Spider-Man: Life Story By Chip Zdarsky & Mark Bagley

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Honestly what this story's most reminding me of execution wise is Spider-Man/Human Torch. With each issue focusing on a different moment from an era, just in this case now recontextualized through a specific decade.

I was thinking of Spider-Man/Human Torch. Only there because it's canon to 616 means that Slott had to compress all the actual Spider-Man/Torch interactions across the decades into a complete whole that is continuous on a sliding time scale. And of course there you have the hook of the Spider-Man/Torch friendship and to a large extent its more Johnny Storm's book than Peter's.

I don't think he needs to be super extensive in Spider-Man history in order to tell this story, this isn't like Ed Piskor's X-Men Grand Design epics, though I would absolutely LOVE to see something like that for Spider-Man too.

Grand Design is intended to summarize and contextualize X-Men's massive history and in the case of X-Men you don't have sliding time scale as much, you do have characters aging and progressing. Like Magneto is always a holocaust survivor, he and Charles first met in the '60s, Cyclops, Jean and others were teenagers who became adults/parents/exes. Wolverine is an immortal.

Whereas with Spider-Man you have a character who is from the '60s and indeed a '60s icon (college kids were known to say, Spider-Man meant as much as Bob Dylan back then) and many of his early stories are situated in the '60s and '70s gradually becoming unmoored from that time especially Post-OMD. Pre-OMD where Peter was near his 30s and being a fair bit away from both his teenage and college days still made some sense but Post-OMD he's de-aged a fair bit.

Likewise Spider-Man is the quintessential New Yorker and New York is a city that has changed rapidly and dynamically decade-from-decade and especially Peter's circle of the newsmedia, academic world, and others were especially affected by those changes and yet nothing of that came in. Like Stonewall Riots happened in Greenwich village, and ESU (the stand-in for NYU) is located there...that was a mob controlled gay club and so on, and in Spider-Man in the Lee-Romita we see Kingpin own a club as a front which checks out but there's no hint of any of that affecting Peter. And of course the AIDS crisis was a big deal in New York, and especially the fashion industry which Mary Jane was part of, but we don't see that there. Then of course you have gentrification and Peter should ideally have moved out of the city because he's not believable anymore as a poor scrapping New Yorker. Crime rates and others have fallen which means that Spider-Man shouldn't really be such a stressful job for him. By the time Peter comes to the '90s, he can legitimately hang up his webs because the kind of street crime that he fought and defined him was part of the Taxi Driver era of New York and that has gone.

[Scott Taylor]

There is no frickin' way Gwen could kick like Princess Peach.

[Vortex85]

There is no frickin' way Gwen could kick like Princess Peach.

Ok, now I want to see a Super Smash Bros. with Spider themed characters and settings.

Just think, you could play Spidey vs. Gwen vs. Green Goblin on Bridge map.

[Inversed]

Whereas with Spider-Man you have a character who is from the '60s and indeed a '60s icon (college kids were known to say, Spider-Man meant as much as Bob Dylan back then) and many of his early stories are situated in the '60s and '70s gradually becoming unmoored from that time especially Post-OMD. Pre-OMD where Peter was near his 30s and being a fair bit away from both his teenage and college days still made some sense but Post-OMD he's de-aged a fair bit.

I think as of right now his official age is 29, since he became Spider-Man when he was 15, we know Spider-Verse happens 12 years after that, and there has been at the very least 2 years since then, because of the whole 8 months between Secret Wars and the start of Worldwide, and then the year Scorpio is locked away.

[Vortex85]

I think as of right now his official age is 29, since he became Spider-Man when he was 15, we know Spider-Verse happens 12 years after that, and there has been at the very least 2 years since then, because of the whole 8 months between Secret Wars and the start of Worldwide, and then the year Scorpio is locked away.

