‘Amazing Spider-Man’ Retcons Peter Parker’s Childhood, Reveals Bookworm Was Actually A Beer-Stealing Troublemaker
Ask practically anyone what they know about the character of Spider-Man, and after various notes about his powers (and maybe a couple mentions of his and MJ’s live-action ‘upside-down-in-the-rain kiss’), a given respondee is likely to mention something about how before getting his powers, Peter Parker was a bookish and angry young man who often found himself the target of his classmates’ constant bullying.
And in a testament to the reach of pop-culture, they would be absolutely right in their recollection – that is, unless you were to ask them this question in post-Amazing Spider-Man Vol. 7 #2 world.
Spin the wheel on a Spider-Man story, from any medium, and odds are good that at some point, it will make mention of the hero’s less-than-fun childhood.
In his first ever appearance in Amazing Fantasy Vol. 1 #15, the second word bubble of the issue sees Flash Thompson replying to the proposal that he and his friends invite Peter to an upcoming dance with the dismissive declaration, “Are you kiddin’? That bookworm wouldn’t know a cha-cha from a waltz!”, all of which is followed by a brief montage revealing just how little his Midtown High peers really think of him.
Likewise, despite being slightly older in Spider-Man: The Animated Series, the show’s second episode sees Peter Parker facing the abuse of Flash Thompson, who during a charity ball for the Hardy Foundation dons a Spider-Man costume and attempts to fall back on old habits and physically intimidate his former classmate into turning down the attentions of his date, Felicia Hardy.
Same thing in the first issue of the original Ultimate Spider-Man run: In his very first scene, Peter is shown being an easy and accepted target for bullying – which in this case takes the form of a french fry barrage – by Midtown High’s upper hierarchy.
Speaking of Sam Raimi’s first Spider-Man film, as mentioned above, this particularly seminal chapter in the wall-crawler’s media history introduced mainstream audiences to its titular protagonist by showing him being desperately chasing to catch his school bus as another student chooses to laugh at him instead of getting the driver’s attention.
During the events of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, while breaking into Midtown High to retrieve a thumb drive containing the only remaining records of their old high school-era science fair project, Peter questions Harry Osborne, “Why’d you bring us here? We both HATED high school,” to which his friend replies, “Remember that time Flash and his buddies cornered me and broke my laptop?”
The various mentions of Peter’s childhood isolation could make up an entire Wikipedia entry on their own, but suffice to say, this aspect of his younger years has been almost as definitive aspect of his character as Uncle Ben’s iconic proverb.
As such, readers who picked up the most recent issue of Amazing Spider-Man would be forgiven for being taken aback by the reveal that, far from a bookish nerd with self-esteem issues, the eventual wall-crawler was actually a bonafide troublemaker.
Last issue, writer Joe Kelly, artist Pepe Larraz, and colorist Marte Gracia introduced the new character Brian Nehrid, one of Peter’s rare childhood friends who ends up connecting him with his latest job at Rand Enterprises, itself a subsidiary of Iron Fist Danny Rand’s larger business holdings.
Though Nehrid is only given a very brief amount of page time before a rampaging Rhino steals Peter’s attention away, the time they do spend together is littered with references to the two having a history of troublemaking, including mentions of a massive stink bomb prank and a flashback to a young Peter smiling after having gotten in a physical fight.
Their shared penchant for delinquency would eventually be outright confirmed with this week’s issue, wherein Peter’s mind is shown drifting back to memories of him and Brian sneaking away to get a peek at a nudie mag:
Running from the cops after being caught stealing beer and snacks from a local bodega:
And, after being arrested for said shoplifting incident, telling off Uncle Ben and Aunt May when they come to pick him up and fleeing to raise more hell with Brian and another as-of-yet-unidentified member of their ‘Freaktastic Four’ friend group.
Now, in the interest of intellectual honesty, it should be noted that during both issues, Spider-Man is confirmed to be experiencing extremely intense hallucinations, as caused by a cocktail of toxins administered to him by Hobgoblin (Roderick Kingsley) and his Deadpool-hybrid-clone Itsy-Bitsy (check out Spider-Man/Deadpool Vol. 1 for her whole deal) and intended to make him question his sanity.
And while some may speculate that his memories of Brian are part of these hallucinations, this notion is countered by the simple fact that not only does the entirety of Peter’s initial reunion with his childhood friend, including his ‘fight flashback’, happen before Itsy-Bitsy is confirmed to have delivered the toxins herself, but Aunt May is shown just pages before their meeting having an explicitly cold reaction to the very mention of his name, thus establishing that her nephew’s troubled history did in fact happen.
Further, as is common with comic books in particular, there does exist the good possibility that Kelly has a genuine narrative ‘reveal’, no matter how good or bad, regarding Peter’s new history – and should that happen, we’ll do our best to update this article with that information.
However, at current, it appears that despite the widespread hopes that previous writer Zeb Wells’ exit from the book would herald a better era of storytelling for the web-crawler, Marvel Comics is instead sticking to their guns and doing all they can to run roughshod all over Spider-Man’s character in service of cheap drama.
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