Spider-Man character growth vs. staying in high school and Joe Quesada

[phonogram12]

Some of the story ideas will repeat a bit after decades, but that's fine. Once you're 300 stories deep you can't expect every reader to have read all 299 previous stories.

I agree with you here, but I have a feeling many Marvel and DC readers wouldn't. While I think it's pretty unreasonable to expect a current story to adhere to another from over 20 years ago, I know there are many that wouldn't.

And that's the thing about comics. When they were first conceived, readers were supposed to move on at some point, replaced by a new set of readers. Instead, very few new readers are coming in because superhero comics have become increasingly insular and gatekeep-y, which is certainly not a good thing for the genre.

[Mister Mets]

Do you know of any examples in fiction of a never-ending serialized story with a protagonist who "learns and grows up" and is also frozen in time? What you seem to be describing is an impossibility because those two approaches to storytelling directly contradict one another.

You seem to think that the youthfulness of the character is his most important defining trait and that the "growing" element of the story should be sacrificed in favor of preserving the character's youthfulness. But I believe that growing was central to the comic's appeal.

Regardless, where is the line the sand? How does crossing that line affect the commercial viability of the character? Do you have any evidence to support that hypothesis?

This seems to be a situation where evidence can be dismissed until it's too late. When the line's been crossed, how do you walk it back?

As we saw from the Who Killed Kamala controversy just recently, the value of hearsay evidence in this context is lowish.
We know that if Stan Lee didn't want to age Peter up then it must have been Ditko's idea, and vice versa.

If Marvel want to do a hard reboot on their continuity or shift to a there is no continuity model of storytelling then maybe. But they have consistently rejected doing either.
There's a tvtropes page on levels of continuity. No doubt further splitting is possible. Anyway, as I remember, the first two levels are:
1) Looney Tunes. Aside from the basic characters stories may start with a different setting, without explanation, and the ending may change the characters entirely because it will just be ignored.
2) Pre-Babylon-5 genre television. There is an illusion of continuity in that characters revert to the status quo at the end of each episode - they may fall in love or otherwise be emotionally changed but that will just be ignored the next time. The intention was that networks purchasing the series could show the episodes in any order or that viewers who missed several episodes could watch the next one as if nothing had happened.

Received wisdom is that Marvel succeeded in part because Lee broke from those two levels of continuity, and adopted a higher level of continuity where characters did grow up, fall in and out of love, get married, die, and so on. They could shift to a nothing ever happens again model, but they'd be departing from what made Marvel Marvel in the first place.

In any case, it's one thing to say one needs to draw a line in the sand and not go beyond it. It's another to say one needs to draw a line in the sand that one had already crossed with no apparent ill effects some while back.

I know the TV Tropes thing was vague.

There is a bit of nuance.

Obviously multi-part stories have been standard in television, and the same rules apply. The continuity in the beginning of Part 2 is different because it deals with the consequences of something Part 1 (Spock is on trial for going to the forbidden planet, Richard Kimble travels with an unusual nun) but it's usually back to normal by the end of the story.

The Looney Tunes continuity approach probably kicked off with the Sherlock Holmes short stories. That's an early example of readers following regular standalone adventures of a character.

There was some serialization before Babylon 5. It was a big moment in Star Trek: The Next Generation when the episode after a pivotal Borg story featured Picard still dealing with the trauma.

The level of serialization in film, TV and comics changed with differences in how we consume media. It was unreasonable to expect someone to be familiar with earlier issues of a comic in the 1960s when the distribution model was uncertain. Now there are many ways for someone to catch up, so if they've heard good things about a run (Ram V's Detective Comics) they're more likely to start from the beginning and catch up.

And it gets messy to figure out what level of change is best for a series that's been around for 60+ years.

Fores Hills is pretty suburban. It's not technically the suburbs because it is inside of Queens. But it is more suburban than parts of Long Island. It's a well-off residential neighborhood with little public transportation.

Yep. This gets a bit complicated since Forest Hills circa 2024 is different from Forest Hills circa 1962. Especially in terms of home values.

