Matthew: Hello and welcome to this episode of Superhero Ethics. Today we’re continuing our wrap-up of kind of this first chapter of Superhero Ethics where we’re taking some of the um major characters and questions in all the things we’ve talked about and doing a look back and trying to kind of put a period on those discussions. And of course, today it’s myself, Matthew, Paul, my co-host, and two of my favorite guests, the guys from the Hype is my superpower podcast, Steve and Will are here to talk about, of course, Spider-Man. You guys want to introduce yourselves each and give a quick message about who you are?
Steve: Start us off. Okay.
Will: Hi, I’m Will. Um I’ve uh what is my favorite reference here? Uh I’ve been reading comics ever since Steve got in got obsessed with comics in the 90s, and I’ve been collecting them since uh a little early 2000s. Um and uh I really like Spider Man.
Matthew: I’m not sure if you’re not sure.
Steve: Yeah, I would say that is that is
Matthew: your home base for comics. Uh
Steve: Will and I, yeah, uh as he alluded to, we’ve been best buddies since day one. Um, like while we were in diapers, and uh and yeah, comics have always been a big part of that. We started a podcast a little while back called Hype is My Superpower. It is currently on indefinite hiatus as we have other things going on. Will’s a Twitch streamer, I’m going back to school, I’m gonna be a teacher. Life is crazy. Uh I also make comic books, so if that’s something that you’re interested in, uh I’ll talk about it.
Matthew: Yeah.
Steve: We’ll definitely have uh some information in the show notes about how to get up get a hold of that. Paul, um, what does it mean your connection to Spider-Man?
Paui: Um, I mean, I was into Spider-Man as a kid. I’m pretty sure I had Spider-Man Underuse.
Matthew: Um
Paui: And I didn’t I wasn’t a big comic book collector, but I I read comics here and there. Um my wife grew up in Queens, and then I lived in Queens later.
Matthew: And
Paui: the first movie we went to together was actually an outdoor screening of Spider-Man of the first of the recent, not recent, you know, the the first movie one.
Matthew: Yeah.
Paui: Um and
Steve: so that that movie, like we’d watch it like every now and then.
Paui: Kind of like sort of like as an anniversary thing, but not necessarily like honor anniversary, of which we have several.
Steve: Um and it’s a way to do it.
Paui: Yeah.
Matthew: Humbleplex.
Paui: Um, and so So, yeah, it it Spider-Man just has always felt to me like a very relatable superhero. Um, both in terms of like the character I think is designed to be relatable, but also like being from New York, you know, doesn’t hit quite the same way as like Daredevil growing up in Hell’s Kitchen, you
Matthew: know, but
Paui: um, you know, being a uh transplant to Queens at some point, and um and um he’s he’s my wife’s favorite superhero as well. So
Matthew: yeah,
Paui: you know, I’ve uh have uh felt a connection to the character for a long time. Nice.
Matthew: Yeah.
Steve: I live in New York City now, and uh I my one of my favorite things is a drive-in movie theater uh over in Green Point, uh just along the um the East River that has you know just you’re facing the the midtown skyline, and we we would always go to see the Spider-Man movies there while it was still open, and
Paui: he’s you know, web slinging through the exact same guideline that you see in the background.
Matthew: It’s really cool.
Paui: We were on the Hudson when we saw it outdoors.
Matthew: I’m
Steve: probably the only one here who wasn’t a big Spider-Man fan growing up, really.
Matthew: I I I think it’s because I really loved Superman as a kid, and then it really got into Michael Keaton Batman, but also I just I was a Star Wars guy, and that was my like main kind of you know thing that I wanted the toys from and all that. And for what reason Spider-Man never really grabbed me until that first Tobey McGuire movie. And I think that was
Paui: the you
Matthew: know, a lot of people talk about that as kind of the beginning or at least like one of like the preludes to sort of the era of spy of superhero movies that we’ve now been in for a long time where they’re just taking a lot more seriously.
And I I certainly think I react I that’s how I felt. It felt to me like this was the firsthero movie, maybe outside of the Batman movies that felt like a real movie, not like a okay guys, this is different than other movies because this is a comic book movie. And I really liked it. I think it really part of what I liked is how it addressed a lot of the kind of questions that I cared about, you know, in terms of what is responsibility and what is how what is your responsibility to the people you love, you know? And I remember being blown away by the fact that that movie ended with him walking away from Mary Jane and not being with her because there was some some trade-offs. And you know, now I think we kind of look at that movie, you know, almost like, okay, yeah, that was still pretty damn cheesy, and and you know, gone so much further.
But um, and and Tommy McGuire is probably I think of the of the three we’ve had recently, um, or even four with Miles Morale is probably the my least favorite of all of them. But I still have some nostalgia for that movie, and I have really come to love the character and what he represents, um, particularly because he’s so different from some of the other superheroes that we have. And and of course, all of the stuff that was said, someone
Paui: else who grew up in New York.
Matthew: Um I think I got that a little bit the first movie, but what that really hit me was the PlayStation video game that came out, and then the following one, and then with the
Paui: Miles Morales movies and stuff, it just maybe
Matthew: it’s in part because when I was in New York, I was like, Yeah, it’s another movie set in New York, we’re the best city in the world. Of course, people make movies here.
Paui: Um, but I think as a kind of like New York emigrant,
Matthew: you know, since I moved away, you know, I’m one of those obnoxious people who if you watch the movie or play the game with me, I’ll be like, Oh yeah, I know that place, I know that corner, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah. So I yeah.
Steve: It’s absolutely the opposite of that has been my experience of
Matthew: moving to New York, is you know, before you come here, oh yeah, everything’s set in New York. Now it’s like, no, I have the fluency of what different neighborhoods and different parts of the city mean. It actually is uh yeah,
Steve: totally.
Matthew: They don’t teach you
Steve: guys New York City geography and like Parker comes up with that. Wow. No, we learn about the the California missions instead.
Matthew: Okay. Um it
Paui: is
Steve: not nearly as dark as
Matthew: it ought to be.
Steve: Um and uh it um But but yeah, Peter Parker’s from Forest Hills.
Matthew: He has a real world address. Uh when Will came to visit, we went there.
Steve: We we saw it. And so that’s that’s really I think you’re getting to a really core part of what the Spider-Man idea is that there’s
Matthew: a real person situated in the world.
Steve: And and it kind of, you know, the core idea if we’re getting into ethics is with great power comes your responsibility. Everybody knows the quote. But what makes the, you know, that’s not hugely different in terms of an idea from what
Matthew: Superman stands for, for example.
Steve: But the fact that this is a regular person, that as a regular person, you can conceive of yourself as somebody who has great power. And with as a person, you also have great responsibility. Uh, I think is what I find so truly
Matthew: transformative about the character in the edge. Uh I will say this is gonna come out a week from now, but we are recording this on election day when all of us have the power to overthrow
Steve: our government.
Matthew: So, you know, it’s probably the closest to a superpower we get. Um so you know, just like a cool thing there. Well, and let’s talk about the relatability because I know that not only in comic, not only in the kind of movies and TV shows and stuff, but especially in comics, this was really the first time, you know, Bruce Wayne is a billionaire. Um Superman is a person from another planet with all this incredible power. Spider-Man, a big part of what he had, and what really kicked off so much the Marvel brand with him was this idea of you know, is it harder to fight Green Goblin or to make sure you study for your math cast and ask out the pretty girl who makes you nervous? Like what do you what for you guys is the importance that that relatability, both for Spider-Man, but also kind of bringing that concept into comic book and superhero media.
Will: As as As an impressionable young uh teen and young adult and into adulthood, um for me, it was kind of like even though Pete couldn’t do both in terms of like, hey, I have this budding relationship, but I keep on bailing on every single one of my dates because someone’s getting robbed around the corner. Um it kind of it kind of became this like challenge to for me of just like, well, if he can’t do it, I’d
Paui: be like, I’m just
Will: like, okay, like I uh, it’s very important to me to help the people around me. I I’m more likely to um sit on a park bench with a friend who’s going through something than I am to go to somebody’s birthday
Matthew: dinner.