Slott stated “13 years later” after Spider bite in the relaunch issue after Superior. So he was 28 at the rise of of Parker Industries before Secret Wars. Safe to say he is at least 29 by now. I have a feeling the time skips around Secret Wars could be retconned to be shorter. It’s hard to imagine Parker Industries all happening in 1 year in the real world, but that’s comics. Tons of events packed into tiny timeframes. Peter could be in his late 20s forever. Seems like every time I think he’s going to stop aging someone writes something to inch his age up a little bit more every decade or so. Still haven’t hit a definite 30 milestone and I’m not sure if Marvel would be comfortable to let it happen any time soon... if ever

[WebSlingWonder]

There is no frickin' way Gwen could kick like Princess Peach.

Ok, now I want to see a Super Smash Bros. with Spider themed characters and settings.

Just think, you could play Spidey vs. Gwen vs. Green Goblin on Bridge map.

It's been a day when people prefer Princess Peach over Gwen. Can't say I blame you guys XD

[WebSlingWonder]

Slott stated “13 years later” after Spider bite in the relaunch issue after Superior. So he was 28 at the rise of of Parker Industries before Secret Wars. Safe to say he is at least 29 by now. I have a feeling the time skips around Secret Wars could be retconned to be shorter. It’s hard to imagine Parker Industries all happening in 1 year in the real world, but that’s comics. Tons of events packed into tiny timeframes. Peter could be in his late 20s forever. Seems like every time I think he’s going to stop aging someone writes something to inch his age up a little bit more every decade or so. Still haven’t hit a definite 30 milestone and I’m not sure if Marvel would be comfortable to let it happen any time soon... if ever

I'm actually very comfortable with a 29-year-old Peter Parker. I don't quite know why though.

[Vortex85]

I'm actually very comfortable with a 29-year-old Peter Parker. I don't quite know why though.

Me too. I don’t have any reason to have interest in Peter going past his 20s. It ‘d be cool with 29 forever. It wouldn’t upset me in the slightest to see him age into 30 either. I just don’t se any story reason at this point. He is old enough to do or be anything and young enough to still have a lot of possibility and directions ahead of him. Probably a good idea for Marvel to keep it vague so they can still time skip or tell stories with passage of time and we still don’t know if he is in his late 20s or early 30s

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Fact is the way sliding time scale works, older stories have more weight than recent ones. So that means if Peter gets younger and stays young, than 1962-2007 happens over a bigger part of Peter's life than 2007-2019. The past gets nearer, the present happens over a shorter period of time. SO Superior Spider-Man which is 1.5 years real time going forward could be a month or two at best...

In either case if Peter is 29 (I personally think he's 27 or at the very least mid-to-late 20s) and officially it's not clear yet....that means that he's right now a millennial and he damn sure doesn't feel or read nor is he written like a millennial. Spider-Man PS4, for instance, which draws most of its ideas from Bendis' Ultimate comics for the characterization, has a millennial Peter and MJ and just compare those characters to the ones in the comics and it absolutely doesn't feel like the comics characters are really connected to our time and place.

That means that Peter now Post-OMD was born in 1988-1989, the year after ASM Annual #21 IRL, and he got bitten by the spider three years after 9/11, which means he MJ and Gwen hit their college years around the Obama Presidency and the recession...can you imagine what that means. How does Goblin dropping Gwen off a bridge, you know lunatic flying around Manhattan on a glider look in a Post 9/11 era...

When JMS wrote Peter and Spider-Man he wrote him like an adult and even if sliding time scale kept him mid-to-late 20s and given his life experiences and trauma someone who mentally I think would be older than his years...so you could imagine that Peter in his mid-to-late 20s but also in his 30s and his 40s and it made sense, so he felt contemporary to the 90s, the 00s and so on. Which is another reason why I continue to think that not only was the marriage important it's necessary because it smooths over stuff and keeps all this sliding time business and other stuff under control. Are Peter and MJ married for 3 years or 6 years or 8 years, you could write them as old and young as you would like and it would fit.

[WebSlingWonder]

Fact is the way sliding time scale works, older stories have more weight than recent ones. So that means if Peter gets younger and stays young, than 1962-2007 happens over a bigger part of Peter's life than 2007-2019. The past gets nearer, the present happens over a shorter period of time. SO Superior Spider-Man which is 1.5 years real time going forward could be a month or two at best...

