The characterisation of Spiderman is part of a bigger
problem. Stan Lee respected scientists and yet he
stereotypically dismissed them as nerds. Mr.
Fantastic is a nerd who somehow convinces his
girlfriend to go with him into space. This might have
been considered romantic except that Reed Richards is
never ****trayed as having any romantic instincts. Dr.
Pym was ****trayed the same way. Dr. Doom was so
arrogant that his experiment (literally) blows up in
his face and he then plots to take over the world.
Bruce Banner, like Peter Parker, was a nerd with
gl***** who's inner rage manifested itself as the
Incredible Hulk. And on and on and on.
Keep in mind that Stan Lee probably got a lot of his
inspiration from reading other comics. One of the
worst stereotypes in comics in those days was the mad
scientist, the brilliant loner who is never understood
and decides to make everybody pay. Stan Lee's
brilliant idea was to make scientists heroes, which is
what he considered real life scientists to be, what
with all the modern technology that they already had
in the 60s. But he couldn't bring himself to ****tray
his heroic scientists as any less nerdy, lonely and
(occasionally) angry than the villains.
I suppose, really, attitudes towards scientists were
that scientists created the atomic bomb. Thus, it was
argued, science and scientists would ultimately be
responsible for the world's destruction. Even if
scientists weren't evil, it was felt they were clearly
not thinking about the consequences of their actions.
Thus, Dr. Doom's face blows up, Reed et al get exposed
to cosmic radiation, Banner gets exposed to gamma
radiation, Hank Pym created Ultron and so on. Scientists,
heroes and villains alike were often to blame for their own
misfortunes. And the X-Men were referred to as "Children
of the Atom" which suggested that atomic radiation was
responsible for their mutations. And while Spiderman
wasn't responsible for irradiating the spider that bit him,
other scientists were. Lee both respected scientists
yet regarded them as total f*ck ups all at the same
time.
Now maybe Romita didn't want Parker to be an
inherently unlikable character. Maybe he wanted
Parker to grow up. Or maybe Lee softened Parker up
when he graduated from high school: you can't be in a
class full of science majors and still be looked down
on as a nerd! Maybe Lee knew that this would be when
Peter would start to get looked up to. And yet, with
Parker spending so much time as Spiderman, his grades
couldn't possibly be what they were in high school.
Suddenly Parker really was an ordinary Joe struggling
along with everybody else.
Tom Defalco? Tom Defalco is a throwback from an
earlier era. Tom was more comfortable writing Thor
because Thor's dialogue can sound stilted and out of
date and that would be exactly right for Thor. But
having people in the eighties talk like they did in
the sixties doesn't sound right for everybody else.
For that matter, verily I say that Thor wouldst have
learned to speaketh modern English after being exposed
to it for more than a decade. Makes you wonder what
people speak in Asgard. Norwegian? Turkish? But I
digress.
All the above assumes of course that Spiderman being
an angry young man is a bad thing and it wasn't clear
from the video whether or not you thought it was a bad
thing, a good thing or if you were just indifferent to it.
But, anyway, this is my take on why he was ****trayed
as angry in the first place.
Martin
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