Working up to Spider Climb

I love finding a Spider Climb spell.

What does that mean? Spider Climb is a spell that’s been in Dungeons & Dragons since some of the game’s earliest editions, and it does just what it sounds like—lets someone climb walls or “whatever a spider can.”

—Yes, I was a Spider-Man comics fan even before that. But this is different.

What gets my juices flowing here as a gamer, reader, and writer is that in D&D you can find a spell like this in some treasure chest. Not just develop it out of the abilities the character’s been using, but simply discover something brand new. One minute that castle wall was too high and smooth to scale, or those gems back in that unstable ruin were out of reach. The next minute, every surface is potentially a highway that gives a new angle on the world.

Think, what would you do if you came across a power like that? What rooftops would you climb to watch a sunset from? What places would you go, or just how would you look at those feet of “empty space” between your head and the ceiling?

It’s one of my favorite things to write: how having some magic or ability, or really any gain, it changes how characters see things. Remember the first time you drove a car, or the first time you went out with friends and realized they had your back no matter what happened? I think it’s fair to say, our world shifts.

And when someone in my kind of story is searching for answers, or trying to trust a new ally, or fighting for their lives, those world shifts mean even more.

Starting in 2022, you’re going to see a few walls climbed.

For Stan Lee

“Stan Lee.”

Two words I thought I’d always be happy to see… until I saw them on the LA Times quick links section, where too many people only appear as obituaries.

Just seven letters. That’s way too few, for someone who wrote more than a hundred Spider-Man comics, another hundred Fantastic Four, a hunded Thor, and created all them plus Iron Man, the X-Men, the Hulk, and practically every other Marvel superhero who’s running the world today. All during the same few dizzying years.

Another short set of words to conjure with are:

“Why don’t you tell the story the way you always wanted? If you don’t like it, you can quit.”

That’s the advice Stan’s wife gave him, that convinced him to give the tired old superhero genre one last try, and put four very real people on a rocket ride.

“The story the way you always wanted”

Stan Lee and his Marvel comics pushed superheroes out of grade school.

There are whole layers of truth in the quip that “Marvel is where humans pretend to be gods. DC is where gods pretend to be human.” But “pretending” is all too accurate for what comics were before the Fantastic Four, and it’s what Stan’s heroes tried to move beyond.

Superman and his imitators said there might be a legend hiding under Clark Kent’s fedora.
Spider-Man said the person who’d gotten a legend’s power still was Peter Parker.

And Peter lived in a world with money problems, a newspaper that called him a menace, and everything a fifteen-year-old should feel about how impossible his life had just become. A kid could dream of being Superman, but Spidey showed us what courage was.

So how much of that was Stan Lee’s work?

Yes, it’s gotten fashionable to argue over how much of those comics were the work of magnificent artists like Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, or say that “With great power comes great responsibility” is just a rephrasing of Franklin Roosevelt or the Bible. Sure, Stan was a master collaborator. But he was the one at the center of those hundreds of comics.

When the Fantastic Four discovered (and got “clobbered” by) the Black Panther, or faced a simply biblical apocalypse in Galactus, that was Stan. When the Green Goblin was revealed as the father of Peter’s best friend Harry, and the memory of his evil self broke free while learning Harry had become a drug addict, that was Stan. (And when the story published even though the Comics Code was afraid to let stories even talk about drugs, that was definitely Stan Lee.)

Stan Lee made it all happen. He created, he wrote, and he guided the essentials of it all. Even the next steps of comic evolution came out of the Marvel shop he led: Frank Miller made Daredevil famous before moving on to The Dark Knight Returns, and Chris Claremont was essentially the next-generation Stan in how his X-Men were a game-changing volume of superhero excitement that added even deeper levels. (Those two and Britain’s Alan Moore at DC would be the key influences in bringing comics from adolescence to their adulthood.) And it was sheer faith in that work that made Marvel, even on the edge of bankruptcy, dare to form its own movie studio and interest the world in some “B-team” hero in an iron suit.

But Stan was always more than his stories to us.

“If you don’t like it, you can quit”

To pick up a Marvel comic was to shake hands with Stan himself. That’s how it felt, from the playful credits on the splash page (Written by: “Smilin’” Stan Lee, Art by “Jazzy” Johnny Romita) to the announcements pages in the middle and the letters at the end where Stan might award the coveted “No-Prize.” (As in, they kept changing their minds about what it was for, so there’s still No real answer about it.)

Stan was a carnival barker, a traffic manager, and a friend to all of us who read it. When the movies began, it was inevitable that he’d have his cameos.

If there’s a publicist on the planet who hasn’t studied how Stan Lee made the community of comics fun, they’re cheating themselves.

And it all worked, because of Stan himself. Over all those hundreds of stories and thousands of hours of columns, interviews, public appearances, and all the rest, one thing always shone through: Stan Lee honestly loved what his stories could be, and he loved the people who shared them. Stan “the Man” was always Stan the Fan.

He might be a model for media people everywhere, but he’s even more of a hero for all of us quiet writers. In this business we spend most of our time holed up trying to create something a little as memorable as Stan has (or at least write as fast). So our most challenging moments can be when we have to look up and reach out to readers—or worse yet, stand in front of them.

Stan made it look easy, in print or live. Simply because he cared. That’s the excitement and the connection we all need, both as fans and when we step forward to share our own take on the same thrills. We’re all here because we care about the story, and that’s all we need to take our turn.

And now he’s gone.

Across The Hall

A piece like this should end with a memory of meeting Stan himself… but I don’t quite have one.