In either case if Peter is 29 (I personally think he's 27 or at the very least mid-to-late 20s) and officially it's not clear yet....that means that he's right now a millennial and he damn sure doesn't feel or read nor is he written like a millennial. Spider-Man PS4, for instance, which draws most of its ideas from Bendis' Ultimate comics for the characterization, has a millennial Peter and MJ and just compare those characters to the ones in the comics and it absolutely doesn't feel like the comics characters are really connected to our time and place.

That means that Peter now Post-OMD was born in 1988-1989, the year after ASM Annual #21 IRL, and he got bitten by the spider three years after 9/11, which means he MJ and Gwen hit their college years around the Obama Presidency and the recession...can you imagine what that means. How does Goblin dropping Gwen off a bridge, you know lunatic flying around Manhattan on a glider look in a Post 9/11 era...

When JMS wrote Peter and Spider-Man he wrote him like an adult and even if sliding time scale kept him mid-to-late 20s and given his life experiences and trauma someone who mentally I think would be older than his years...so you could imagine that Peter in his mid-to-late 20s but also in his 30s and his 40s and it made sense, so he felt contemporary to the 90s, the 00s and so on. Which is another reason why I continue to think that not only was the marriage important it's necessary because it smooths over stuff and keeps all this sliding time business and other stuff under control. Are Peter and MJ married for 3 years or 6 years or 8 years, you could write them as old and young as you would like and it would fit.

Jack, man...I'm trying to follow your point, but you got three different statements in there. What is the succinct statement you're wanting to make about the sliding timescale.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Jack, man...I'm trying to follow your point, but you got three different statements in there. What is the succinct statement you're wanting to make about the sliding timescale.

Just that Peter Parker can't really be a young guy in 616 no matter how much Marvel insists he does.

If Peter Parker is supposed to be a young post-grad all the time and so on...then that means he has to be the young post-grad of each generation but he has never really been that. Does Peter Parker in Slott's run read like a millennial? I don't think he does. He certainly wasn't written as one. Whereas Miles Morales does feel like, read like a member of Generation Z, and going forward he will have to be the high school kid of each generation, which is going to be harder to do but not impossible.

The comics and all the continuity and stuff that comes to is always situated or referring to stuff in an older era and it always reads old and feels old. And in terms of wanting to keep Peter single so he doesn't come off as older it feels self-defeating.

[Vortex85]

Just that Peter Parker can't really be a young guy in 616 no matter how much Marvel insists he does.

If Peter Parker is supposed to be a young post-grad all the time and so on...then that means he has to be the young post-grad of each generation but he has never really been that. Does Peter Parker in Slott's run read like a millennial? I don't think he does. He certainly wasn't written as one. Whereas Miles Morales does feel like, read like a member of Generation Z, and going forward he will have to be the high school kid of each generation, which is going to be harder to do but not impossible.

The comics and all the continuity and stuff that comes to is always situated or referring to stuff in an older era and it always reads old and feels old. And in terms of wanting to keep Peter single so he doesn't come off as older it feels self-defeating.

I agree with that last statement. OMD has no effect in making Peter feel younger as it still feels like his marriage (or comitted relationship) was all in his past. There are married people much younger (and who feel younger) than Peter.

[WebSlingWonder]

Just that Peter Parker can't really be a young guy in 616 no matter how much Marvel insists he does.

If Peter Parker is supposed to be a young post-grad all the time and so on...then that means he has to be the young post-grad of each generation but he has never really been that. Does Peter Parker in Slott's run read like a millennial? I don't think he does. He certainly wasn't written as one. Whereas Miles Morales does feel like, read like a member of Generation Z, and going forward he will have to be the high school kid of each generation, which is going to be harder to do but not impossible.

The comics and all the continuity and stuff that comes to is always situated or referring to stuff in an older era and it always reads old and feels old. And in terms of wanting to keep Peter single so he doesn't come off as older it feels self-defeating.

Okay, that I understand.

[Vortex85]

You know what I just realized? My impression of Peters age is really highly dependent on the artist drawing him. If Quesada’s goal was for Peter to be more youthful the most effective mandate would have been for artists to draw him younger looking.

[Kevinroc]

Marvel will never say (616) Peter is older than 30. Absolutely never.