I know a teenager who gets bullied a lot at school. He’s a bright, young guy whose got his whole life ahead of him. But for all his best efforts, he can never get a date. So, he’s sad and depressed, except for the times when he fantasizes about being a superhero leaping tall buildings and swinging through the busiest corners of Manhattan. Where he falls short as a man at school, he succeeds on the streets, combating vile mutant villains with fists curled and a mouthy tone most would find annoying. Everyone knows the story, but Straczynski suggests otherwise. His book Transformations, Literal and Otherwise turns the entire Spider-man story on its head, leaving the webslinger with more depth of character and purpose worthy of his Spider-Soul.
You could say that his name is Peter Parker. The one whose likeness has graced comic book covers throughout North America for decades. But I say he’s more than that. His name is the name of every guy fighting the bully he can’t beat. From this, comes a Spider-man mythos that’s older than the guys still reading the comic books.
At the core of Straczynski’s work is the notion of being a man. We all want to be the strong guy who fights his own battles and wins, not like the puny Parkers of the world that get picked on. That’s why Spider-man is cool to read. Parker and Spider-man represent the two extremes of the “real man”. All that separates these two people is a mask. One is a hero, the other is a wimp.
It’s no wonder that bullying plays a big role in the Spider-man narrative. Ever since issue #1, Peter Parker has dealt with bigger guys who put him in place. This dichotomy is fascinating in the sense if provides an intense relief for anyone seeking at least the notion of empowerment after a series of humiliating defeats. Spider-man can be intense drama, it just depends on whose reading the comic book.
Straczynski’s Transformations, Literal and Otherwise is a seminal work insofar that it challenges this psychological experience altogether. The story achieves this by rewriting the Spider-man origin story so that masculinity becomes more reasonable and less cartoonish – something that the medium has grown into since works from notable others such as Grant Morrison and Alan Moore.
In a nutshell, Straczynski’s adjusts Spider-man’s origin story from a radioactive spider bite to a magical spider god whose akin more to a mythical deity than a Cold War miracle-curse of radioactivity. This paves for a new post-modernist trope that makes Parker an indigenous mythical hero rather than a scientific prodigy turned radioactive superhero. But just as with great power comes great responsibility, so does great power come with a great vulnerability – and this challenges Spider-man’s tough guy persona. He can beat, real bad. Humiliatingly so. Because here comes a world now filled with Spider-men and Spider-women and, along with it, their exterminator called Morlun, another supernatural beast that feeds on this spider-god energy. It’s at the start of the story when Morlun kills a German Spider-man that references the kind of emotional depth waiting Peter Parker/Spider-man. When we see how pathetic and helpless this German Spider-man looks, we cringe at seeing our hero chained to a floor, begging for mercy and dying his last breath. And there’s only one way for our Spider-man to save himself. With great power comes also great sacrifice. The first time around it was Uncle Ben.
Parker goes back to his old high school because it’s so dilapidated and in need of community help. While there, he finds a kid getting bullied just like he did when he was a young student there. Parker’s return to his old high school is Straczynski’s way of forcing our hero to go back into his roots to re-imagine them. The reader does also. Because Parker rescues the student only to be chastised by him, claiming the bullies will just be angrier the next time. The school gym teacher agrees. He says that the kids have got to stand up on their own two feet. The message is to fight your own battles, kid. That’s what it means to be a real man.
In many ways, Parker returning to his old high school is like a visit from Christmas Past, because before incident, he’s visited by a much older Spider-man called Ezekiel, an older man which in many ways comes off as Christmas Future. Ezekiel is the one to tell Spider-man that many others like him exist, got bitten from a magical spider and are at risk of being killed by Morlun. In fact, Ezekiel tells Spider-man that he’s got a bunker to hide in to keep them both safe.
Spider-man is incapable of agreeing with. He’s Spider-man, not Peter Parker. He doesn’t run and hide, Parker does. That’s the whole point of being Spider-man and the whole point of reading the comic book! Here we see what Straczynski has done. The young student won’t take help from Spider-man and Spider-man won’t accept help from Ezekiel. Straczynski breaks this chain-link of men when a kid shows up at Parker’s school to shoot other kids down. He’s tired of the bully and has cracked up. It seems this male fighting ethic doesn’t quite work and standing up to bullies alone may not be a good idea after all. As for the gym teacher, he basically ducks out when the shootings happens. (Yes, it happens every now and then.) That’s where we see that his sink-or-swim attitude leads to a human sacrifice of sorts, or a Russian Roulette. Some kids need to be sacrificed to the god of strength and invulnerability so that the rest of us don’t feel so insecure out here.
So what happens between Spider-man and his bully, Morlun? Spider-man gets the shit kicked out him. In a bad way. He’s looks just as pathetic as the German Spider-man drained and submissive at Morlun’s feet. Helplessness is a hard emotion to watch, by the way, even worse to watch a powerful superhero meant to provide comfort in the face of life’s hardships.
Morlun knows Spider-man like an exterminator knows his prey. He can predict Spider-man’s next move, counter them logistically and strike back with precision and little effort. Spider-man, on the other hand, gets shredded to bloody rags. He looks like shit, really. Morlun is the bully he can’t beat and now he knows it. An older version of himself, Ezekiel, tried to tell him that, just like an older version told the student at his high school. Older guys don’t have much of an ego. They do what works instead. But Spider-man didn’t listen and now he faces death.
Parker even calls Aunt May to say his last good-bye, he’s so sure that he’s going to lose to Morlun. But instead, there is one last Spider-man trope Straczynski didn’t use as a clever plot device in the retelling of Spider-man’s story. A sacrifice needs to be made in the same manner that Uncle Ben had to die to teach his nephew a valuable lesson. And when Spider-man learns this new lesson, all three men align under a more humane, reasonable male charisma: They’re connected to others rather than stand alone in dire stoicism that rots human feelings.
Straczynski rewrites Spider-man origin story both literally and otherwise. The spider bite literally changes from irradiated spider to a spider god. This god gives spider-energy which is sucked in by Morlun, a supernatural beast that feeds on it. It just so happens that such a radical transformation in Spider-man’s origin story also leads to a psychological makeover as well. Which challenges our notions of masculinity as well as the three generations of men still reading the comic book. All this from J. Michael Straczynski, master storyteller. A seminal work indeed.