Will: Um if if if like those two opportunities are happening the exact same time, I’m going to the bench. Um I’m much more likely to drive to Las Vegas to help somebody move than I am to drive to the next county over to uh hang out and play a couple rounds of magic. Like it’s just that’s realistically uh my life, but I don’t have a dual life, I think is
Steve: is where
Matthew: the difference is. I don’t have to put on a mask to go and help somebody move or be there for somebody. And so I can be open. And I guess that’s my my takeaways like the the significant other or whoever is getting spurned is
Paui: a lot more understanding once you know that Pete is Spider Man.
Will: And then the conversation becomes well please be safe and
Matthew: not the how were you
Will: um and so now I’m just telling myself well you know I figured out I cracked the code. I can go and be a superhero as long as I’m public about it. It’s totally fine.
Matthew: No you’re right and you know this is a a different topic we’ve talked about in many podcasts and maybe revisit at some point in this wrap up but one of the things that I I and I think a number of people on this podcast have expressed their their real dislike of is the plot line where the family member particularly often the the woman romantic partner is getting massively gaslit about why they keep missing uh appointments because you know, they’re often superhero stuff and when that person starts to get suspicious they’re yeah that’s when the gaslight really kicks in and they’re like you know no why would you do that? You know you why don’t you trust me like all this kind of stuff and I’m I’m really glad that it as far as I can tell Spider Man has had very little of that especially in the in the movies. But I think also in comics
Will: well it’s because there’s only been
Matthew: seven you
Steve: know
Matthew: the Flash TV show set it up within four episodes.
Will: So I mean it’s definitely you know right Yeah, it happens
Matthew: a lot in the comics.
Will: And only because there’s this official unofficial
Matthew: unwritten rule that Peter Parker has to struggle.
Will: Which is why he’s not married to MJ anymore. And like he always has to he has to fail. And that sucks.
Steve: Oh yeah we’re getting into it we’re getting into there’s the core the every every superhero has and maybe this is getting off topic so please let me know if we should touch on this later but every superhero has this sort of like
Matthew: core myth right like
Steve: a one sentence summary of of what the what the character is about that’s sort of like the true North whenever you adapt it you’re doing a variation on that idea. For Spider-Man it’s you know a regular guy from Queens great power great responsibility for Iron Man it’s you know um the sort of perils of ego with somebody who can truly think and do anything.
Um And and on, and you know, the somebody who has uh shrapnel in his chest, finding his heart. Um, right, you You have these sort of like elemental ideas and mythologies which get expanded and interpreted and and uh you know re reexplored uh over decades and decades and decades of of telling the tale to new audiences to new in new contexts new history um and for Spider-Man the struggle has been Spider-Man is a relatable character
Matthew: he was in a lot of ways an audience stand in or uh an author stand in
Steve: for Stan Lee where the one for Jack Kirby was uh Ben Grimm the thing. Um and so the it’s in what set it apart when what made Spider-Man so revolutionary in terms of comic history was having this character who’s growing up before your eyes we you know Spider-Man is like 15 years old at the start of publication and you’re watching this young character go through life lessons go from a boy to uh from a kid to an adult
Matthew: from a boy to a
Steve: man uh and and that the reader gets to go along this journey with him and then at a certain point you have to keep selling you have to keep publishing you have to keep telling selling comics and and he’s put in suspended animation and now the exact thing that is central to to what the story is is uh it’s a betrayal of of what the character with the story is that you have to keep telling the story because he’s supposed to be the character who grows up and if he does that any more then he’s not gonna be the relatable figure the every man for a young audience. Um, And that’s why you have you know uh Miles Morales being so uh effective and and really taking off I would say more than any other legacy hero is because the correct movies yeah
Matthew: you have a different Spider-Man and different the different person in a different context has to go and live these lessons and and uh take these lumps and and find their own way to
Steve: adulthood um and um uh but we can’t do that, so here we are. And Peter Parker gets put in this weird
Matthew: corner where he’s learned all his lessons and yet he also has to forget. Yeah, I always thought one of the most brilliant things about the Spider-Ver movies is the way they gonna be a little bit more than a little bit. give you um a hint of an adult Spider-Man.
I remember really liking like we get I think it’s Chris Pine is the voice of him, and we get you know, like 15 minutes of really entertaining stuff about what an adult Spider-Man is like, and like he’s you know got a happy
Will: relationship, and he has you
Matthew: know, he’s the singer putting out these albums and like doing this ridiculous stuff, but of course he spoilers for a pretty old movie, but if you haven’t seen it, hit pause because it’s a big spoiler. Of course, he has to die. And you know, so that Miles Morales can become the next Spider-Man. And then when we do get an actual adult Spider-Man um from a different he’s from a different universe. And yes, he is struggling, as we talked about, um,
Steve: but
Matthew: his adultness allows him to be a mentor, but still he’s not the main character. It’s Miles Morales, who still we get that, you know, okay. Can you know, can you figure out how to fight the bad guy, do your math homework, and ask the girl the prom. That still gets to be part of the part of the story.
Steve: Totally.
Paui: I think it’s really hard to tell the story of a given character like over and over and over. Especially when they’re a character that’s very associated with a particular age. You
Matthew: know, it’s like, I
Paui: mean, if you look at how many tellings of Batman there are, and how many of them have like Martha’s pearls, right? It’s
Matthew: like because there’s
Paui: this moment in his life that like is his backstory, and it’s like, so they just have to tell that every single time, and like they don’t have to, right?
Matthew: They could not do that.
Steve: And
Paui: um, the same way, like you can have a Spider-Man that doesn’t show the you know all of the backstory every single time, but there tends to be uh an urge to, but like the character needs to age over time, like it’s not Bart Simpson, right? And right.
Steve: Well, I think that’s really the difference, though.
Paui: Like most common characters don’t have to age because they both start as young
Steve: people, and the ones that are coded as young people often tend to stay
Paui: as young people,
Matthew: you know.
Will: Uh you
Steve: know, Robin can stay Robin forever because Robin’s a side character.
Paui: But
Steve: also there’s three Robins or four Robinson’s point is right, or five Robins. Totally, yeah.
Paui: I’m not I’m not a DC guy, so I’m uh like he has really bad example. You know,
Steve: and yeah, yeah. Spider
Matthew: Peter has to grow, exactly. Yeah.
Will: Miles is never going to graduate high school.
Steve: Yeah. At
Will: least not for another, at least.
Paui: Well, it’s hard when you’re doing all these spider things, and you know, how can you do your homework and how are you ever gonna graduate?
Will: Sure.
Steve: Well,
Will: even though he has stories where he’s
Steve: doing high school work,
Will: but
Steve: even though even though you know nobody gets held back in New York City
Matthew: public schools anymore and starting. Well, I I promise I’m not just gonna talk about the uh Spider-Verse movies, but I I do love them. We brought them up with Miles Morales. I I think it’s one of the
Steve: real brilliances of the second movie, and I’m really excited to see what the third one and how it resolves it,
Matthew: is that it kind of like is being meta about the Spider-Man meta. You know, that’s that the main plot of it is how much do how much does Spider-Man have to have this core things happen of these
Steve: people dying in this order
Matthew: and these things, and like can you break that? And I I thought that was such a wonderful meta commentary on all the stuff we’re discussing. And and in some ways, yeah, it might be interesting, also about like, you know, I I I could see them having something of like, you know, Miles wanting to go to college and and there being some concern of like, no, but that’s not what Spider-Mans do, you know. Um something like that.
Steve: Mm-hmm. And And and the meta commentary as well on is is trauma the only way that
Matthew: somebody can grow.
Steve: Um because you know, if you’re talking about the um the comic book Spider-Man, and the movies don’t get this quite as much, but you know, it it’s all centered around these formative deaths of people in Peter’s life.
Matthew: Before we ever meet him, it’s his parents,
Steve: and then in at the very beginning, it’s Uncle Ben, and then once publication history starts going on, it’s Captain Stacy and Gwen Stacy and Gene DeWolf, and just like on and on and on and on and on, right? Like all these people who he’s who Peter is close to die. And it’s this litany of trauma that he has to sort of like undergo, and uh and that that is these are sort of the the markers of his life. And yeah, the Spider-Verse movies say, well, hold on.
