Palumbo, Donald. “The Marvel Comics Group’s Spider-Man [sic] is an Existentialist Super-Hero[sic].” JofPC (17.2) 1983.
I’m always a little impressed by an essay that has its thesis right there in the title, but as a corallary, the paper itself tends to be somewhat flat. Palumbo does a fine job of arguing that Spider-man has strong existentialist elements in his origin and common themes, in so far as he defines for us what constitutes an existentialist hero and then makes sure that Spider-man and that definition match. There are problems, though. Palumbo seems to take Spider-man comics as a closed narrative. Though he doesn’t say so explicitly, he does fail to opening aknowledge that the comics are on-going, and therefore his analysis tends to take for granted that the Story Thus Far is complete. The biggest hole this creates in his argument is his discussion of the famous death of Gwen Stacey, which Palumbo posits as an object lesson in the absurdity of life as demonstrated by the meaninglessness of death. “Peter’s most serious romantic interest, Gwen Stacey, is ultimately slain by one of his arch-foes, the Green Goblin” (69). Writing in 1983, Palumbo should have been aware of Mary-Jane Watson waiting in the wings to be ‘the’ great love of Peter’s life, despite constantly living under the shadow of Gwen’s death. At the very least, he should have acknowledged that it’s unlikely Peter wouldn’t ever have a love interest again.
Inversely, he also doesn’t quite make the on-going publication of Spider-man comics work for him, either. The central action of Spider-man stories is, of course, the title character’s battles against criminals and monsters of various kinds. The nature of comicbook storytelling is such that that battle is required to be ‘never-ending,’ “the absurdity [Spider-man’s] encounters in his world must be both accepted and combatted, […] meaning is to be found only through contined struggle and […] defeat lies only in capitulation” (69). Coincidentally, that format allows for the continual publication of comics staring Spider-man. I don’t point this out as a way to defeat Palumbo’s argument, that the character is existentialis, but to show that publication practises might have something to do with that existentialist impact, and to show that Palumbo didn’t recognise a pertinant fact of comics publishing.
The interesting difference that Palumbo ultimately highlights is that, unlike most superheroes, Spider-man actually realises how absurd his world is, in both its ridiculousness and its lack of closed meaning. One of the character’s signature traits is his witt, which he uses, often as not, to point out how strange the people around him actually are. He will make fun of a villain’s costume or name, for example, or just inject a life-or-death situation with mundane levity in the style of Jerry Seinfeld. Other heroes do not do this. They live in their worlds and accept them, absurdity and all, much as their readers accept the absurdity as reasonable within the context of supehero comics. Spider-man, however, points out the absurdity, possibly making the audience aware of the power of verisimilitude. We, the readers, share a laugh with Spider-man as we realise how incredibly dumb a character like Electro really looks, with his yellow lightning-bolt costume motif. The conflict, however, rears its head when we realise that Spider-man himself looks just as silly, especially considering that red and blue are not normally colours associated with spiders. So, though, according to Palumbo, he accepts the absurdity of the Marvel Universe, he also embraces that absurdity but does so with the knowledge that it’s absurd.
In the end, though, I’m not sure what the point of this paper actually is. Okay, says I, I’m convinced, but so what? Does that existentialism in comics point to something in the production of comics, as both art and consumer goods, that’s of note? Does it signal an attitude amongst the readers or creators of Spider-man comics? This paper is, in the end, ‘flat’ because it doesn’t seem to do anything interesting with its argument.
Posted by orion at January 24, 2006 4:36 PM