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Today, we look at the major plot change in the early years of the Amazing Spider-Man that Spider-Man’s co-creator Steve Ditko later regretted making.
Knowledge Waits is a feature where I just share some bit of comic book history that interests me.
Recently, I wrote about how there is a bit of confusion over how old Spider-Man was supposed to be in those early Spider-Man comics. Or, if not “confusion,” I should say that different writers had come up with different ages for Spider-Man over the years, while the idea that he was 15 when he was bitten by the spider has become the fairly standard answer now for over 15 years.
One of the odd things about Spider-Man’s age is that his creators, Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, had Spider-Man graduate from high school just TWENTY-EIGHT issues into the series! So if you accept that Peter Parker was 15 when he was bitten, then at LEAST two years pass in the comic in those first 28 issues, and probably more like three, meaning that Spider-Man aged three years in 28 issues and then, like, seven-eight in the next FIFTY-SEVEN YEARS!
The other interesting aspect of that decision to have Spider-Man graduate in Amazing Spider-Man #28 is that Ditko had famously stopped talking to Stan Lee by that point and starting with Amazing Spider-Man #25, Ditko would plot the book entirely by himself and just send the finished pages to Stan Lee with notes about dialogue and Lee would then dialogue the book. There would still be changes made, of course, but those changes would be told to Ditko through an intermediary, Sol Brodsky, and those changes would sometimes come from Marvel publisher, Martin Goodman, as much as they would come from Stan Lee.
Therefore, while Peter Parker graduating was very likely a compromise between Stan and Steve, it was all Ditko’s game at that point, so he freely let Peter graduate, but it was something that he would later very much regret.
HOW SPIDER-MAN WAS ORIGINALLY AN EVERYMAN
One of the interesting aspects of the Stan Lee/Steve Ditko working relationship over the years is that Lee was always REALLY impressed by Ditko’s plots. Jack Kirby mostly plotted his own work, but Jack Kirby was a legend in the industry, a guy who had one of the biggest books in the country (Captain America Comics) before Lee had written his very first comic book story. So while Kirby was allowed to his own thing, that was different from allowing a comparatively less-accomplished creator like Ditko to do the same, but Lee not only quickly afforded Ditko similar freedoms to Kirby, but Lee even invented a whole comic book series, Amazing Adult Fantasy, to specifically spotlight Ditko’s distinctive stories.
The end of that series (minus “Adult”) launched Spider-Man into history, but Spider-Man continued to be plotted in that off-beat fashion by Ditko that Lee couldn’t get enough of. Look at Lee bragging about how DIFFERENT Spider-Man was right off the bat in Amazing Spider-Man #1…
Lee frequently found himself breaking the fourth wall, to a certain extent, to brag about Ditko’s plots, like the end of Amazing Spider-Man #7…
However, it is clear that what Lee thought was so compelling about Ditko’s approach was that Peter Parker, the Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, was an “everyman,” a guy who wouldn’t go through life the way a traditional superhero would.
That’s why Amazing Spider-Man #18 was so historic, as it really captured the perfect melding of Lee and Ditko’s approach to Spider-Man AT THE TIME, which had Spider-Man deciding to quit being a hero before he ultimately deciding to stick it out (his sense of responsibility was always strong enough to make Peter make the right choice in the end, but it is important to note that Peter was always someone who struggled with doing the right thing). The issue was an especially big deal because it showed just how popular the personal life of Spider-Man was, as Spider-Man fought no supervillains the entire issue (Sandman tries to fight him but he just runs away from the fight)…
See how Lee continued to brag about the plot?
WHY DID STEVE DITKO REGRET AGING SPIDER-MAN?
The problem, once Peter Parker graduated high school, is that Ditko felt that college was the time for Spider-Man to really grow up.
Ditko, a follower of Ayn Rand and Obkectivism, was okay with the idea of a young teen not being a “true” hero (that is, having some gray areas), but now that Spider-Man was in college, Ditko wanted Spidey to become more of an objectively heroic character. Stan Lee and Martin Goodman, though, wanted to keep Spider-Man as an “everyman.” That was the exact opposite of what Ditko wanted for the character.
Ditko’s stricter views came out in other areas, as well, like Ditko’s disdain for student protests. Check out this hilarious sequence from Amazing Spider-Man #38, hilarious because Ditko clearly draws Peter Parker as being disgusted at the idea of school protests and Lee has to try to save the sequence through the dialogue and thought balloons to keep Peter from espousing the exact views that Ditko clearly wanted him to have in those panels!
In fact, knowing that that issue was Ditko’s final issue of the series, it suggests that the knowledge that Lee, as the scripter, would always have, in effect, the final say over how the character would be depicted, might have played a role in that being the “final straw,” as it were, for Ditko, before he left Marvel (Ditko, though, had LOTS of very legit beefs with Marvel that were also major keys to him wanting to leave the company).
Once Ditko was gone, Lee was free to have Peter be more laidback, which paired beautifully with Ditko’s successor as the artist on the book, John Romita, as seen here in Amazing Spider-Man #47…
Marv Wolfman, who worked with Steve Ditko when the artist returned to Marvel in the late 1970s, has recalled a number of times that “Steve felt, and I agree, that sixteen would have been the best age to freeze Spider-Man. Sixteen is the last year where you are allowed to be a total foul-up. You’re not an adult, but you’re no longer a kid.”
It is notable that when Ditko almost returned to Spider-Man one last time in the 1990s, it was to tell the untold stories of what happened to Spider-Man between graduating high school and starting college, as Ditko felt that that was the only version of Spider-Man that he was willing to work with, that pre-adult Spider-Man (Ditko then found out that Marvel was planning Untold Tales of Spider-Man and he was not happy and dropped the project).
So yeah, Steve Ditko would always regret Spider-Man growing up. Interesting stuff.
If anyone has suggestions about interesting pieces of comic book history, feel free to drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com.
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