Will: It There’s
Steve: other ways to be and to become an adult, and and there are other formative experiences that aren’t just traumatizing oneself.
Matthew: And and part of why I love that as a commentary is that like, yes, trauma is a very important kind of character development and growth and and you know, something we can all relate to on various levels, depending on how how our lives have been. But like I think I loved when like we started really diving into that in movies and really talking about like, yeah, you know,
Steve: actually watching your parents die really fucks you up, or like, you know, this different kind of stuff.
Matthew: But also there’s an extent to which it is now gotten to a point where it feels kind of lazy sometimes of like how do we show this new character who no one’s ever heard before. Why are they the way they did? Oh, well, their parent died, or their spouse died, or you know, their dog got killed, um uh John Wick being a
Paui: fun.
Matthew: But of course that’s also about the the grief of the wife who had the dog and all that.
Paui: But yeah, like also the backstory in Lola Hammer, but anyway.
Matthew: Yeah, yeah. So many things. But yeah, so I kind of love that Spider-Verse movies are are playing with that. Going back to the teenage thing, one thing that occurs to me is that like I I wonder if part of why the teenager’s part of it especially is so relatable to people, or they enjoy relating it so much is certainly when you are a teenager, and and Paul movie at this time and can testify this is very true for myself, not Paul, who’s been you know, 15 going on 40 since I knew him, but um, like uh uh you’re 16 and like the person you like doesn’t maybe doesn’t like you, or like you embarrassed yourself in front of them, or you gotta see on that test the world is ending. And now, you know, when you’re
Will: like trying to struggle to pay rent or the mortgage is you know, eating you alive,
Matthew: or you’re getting divorced from the person you’ve known for you’re married for 20 years or whatever, there’s a tendency, I think, to look back on those high school struggles and be like, Aww, I thought that was a real struggle, and like it’s nothing compared to what I’m going
Will: through now.
Matthew: And I think for me at least, part of I never really kind of commit made this connection until I heard you guys talking about Teenage Spider-Man. I think there’s a comfort in that sometimes.
Steve: Like sometimes it’s fun to
Matthew: I remember when that was the biggest deal for me. You know, yes, I mean Peter Parker’s life is in danger on a
Will: very frequent basis, in a way mine wasn’t.
Matthew: But um although we did see very stupid things as teenagers. But
Paui: like um,
Matthew: but you know, I I I think that for me at least I think there’s a comfort in relating to those high schoolish struggles because at that time it seemed like the end of the world, and now when I look at the things I’m actually struggling with, I’m like, whoof, gosh, I would I would pay a lot to have to do math homework rather than figure out, you know, if my
Steve: disability benefits are gonna get cut.
Paui: Mm-hmm. I I I feel like
Steve: almost it’s a way of
Paui: kind of I don’t know, maybe like working through
Matthew: and processing those types of emotions like by proxy, but I like
Paui: if you have whatever like the worst thing in a person’s life is the worst thing in a person’s life, like
Matthew: whatever it
Paui: is, you know, and I I think a lot of times it’s like you can always kind of look at something and be like, well, it could be worse, you know. You probably don’t want to say that because then it probably will be, right?
Steve: But
Matthew: like
Paui: it it’s you know, the comparison is you know, you can you can always look at things relatively like that, but also if you’re going through something really tough, and then you see someone going through something that’s really tough for them, but maybe doesn’t seem that tough for you, like I I feel like it can potentially give you some perspective on what you’re going through and
Matthew: the ability to kind of put it in perspective, which which never is the thing less bad, but it I just think being able to kind of frame it differently or kind of step back from it and realize it’s not all of existence like at that one moment, it’s just what it is, and like
Paui: it will pass one way or another, sometimes not in a good way, and
Matthew: sometimes in a good way, but like
Paui: it’s things are going to change and it’s not gonna be the way it is all the time.
Matthew: I don’t know.
Paui: So I I kind of think like since I think high school for a lot of people is a time when things like got really everything seems really big. Um and then looking back, it seems like it’s not as big. I don’t know, maybe Maybe going through something that seems really big at the time and like being able to kind of live some of those emotions through fiction without
Matthew: actually dealing with the thing you’re dealing with now.
Paui: Like, I don’t know, maybe there’s something to that.
Matthew: I I mean tell me if I’m wrong, but I’m gonna try to summarize that in kind of a specific specific language.
Paui: Like when
Matthew: you look at yourself having catastrophized about things that actually weren’t that bad, and you’re now catastrophizing about things that are worse, or maybe still aren’t like quite as bad as you think. It it allows that for perspective and things like that.
Paui: Yeah, that’s that’s kind of what I’m getting at.
Steve: Yeah, but that’s kind of what growing it’s kind of what growing up is
Paui: too, in a sense, right? Like
Steve: you you’re you have to go every through everything for the first time once, and then when you go through it again, you have some context for it, and that’s
Paui: that’s what kind of
Steve: growth and and uh and growing up in a large part is.
Paui: Yeah. And I mean, I do think like having some larger trauma younger in your life can like, I don’t know, maybe that’s one of the reasons I felt like I was like 15 going on 40, like I had trauma in my young like people died, you know,
Matthew: like my dad died when I was eight, and you
Paui: know, that’s why Batman’s always been so relatable to me.
Matthew: Legit.
Paui: But like
Steve: But that you know, that doesn’t mean that things in high school that were so much less of a big deal
Paui: didn’t seem like such a big deal.
Matthew: Yeah.
Paui: Like, oh, if this one relationship doesn’t work out, like the world’s over. Like this is like the only thing that matters to me, right?
Matthew: So sorry for introducing you to her.
Paui: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, you know what?
Matthew: Yo.
Paui: No, no, no. She she was a lovely person, and it just it just didn’t work out, and it’s
Steve: fun.
Paui: But like uh, yeah, there was there was a lot of pain and suffering. There was a
Matthew: lot of
Steve: deep suffering. But
Will: you know boy. That’s uh that’s one way to grow.
Matthew: So Yeah, no,
Paui: it’s true. I think
Matthew: that’s we’re gonna get out of topic, but I’ll say this and and go on. Like, you know, after my divorce, like I had other relationships end, and it didn’t like I kind of have more perspective. And and like one thing I’ve thought about a lot as my father’s getting pretty damn old and and his health is really starting to fade. The death of my mother devastated me. And I I do wonder what the death of a second parent is like, you know, if it it you know, and I I meant a lot of it has to do with the circumstances and and all things like that. Like it’s certainly gonna really upset me, but I do wonder if there’s that kind of like I I didn’t know what life would be like without a parent. Now I do, you know, and and I I think you’re right, Paul, that part of that the teenage thing is that it’s that uh or Steve, you may have said this that it’s the you’re going through all these things for the first time, and it’s like, how do you live if this terrible thing does happen? You know, but the reality is you you you you we we struggle through.
Steve: I mean, I think it makes sense that we’re talking about personal stuff on a podcast
Paui: about Spider-Man, because that is what the really relatability, right? Like
Steve: that’s that’s what relatability
Matthew: means is that we’re able to take this character and and apply it to things in our own lives and and it it feels relevant.
Paui: For sure.
Matthew: Mm-hmm. I
Will: do get jealous sometimes of when comic book characters go through something that’s tough because then they can go and punch some bad guys to let
Matthew: out
Will: some
Matthew: steam.
Will: Uh we don’t get typically we don’t get that kind of uh outlet and catharsis. I guess we could go like take a boxing class. Um but I feel like
Steve: I’m I think you need to train
Paui: this. Yeah, I
Will: I just think that
Paui: I just wrote uh a piece about uh on the you know 25th anniversary of uh 911 I wrote about like the day before that that day, the next day, and on that day, like you know, all that happened, and then I went to the Taekwondo school, hung up the bag, and like a bunch of people came by, a lot of community, and you know, just beat the shit out of the heavy
Will: bag.
Paui: Like, you know, and e even
Will: if it’s like you’re not necessarily mad about whatever, it’s just like you’re just feeling stuff. It’s like
Matthew: it’s
Paui: you know, it
Will: uh uh probably a little healthier than like beating up somebody trying to rob an ATM, you know,
Matthew: but
Paui: like to, you know, to each their own, I guess.
