Best of this Week: Spider-Man Life Story #6: The ‘10s – Chip Zdarsky, Mark Bagley, Drew Hennessy, Frank D’Armata and Travis Lanham
All good things must come to an end. That’s the main theme of this final issue of Chip Zdarsky and Mark Bagley’s phenomenal Life Story miniseries as it recounts the last adventure that Spider-Man goes on as he leaves the world free and safe in the capable hands of the new generation of superheroes.
Comic books are cyclical. For some heroes, you get a short run, 6-12 issues and then they disappear for years until they’re needed again for some big event. For the bigger heroes, there are ongoing series that last years upon years with some BIG changes that inevitably get reversed for the sake of reestablishing the status quo. It’s understandable, recognizable names draw big money, but there’s only so many times you can see a hero fight a particular villain before it becomes trite and meaningless.
The same goes for their daily lives as well. Peter Parker has been stuck as a meandering young adult for the better part of a decade since the events of One More Day and he hasn’t been allowed to grow past his immaturity, save for the few times when the situations have become desperate and dire. Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows tried to posit a family man Peter Parker in an alternate universe, but for the most part he came off as just regular Peter with a kid to banter off of. Nick Spencer and Tom Taylor are doing their best in their respective Spider-Man series to get Spider-Man back to a position where things actively change for him, but Chip Zdarsky has gone the extra mile.
The Spider-Man Life Story miniseries goes through Peter’s life if he actually aged with the decades that all of his comics took place in. He goes through the struggles of being an American citizen straddling the fence during Vietnam, the aftermath boiling to a superhuman civil war, a better Clone Saga of the 90s, Aunt May’s death, the start of the information age and finally having children and watching them grow up. Peter Parker is allowed to grow old, change with the times. He sees old friends die, new heroes emerge, give his take on current events of the time and it’s all been amazing.
I know I mentioned that fighting the same villains over and over can seem trite and meaningless, but that’s only when they’re done for the sake of being done. In this fantastic take on the Superior Spider-Man story, Peter and Otto have their absolute final confrontation with one another over the body and soul of the young Miles Morales. Peter and Miles are shot into space to stop some sort of satellite created by Doctor Doom that allowed him to fill the power vacuum left by Captain America and Iron Man’s Civil War. As the two explore, Peter is attacked by Kraven wearing the Venom symbiote, but he dispatches the villain easily and it’s revealed that the suit was just piloting a are skeleton.
Miles questions how it was possible and Peter replies that all of his old enemies are dead and rightfully accuses Miles of being Otto Octavius, Doctor Octopus. Otto reveals his scheme, but instead of fighting Pete physically, he chooses instead to go into the mindscape and have a battle of the intellect as they were always destined to do.
Bagey pulls out all of his stops as he draws Spider-Man costumes from the various decades as well as beautifully illustrates some of the best of Spider-Man’s rogues gallery as they battle for supremacy. Set against a white background, the characters shine with their vibrant colors, dynamic posing and Bagley’s ever amazing facial expressions. I have never seen Otto look so menacingly mad and subsequently, once Peter defeats him, absolutely crushed.
Using the only person that Peter knew Otto cared about, Aunt May, she’s able to convince Otto to let go of his hatred and rage. She tells him to let Miles live his life, to move on. I really felt this and inside, it feels like Zdarsky is also telling us that sometimes we have to let the status quo go. Spider-Man has been around for longer than some of us have been alive and will be long after most of us are gone. Do we really want him to be the same mid-20s to early 30s hero that we knew, or do we want to spend our time with someone new? Miles Morales is a little more than ten years old, he’s fairly young as a character and I wholeheartedly believe that he can carry on the Spider-Man name on his own.
As the satellite starts to collapse and there’s only one escape pod left, Peter chooses to save Miles and sacrifice himself so that the future can flourish in peace due to his heroism. It’s a true heroes death and something that we almost never see (and likely never will), but if this were a true moment of closure, then I would be happy with it. Peter Parker is known for having more guilt than a Catholic who hasn’t been to Mass for a month (or Daredevil) and as he finally closes his eyes for the final time, he has a nice conversation with Mary Jane and recounts his recurring dream of the day he truly learned about power and responsibility. The last panel is his guilt finally being washed away.
If there is one series I would recommend anyone read, hands down, without a doubt it would be this one. Chip Zdarsky has a strange yet beautiful understanding of how to tell a story with characters that some of us know better than our own family members. Mark Bagley has the art skills to make us care about them immensely as well. Putting these two together as well as their amazing inker in Andrew Hennessy and colorist in Frank D’Armata, they sell you on each decade presented and how Peter changes throughout.
Spider-Man isn’t the same plucky youth we met in the 1960s. By the end of his story, he’s led a full life full of adventure and his time has been well spent making sure that it was a future worth living in. Isn’t that something that we all can only dream of?
Ty Talks Comics 