With Spider-Man: Homecoming on the horizon and a new era of Spider-Man movies dawning (and, hopefully, they won’t be immediately rebooted this time), it seemed fitting to look back at a story arc that defines Spider-Man for me. Back in the before times when Peter wasn’t an Avengers, before “Civil War” unmasked him and before ‘One More Day’ reset his life path, J. Michael Straczynski and John Romita Jr. looked at Spider-Man’s past, present and future in an anniversary story arc.
Written by J. Michael StraczynskiCover by J. Scott Campbell
Illustrated by John Romita Jr. & John Romita Sr.
Inked by Scott Hanna
Coloured by Avalon
Lettered by Randy Gentile
Two generations of the greatest Spider-Man artists of all time mark a milestone! It’s Peter Parker’s birthday…but how do you throw a surprise party for someone with a Spider-sense? Someone figures out how and Spidey spends his special day looking back at his career and EVERY villain he’s faced over those years…against his will! A special story for Spidey fans new & old!
And a lean, silent figure slowly fades into the gathering darkness, aware at last that in this world, with great power there must also come great responsibility!
Those words, more than fifty years ago, defined the character of Spider-Man for years to come, but, for my money, there’s never been a story that has explored their meaning better than J. Michael Straczynski and John Romita Jr.’s ‘Happy Birthday’ arc. Coming at the height of the run on “Amazing Spider-Man,” the three issue story arc lead up to and concluded with the anniversary of the 500th issue of the series. The premise of the story is deceptively simple, but allowed Straczynski and Romita Jr. to take the character incredibly interesting places over just three issues. Basically, Spider-Man is thrown outside of time and space because he got caught up in a trap laid for Doctor Strange (which is a longer story than I have time to explain here) and must relive his timeline in order to return to his present and stop the trap from being sprung.
Like I said, it’s a fairly simple time travel meets This Is Your Life kind of set-up that’s probably been done to death by now, but this story holds a special place in my heart. For one, Spider-Man was the first superhero I ever loved. He was my introduction to the concept of superheroes and to comic books in general. For two, Straczynski and Romita Jr.’s run on “Amazing Spider-Man” was one of the first Spider-Man comics I’d ever read at the time and their take on the character codified so much of how I read Spider-Man comics to this day. This story coming at their height of their run, just before Romita Jr. left and Straczynski’s writing became increasingly caught up in event tie-ins, became a defining point for Spider-Man for me.
Why, then, does this story stick out despite it being so simple on the surface? It’s a strange feeling and one I’m going to try and point into words over the course of writing this review. Obviously, there was a formative connection between 14 year old me and this story, but even on revisiting it I found myself tearing up in places. There’s a poetry to Straczynski’s writing throughout all three issues that’s unmistakable. While his purple prose narration may evoke something akin to Chris Claremont on a off, it works here. As Peter is lost in time, revisiting event from class Stan Lee and Steve Ditko stories, it’s Straczynski’s narration that keeps the reader connected to Peter’s mindset.
As the exhaustion begins to set in and as Peter begins to question his entire life up to that point, weighing the lives and deaths his presence as Spider-Man has altered, it’s Straczynski’s writing that keeps us in touch with the person behind the mask. It becomes a very personal struggle as we see a man debating whether he could sacrifice all the lives he has saved and all the deaths he couldn’t avert just to live a normal life. The one that gets me every time are the pages as Peter witnesses a dark, depressing future where he has lost almost everything, but refuses to give up his principles.
Continued below“Nobody lives forever. Nobody gets a free pass. What matters is you go down fighting… and you go down clean.”
Those words, combined with John Romita Jr’s art of superpowered cape-killers piling on top of Spider-Man in the rain, the darkness swallowing the brief flashes of red from Spidey’s costume, before re-emerging triumphant in the face of certain doom, are a perfect encapsulation of what this story is really about. What it captures about Spider-Man is an echo, a reverberation of that original quote that defined the character filtered through decades of story through various writers and artists. By this point in time, Peter Parker was no longer a teenager mourning his callous mistake that cost his uncle’s life. He was an adult, a high school science teacher, a loving husband and nephew.
Everything he’d accomplished up to that point was put into question: would all the lives he had saved up to that point be worth sacrificing to stop this terrible future from happening. Of course the answer is no, but what Peter’s journey from this dark future through his fateful first adventures and back to the present showcase is the unimaginable perseverance inherent to the character. What Straczynski and Romita Jr. capture in these three issues is the essence of a man who has made mistakes, but who gets up the next morning and does his best to do good for another day. That each day is another chance to make a difference. And that’s the essence of Spider-Man.
In the first scenes of the story arc, Peter tries to teach his students science through it’s connection to poetry. It largely serves to set-up Peter’s exploration of human nature and what it means to be a hero, but I’m fascinated that Straczynski choose poetry. Because there is a poetry in how this story arc is constructed. There is a poetry to the writing and to the narration, to Peter’s journey through his displaced timeline and the lessons he learns from his mistakes and successes. There’s even a poetry to the artwork.
I would never claim to be the world’s biggest John Romita Jr. fan, but I cannot deny the work he puts into these issues. When you need Iron Man, Thor and the Fantastic Four fighting a horde of Mindless Ones, you call John Romita Jr. When you need the dimensional clash of Dormammu and Doctor Strange to level Times Square, you call John Romita Jr. When you need a double page splash of an increasingly exhausted, but never faltering Spider-Man fighting his way through every villain and every challenge he has face in his entire life, you better call John Romita Jr.
And that’s not even commenting on the fantastic appearance of John Romita Sr.’s art in the final pages of “Amazing Spider-Man” #500. It’s a story beat that, again, has probably been played out a million times: through magical means, Peter is able to spend a few moments with Uncle Ben and get some closure on the wounds that have been haunting him his entire life. Telling that moment with John Romita Sr. played against the artwork of John Romita Jr. for the rest of the arc was a powerful moment that spoke to the legacy of this character and the artists that have leant their blood, sweat and ink to bring him to life.
Even under the purple prose and the time travel and the poetry, this story arc serves to showcase some of John Romita Jr.’s best artwork of his career. It’s full of large action and the kind of superhero bombast that he’s known for, but combining it with Straczynski’s narration brings a level of emotion to it. It’s not just huge action for the sake of piling as much as you can on the page. The combination of Romita’s bombastic style and Straczynski’s narration brings poetry to this tale of Peter Parker going through hell and back to make him realise that everything he has ever done, all of the mistakes and all of the triumphs, were worth it just for the chance to say that he made a difference.
That is what it means for great power to come with great responsibility. The responsibility to get up each and every day and try to make a difference.