Matthew: Yeah,
Paui: but yeah, uh
Steve: you know,
Paui: so sometimes having having uh and uh literally a physical outlet, I think has merit, you
Matthew: know.
Paui: And then for some people
Matthew: their physical outlet is like
Paui: their family, and that’s terrible, right?
Matthew: Like that’s that’s a real thing. That’s like awful.
Paui: Um and maybe that’s an even bigger argument for having like a recreational inanimate physical outlet for you
Matthew: know
Paui: um anger and whatever other kind of emotions got going on.
Matthew: I mean, my my outlet wasn’t physical, but I was I was working for a politician at the time, and um part of the part of his uh district and and the one I was kind of specifically assigned to was a big part of Chinatown. And the Chinese New Year happened fairly soon after 9-11, and there were some things that were passed of you know, you’re not allowed to have
Paui: fireworks, you know, anywhere in like the southern part of Manhattan for like six months after uh 9-11.
Matthew: And I remember
Steve: like yeah. the
Matthew: fact that like their their annual celebration for which fireworks are were kind of invented.
Paui: I mean, like this is how
Matthew: deep that tradition goes off thousands of years, at least hundreds and hundreds of years. Um was it the end of the world in the end of the at that they weren’t allowed to do it or they had to like go out to parts of Queens and stuff? Probably not. Did I fight more on that political fight than anything I did in 20 years of acting since? Did I yell at a lot of people?
I probably shouldn’t have yelled at quite so much the first thing. Because it was like, you are an annoying person, and I have my city was just attacked in this horrible way, and now some asshole is trying to bomb people because my city was like all of that came out in that political fight in ways that mostly I’m proud of, and in
Steve: some I’m not so proud of. But it
Matthew: definitely was that kind of an outlet, you know, what you’re talking about of like I’m throwing myself into this fight. And I I I it’s one thing I think I’ve really liked about the Spider-Man verse is that I think he, like Batman, is one of the ones who most often talks about the difference between, as you were kind of saying, We’ll wanting to help the people in need versus wanting to hurt the bad people.
Steve: And that when his motivation
Will: is
Matthew: I am angry at the bad people, I need to process that by hurting the people who seem bad to me, even though often it’s you know the the person ripping off an ATM instead of the the boss who fired that guy, so he has to rip off an ATM.
Steve: Like that’s in a way, that’s another very relatable part of him, and the fact that he struggles with that and
Matthew: and names that and doesn’t just say like, oh yeah, I was upset, so I beat up some some poor people who were doing criminal stuff, and that’s not great.
Steve: Totally. Um I think you get to an interesting part about Spider-Man, and and this was um some uh something that was on my mind, this being election day, is that uh so with great power comes great responsibility is like pretty deep in my own personal moral code, right? Like the it it gets to the the questions of of what we owe to each other and what uh what we owe to the world around us, what uh what does a person uh how how how much does a person uh make up or you know, um it’d be be a uh a part of society around them and and how do we take how seriously do we take um that sort of moral um or ethical sort of uh positionality for ourselves? Um and I can apply it to everything from you know uh my own, you know, trying to get in uh involvement in in neighborhood activism to you know Israel and Palestine, like who has the the side with the greater power has the greater responsibility
Matthew: towards creating peace, that you things like this, right? Like this is something that’s applicable
Steve: that I can I can put all over the place. What it doesn’t do is it doesn’t say that there is a particular responsibility, it’s non-ideological, which is fine because I think it’s more transferable and more useful, but there’s no like analysis of like what is that responsibility and what does it mean beyond the the things that you can touch with your hands? And the question that I wanted to pose to you all on this election day is does Peter Parker vote?
Paui: Not when he’s uh like 15 in high school.
Steve: Okay, fair. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s easy. Dang it, I thought I
Matthew: had something. I
Paui: think that’s really good. He grows up and you know, school president. I don’t know.
Matthew: Sure.
Steve: But like it’s g it it it it sounds like kind of a stupid question because it’s uh it is part of
Matthew: responsibility, but it’s
Will: abstracted
Matthew: in a way that’s like really far outside of the types of things that you normally see Peter Parker like
Steve: think about or deal with or struggle with, and I’m just
Matthew: uh I
Steve: don’t know, because it’s election day, that that was
Matthew: just something that
Paui: I think.
Matthew: Yeah, was going through right now.
Paui: W What’s the gears?
Steve: Yeah.
Paui: Yeah, I I I have some thoughts on this, but
Steve: like it’s a bit of a different direction. So, Will, if you have an answer, go for it.
Matthew: Or if we need to pause.
Will: I mean okay. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him vote. But that’s out of that’s that’s regardless. But like at the same time, I’m trying to I’m trying to conceptually take what Spider Man Peter Parker stands for, and how he how he manifests those morals, and does voting fall within those
Matthew: morals? Like,
Will: like, oh, cuz, because he’s he’s not necessarily okay, as opposed to someone like Luke Cage. Uh Pete tries to inspire other people to be good, where Luke holds people accountable
Matthew: to be good.
Will: I very much believe Luke is out there voting and campaigning.
Paui: He’s also currently the mayor of New
Matthew: York in
Paui: the comics. But
Will: but he’s out there being like, no, every single person matters. He’s walking through the streets of Harlem being like, you need to go vote because your voice matters. You need to take care of your neighborhood. I don’t see Peter Parker doing that. I see him going to the person who was elected and then telling them that they need to be good because the
Matthew: people chose them.
Will: But the step before that,
Steve: I
Will: don’t know if he’s
Matthew: I I
Will: think he would vote, but I think you’re right. It’s the kind of thing where, like,
Matthew: you know, if Norman Osborne is running for office, he’s gonna do all they can to expose, you know, expose the things that would alter the election. Um, uh
Will: huh.
Matthew: I, oh, okay, I have like two conversational routes I want to go down here, so I’m gonna need to pick one. Uh I’m gonna start with this, but bookmark the other question I want to ask, which is that Steve, while you were talking, I had a whole thought set up that was gonna lead to voting, and then when you started to ask your question, I was like, oh no, but I want to do my thing, and but but then you asked that voting so this is perfect. um because part of what I
Will: was thinking about was
Matthew: I I’ve done episodes, I think with you guys before, certainly with Paul, about that idea of does great power come with great responsibility, and I think there’s some I have some objections to it sometimes with the idea of like who gets to decide who else has that responsibility and how much does that kind of aggregate your own responsibility. But I think as we’re talking about it today, I was thinking a lot about the focus shouldn’t be on the responsibility, it’s on the power, and that maybe the point is not that Spider-Man has a power that we don’t have, but and I think teenagerness is especially a part of this. But it you know, I think one of the things that people often do is overestimate their own powerlessness and
Steve: overestimate
Matthew: like and
Will: that becomes a way of shirking responsibility. And
Matthew: I’m saying
Steve: that Yes,
Matthew: with a plan to go vote after this podcast, looking out my window where it’s cold and raining. And, you know, three
Paui: of us, four of us have at some point in our lives, but certainly right now, three of us live in places where
Matthew: I’m pretty sure the election’s gonna go blue, you know, New York, uh uh California, and and it was doubtful for a little bit, but Minneapolis is pretty damn safe. Um I’m still gonna go vote. But like even just noticing there’s that little
Paui: voice in my head being like, come on, it’s rainy, it’s cold, you don’t need to.
Matthew: I think there’s something really powerful about that
Will: Spider-Man idea of recognizing like
Matthew: I do have that power, you know, in and in the same way of like, you know, all the stuff about the Cornell case, uh uh the horrible sexual assault that happened there and everything about it. I’ve really liked that there’s a conversation that are shifting from it’s not just the Cornell 7 who are horrible and all like that has to be judged, but also the Cornell 51. You know, all the people in that text chat, and like um, you know,
Will: I I
Matthew: Paul and I had, you know, uh there are people who I knew certainly in my high school groups who treated women pretty terribly, and and I they would say awful things about it, and I would laugh and be like, come on, you shouldn’t say that, dude. That’s not cool. And probably not too much more about it.
