Comic Book Taboos
08.08.05
I was going to try to post a picture of my Mustang convertible today. (*sniff* *sniff*) Unfortunately, I can't get the file to load. So instead I figured I'd share a bit of Scryptic Tom-Foolery.
We occasionally come up with little challenges for each other on the Scryptic discussion boards. Recently, Jason Rodriguez (of Hoarse & Buggy fame) proposed the following:
Bring back Uncle Ben in such a way that it minimizes the damage done to your name and the Spider-Man franchise.
Even if you've never read a Spider-Man comic book, you probably know who Uncle Ben is. He's the guy in the movie who tells Peter that "With great power must always come great responsibility."
And then dies.
So his death is pretty important, and undoing his death is a pretty big deal. So I wanted to come up with a way to bring him back that wouldn't seem COMPLETELY ridiculous and wouldn't take away from the importance of Ben's death.
I came up with two versions. Below you'll find the second version. If you're not a comic book reader, the premise may strike you as nonsensical, but trust me... It makes perfect sense in a distinctly Marvel Comics sort of way:
One day, Ben Parker wakes up from his coma. "What?" you say. "Since when has Ben Parker been in a coma?" Well, that's what Peter would like to know too.
After some investigation--spread out over three or four issues and hitting all the usual suspects: Reed, Strange, Xavier--it turns out that there was some crazy cosmic event on the other side of the universe that subtly rewrote history. (Butterfly in China and all that.) Peter is aware of the change as are several other heroes, because of the sheer number of times they've been through these cosmic events.
There might be a few other weird events tied to this too. Some new threats and some related twists and turns.
But the bottom line is that Ben is back. Really back. And Peter is conflicted. The universe has "given him one for free" and for Peter Parker, nothing is free. On the one hand, he's waiting for the other shoe to drop. On the other, he's wondering if this means that Ben might have been wrong.
Must great responsibility ALWAYS come with great power? Or does great power ultimately afford a certain amount of irresponsibility? Of freedom?
In the end, Ben is back for good, and Peter is tortured because he knows that eventually the universe is going to take him away again. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but eventually. And Peter doesn't know if he can handle it a second time.
And that is how the universe gets back at Peter Parker. Because sometimes the guilt and the doubt and the fear are all worse than the certainty of death.
And, uh, Aunt May has moved on, and Uncle Ben has trouble living up to Peter's expectations.
And I still win an Eisner.
Well, it's not genius, but I think it does the job okay.
Read the entire thread, including my first stab at a solution, here.