does it?
But wait! What about when he’s not Spider-Man?
Ah, that’s an entirely different picture. Peter Parker is not exactly Mr. Excitement. In fact, he lives a life of worry and turmoil. It does not look like he’s having fun. He looks miserable. He’s got a gorgeous wife, a glamorous job, a satisfying secret life, but he clearly considers himself a loser.
How’s that again?
Say, what’s going on here?
Let’s leave Spidey for now and look at Batman again for a moment, shall we?
Ah, yes, the Batman. When he’s not obsessively fighting crime, he’s Bruce Wayne, millionaire playboy, majority stockholder in Wayne Enterprises, chairman of the Thomas Wayne Foundation. Envied and admired by most of Gotham City’s upper crust, he’s got it all—looks, money, fame, respect, power.
And he doesn’t care. That’s the thing—“Bruce Wayne” is a front, a role he trots out now and then just to keep up appearances. It’s not who he is; the wealth and glamour is just a disguise, a tool. His real identity is Batman, the avenger, the dark warrior, the humorless obsessive. Wayne Enterprises exists to supply him with the money and equipment he needs to continue his relentless battle against evil. The Wayne Foundation exists to try to cut crime off at the roots by fighting the poverty and injustice that drive people to desperation. His money is just a necessary fuel for his secret life. He has no real family, no love life, no friends as Bruce Wayne; his only friends are people like Alfred, Robin, Oracle, Commissioner Gordon—his companions in Batman’s war against crime. Everything he does, everything he is, is targeted at his crusade. It’s all he wants, all he lives for. Bruce Wayne or Batman, it’s the same guy underneath, and that’s Batman.
But for Spider-Man, Peter Parker isn’t just a front. Peter Parker is his attempt to have something resembling a normal life. It’s who he really is. It’s who he was before the radioactive spider sank its fangs in him, and who he still wants to be. The child who was Bruce Wayne is gone, leaving only Batman, but Peter Parker was a little more established, a little more certain of his identity, and he’s still Peter Parker, not Spider-Man.
And Peter Parker is generally pretty miserable. He certainly isn’t rich or famous or handsome or successful, like Bruce Wayne…
But—why not?
Why does he consider himself a loser, and behave accordingly?
Before that spider bit him, before Uncle Ben was killed, Peter Parker was on track for a pretty good life. Maybe he didn’t think so, but he was. Really, think about it.
Yes, he was an orphan. Yes, he was a nerd. But so what? That was high school. It wasn’t real life. He had a loving home, even if it wasn’t with his parents, and he had a brilliant scientific mind. His classmates mocked him, but his teachers didn’t—they respected and encouraged him. Science nerds may be looked down on in high school, but ten years later, when the captain of the football team is selling shoes, the nerds are pulling down six-figure salaries from major corporations—or perhaps running major corporations, like Steve Jobs or Bill Gates. The jocks look back on high school as their glory days, but the nerds look back on graduation as the beginning of everything important in their lives.
And maybe Peter Parker wasn’t exactly a ladies’ man in high school, but he did all right. Betty Brant and Liz Allen were fighting over him, for heaven’s sake! Later on a hot blonde named Gwen Stacy adored him, and in the end he wound up marrying a model. A smart, funny, utterly devoted model. As Mary Jane herself put it—face it, Tiger, you’ve hit the jackpot. Clearly, Peter Parker had the right pheromones; even when he wasn’t trying, he attracted women.
And why not? He’s not ugly. He’s smart and witty and modest—what’s not to like?
Brains, family, friends, charm, health—so why didn’t Peter Parker wind up rich and happy?
He tells himself that it’s because he’s just naturally a loser, an unlucky guy, and that the need for Spider-Man interferes with everything else. Uh huh, sure. Being a superhero is such a thankless chore.
Then why does he look like he’s having fun when he’s Spider-Man, and like his puppy just died when he’s Peter Parker?
I’m not buying his explanation. It just doesn’t fit the facts. What really went wrong for Peter Parker, and right for Spider-Man?
What went wrong? Well, first, he didn’t stick with his plan for a career in science. He became a freelance photographer, and even though it was originally intended to be a stopgap to get him through a financial rough stretch, he stayed a freelance photographer. Unless you’re Alfred Stieglitz or Ansel Adams, there isn’t generally a lot of money in that. His plans for a career in the sciences just sort of faded away—he let a few setbacks completely derail him. His excuse was that he couldn’t devote the time to it and still keep up with his responsibilities as Spider-Man.
Oh, come on. Night classes. Part-time work. He’s got the brains, he’s got the contacts—he could do it if he wanted to. He could still go back to it, even now. People expect scientists to be eccentric. Keeping odd hours is entirely within acceptable tolerances, so long as the work gets done. He could do it.
But he doesn’t.
Instead he keeps on working for J. Jonah Jameson and the Daily Bugle even though he knows that Jameson’s an obnoxious cheapskate, and worse. Oh, he’s occasionally made half-hearted efforts to sell his photographs elsewhere, but just as he has with his scientific studies, he gave up far too easily. He’s never tried to study photojournalism, never tried to develop multiple markets for his work the way most freelancers do; instead he just keeps on selling Spider-Man pictures to a man who loathes Spider-Man.
This is clearly self-hatred at work.
As for his love life, he seems to have deliberately sabotaged that for awhile, too. He willfully misunderstood Betty Brant’s concerns, refused to take Liz Allen’s attention seriously, actively avoided meeting Mary Jane for months. Okay, he got Gwen Stacy killed, and that was a genuine piece of horrible misfortune directly related to being Spider-Man, but if anything he was less reluctant with women after that; it certainly wasn’t the start of his romantic failures.
Really, if you look at what he actually does, rather than what he says, it’s clear that Peter Parker is deliberately sabotaging himself in any number of ways. He says it’s all because of Spider-Man, but it doesn’t really look like it. He’s screwing up his own life, and ignoring opportunities to straighten it out.
So why would he ruin his own life?
That’s easy. Why does anyone reject happiness? Guilt.
Peter feels he doesn’t deserve happiness. After all, he let Uncle Ben get murdered, when he could have prevented it. He can’t allow Peter Parker to ever have all the things Uncle Ben wanted for him, if Ben isn’t there to see it. Ben Parker was encouraging him in his plans to study science, so with Ben gone, science is no longer where he’s meant to be. He can’t have the research career that his uncle was guiding him into, because that uncle is gone, and it’s all his fault.
Ben would tease him about girls, and offer him advice, and Ben and May provided his role models of a loving couple, so with Ben gone he can’t have that, either. So he screwed up his love life.
Ben never let him worry about money, even when things were tight, so with Ben gone he’s constantly obsessing about it, even while he’s