And remembering like one of my like a person who had like I I think he may have been actually a literal, like, you know, well-treated sociopath. I’m not sure. But that there was a night when a friend of ours was really drunk and another guy was trying to take advantage of her, and he put a sock on his hand and literally did this sock puppet routine of like, are you sure you want to try and kiss her? She doesn’t look like she can kiss you back. Isn’t it more fun? Like, he basically did the thing like that, you
Steve: know, posts are always about, like, you know,
Matthew: call out your friends when they’re like doing that horrible shit.
Steve: Yeah.
Matthew: And in many ways, I think that was one of the most heroic acts that I think I ever saw someone take in high school. Um so yeah, so it should I I I kind of think like this time, as we’re talking about Peter, my thought isn’t just as much on the oh my god, we need to be more responsible, you know, that the people with the the big power need to be responsible. I think they do, but also like it’s really easy to tell ourselves we don’t have the power that we do and thus shirk our responsibility. And I think that’s a lot of what I get from Spider-Man.
Steve: I think that’s a good thing.
Paui: Yes. Absolute nail on head there.
Steve: Totally agree.
Will: It’s what
Steve: was your other thought?
Paui: I was so
Steve: sorry, it’s a headball. It’s not funny though
Paui: because I’m pretty sure I know who you’re talking about.
Matthew: Yeah.
Paui: And I thought you were talking about someone else. No, I I was thinking of a different incident with the same person where they were on the other side of it. Oh,
Matthew: interesting.
Paui: Which
Will: is
Paui: like I don’t know. Like, people aren’t necessarily universally predisposed to
Matthew: like
Paui: do the good thing or do the bad thing. Like
Matthew: people can do
Paui: one and then the other, you know. And um yeah, you know, sometimes you you see a character go through some sort of change and whatever, and you’re like, oh well they wouldn’t, you know, do this after whatever.
Matthew: But it’s like, I
Paui: don’t know. People People
Matthew: aren’t always the same through their whole life.
Steve: You know?
Matthew: Yeah.
Paui: Um
Steve: totally.
Matthew: So let me go back to the voting question and ask a different version of it, but it’s connected to voting.
Paui: Yes,
Matthew: I did move to Pennsylvania partially because I thought my vote mattered here
Paui: as well as the other people that I brought with me. Oh that wasn’t the question.
Matthew: My bad no no no no awesome no but I mean yeah you live in a state where Pennsylvania is a is a common little state.
Paui: It was it’s there’s a there was a screen name on one of my poker sites, Pennsylvania or something or whatever.
Matthew: That was one of their great leftist Democrats like Fetterman. So um sarcasm intended but no so here’s my voting uh uh adjacent question Peter Parker wants the work wants the city to be better he wants to protect his local neighborhood and his city and he is willing to use violence against the people who are doing bad things to do that what would he think of Curtis Slewa and the Guardian Angels would he have voted for Curtis forget Mamdanny would he have been a Curtis like and for those who don’t know Curtis Sleewell was the head of a group called the Guardian Angels who were quite literally New York City vigilantes and were they always did what they could to kind of make sure they never quite you know cross the line but there were definitely times where they used violence against people who were doing bad things themselves and I think could a lot of the time they have a legal uh idea of either self-defense or defense of another yes were there times where they maybe went after people who weren’t 100% certain to be being criminals and the police kind of let them go absolutely yes um but in a way that like kind of we can say you know look at what how Spider-Man handles things like and and then Curtis Leo of course later ran for mayor um and was he was the Republican but he was much more pro-Mam Dani than um the other Democrat who didn’t like Mam Dani. Um, It’s a whole long New York City politics is so weird and Curtis Lee was such a complicated nuanced
Steve: figure.
Matthew: But yeah like what do you think Spider-Man would think of like the real life vigilantes we’ve had in our world in particular in his
Steve: city I’m gonna dodge this question by saying uh Peter Parker is a dog person not a cat person so Slila would not get his vote he
Will: did date someone literally named Black Cat. So I don’t fully agree with you there.
Steve: Okay.
Paui: Yeah, but How did that
Steve: work
Matthew: out?
Steve: You know
Will: what he’s then hey she broke up with him last time. So
Paui: it’s a
Matthew: field since the deep or thing sorry apologize. There we may have guessed from listeners from the winterfield since it’s a great school
Paui: one of the people anyway
Matthew: anyway Curtis Leo what do you all think?
Will: I
Paui: mean I
Steve: I grew up in in Hell’s Kitchen you know with in the 80s with like
Matthew: the Guardian angels like walking around you
Paui: know and like I felt safer I guess like and I
Steve: I’ve
Paui: I I actually in um maybe 2021 I remember visiting Oakland Chinatown and there was this like community group all like wearing blue t-shirts with like I think they had like umbrellas or something and they were like like a neighborhood patrol kind
Matthew: of whatever that like
Steve: they weren’t particularly threatening looking but like they were you know basically just trying to kind of dissuade all these like you know anti-Asian attacks and stuff that were going around there.
Matthew: Right.
Paui: Um which it was funny there was some I think like 80 year old woman who got attacked and just like not like beat the crap out of the guy attack
Matthew: I remember
Paui: that’s like and she’s like speaking like Toyson and anyway but like the point being like I think the I I think the idea is fine you
Matthew: know
Paui: and especially as like a community group you know as
Matthew: opposed to maybe necessarily a single masked vigilante or whatever.
Paui: Right um where it’s more
Matthew: about like
Paui: the presence you
Matthew: know where it’s more of the the watch of like we’re gonna call in for support we’re ness versus like we are big and strong and we’re gonna beat you up
Paui: immediately right or even just like the fact that we’re here means that like somebody’s less likely to do something
Matthew: yeah
Paui: violent or whatever. Um, Sort of like having the security guard who’s never actually going to stop someone from doing something but just like they’re there so
Matthew: someone’s maybe less likely to do the thing.
Paui: I don’t know.
Steve: Um.
Paui: But But it it I mean I think it just always comes down to like what are you actually doing right like concretely what are they doing like who are they trying to stop do something. There was a funny thing in I I don’t remember whether it was Spider Verse or was it homecoming. So one or the other, somebody was like doing something with a bicycle, and then Spider Man like tried to stop them. I was like, this is my bike.
Will: Homecoming.
Paui: Like it was
Will: right?
Paui: Which it was homecoming.
Matthew: I think so, yeah.
Paui: Yeah. Um and I I mean I think I remember that movie felt like the most real New York of the live action movies, and then the Spider Valverse felt even more real New York, I
Matthew: think. But like
Paui: um But yeah, like Spider Man doesn’t always get it right either, right? I mean that there he’s a rookie, right?
Matthew: It’s understandable. But it
Paui: but it is
Steve: like any time you’re trying to do something, especially if it involves
Paui: using violence, um, there’s always a risk that like you’re gonna get it wrong.
Matthew: And then there’s like
Paui: do you agree with the thing the person’s trying to do? You know, and it’s like maybe you do, maybe you don’t. And so I’m sure there are probably things that like Curtis Sleewat did that like Peter Parker would probably be like, Yeah, that’s great. And probably some other things would be like, oh no, no, no, that’s not that that’s not the way to go about it. Um but like yeah, I I mean I think the real you know, our world kind of vigilantes, it’s like it’s complicated.
Matthew: You know, there’s a long history of
Paui: people doing horrible things, and then there’s a history of like people doing things where like there’s either law enforcement doesn’t want to get involved, is unable to get involved, or is on the other side of it,
Matthew: and
Paui: it’s probably good that there’s some people, you
Matthew: know, not
Paui: just like waiting for the cops to show up or whatever.
Matthew: Lynch mobs are vigilantes.
Paui: Yeah.
Matthew: John Brown was a vigilante.
Will: Like
Matthew: that word covers a lot of ground.
Paui: It does. It does. Yeah.
Steve: Yeah, I I’ve only been in New York for seven years, so I really only know Sleewa as a punchline
Will: rather than as a uh,
Steve: you know, what the Guardian Angels ever did, and uh it it sounds uh
Paui: very troubling to
Steve: me, but uh just hearing the the top line description of you know, these dudes from uh in
Paui: Red
Steve: Berets stopping crime by their own, you know, means but uh I I don’t have any
Will: more
Steve: knowledge or lived experience
Matthew: of them than that.