In comparison to Manhattan, Forest Hills is the suburbs, especially the part Peter seems to live in. But if you're looking at population density and amenities, it is what people in other cities would consider to be a city.

[Lee]

That's quite the slippery slope. Peter is/was a married man nearing his 30s. Nowhere was he or any of the principal cast (aside from May Parker) near death.

Marvel has the choice to freeze him at that age, or age him into his 30s. Then his 40s. Then his 50s. And so on. They've chosen to freeze him in his 20s.

If you are forced to keep regurgitating/ recycling story beats to keep the characters in stasis, then your characters aren't learning and growing. It's simply not possible to achieve both. And you're unlikely to incentivize customers to stick around and continue purchasing books with that degree of repetition. You're basically encouraging them to hop off after some indeterminate amount time. I don't think you can divorce Marvel's success from the serialized evolution that occurred to its principal characters. That type of storytelling encourages long term investment.

I think the issue-to-issue soap opera is an incentive. I don't think it's necessary to age characters up to have that. The character relationships can evolve without ageing up the characters.

I think Marvel and DC comics are by their nature already largely repetitive.

[Frontier]

To be honest I don't think grappling with the weight of a big backlog of continuity means we need to accept bad character writing.

It's like comparing Nick Spencer Peter/MJ to Wells Peter/MJ and the difference is night and day.

[bat39]

Not going to lie, a lot of the "appeals to authority" and attempted "this wouldn't work because it makes him feel old" arguments still end up quietly having this weird addendum of "... and as a sign of how much him being a young teenager-feeling dude is important, we have decided to freeze him when he is blatantly too old to be a teacher or student for all time, and given him a 30-year old's characterization" aspect.

It's complete bullshit to try arguing "Well, Ditko thought he shouldn't have left high school!" or "Marv Wolfman hated graduating him from college!"... and then still move heaven and earth to enforce a post-college status quo with a timeline that blatantly makes him no longer passable as a young 20-something.

I don't believe a word said in favor of OMD that involves "youth" or some "conviction" that Peter should have stayed young - because there's no desire among OMD supporters to actually make Peter young or undo that. It makes supporters sound like they *should* be just as miserable with their own status quo as critics of it... and we don't see someone Mr. Slott or Lee lamenting that Peter's out of high school until someone carries the argument for the marriage over to it reflecting Peter's growth, and it's to defend a story where Peter's a 30-something "magic divorcee," so it's clearly just rhetorical maneuvering rather than an actual conviction.

It really does feel like it's more just hatred of the work and standards required to write Peter when he's a growing character rather than any kind of conviction about what he was.

If you seriously think he needs to be young, juts reboot his ass back to high school. Otherwise, I'm going to know "youth" has nothing to do with the argument we're having, and is just obfuscating and goalpost moving out of desperation.

I think its really about getting the character to a status quo which can be perpetual while also maintaining the perception of youth.

Peter can be a 20-something, or even 30-something college graduate who's single (and ready to mingle) and theoretically the story possibilities are endless - as long as you always default back to the status quo.

You can't really do that with a high-school or college kid because at some point you'd expect him to progress out of that status quo. And Marvel is very much a shared universe where there is some forward progression. Peter can't be a high-schooler forever while the X-men go from living in the Mansion to living on Utopia to back at the Mansion to Krakoa, and so on.

To sound a bit controversial on the surface (but only on the surface)... I will grant there is a chance that Spidey would have stayed longer in high school if Stan knew how big Marvel would get. But only in the sense that they would start a floating timeline from Day 1.

The same is true for all the other Marvel IP's. I don't think that's at all unique to Spider-Man. The Marvel Universe supposedly existed for 12-15 years, but Franklin Richards was 5 already in like the late 1960's. It's around that time when Marvel drops the real time feeling altogether.

What that probably means is that the Lee/Ditko/Romita run would have more evenly split the high school and college era. I don't even think it means that it would have delayed any other events like Peter graduating college and getting married - part of why the Marvel Universe slowed down as much as it did is to make up for how fast it went in the beginning. With it going slower from the beginning, there is also less of a need for it to slow down.

