Results of Ruminations

When I talked about dual identities a while ago, I focused on the Batman and a little on the Hulk. I had originally planned on incorporating an analysis of how Peter Parker and Spider-Man intersect as identities, but the essay was going too long by that point. I cut the stuff--which, for me, means highlighting the text and pressing Delete . So whatever I was thinking about apropos of Peter/Spidey, it's gone now. However, I'm at the precipice of beginning another school year  and I've been feeling incipient stirrings of what I can only assume is the (apparently) real phenomenon of a mid-life crisis. My parents were pretty steady, stay-the-course kind of parents, so I don't have a lot of up-close context for these feelings, but I've been struggling a lot with what I understand of myself, my goals, my ambitions, my dreams, and my realities. One of the things that I've always used as part of my identity, with varying degrees of severity, is my obsession with Spid...

Yes, you should go see the movie. Spoiler: He doesn't wear those headphones with that jacket. ( Source ) Seeing the Spider When I was, I don't know, eight or nine, I owned a Spider-Man comic (I believe it was Amazing Spider-Man 361 or 362 ) that had exciting news in it: a Spider-Man movie would be released soon. The next bit of news I heard about Marvel was that it was going bankrupt. (For more details, this article walks you through the big parts.) I was worried that my favorite comic book superhero would never get a chance to be on the silver screen--and, even worse, that his parent company might go under. Fortunately, Marvel pulled through. Eventually, we got the Sam Raimi Spider-Man  and its two sequels, and though the third was easily the weakest entry, all of them represented a unified vision and tone for the franchise (though, yeah, the third one is atonal, but...well, moving on). When I first saw Spider-Man , I was about two months out from starting my mi...

Self-realization happens slowly. I have dim memories of being five-or-thereabouts and raising my arms in exultant joy that I was eating pancakes for dinner. I remember seeing myself in the dark reflection of the sliding glass door that led to the backyard of the Provo home that I had assumed we would live in until I died. Now that I see my second son's mannerisms, I believe that I tilted my head to one side the way he does, and I don't know if my memory is incorrect or not. One of the things that I dreamed of becoming some day was Spider-Man. I read novels about him, bought comics on occasion, and watched the '90s cartoon show fanatically. My own brown (ish) hair, white skin, and almost-kind-of-like-his body type only propelled me further into the fandom. If I married a redhead, I'd like to think it wasn't some vestigial sublimation of a too-obsessive childhood desire and that I was attracted to my future wife for other, more significant reasons. (Because I did, i...

A couple of years ago, Salt Lake City developed a hankering for some Comic Con (or ComiCon), ushering in a new wave of geek ephemera and focus on fandom. While my wife and I missed the first one or two, we decided to attend one of the cons when some of the Lord of the Rings  actors (particularly Sean Astin) showed up for the experience. Gayle put together a dress that looked like Arwyn from The Return of the King  and I wore some Hogwarts robes. We got a picture with Sean and generally had a good time. Since then, we've attended each convention, always going in costume. We've worn steampunk, Hogwarts, Cinderella and Fairy Godmother, and Queen Elizabeth with her Shakespeare. The boys sometimes come, wearing superhero costumes, dressing as Leonardo da Vinci, and even dressing up as dinosaurs. In short, we go and we participate and we enjoy the experience. Now feeling fairly familiar with how a convention works--how much there is to see and enjoy, how much time one is standin...

When I was in sixth grade, a new cartoon aired on FOX Kids. It was simply called Spider-Man . I loved this show. Because I was in sixth grade when it came out, my birthday was geared toward a plethora of Spider-Man related merchandise. When I finally got to my big day, I was delighted that I got so many Spider-Man toys. I got the Lizard (a.k.a. Curt Conners, a biologist who lost his right arm--in the Vietnam war in the comics, but for undisclosed reasons in the TV show--and tried to regrow it by fusing his own DNA with reptile DNA), Kraven the Hunter, and a Peter Parker figure. Peter Parker. Complete with camera accessory! Source .  I never got the Scorpion character (bottom left), but the others all ended up in my collection. Source . When I unwrapped Kraven--likely the last one that I received for my birthday--my mom said, noting the slight look of disappointment on my face, "It's good to have some villains for Spider-Man to fight!" This is a true stat...

I used to read a lot more than I do now, I think. Or, at least, I used to finish the books I got. When I was a kid, getting a new book was a fairly exciting prospect. There used to be a place called Media Play that would sell books, CDs, VHS (and, later, DVDs), movie posters, toys, and other '90s ephemera. Man, look at the colors. They're almost as vibrant as the pants I wore back then.  The closest Media Play to me was in south Orem, about fifteen minutes away, depending on the speed of my 1987 Chrysler LeBaron. But before I could drive, it was one of my primary destinations whenever I got my allowance. I remember the first time I saw a Spider-Man novel, a "Spectacular New Novel", according to the blurb at the top of the dust jacket. It was Spider-Man: The Venom Factor  by Diane Duane. I loved  this book. According to this site , it was published in 1994. I remember being shocked at the cover--it intrigued me (because it had Spider-Man on it), but I thou...