| Posted: 14 January 2015 at 12:06am | IP Logged | 7
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Such investigations into the nature of time and the characters' relationship to it belay the essential point of storytelling: finding out what happens next.
The ones who engage in these bouts of navel-gazing may tell you that what they're doing is the same thing. After all, how many "next things" can believably or even possibly happen to a character? Shouldn't someone be counting them? Shouldn't we keep a running tally on how times Peter Parker has fought the Vulture? Shouldn't they all "count?" If they don't, then isn't the next already dead in the water before we've written it? After all, it's going to have no more permanent impact on the life of Spider-Man that all the others we're now rejecting out of hand...
None of that however tells us the next story; a story that logically, commercially, and thematically should begin with the same basic premise as the ones the writers and fans grew up reading. Spidey's a young super-hero, a little bit insecure at times, a little bit too cocky at others... He's Amazing. He's Spectacular.
What is the point in prioritizing the navel-gazing over these intrinsic elements? Elements that interested the writers back in the day. Elements that have continued to lure readers and hold them since. How is the bleating of one writer that all thirty or so of Spidey's girlfriends should all get together and gang up on him, because, seriously, what kind of a piggish lothario is he, anyway, to have had so many "relationships?"
Here's the thing: There are those who keep track. Let them. That's what they like doing. The world needs the occasional George Olgeshevkey Index Series to keep things interesting. What's interesting about them is that they do look at the form from the wrong end of the telescope and everything looks kind of cool, all small and intensely miniaturized that way. They're fun. But the folks who write them are not your audience.
Even you, the writer, are not the audience. Once upon a time you were. Sure, you still have to write to please your own aesthetics, but that's not the be-all, end-all of the job you've taken on. Your job is write Spider-Man. The same guy you read as a kid. The same guy the kids today have every right to expect of you. Spidey's a young hero, masking a ton of insecurities and the occasional guilt-trip or neurosis. He's a hard-luck hero who's fighting very hard to get it right, and he isn't there yet.
He's not a married guy with a pregnant wife or the owner of cutting-edge tech company. There are stories to found in those characters, yes, but they're essentially not Spider-Man stories. The central premise is lost at that point, sacrificed on the altar of neurotic compulsions that have nothing whatsoever to do with Who Spider-Man Is.
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