(That's also why I don't have a problem with adaptations adapting Lee/Romita content from when Peter was 18-19 into the high school years when Peter was 16-17 - not a big deal IMO.)

However, none of that would mean what Quesada and Co. think it means. Both Lee and Ditko made it clear from the beginning they wanted to grow Peter up. The Marvel universe as a whole has grown since then, even after time started "slowing down" in-universe. Like, even after Marvel dropped any resemblance of real time, it's clear that at least 10 years passed in-universe way before we even got to OMD.

Basically, there is a chance that in hindsight, Stan would have made Peter's journey look more like what Greg Weisman planned for Spectacular Spider-Man. Peter stayed longer in high school there but ultimately there was still a plan to age him up. But even if that's somehow true, that's still a far cry from "Spider-Man is about youth" or from OMD having any sort of valid point.

I mean, it's not [that simple. There are other factors why Peter left college so fast, like Ditko wanting to give Peter a character arc and also cultural factors like Spidey becoming more popular with college students. My point though is that in a vacuum, wanting to more evently distribute the stories is the continuity is the only reason you might do things differently in hindsight - which literally has nothing to do with OMD or what Quesada is talking about.

Its the dichotomy Marvel has always faced, perhaps more so than any other long-running franchise - allow characters to progress and evolve (which means the passage of time and ageing, at whatever rate), or keep them 'frozen' in a particular age/status quo.

DC doesn't have this problem nearly as much as Marvel because of their near-constant reboots, though, as mentioned right at the start of this thread, even they've had to retain some of their character progression simply because those have been accepted by vast sections of the fanbase as essential features of the franchise (Dick going from Robin to Nightwing, Bruce's son Damian, Lois and Clark marriage etc.)

[Daibhidh]

The Looney Tunes continuity approach probably kicked off with the Sherlock Holmes short stories. That's an early example of readers following regular standalone adventures of a character.

Apart from the disappearance of Mrs Watson, the Sherlock Holmes stories are level two. You'd have the Looney Tunes approach if The League of Red-headed Men started with Holmes and Watson working as a pair of lumberjacks and ended with Watson eloping with the local lady of negotiable affection, the next story started with them both single and not lumberjacks in 221B Baker Street and ended with Holmes' death, and the next story started with Holmes alive again without any explanation of how he survived.

It's a level of continuity almost entirely found in comedy, though the James Bond films prior to Daniel Craig verged on it, in that all but one of the films end with Bond sailing off into the sunset with that film's love interest in a way that kind of looks like a happily ever after.

[TinkerSpider]

In Comics Creators on Spider-Man, Marv Wolfman recalled a conversation he had with Steve Ditko when they were working on Machine Man together (1979), in which Ditko said that the best age to freeze Spider-Man would have been 16.

Wolfman recounted that conversation in 2004, decades after he worked with Ditko, when Marvel had already tried twice to get rid of the marriage and was winding up for OMD - and Wolfman is on record as not being a marriage/growth proponent. Not saying he didn't have the conversation, just pointing out context.

Meanwhile, we have Ditko's own words that graduating Peter from high school and moving him to college was an idea he and Stan had, and he prompted Flo to ask Stan if he still wanted to do that.

In fact, I just found the entire essay on line: "#45, Why I Quit S-M, Marvel" so you don't have to believe me that it's in the book.

There's also this from the essay:

"The sheet was for me to note any sub-plot ideas for S-M, PP, and the main supporting characters: J. Jonah, Aunt May, the school kids, etc. An example: Aunt May. What kind of problem, concern, would affect PP and S-M?When would be the worst time for a real serious problem affecting her, PP and S-M? His first day in college. So I slowly built up her heart problem to come to a climax on PP's first day in college."

This, of course, is the Master Planner Saga, regarded as one of THE classic Spider-Man stories, and it was specifically designed to take place on Peter's first day in college BY Ditko.

But putting the fact we hear directly from Ditko aside: I am curious why we are supposed to honor only Ditko's apparent wishes and not Stan Lee's?