Instead, there was my one visit to ComiCon. Huge crowds, posters and costumes all around, and me and a couple of friends trying to make some noise in a booth for our books.

Then there’s this ripple through the crowd. Heads turning, people pressing in. I weave through the aisle enough to get a look—

Oh. I know that face. He was walking slowly through the throng, until he settled in at a carefully-prepared booth.

He wasn’t giving a speech, just doing his best to field all the questions that the people threw at him. The crowds were too thick, and I had my own booth to get back to. And I couldn’t think of much I might have said to him except simply “Thank you.”

So I walked away.

That’s where regrets come from.

Image by Jun Chui Illustration

Photo by Gage Skidmore

Why Wonder Woman is finally the Strongest Superhero (too)

So starting this week Wonder Woman is the ultimate superhero. We should have seen it coming.

Not just the movie’s pedigree; was it really a surprise that an Oscar-winning director like Patty Jenkins could deliver where the flashy but erratic Zack Snyder had misfired? Not only that there’s a big-screen superhero who looks like that “other” half of the potential audience.

I’ve got an observation of my own.

Small Wonder

Diana’s always had a rough time in the comics. More than one fan calls her the top-flight hero we never really knew.

Yes, everyone’s heard of her, but for what? DC Comics likes to point out that she’s the only female superhero to be in continuous publication since the 40s… when a lasso of truth would bring out how William Marston’s contract for creating her said that he’d regain the rights if she went out of print. They definitely don’t mention some of the sad, silly eras Diana has had to go through, like giving up her powers until Gloria Steinem rescued her.

Or how in the last ten years alone, both Joss Whedon (Buffy and The Avengers) and David E. Kelly tried and failed to keep Wonder Woman projects alive.

Even as a proper superhero, who’s her arch-enemy—the Cheetah, just a woman who jumps around swinging claws? Dr. Psycho (the name about sums that one up)? Out of seventy-six years (until the last week), point to a really lasting Wonder Woman story arc, her Dark Phoenix or Long Halloween.

And Steve Trevor. Just… why?

She’s a magnificent character. She’s had some great moments over the years. (Say, telling Batman “No, I said I cannot allow it.” Or how George Perez had her lasso defeat Ares by showing him he didn’t dare trigger a Final War.) But as an A-lister, Wonder Woman was always better known for just being there as The Super Hero-Ine among the boys and for what that meant she could do, more than for she has done.

What bothers me most is the most primal thing about a superhero, at least for one of the early DCs that claim to have staked out their place first. That is, what are her powers… with the emphasis on just hers?

It matters, because that core Justice League around her have some of the best abilities ever imagined, taken up to a level no other story even tries to match. The Flash is the Fastest Man Alive. Batman is the ultimate trickster. Green Lantern has the greatest ranged weapon, or the best “power” superpower, of all. And Superman is the incarnation of raw strength. Just try to picture a gathering of great heroes without those four assets at the top of the list.

And Wonder Woman is strong, like Superman. She deflects bullets, like Superman—but with her bracelets, right? She flies, like… there have been days I’ve wished they’d say Supergirl had crashed on Paradise Island and get it over with.

(Her outfit doesn’t help either. Where the others have a distinct solid red or being named for green or say “does it come in black,” she’s got Supes’s colors too, but mixed up with an American flag. And of course there’s never been as much of it as the boys had on.)

I don’t mean to tear the character down. The problem is that over the years she’s never been built up, the way the more accepted heroes have.

Superheroes rarely start out with a high-quality story; to earn respect they need years of good adventures (okay, mixed in with some awful ones that we get selective memory about). Even their powers tend to evolve over that time, until they pretend they were always that well positioned. Spiderman didn’t start out with spider-sense or even his signature agility; Stan Lee just drifted into that is his strongest power because it was the most suspenseful way for Spidey to fight. Superman didn’t fly, once.

But over the years, nobody’s ever thought Wonder Woman needed a niche of powers that were hers; as long as they could point to that lasso as one bit of variety, they were free to let her copy more and more of Superman. (Her costume too; Flash and Lantern had theirs redesigned a few times to reach the current perfection, but Wonder Woman doesn’t need to look unique, right?)

But now that she’s got a new spotlight, let’s take a second look at where she stands.

A Place in the Pantheon

If Superman is the biggest, the strongest, of the Justice League (which of course outpower any other superhero anywhere), he’s also considered a bit slow and awkward. Sure he’s got his own super-speed, but he’s still got a lack of aggression and training. He’s the tank or the battleship, the clumsy knight in full armor, the bulky battleaxe.

Of course Batman is the trickster, but he’s also got the least actual power. (At least, if he weren’t amped up so many favorite stories and fan love to demand he get the best moments.) He’s the recon plane, the spy you forget you sent out until he shows up in your tent with the enemy plans, the dagger.

The Flash? All speed and only so much else, like a fighter plane or light horseman, the rapier.

Green Lantern? Artillery, the bow. (Too bad Green Arrow’s a separate character; a cosmic bow would have been so much cooler than a glowing ring.)

And there’s no specialty left for Wonder Woman.

Because she’s got them all.

Maybe not as sneaky as Batman, but she’s a true strategist and trained warrior. Fast, and with her own weapons too. And strong… DC wasted a whole movie seeing if Batman could beat Superman, but with her skills and near-equal strength Wonder Woman should take the blue boy apart.

(And that’s without the lasso that brings up his vulnerability to magic!)

Wonder Woman might be the perfect balance, the center and the leader of the whole Justice League. The sword (she likes swords), of the true hero.

It’s just a thought, from looking at the iconology.

That and, right now she deserves to lead.

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Photo by earldan