Five Days To Year's End, Spider-Man's Dead.

That is not a typo; I caught the article on Yahoo! yesterday that the issue of The Amazing Spider-Man which debuted yesterday on newsstands (and is probably gone by now). I was about to but didn't go into prayer for the family of Peter Parker – Spider-Man's true identity – for I remembered he was a fictional character from the get go, unlike an incident twelve years ago when I read the Star Wars novel Vector Prime and learned of Chewbacca's untimely demise. It did take a moon crashing into him on a planet's surface as he was evacuating as many people aboard the Millennium Falcon as he could, so it was quite the hero's death. But it's still death. And I prayed for Chewbacca's family after I read that passage, I SO identified with the character, and a couple of minutes later caught myself.

And now to Spider-Man – unlike novels that expand on an already established fictional universe, those who die in comic books typically don't stay dead. In fact, it's become a truism at Marvel Comics where Spider-Man's from and throughout comics in general that the only ones who stay dead are Peter Parker's Uncle Ben and Captain America's World War II partner Bucky. And recently the second one isn't true; seven years ago Bucky was brought back as an assassin the Soviets would use every decade or so when the USSR was still a serious player in geopolitics. But Uncle Ben … is always dead. As you'll see in this essay I wrote to win a copy of The Amazing Spider-Man #700 – and if I don't win it because it appears here too, heck with it – Peter Parker could not have been Spider-Man (or I think as effective as Spider-Man as he has been/had been) without this tragedy. So when I answered why I should have a free copy, I responded:

Because it's just so ... heart-stopping. For those alive before Spider-Man debuted in '62, he's the ultimate hero, the Everyman who could just as easily be you (or have been you) as a teenager and young adult. For those alive after he'd appeared and cemented pop icon status, Spider-Man's STILL the ultimate hero, the Everyman you could imagine yourself being, the socially awkward geek (this was me in the 70s and 80s when I grew up, still is to a degree) who you could imagine was swinging outside your window.

Not nearly all powerful like Superman or the Hulk, not oozing nobility like Captain America, not rich like Batman, not a technogeek like Iron Man (but smart enough as nobody's really duplicated his webbing), but he's the one who never gives up, never stops, who as I remembering reading in one story maintained being Spider-Man because he owed it to himself. YOU thought I was going to say "With great power comes great responsibility" didn't you?

But he's probably the first hero anywhere to articulate that, and no matter who or what gets retconned or eliminated or altered or added to a character's backstory, the one signature event that DOESN'T (in Marvel Comics anyway) is Spider-Man's reason for being a superhero -- Uncle Ben is still dead, still shot by that burglar whom Spider-Man didn't stop, and there's still Spider-Man, whoever wears the costume and spins the webs. Part of me's sad it won't be Peter Parker any more -- again, because he's Everyman as well as Spider-Man -- but I will work on relating to someone else.

I just need, would like in the case of Peter Parker THE Amazing Spider-Man, closure. #700 rocks!