Again, the intent was right in the name from the very beginning: Spider-MAN. Not Spider-Boy. Not Spider-Teen.

You can have a comic series about a teenager learning life lessons without following them through all the stages of human life.

Perhaps you can provide examples to better illustrate what you mean?

The approach you're describing isn't viable for a comic designed to run forever while keeping the character recognizable for commercial reasons.

I would argue it's actually the opposite, despite conventional wisdom suggesting otherwise.

Keeping a teen character locked in amber and stagnant appears to be a recipe for cancelletion.

I don't see Superboy or Jimmy Olsen on the shelves these days, despite each selling 500,000+ issues a month in 1965.

Archie was on a downward slide to oblivion, revitalized by allowing him to grow up (and even die).

Under those conditions there eventually comes a line in the sand.

Absolutely!

And that line for a dramatic serial in which the teenage character is learning and growing (and isn't just a stock type in a situational story like a comedy or mystery) is transitioning to an adult character (with or without passing the torch to the next generation), dying, or cancellation/stoppage of the series.

There is not an example to the contrary that I can think of. Again, if you have one, would love to hear it!

Here's the thing:

An adult Peter can conceivably break his plans for his 25th time to fight against Doctor Octopus, because "adulthood" is an amorphous amount of time; our disbelief is suspended.

A teenage Peter cannot stand up his prom date for the 25th time. That breaks verisimilitude and makes his world nonsense. Audiences can't suspend disbelief. Not if Peter is supposed to be a three dimensional human character and not a stock Looney Tune-type who never changes, never grows, never learns.

Peter as a high school teacher would have been a bad long-term job because it places Peter as an authority figure to teenagers. It's one of the worst jobs to give to a character you want a teenage and younger audience to relate to.

Has anyone told Captain America?

To be honest I don't think grappling with the weight of a big backlog of continuity means we need to accept bad character writing.

It's like comparing Nick Spencer Peter/MJ to Wells Peter/MJ and the difference is night and day.

Co-signed. And audiences have more means that ever before to get caught up on the stories if they want to.

This is why television is so serialized now (and why it's called a new Golden Age): Originally, there was no way to watch previously aired episodes unless you caught the re-run. Hence why television was overwhelmingly episodic. But first VCRS, then DVRs and DVD box sets, and now streaming means that people can go back and watch previous episodes whenever they want to. So there's no need to maintain a strictly episodic format. Same with comics - there is Marvel Unlimited and omnibuses as well as physical and digital back issues, plus wikis and social media, to catch up on previous stories.

[Garlador]

Marvel has the choice to freeze him at that age, or age him into his 30s. Then his 40s. Then his 50s. And so on. They've chosen to freeze him in his 20s.

Then the story is effectively over. If the character cannot move forward in life like a relatable, flesh-and-blood human being, he's effectively ceased to exist as a compelling, narrative-driven character and is in effect a soulless mascot devoid of any future.

BUT, as has been argued many times before, the rest of the Marvel universe IS AGING. It may be slow, but Jubilee is no longer a plucky teen sidekick; she's a single adult mom. Normie Osborn was conceived, born, and has grown into a 10 year old 5th Grader. Entire younger generations of heroes like The Champions have come along that view heroes YOUNGER than Peter as the "old guys".

If they want a younger Peter, screw it. Reboot the book. Do another Bendis. Do a "Beast grabbed the younger versions from the past" X-Men thing. Do another teen Tony. But they won't, because they know fans would hate it, and they don't want to erase all those beloved adventures the ADULT Peter had (just the marriage he had when all those beloved adult stories happened).

It's as you said, the genie is out of the bottle, and so we're at a state where Marvel really wants him to be this "youthful" hero... but he isn't. He's still listed as nearly-30 and complaining about how badly his adult years have gone with major divorced loser energy. He's older physically than he EVER was in the marriage era. So they fail on that regard. So neither those that want him written more maturely OR those that want him to recapture his youth are really satisfied. He's just stuck in this frustrating limbo that makes NEITHER side happy.

