#steve rude
Batman oil painting by Steve Rude.
Two paintings of James T. Kirk by comics great Steve Rude. They’re available on his site for $5000 and $2500, respectively.
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hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger:
The above is from Spider-Man: Lifeline #3
For context, everyone is after an ancient stone tablet (the same one from the classic Stan Lee storyline) that will grant it’s user immense power even over life and death.
When creating the formula to imbue someone with this power Peter considers how the power could be used to bring back Uncle Ben, Captain Stacy and Gwen. When Hammerhead (temporarily) obtains this power he offers Spidey the chance to restore them to life.
What I want to talk about is who Spidey and Hammerhead don’t mention, namely Mary Jane.
You see this storyline is distinctly set when MJ was presumed dead after a plane crash. Thus a No. prize is demanded to address why Peter wouldn’t consider resurrecting his wife!
This is my attempt at reconciling the issue.
The first thing to bear in mind is that this three part mini-series was released towards the end of the era where MJ was believed dead. Specifically issue #1 came out the very same month we learned MJ was in fact alive and issue #3 was released after she’d definitively returned.
So clearly this was an editorial issue. When the first issue came out MJ was dead when the last was out she was alive again. Not only might it have been weird to reference her as dead when she was very much alive but given the controversy surrounding her death Marvel were probably in damage control mode and wanted to move on as quickly as possible. It’s telling that MJ’s fake death was rarely if ever mentioned again in any story after Mackie left the titles.
Additionally Ben, George and Gwen form the ‘iconic trio’ of dead Spidey supporting characters as their deaths were easily the most iconic and integral to the Spider-Man mythos. Given how the story (as evidence by the art style) was trying to recall the halcyon ‘good old days’, it makes a thematic sense to emphasis those three and not list every Jo or Jane Blo who’s died in the Spider books.
From an in-universe POV Peter didn’t just omit MJ but numerous other loved ones who’d died. Ned Leeds. Lance Bannon. Nathan Lebunsky. Ben Reilly. Baby May and of course Harry Osborn. All of them weren’t even referenced.
Does this demonstrate how callous Peter is for only caring about those three dead people?
I think the more likely explanation, as hinted at by the story itself, is that Spidey was less concerned about people who’d died but more people who died because of him.
Whilst we can debate technicalities, the fact is that Peter honestly was far more directly involved in the deaths of those three people than any of his other loved ones. He will never know if MJ would’ve still caught her deadly flight even if he didn’t miss her before she left. He knows enough about the Osborns to see that Harry was thoroughly screwed up regardless of anything he did. Ben Reilly was a hero like him and literally did what Peter would have done in the same situation, wherein he gave his life to save Peter from a murder attempt. Peter couldn’t truly have done anything to have prevented that sans knocking out the Goblin. Even then he wallped Norman with everything he had short of a killing blow so there really wasn’t anything he could do. Similarly lance Bannon and Ned Leeds were murdered by third parties Peter never knew about.
In contrast Peter’s selfishness actively facilitated Ben’s death. His carelessness snapped Gwen’s neck. And whilst George gave his life to save a child, the child was endangered due to Peter sending Doc Ock’s arms out of control.
So I think this scene is ultimately about Peter wanting to undo mistakes that caused him to lose loved ones rather than wholesale play God and restore his loved ones altogether. In other words it is about Peter’s guilt, which obviously weighs heavily upon him.
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Steve Rude’s Flash 75th Anniversary variant cover for Aquaman #38 coming out in a few weeks (January 2015.) A photobomb riff on the classic Nick Cardy cover to Aquaman #42 (volume 1) (December 1968).
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Jonny Quest
Art by Steve Rude
