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The Unbearable Heaviness of Being Spiderman
The Webbed Crusader as a study in loss and grief.
Warning: The following contains spoilers for Spiderman: No Way Home.
There are two main reasons people love the comic book superhero Spiderman. The first is his age. He’s one of the few major heroes that’s still a kid. Peter Parker is a boy in his late teens and that’s both a good thing and a bad thing. The good is that there is still an innocence about him as he experiences not just his newfound powers, but his first experiences leading to adulthood. The bad side is that with youth can come impetuousness as well as cockiness and no matter the story, Spiderman is sometimes sure of himself to his detriment and the detriment of others. His arrogance has a price that is sometimes paid for in blood.
That leads to the second reason people identify with Spiderman: he is a character that has experienced grief and loss at an early age. The main lore is that he is an orphan who was taken in by his Uncle Ben and Aunt May. Shortly after he gains his powers, his Uncle Ben is killed by a thief that Peter Parker as Spiderman lets getaway. In some versions of Spiderman, Peter loses his girlfriend, Gwen Stacy, after failing to save her from a fall. He lives with a lot of loss in his life and has to learn what everyone must learn at some point: how to…
