My Thoughts on Amazing Spider-Man #655 (spoilers)
Like all forms of storytelling, death is common theme in comic books. Yet, given how often death is used in events, or when certain characters manage to cheat it, death in comics has become trivialized to the point of being rendered meaningless. The question then becomes how, in a fictional universe where resurrection is commonplace while the rest become cannon fodder, does one tackle such a subject that all of us must face and cannot escape from? For Amazing Spider-Man #655, writer Dan Slott and illustrator Marcos Martin have chosen to approach this subject by not so much focusing on the person who died, but how a person’s death can affect those who are still left among the living.
It begins with both J. Jonah Jameson and Peter Parker preparing for and then attending the funeral of Jonah’s wife, Marla, in which for 10 pages, in which we get no dialogue, sound effects, or narrative captions. Thanks to Marcos Martin’s use of composition and character rendering, along with Muntsa Vicente’s use of coloring, we understand exactly what the various characters are going through far more effectively than any words would have conveyed. Jonah’s expression, or lack thereof, remains the same throughout in sharp contrast to his usual bombastic self. We see, therefore, in spite of his exhaustion and grief, attempting to maintain a sense of quiet dignity and solitary strength throughout. By contrast, Peter can barely hold his guilt in check, and despite being the company of his family and friends, we see Peter is just as isolated, if not more so, than Jonah is, unable to reach out to the people he cares the most, much less Jonah himself.
But if we thought these silent panels were a excellent use of sequential art to tell a story, it’s nothing compared to what’s in store next as the second half ventures into an extended nightmare sequence in which Peter is confronted by all the “ghosts” of those he has ever known who have died. Martin pulls out all the stops in presenting us with some of the most surreal and provocative imagery this side of Steve Ditko, with Vicente’s colors becoming garish and vivid. Almost every page has something which burns into one’s brain, from the Burglar running past Spidey in a series of panels that spiral towards an Uncle Ben with a bloody gunshot wound, the Escheresque splash-page of the city populated by all of Peter’s deceased loved ones, Gwen standing erect with a snapped and twisted neck, and various villains--giant and emaciated--rising from the grave while a floating and implied Green Goblin looks on and laughs. There’s also another confrontation with the Burglar that leads to one of the more gruesome and shocking climaxes in recent memory which also speaks volumes about Peter‘s nature. It’s no exaggeration to say that Marcos Martin has outdone himself and has achieved a new level in his craft.
This section also allows for the return of the word balloons and caption, and thus Slott uses this opportunity to examine Peter’s character as it pertains to his feelings on death and manages to act as a commentary on the superhero genre as a whole. It dares to ask us if Peter really loved the people whose lives were so tragically cut short, then why doesn’t he kill the villains who have taken their lives, if only to prevent more deaths from happening? And if does care about those who have died under his watch, why does he remember some deaths and not others? Granted, these are questions and issues Spidey--and other heroes--have tackled and dealt with numerous times before. Heck, Peter feeling guilty over being unable to save a life he believes he could have otherwise have saved is practically his stock and trade. Yet by tying it into Peter’s past experiences, his origins, his fears, and his guilt, along with Martin’s illustrations, Slott get to the heart of just who Peter Parker is, not just as a hero, but also as a man. By the time Peter’s dream is over, and he vows that no one else will die under his watch, we hope that he can succeed, even though we know--and are all too shortly reminded of when being introduced to the villain Massacre--what an impossible vow this is for Peter to keep.
And it’s this vow in particular that brings up one grating nitpick--wasn’t this promise of making sure “no one died” something Peter was already committed to doing in the first place? Wasn’t this a given when he choose to use powers responsibly as a hero in honor of his murdered uncle? It’s not like Peter has been deliberately murdering innocent people or letting them perish through willful negligence prior to this (heck, the Kid Who Collected Spider-Man appears as one of the dead Spidey‘s dream, and he died of cancer), so all he’s really accomplishing with this promise is beating himself up over something he can’t control and making his life that much harder. Although, maybe this is the point, and that Peter’s attempt to live up to this promise will be the first step of his inevitable collapse after reaching the heights of “Big Time.”
Nevertheless, this is an issue worth reading. While it is true that this story revolves around the death of a character who, despite being Jonah’s wife, was still a relative unknown, this could be a story about any death that has ever haunted Peter since the beginning of the series. If Spider-Man is the “hero who could be you,” then his dream of the dead is our dream, haunted by the unshakable feeling that, while the people we loved had lived, we might have done more for them to show them how much we cared.