Will: Uh conversationally comic book Spider-Man, I think would be totally fine with
Steve: it
Will: with Guardian Angels. Only because from the way it’s been presented here, because I’ve never heard of any of this. Um Um, it sounds like what Luke Cage does in like his solo
Paui: titles
Will: before he was mayor, was like walk around Harlem and bust up drug rings and stop all the drug dealers, and like if what he was doing ends up on somebody’s camera, he gets his face in the camera as like, hey, you cannot push drugs here in Harlem. That’s not okay. Like if you’re doing it, I will find you, blah, blah, blah.
Paui: Like it’s I think that’s the gist of
Will: what it was then,
Steve: anyway.
Will: Right,
Matthew: right. Yeah,
Will: yeah.
Paui: So like to
Steve: a
Paui: comic
Matthew: book degree. That
Will: sounds what the sounds like what the Guardian Angels are doing. Now they’re but also because New York is vast and solo titles are very isolated. Um it’s not like there was ever a time when Luke is specifically busting up a uh uh a drug dealer and Spider-Man comes down and he’s like, Hey, you’re doing a great job, good job. Let me walk him up for you.
Matthew: Like that’s not like you
Will: know uh so but because he knows Luke and he still he he’ll be on the new Avengers with them, he’ll he they tend to be on the same side of superhero civil war situations. I’m inclined to assume that Peter Parker Spider-Man is totally fine with the concept of the
Matthew: Guardian Angels.
Will: Um He gets nervous when it because you know in comics you’re dealing with superpowers, so like uh or like stolen alien tech and like more advanced um more readily available um damage dealing tools in the comics than you are in real life, typically.
Um and so I know that if the Guardian Angels were introduced in a Spider Man comic, he would be keeping tabs on them just as much as he is on the
Matthew: ground that they’re fighting. Um
Steve: Right. This is Punisher, basically.
Will: Yeah.
Steve: Also got uh introduced into Spider Man
Matthew: comic.
Will: Exactly.
Steve: Yeah.
Will: Um So, you know, I think you’d be cool if it
Matthew: doesn’t
Will: it comes down to the storytelling and what
Matthew: title you’re introducing this concept in and blah blah blah blah blah blah.
Steve: And yeah, what I I don’t know. I as you’re describing Luke Cage and as you’re describing The Guardian Angels, I’m wondering how much my knee jerk re response is based on uh Curtis Lewell of being white and being you know running as
Matthew: a
Will: Republican in the 2020s.
Matthew: Yeah, I mean I mean like
Steve: straight
Matthew: certainly
Will: the sure
Matthew: like and this is something we talked a lot about with we did an episode on the Lagos incident in Marvel Civil War and stuff like that. Like that’s one of the when a person is saying I have the ability to discern who is or who isn’t a threat, and I will use violence against the people who are a threat, but not those who don’t. The first question has to be what are your biases and how do those biases
Steve: affect
Matthew: who you do and who you don’t see as a threat? You know, and I think that was certainly an issue with the Guardian
Steve: Angels. And and
Matthew: definitely, you know, I I think we always think of Peter Parker as the like you know perfectly woke, open-minded person for whom that doesn’t uh the things don’t factor in. And also most of his villains wear stupid wild the artistic, you know, masks, so they don’t even know what race they are.
Like it’s certainly a thing. Um let me let me shift that one more direction and and kind of ask ask both what you think of this question, but also to what extent it has or hasn’t explored in Spider-Man because think of you two as having much more knowledge of that. You know, he is someone who, like a lot of Batman stuff and a lot and some others is really focused often on street level crime, you know, like the the you know person mugging a little old lady, the people robbing an ATM machine, like stuff like that. Um One of the things that I think has societally changed changed in that regard, um, and and also I’ll just add, like, and also people who are working for a big bad boss, you know, but are doing their like street level, you know, stealing from a chemical truck or whatever. One of the things that I think has changed societally is that we’ve become much more aware of the idea of people don’t do that because they are bad people TM, they do it often because they are in horrible circumstances themselves, caused by societal problems of
Will: you know,
Matthew: like the the person who is mugging someone in order to afford the fix they need for their addiction probably needs rehab a lot more than they need to get beaten up or webbed to a building, you know. The the person who is no one says, oh, you know, I could have this good job as a as a waiter or or a custodian, but instead I’m gonna work for this guy with a freeze ray because that seems like it has really good, you know, um long-term prospects.
Like, maybe have a better jobs program, and like those people have less ability to um recruit people. And like as Paul and I talked about, the most recent um Batman movie actually addressed that in some really interesting ways, and talking about like, are there things Bruce Wayne can do with his money that do a lot more to um fight crime and even Batman literally carrying a torch to lead people to safety uh rather than beating up the people you know who are at the lowest level. It is that something that Spider-Man has ever like thought about or considered in the comics, and is it something you could see him doing or would want to see Peter Parker doing? Because he does, it seems like beat up an awful lot of the lowest level of criminal. Will’s
Steve: flashing
Paui: through
Matthew: 200.
Will: I just quoted it.
Steve: You
Paui: You’re watching the roll of deck
Will: spin. Oh man. Uh like okay. You know, our perspective is with recency bias like the Spider-Man video games. Obviously, it’s gonna be 99% uh faceless random thugs doing random things because it’s a video game and it’s open world, and so you’re gonna explore a lot. In the comics, he doesn’t do he hasn’t hit them that many times. Um it’s typically it’s typically if you have a gun, it’s a dodge web one punch to get to knock you down, web you up, put a put a note, leave. Like it’s it’s it’s not
Matthew: it’s
Will: preventing that punishment.
Steve: Except let me do a let me do a 15-piece combo on you real quick and then hang on
Will: you from your ankles
Steve: Right. They’re a video game definitely you know, uh, makes spectacle violence in an uncomfortable
Will: way. But
Steve: but he is doing to it in a certain extent, and I think this is what Matthew’s getting at, that sort of broken windows policing of you know, we can keep uh we can sort of uh uh keep larger social problems from uh getting worse or or keep them from you know, like breaking through if we um keep the the appearance of things you know solid. Uh if if if the small things never happen, then the big things can’t um take place.
Will: And
Steve: yeah, the publication of Marvel says that that’s overwhelmingly not true, but I think that’s also a publication tribe uh contrivance
Matthew: more than you know a real comment on his morals.
Steve: Um I do agree we’re in a different sort of place with that. Um how we how we consider the connection between low-level crime and larger sort of social problems um is in a different place now than it was um 30 years ago in the you know uh Clinton
Matthew: era crime bill or something like that.
Steve: Um and and uh I I do think that you you see some of that changing in how Spider-Man works, but it’s it it it kind of um Spider-Man does have to work on a small scale because that’s the that’s the question of who has power to what
Matthew: you were getting to before.
Steve: Um and you know, you’ve got um characters with godlike powers running around out there. That’s not this isn’t Spider-Man’s beat, you know. He’s he’s concerned with his neighborhood and what he has uh power over, and he because he’s so dang good Mor morally and so he has such a deep well of just like resilience of throwing himself at problems. He gets drafted into these big crossovers, and he he is the sort of like everyday morality um perspective on big cosmic events, um, but that’s that’s about uh perspective and focusing and and and giving yeah, giving
Matthew: a new viewpoint rather than
Steve: um I think m Marvel really having any sort of thing to say about uh the connection between small ills and large evils, which um I would not trust anything they
Matthew: have to say there
Will: anyway. Yeah, but uh for like the named villains, I would say that Spider-Man frequently tries to understand why they became why they decided to um you know break the laws in the first place and he frequently um appeals to their whatever good side existed before. Like if you were a doctor before you became this bad guy, you took you took the Hippocratic oath at some point, and so he’s going to uh try
Steve: to lizard that version of
Paui: you. Yeah,
Steve: or activity
Will: um and get you in contact with some program that exists to rehabilitate ideally not arc not um uh uh Raven, yeah, Ravenscraft, which is Arkham Asylum in Marvel. Um but like uh uh some sort of rehab program like getting Kirk Connors um a teaching job at a local university, or like he will appeal to that
Matthew: if he can.
Will: There are
Matthew: other characters like
Will: Swarm who is an undead Nazi scientist whose body’s made up of killer bees with black bits.