I think the issue-to-issue soap opera is an incentive. I don't think it's necessary to age characters up to have that. The character relationships can evolve without ageing up the characters.

And yet the biggest complaint readers have is the character relationships are evolving BACKWARDS. Character history that is defining and established is being ignored and regressed. A soap opera is fine, but even my grandmother watching her old soaps would say that a long-running season would suck if the characters suddenly started acting like they did 20 years ago. Even those soap operas have characters get married, have children, those children growing up, having their own drama, etc.

I think Marvel and DC comics are by their nature already largely repetitive.

Why do we accept that? Raise your standards. Demand better. Demand MORE. You're the customer paying good money for a book.

Why on earth should anyone accept largely repetitive, unoriginal, regressive slop with a smile and thank them for it?

I don't believe in throwing up our hands in apathetic surrender that we have "no choice" but to accept substandard comics as a result.

Co-signed. And audiences have more means that ever before to get caught up on the stories if they want to.

This is why television is so serialized now (and why it's called a new Golden Age): Originally, there was no way to watch previously aired episodes unless you caught the re-run. Hence why television was overwhelmingly episodic. But first VCRS, then DVRs and DVD box sets, and now streaming means that people can go back and watch previous episodes whenever they want to. So there's no need to maintain a strictly episodic format. Same with comics - there is Marvel Unlimited and omnibuses as well as physical and digital back issues, plus wikis and social media, to catch up on previous stories.

There has NEVER been a more accessible time for comic readers to catch up than the current modern online age. The entire archive of Spider-Man history can be found for interested readers.

A good example of this is the new X-Men '97, which is a direct continuation of a show that went off the air in 1997, over 27 years ago. My wife wanted to catch up on the original and, wouldn't you know, it's right there on Disney+ for a new fan to experience nearly three decades later, without missing a beat.

The idea that episodic, repetitive stories are the path forward - especially for a comic like Spider-Man that often engaged in years-long serialized storytelling - is laughable.

[Frontier]

I actually did have an idea of doing a year or two of porting Lee/Ditko Peter from his time to be Spider-Man in the present-day.

[TinkerSpider]

If they want a younger Peter, screw it. Reboot the boot. Do another Bendis. Do a "Beast grabbed the younger versions from the past" X-Men thing. Do another teen Tony. But they won't, because they know fans would hate it, and they don't want to erase all those beloved adventures the ADULT Peter had (just the marriage he had when all those beloved adult stories happened).

I agree.

Either Marvel needs to just throw up their hands and admit, "We're wrong. We did not get our continiuity right the first time. We should have followed DC's example all these years and constantly rebooted our universe" and then, y'know, reboot --

Or continue with the same storytelling that made them a powerhouse in the first place.

It's still incredibly odd to me that people can see that DC's static, mascot first storytelling was rejected by audiences in favor of Marvel's serial, character-driven storytelling - with DC changing to be more like Marvel - yet are now advocating that Marvel should be telling static, mascot-first stories and reject what made Marvel Marvel in the first place.

And yet the biggest complaint readers have is the character relationships are evolving BACKWARDS. Character history that is defining and established is being ignored and regressed. A soap opera is fine, but even my grandmother watching her old soaps would say that a long-running season would suck if the characters suddenly started acting like they did 20 years ago. Even those soap operas have characters get married, have children, those children growing up, having their own drama, etc.

I think people who use the term "soap opera" to describe Amazing Spider-Man should be made to watch an actual soap opera for at leaast a month.

Soap operas are incredibly character driven. Soap operas live and die by their super couples.

The current run of Amazing Spider-Man is NOT a soap opera. Soap opera fans would tear the storyline to pieces far more viciously than comic book readers are.

There has NEVER been a more accessible time for comic readers to catch up than the current modern online age. The entire archive of Spider-Man history can be found for interested readers.

A good example of this is the new X-Men '97, which is a direct continuation of a show that went off the air in 1997, over 27 years ago. My wife wanted to catch up on the original and, wouldn't you know, it's right there on Disney+ for a new fan to experience nearly three decades later, without missing a beat.

