If you’ve seen the recent Amazing Spider-Man movie, then you know that during the film, Andrew Garfield’s Peter Parker could not stop taking his mask off. It was like a compulsive habit or something. It actually irritated me in the film quite a bit. Fortunately, in the comic book series, The Amazing Spider-Man, Peter is a little bit less inclined to take his mask off for every person he saves, kisses, knows, walks by, etc.
“I was going to keep the mask on more often, but it gives me such a bad case of mask hair.”
In fact, lately in the comics, I’ve noticed that Peter seems to have the opposite problem. Spider-Man never takes his mask off anymore, or at least he rarely does. And what I mean by that is that for the past few story arcs, we only get to see Peter’s life as Spider-Man; the writers have stopped showing us the personal life of Peter Parker.
I just finished reading the story arc “No Turning Back” and before that “Ends of the Earth,” the former about the return of the Lizard and the latter about Spider-Man, Silver Sable, and Black Widow saving the world from Doc Ock and the Sinister Six (or so they call themselves). And in both story arcs, spanning ten issues of ASM, we see very little of Peter Parker living his day-to-day life and about 95% (rough estimate) of these ten issues is Peter as Spidey saving the world ad nauseum.
This is disheartening for me because one of the things that I love about Spider-Man is that he is one of the few Marvel characters who is still trying to lead a normal life. He tries to keep his secret identity and keep his job and keep a girlfriend (sometimes more successful than others) while moonlighting as our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man; he hasn’t just cast aside the life of Parker and donned the red-and-blues full time. I like reading about Peter Parker. It’s a nice break from the fighting and explosions to see Peter try to woo Carli Cooper (his ex girlfriend who I loved!) or get in an argument with his cantankerous roommate (former roommate Michelle Rodriguez).
I always thought the ups and downs of Peter’s love life, his difficulty with his work and keeping a job, and friendships with guys like Harry Osborn were integral to many of the great stories in the Spider-Man world. It’s one of the things that made Spidey unique and fun to read. I hope this trend does not continue. Maybe it doesn’t; I have not read the 50th anniversary issue ASM #692 yet and maybe that has a lot more Peter Parker. Anyways, in the comic book world of Spider-Man, it’s time for Peter Parker to take the mask off… at least for some of the time. And if we’re lucky, maybe we’ll see a lot more of Carli again…
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