Steve: Not to be killer bees,
Will: like
Steve: Not to be. I think a good he’s
Paui: not gonna try so much on
Matthew: that.
Steve: Buzz Buzz Faller Yulia.
Matthew: Yeah, but at the home
Steve: is finally about, you know, him
Matthew: realizing that these criminals are gonna get sent back to their deaths, and him wanting to see if he can help them and save them.
Will: And Right. Yeah, I think I think that’s all very true.
Steve: Mm-hmm.
Will: Yeah. Um so yeah, he uh and I feel like across the board that happens more often than not
Matthew: with many titles,
Will: but but way more often in a Spider-Man title than like an Iron Man.
Matthew: I think it’s true. One sort of last thing I’ll just throw into that is that I also think and this this goes to his teenageness. One thing I’ve noticed is that a lot of times when he does get pulled into these much bigger battles, there is a little bit of naivete sometimes about like what is happening and what’s going on, and that that’s not portrayed as a failing of his. It’s more portrayed as a like adult superheroes going to a 15-year-old and saying,’Come join my crusade’ is maybe not the best. And you know, I was thinking of that specifically in
Paui: terms of Spider in terms of Civil War.
Matthew: Yeah, because like if Steve Rogers is the one who figures
Will: out who Spider-Man is and goes to him, do you
Matthew: think there’s any doubt that Peter
Paui: Parker is fighting on their side in Berlin?
Matthew: Like I granted, he does, especially at that end, have more of a bias towards law and order, and I think doesn’t have the cynicism to understand why the Zacovia core to be, but he’s also a really smart guy. He can read the Sakovi chords and realize that pretty problematic. And I think if you know he gets 20 minutes with Steve
Will: Rogers, I think he’d fight on their side in Civil War. I
Paui: I’m not
Steve: sure in the
Will: comics, it was
Steve: the highest profile He
Will: didn’t live in the comics for sure. Um but also uh, only only because it’s nitpicky, and Steve and I have
Matthew: this conversation pretty frequently talking about
Will: intelligent X-Men characters, but like there is a vast difference between like science smart and like Sis.
Matthew: smart uh
Will: polypsy people’s
Matthew: intelligence
Will: and wisdom to use these three terms. that kind of stuff. Yeah.
Steve: Yeah, or or even you know, uh physics smart and uh uh biochem smart, you know. It’s
Will: like
Steve: if if you in the in Marvel, you know, they had uh uh Hank uh Hank McCoy beast uh uh you know Nobel laureate level uh biochemist invented time machines. Like, that’s not the same
Paui: discipline.
Will: Yeah, that’s
Matthew: very fair.
Will: Well, and like uh I have this conversation with our friend John, who was uh owner of a local comic book shop for a few years, uh Avalon. Shout out to Avalon Rip. Um he always he always stood on this hill of uh Nick Fury Sr. Uh should be a contender for most intelligent character. Um he should be on the list because his military and espionage acumen and how much how often
Paui: he gets away When
Will: like he’s he’s an incredibly tactical genius, and he is very military government intelligent, but no one thinks about that when they think of like T’Challa, Hank Pym, Reed Richards, uh Dr. Doom, those are all science mysticism, uh super science engineering uh intelligence, which is an easy um argument. I’m just like this guy invented a time travel machine, this guy invented a way to travel across the universes. This guy invented a machine that could destroy a cosmic being.
Steve: Yeah, there are different things.
Will: this guy. Yeah, right. This guy knows how to win a war.
Matthew: Yeah, like
Will: it’s
Steve: and and and and there’s interpersonal intelligence and there’s moral intelligence, and I think
Matthew: that that’s one of the things that you know
Steve: the um Peter sort of spans as well is um that sort of social or or moral and look he always has to fail is the thing. Peter Parker always has to fail. He also he always has to to be going into things uh with the wrong perspective, do start out doing the wrong thing, realize that he’s done the wrong thing, and then work twice as hard to make it right. Um whereas somebody like uh Captain America has the moral intelligence to go into any situation, he’s right the whole time. He’s never wrong. If there’s if there’s you know, and it it’s it’s the uh even if you disagree with him, even if you disagree,
Matthew: yeah.
Steve: The the the in the world of the story, right? It’s that it’s that no you move idea. Um of that great monologue from I think uh Winter Soldier, or
Paui: with the whole
Steve: world arrayed against you, and they’re
Paui: trying it’s in civil war, and they’re trying to get you to move, and you say no, you move.
Steve: Um
Matthew: I would say there’s
Steve: a fundamentally morally horrific statement, but
Matthew: we did a whole episode about that.
Paui: We did a
Matthew: whole episode about that. And
Steve: yes, yes, yes, yes,
Paui: yes, yes, yes. I think
Matthew: more willing
Steve: to work everybody. But
Matthew: the the moral, I think maybe moral clarity more than moral correctness.
Paui: But what I’m trying to say, and but that’s a type of intelligence too, is that you can go into a complicated situation and know where you land from
Steve: the first blush.
Will: Whereas
Steve: Peter Parker, it’s gonna
Matthew: take him a few tries, but he will get there in the end and he will do
Steve: everything to get it right and to make sure the right thing comes from the end of it.
Matthew: No, that’s a side true.
Paui: And I think to to your point in um in Civil War, that’s Steve Rogers saying that in the comics, and then in the movie they gave the
Will: line to
Paui: uh Agent Carter, and then
Steve: he hears it, and then
Matthew: whatever. But um, but
Paui: yeah,
Steve: the I my point was kind of always like whenever we talk about Civil War, is like
Paui: certainly within the context of the story, like I think he’s right, and that’s the that’s kind of the story is kind of saying that is sort of partly my point, you
Matthew: know. And
Paui: like
Steve: yes,
Paui: the comics
Steve: also I think set up
Paui: this thing as like it’s supposed to be this thing that’s hard to figure out, but then what the story tells you is like no, no, no, Steve’s right, right? And
Steve: it’s like so
Paui: it’s like and and Matthew and I have talked this about this a lot that it’s like there’s you can have your own opinion on the whole idea, right?
Steve: But the story is told in a particular way where it’s not
Paui: really designed to like let you have your opinion, and it’s kind of hard to say. It’s
Steve: like
Paui: it’s like your opinion can be one thing, and then the story’s like, no, no, no, you know, which which sometimes happens in the other way, like in Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and it’s basically like no, no, no, Carly’s wrong. And I’m like, but yeah, exactly. But they built the story, so it’s like
Will: you can’t really argue that she’s not,
Steve: right? You could just argue that’s
Paui: not what
Steve: the story should have been.
Paui: But you know,
Steve: yeah, that
Paui: she’s
Matthew: inconsistent. Yeah, like I want to argue
Paui: with Steve about if there should be a chords.
Matthew: I
Paui: cannot argue that Sakovia chords are garbage. Right, exactly, because they just decided to write it that way.
Steve: Yeah,
Matthew: yeah.
Will: Yeah. Mm.
Matthew: Uh all
Will: right.
Matthew: Um, we’re we’re already way up past an hour, unsurprising, because we are all yappers uh of the highest degree in the best way. Uh so let me kind of give wrap-up time. Um, if anybody has like for each of you, uh if you want to throw a last question out or just a last kind of comment on everything we’ve kind of talked about today.
Paui: I’ll go first because I’ll be quick.
Matthew: Like foot foot foot.
Paui: I think Spider-Man has like really great powers for like not extreme violence, because
Matthew: like he can really
Paui: restrain people physically with his webs, right? And and so I I try to think of like different types of heroes or different types of characters, and like how well suited Punisher, Punisher doesn’t have the
Matthew: tools to just restrain someone so easily.
Paui: He’s got guns. Now that’s a choice, right? He could have been like, hey, Peter Parker, could I get some of those web slingers?
Matthew: You know, and then he can just go restrain people, but he’s got guns, so what he does is shoot people.
Paui: When you have web slingers, it’s like you have the ability to like have this sort of non-lethal force in a way. Um,
Steve: and I I
Paui: think that’s always an interesting way to design a character.
