identity was part wish fufillment (that I to be honest didn't get) and part a way in-universe for the character to have a normal life. If you read early Superman comics for instance, the comic as soon as possible tries to gtet Clark being Superman and then tries to keep him being Superman for as long as possible, sometimes only having him be Clark Kent in the last panel to wrap things up. Sometimes you'd get a plot about them having to go into their superhero identity while keeping it secret, but the superhero was clearly the main attraction.

Spider-Man was the first successful superhero to be focused primarily on the civilian life. If you read a Spider-Man comic as early as the 60s, much of it will be spent in his civilian identity as Peter Parker. Most of his storylines are focused around civilian drama like having to make ends meet, having to keep his Aunt May safe, trying to keep up his love life. To be honest I found this a baffling shift and I don't get the appeal. This is the primary reason I didn't get into the Teen Titans or X-Men. As their most favernt fans will point out, those books becamse more and more a soap opera with superpowers, and internally I'm thinking that if I want to watch a soap opera, I'll watch a soap opera. If I read a superhero comic, I read it for superheroics. My taste in superhero comics tends to run towards the abstract or the incredibly strange content that other genres simply wouldn't tell. My favorite comic series, for instance, is The Sandman. You aren't going to find many other genres that can do a prolonged series about the anthromorphic concept of dreams' struggle to reconcile his isolation with his need to obey the rules of dreaming. I don't really want to read comics about the characters' civilian life that are basically just the same as any other realistic fiction story with the exception that I know more interesting stuff could be happening right now.

The thing I like about early comics, the comics before Spider-Man is that they truly were about superheros doing superhero things.

2: Ongoing narratives

The thing I really liked that Spider-Man caused was his comics shifted the medium towards telling more ongoing stories. Spider-Man's series was known as the series that had ongoing continuity, where characters wouldn't come back to life if they were killed, where things were constantly changing.

If you've ever seen me rant about filler in anime/manga, you can probably like my stories to have ongoing progression. It can be slow progression, a slow build up, just so long as it is constantly progressing. Before Spider-Man so much of comics were monthly episodic adventures dealing with some random criminal or supervillain and things didn't seem to change very much. It seems like there was an attempt to build something eternal and unchanging, icons rather then persona, which is a desire I view with sympathy but disagreement as to the aim. If you try to make something eternal, you end up making something stagnant. Things need to change over time to feel alive. If you create something dynamic and changing, people will extract the eternal from within it, for the character will face life as we do, as a constant series of changes.

The thing I liked about comics after Spider-Man is that things carried over much more often between issues, there was more sense of continuity and gravity to situations as opposed to being a monthly cycle of never-ending battles.

Conclusion:

I really wish there was a time when comics carried both ongoing narratives and a focus on the superhero. This may sound impossible, and perhaps it is too much to ask for a shared universe written over such a long period. I get that change in the superheroic world is change that is much harder to write around then in the civilian world. But the ideal superhero series for me is a series I don't think I've ever seen, and that's a series where the demigods, the superheroes, show up on Earth and make constant positive changes to society leading it to a better state then ours. There are many dystopian superhero stories where the superheroes have taking tyrannical control and I don't tend to like those because they give the impression that the superheroes shouldn't have control. I see no reason they shouldn't gain control. We try and give those people among us with virtue and competence control over society to lead us regardless. In my favorite series of all, Sailor Moon, the main character becomes the queen of the Earth and turns it into a harmonious utopia. As strange as it sounds to talk about a utopia as realism, I do in fact view that as realistic because if there were people with incredible powers and corresponding high virtue, I would expect society to be in a much better state then it is now. I would expect them to be given control freely because they would most likely know better how to make it harmonious then we do. There isn't anthing tyrannical in that. It is only natural and logical to want our leaders to be the most moral and competent people we can put in that position.



Anyway that's a tangent. I do want to make it clear these are prefernences, not ironclad rules. It's not always good to put focus on the character's superhero identity. They tried to make Peter Parker just Spider-Man in the 90s wih "The Spider" identity and that wasn't very well-recieved. I personally thought there was a little potential in the idea though the execution was not very well done. Likewise some stories that don't impact later continuity are well done. I think anyone who doesn't like "The Kid Who Collects Spider-Man" must have a hole where their heart should be. These are however the general preferences of mine. I prefer superhero stories to be focused on superheroes, and I prefer a very strong sense of ongoing narrative and progression.