The idea that episodic, repetitive stories are the path forward - especially for a comic like Spider-Man that often engaged in years-long serialized storytelling - is laughable.

Agreed.

And also, wanted to point out that this idea that Peter has to be in high school in film/TV adaptations is a fairly recent one as well.

In the 60s cartoon, Peter was in college but the stories mostly revolved around his Bugle workplace.

In the 1970s TV series, Peter was in college but the stories mostly revolved around his Bugle workplace.

In the 1990s animated series, Peter was in college but got married, etc.

The first Raimi film has Peter in high school - but he's out of high school by Spider-Man 2.

It's not until the mid 2000s that we get this insistence on Peter being in high school in adaptations - but even in the MCU he's now graduated into being an adult.

[Huntsman Spider]

I agree.

Either Marvel needs to just throw up their hands and admit, "We're wrong. We did not get our continiuity right the first time. We should have followed DC's example all these years and constantly rebooted our universe" and then, y'know, reboot --

Or continue with the same storytelling that made them a powerhouse in the first place.

It's still incredibly odd to me that people can see that DC's static, mascot first storytelling was rejected by audiences in favor of Marvel's serial, character-driven storytelling - with DC changing to be more like Marvel - yet are now advocating that Marvel should be telling static, mascot-first stories and reject what made Marvel Marvel in the first place.



I think people who use the term "soap opera" to describe Amazing Spider-Man should be made to watch an actual soap opera for at leaast a month.

Soap operas are incredibly character driven. Soap operas live and die by their super couples.

The current run of Amazing Spider-Man is NOT a soap opera. Soap opera fans would tear the storyline to pieces far more viciously than comic book readers are.



Agreed.

And also, wanted to point out that this idea that Peter has to be in high school in film/TV adaptations is a fairly recent one as well.

In the 60s cartoon, Peter was in college but the stories mostly revolved around his Bugle workplace.

In the 1970s TV series, Peter was in college but the stories mostly revolved around his Bugle workplace.

In the 1990s animated series, Peter was in college but got married, etc.

The first Raimi film has Peter in high school - but he's out of high school by Spider-Man 2.

It's not until the mid 2000s that we get this insistence on Peter being in high school in adaptations - but even in the MCU he's now graduated into being an adult.

He was out of high school even before Spider-Man 2 came out. The first Spider-Man film by Sam Raimi had Peter graduate high school and start college partway through, sometime after his confrontation with the car thief that (he presumed at the time) had killed his Uncle Ben.

[wleakr]

He was out of high school even before Spider-Man 2 came out. The first Spider-Man film by Sam Raimi had Peter graduate high school and start college partway through, sometime after his confrontation with the car thief that (he presumed at the time) had killed his Uncle Ben.

Speeding things up in a movie is not a big deal.

At best, you're only getting anywhere from 1-5 films with the same characters.

The comics is the only place where you have to consider growth (or lack of growth) in the long-term.

All other platforms only have to deal with it in the short-term.

[Huntsman Spider]

Speeding things up in a movie is not a big deal.

At best, you're only getting anywhere from 1-5 films with the same characters.

The comics is the only place where you have to consider growth (or lack of growth) in the long-term.

All other platforms only have to deal with it in the short-term.

Aside from TV shows, which can last multiple seasons across a period of years and therefore growth in the long term has to be considered as well.

[Kevinroc]

Speeding things up in a movie is not a big deal.

At best, you're only getting anywhere from 1-5 films with the same characters.

The comics is the only place where you have to consider growth (or lack of growth) in the long-term.

All other platforms only have to deal with it in the short-term.

The original Super Mario Bros. was released in 1985. Mario has been fighting (or go-kart racing, playing tennis with, etc.) Bowser for almost 40 years now.

[TinkerSpider]

Speeding things up in a movie is not a big deal.

At best, you're only getting anywhere from 1-5 films with the same characters.

The comics is the only place where you have to consider growth (or lack of growth) in the long-term.

All other platforms only have to deal with it in the short-term.

That wasn’t my point.

My point is that this insistence that Peter be in high school is relatively recent and very far from a constant.