Matthew: Um and I think there’s a lot of you
Paui: know more profound things to say about the character, but it’s just kind of something that I think about from time to time is like you
Matthew: know,
Paui: what are their options, and that’s the power, like he has the
Steve: power
Paui: to not use
Steve: lethal violence,
Matthew: right? I haven’t thought about
Paui: that.
Steve: Which is a type
Paui: of
Matthew: great power. Absolutely.
Paui: Because I always like to point out that
Steve: like Daredevil claims that hitting people in the head with iron rods is a non-lethal power, and I would strongly disagree.
Paui: Right.
Matthew: That’s what the story tells us. Right. And there’s a part of
Paui: it also reminds you.
Will: Football says
Matthew: about 15 feet from a brick wall, and you shoot a web that puts them right up against a brick
Paui: wall,
Matthew: the chance that their head is gonna bang against the ring wall with a high degree of force causing lethal damage is a possibility.
Paui: Fair, but fair.
Matthew: Putting aside that, I agree with
Paui: you that Spider-Man’s power set
Matthew: is one of the best for one of the most believable for when he doesn’t want to kill people.
Paui: For non-lethal comic book violence.
Matthew: Yeah, exactly.
Paui: Exactly.
Steve: Yeah. Uh I’ll go next because I want to give last word to our number one Spider-Man fan here. Um uh I think the other part, uh I know that I guess I’m the person who says this because I said it about Moon Knight. Uh Spider-Man just looks cool. Spider-Man is cool, like it’s it’s fun. It it Spider-Man’s power is fun looking, he’s swinging between buildings, like it’s more it’s somehow cooler
Paui: than flight
Steve: that you’re that you’re just like doing this sort of like elliptical arc, and you’re plotting out your you know, you can kind of you can it it’s like uh you can look at your surroundings and imagine yourself as Spider-Man in a way that is appealing and fun, and he’s got these odd angles, and he’s always like you know, sticking to a wall, he’s got the cool poses, and and he just from the very beginning, Spider-Man’s always look extremely different than any other uh comic book character, um and interacts with space in a different way than any other comic book character.
Like there was a uh in the most recent movie, there’s a scene where he’s you know in the middle of the fight and he just jumps up on the ceiling, he’s hanging upside down, he’s fighting that way. Like it just it always looks cool, and uh and that’s you know, it’s really an aside to the ethical questions, but I think it’s a really big part of what makes Spider-Man Spider-Man, what makes Spider-Man so great.
Matthew: Uh I will go next, because I agree. I want to give last voice on this to um putting more and more pressure onto his shoulders. Spider-Man fan number one, uh, who’s gonna have words of such like incredible grandeur and intelligence that it will make
Steve: the whole podcast make sense to you.
Matthew: But I’ll just say I I
Will: think
Matthew: we’ve discussed really all the reasons why I’ve come to really love Spider-Man, and I I I do think I will say I think Tom Holland is just I I have trouble imagining him playing a character that I don’t love because he’s such a fundamentally
Steve: charismatic person in
Matthew: a way that I don’t think Toby McGuire is. And um, and I did also really love Andrew Garfield as him and and love Malcolm Ronald’s and all that, but that I think I like Spider-Man best when he is in conversation with other heroes. Like I think it’s part of why I love a
Paui: Spider-Verse movie. That’s part
Steve: of why I love
Matthew: the Tom Holland run, is that I really love him being a foil to someone like Tony uh or or Doctor Strange, you know, and I think that’s the
Steve: um
Matthew: I I know there’s you there’s gonna continue to be all sorts of Spider-Man media forever. Um and Miles Morales, I think is more inherently in conversation, but that probably the the more the more Spider-Man talks to other heroes and other powered people, the more I like okay.
Will: Alright, so I was just gonna leave this with a question, but I guess for okay. Um Spider-Man, he’s awesome. I love him. He’s he is such an inspiration. Um the the stories that he has lived, and I can’t even pinpoint one specific writer, so I can confidently say that it is Spider-Man, the character that inspires me, and not the single way that one person wrote him. He um he is he inspires others to be better versions of themselves, and that is to a T the kind of person that I want to
Steve: be.
Will: Um my favorite Spider-Man comic is a one-page short called We’re Calling Him Ben. You can anyone can look it up. It’s you just go to Google, search we’re calling him Ben Spider-Man.
It’s the only thing that comes up. Um, and it’s it’s this it the the long and short of it is he saves someone’s life, the the lady is pregnant, she wants to she wants to know his name um because uh she wants to name her kid after him, and he says Ben in honor of Uncle Ben, and uh, and then it you just have a montage of all these new parents introducing their their children named Ben, and I
Matthew: just imagine a New York where there’s an entire generation of
Will: Ben’s just I want I want the future of that comic and to like go to like preschool and like every single boy in that class is named Ben. Um anyway, that’s my favorite comic. It’s so good.
I highly recommend checking it out. And my question that I want to end this with to every single listener, I want you to think if you had Spider Sense, how would you live your life differently?
Steve: I
Matthew: would never sleep
Will: if you could sense these if you could sense income like imminent incoming, like obviously it’s like, well, okay, does it does it go off if a mosquitoes buy me because it’s gonna steal my steal my blood?
Take the Spider Sense as you understand it from the comics or from the movies or whatever, or from TV shows. Would you be more bold? Would you do more? Would you go, would you try new things more? What kind of life would you live if you had a Spider Sense and only a Spider Sense? It’s a
Matthew: great question,
Will: right? That’s all.
Steve: Awesome. Uh
Matthew: all right, Will, why don’t you kick us off also with uh if people want to find more about all the awesome people who’ve been on this podcast, where can they find you?
Will: Oh man. Um I stream on Twitch, uh Silver Dreamer, S Y L V E R Dreamer. Um I I’ve been doing that for five years now, and it’s been a great ride. Um if you search Silver Dreamer on pretty much every social except for threads, you’ll find me. Um I’m technically on X at Silver Dreamer underscore because somebody beat me to it a long ass time ago. Um that would be the number one place to go. You can also all those links are on silverdreamer.com because I own that. Um
Matthew: worth of
Will: note, silver s y L V E R. Yeah.
Paui: Yep.
Will: S Y L V E R. Um I’m everywhere. Uh I would love to be your new best friend. Uh you’re not going to be my best friend because Steve’s my best friend, but I am happy to be considered your best friend.
Matthew: I appreciate I’m gonna make it things for the record that Will is a good person. And so that statement does not in any way is not actually in any way as terrifying as it all sounded. going to be able to do that.
Will: I’m anywhere and I want to be your friend.
Matthew: I see the great love.
Will: Yeah, yeah. Find me.
Matthew: Or I’ll find E.I. Paul, what can they find you?
Steve: Uh I’m nowhere, and uh I don’t want to be your friend. No, I’m kidding. I’m happy to be your friend, but uh, I don’t know. I’m uh I’m on Blue Sky, I don’t post. Uh, if you want my comic, it’s about spies and insurance companies. Uh, you know, find me on Blue Sky and ask me uh and I’ll send it to you. Uh or maybe I’ll find a way to get let you pay me for it. Uh that’s it. Uh I don’t I don’t do anything else.
Matthew: If you want to give free marketing advice to help someone sell a comic book, you should probably reach out to Steve. Um
Paui: Or or don’t, because he’d probably have figured that out if that was high on his priorities.
Matthew: I mean, yes, yes.
Paui: That’s just That’s my reason. It’s just my guy. You know.
Matthew: I suppose
Paui: sometimes things are deprioritized
Steve: for a reason. Yeah, for sure. I got
Matthew: school
Paui: prioritization.
Matthew: Anyway, Paul.
Paui: Yeah,
Matthew: I’m Zen Badman. You can find me at as Zen Madman a bunch of places and
Paui: at ZenMadman.com where I write about poker and life
Will: and
Paui: buildings blowing up and stuff. Punching a heavy bag. A lot of good stuff.
Matthew: A lot of good stuff. All right.
Steve: Well, thank you all. This has been a fantastic conversation.
Matthew: Uh thank you all for listening. We um I this is a week late, so but I really hope you voted. I really hope you use the power you have in whatever you can uh with responsibility to make the world a little bit of a better place. Hey, the fourth movie. Thank you, man.
Thanks for the invite. Wait, hold on. Okay. gosh. Look at this.
