I feel silly saying this, but I felt like Stan Lee was speaking straight to middle-school-aged Lucy Rose. That's when I first read the original Spider-Man comics. The summer we moved from the suburbs of Chicago to the Czech Republic we went on this super long road trip to say goodbye to everyone we knew. We drove and flew to Texas, the East Coast...all over and finally flew across the ocean to start our new life as missionaries to the Czech Republic.
My parents bought us a couple books and CDs to keep us entertained on the way. One of them was the entire CD audiobook of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire read by Jim Dale. One of them was a compendium of all the original Stan Lee/Stephen Ditko Amazing Spider-Man comics from the 1960's.
The dialogue is incredibly cheesy to 21st century ears. He calls people, "Buster" and "Pal" and exclaims things like "Honest to gosh!"
Even as an eleven-year-old I felt how clunky it was. But at the same time I was entranced. I was obsessed with the bright, colorful drawings and the wild characters, most of which had melodramatic back stories and all of whom dressed in insane outfits.
My favorite installments were the two times Spider-Man faced The Vulture: a crazed, murderous villain with an electric suit that allowed him to fly. At one point Spider-Man gets trapped inside a water tower by The Vulture and I still have that panel etched into my memory. I think I liked The Vulture the best because he was just ridiculously creepy and strange and made for the best drama.
Anyway, as we road-tripped across the states in our rented cars I kept reading about nerdy Peter Parker. My imagination latched onto the idea of this shy awkward person, who had hidden gifts and a secret identity.
As an extremely awkward pre-teen, struggling with the terrors of puberty and feeling uncomfortable in my own skin I loved the idea that I could be like Peter--that if only people knew the real truth about me they would see past my frizzy hair, crooked teeth and glasses and see my amazing abilities.
I know I'm not alone in this. That's why Spider-Man is so beloved. He's a beacon of hope for anyone who has been bullied for being different, anyone who has struggled to discover their own value and identity.
And for me, specifically, it was the first time I realized that I wanted to make comics. I only made a couple superhero comics of my own, but it planted a seed in my mind about what you could do with the medium of graphic storytelling.
The superhero I invented was called Transmogro-Man. He could "transmogrify" himself into anything: a chair, a jar of peanut butter, an apple tree...In fact, one time he turned himself into an apple tree, but something went wrong and so from then on his left hand was an apple instead of a hand. He would usually stop the villains by changing into some unsuspecting object and then ambushing them.
It was weird and I think I ended up only doing one issue, because I got annoyed with how much work was involved in drawing the action panel-by-panel.
But even though I've never really gone back to trying to do superhero comics I still carry a torch for Spider-Man. He helped me get through some rough years of trying to fit in to my new Czech public school without losing hope. Drawing comics and doodles into endless successions of notebooks helped me feel less alone. Stan Lee's creation let me feel like drawing was a secret power and it gave me one tiny way to express myself and feel seen.
In a lot of ways I still feel a lot like Peter Parker and Miles Morales or even like pre-teen Lucy Rose. I'm still awkward and struggle to feel understood. I haven't become successful as an artist in any kind of commercial or financial sense, so I'm still figuring out how to become who I want to be. So I guess that's why seeing this movie now is meaningful to me as an adult. I needed my old friend Stan to tell me that someday I might grow into it.
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