Spider-man: The story of my life, an incredibly human Peter Parker review

Spider-man

Since its first appearance, Spider-man has distinguished himself as a different superhero than the rest of the characters in tights, even within Marvel itself. Young Peter Parker, especially in the early days of his editorial life, has always maintained a certain emotional and sometimes physical detachment from the rest of the metahuman community of the House of Ideas. Personally, I have always considered Parker, along with Matt Murdock (aka Daredevil), the most human of heroes. Peter has often suffered from his status as a hero, seen at times as the public enemy, was misunderstood and suffered, wearing the mask of course, but under his tears they were incredibly human, common. This characteristic has become the emotional focus of Spider-Man: The Story of My Life, a volume that presents itself as one of the best recent Marvel proposals.

Recreating a life for Spidey

For years we have wondered what the life of a superhero would really be like, if these figures were subject like us to the inexorable passing of the years. Within Marvel Continuity we know that a sort of calendar has been established, based on the famous bite that made Peter Parker the Wall Climbing, but the idea of ​​seeing these characters face an aspect as common and deadly as the passage of time has always been fascinating.

Chip Zdarsky and Mark Bagley, the two authors of Spider-man: The Story of My Life, gave substance to this suggestion. The authorial couple wanted to create an exciting what if? in which even Peter Parker is forced to face the inexorable passage of time, an element that has sharpened the central aspect of Parker's personality: his emotionality.

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Peter has always been conceived as a border line character, capable of throwing himself into funny jokes and outbursts wearing his mask, but who once without this shield shows his fragility. It is no coincidence that at the birth of the Avengers all the Marvel characters present were involved in the super team, except Peter, because his shy character was to be protected, it was the distinctive trait of him that could not be ruined by belonging to a team. heroic. At stake, in fact, was the sensitivity of this boy, who was facing not only supervillains, but also the typical problems of adolescence, as often happened to Marvel superheroes (classic example, the young mutants known X-Men) .

Aware of this deep humanity of Parker, Zdarsky imagined rewriting his history by working precisely on the inner complexity, showing its evolution with the passing of age, eliminating that element of immobility of the absence of aging, letting even the transience of the human being present the bill to the character.

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In doing so, Spider-man did not deprive himself of his charisma in the least, but rather brought him closer to readers. Zdarsky follows the life of Peter Parker when the boy has just become the Tessiragnatele, he opens his heart to us by presenting us with those doubts and perplexities typical of the character's early days, but he inserts him more into the historical context of his country, going to touch long open wounds for US society such as Vietnam.






Spider-man: The story of my life, in fact, not only manages to rewrite the myth of the character in a credible way, while remaining faithful to the authentic spirit of the character, but it has the I deserve to be able to create a narrative subtext that also involves other well-known faces of the House of Ideas, creating a living and credible world that evolves together with the character. All while respecting the most authentic soul of the other characters involved, which therefore show their authentic side.


Zdarsky's prowess is encompassed. in having adapted what were the essential moments of the evolution of Spider-man in this new dimension. Spider-man: The story of my life, in fact, also puts this Peter Parker in front of the events that have characterized the personal dramas of the classic Webweave, he does not spare him the pains and failures, but rewrites them within an existence that sees a boy become a man, as he gets older and has to face increasingly burdensome challenges on an emotional level.

A new life, old wounds

We will relive the death of Gwen Stacy, we will have the clone of Peter back , a certain symbiont will appear again and one of the most exciting stories of Spider-man (that last hunt ...) will be honored, arriving at the Civil War and the epilogue of an existence. In between, however, there are the difficulties of an authentic man, his broken hopes and his adamant sense of responsibility that soon turns into a curse, a force that risks destroying his life rather than making it full. Zdarsky presents us with an authentic Parker, perhaps never as human as in this volume, building a Marvel Universe around the less super and very human figure of the Webweave.





The The emotional maturity of the characters that accompanies their aging is an impressive narrative force, passionate and moving in the simplicity with which it is characterized by Zdarsky, a natural and spontaneous impetus that exudes realism in this context usually perceived as unreal. Above all, he is a Parker capable of very common moments of anger, despair and regret, also free to hurt the feelings of others and to repent soon after. If in the tradition of the character one has always breathed that touch of humanity often only sketched in other superheroes, in Spider-man: The story of my life this side of Parker is the key to reading an entire existence lived in the balance, between meaning. of duty and desire to be normal.



* Until the end, Zdarsky allows Spidey to live his life to the full, without depriving him of his triumphs and pains, reaching the most human epilogues. Poetic, moving but above all human, because as claimed by another Marvelian hero from another universe, the cinematic one

"The end is part of the journey"

A journey, the one told in Spider-man : The story of my life, perfectly portrayed by Mark Bagley. An old acquaintance of Arrampicamuri readers, Bagley portrays Peter's journey with the right touch of realism and superheroism, letting Parker's emotions shine through in the most intense moments with expressions that hit the reader hard to the heart, which envelop him in hyperkinetic fights. but in the end they embrace him with a moving ending that reminds us who Spider-man is, who Peter Parker is.

Spider-Man: The story of my life, authentic portrait of the Spider

Spider-Man: The story of my life is an act of love by the authors towards a symbol of the House of Ideas, a manifesto of the most authentic soul of the character seen through that humanity that has always transmitted, but which has not fully lived . The gift that Zdarsky and Bagley give to Parker, giving him a total and full humanity, becomes at the same time a wonderful gift for fans of Webweaving, the opportunity to experience the most authentic and pure Spider-Man ever read.

Panini has published in its catalog dedicated to the House of Ideas a new edition of this extraordinary What if… ?, enriches the story of Zdarsky with an extra short story dedicated to J.J. Jameson, a character who has always been deeply linked to the events of the Spider, who is presented to us in a different, dramatic key, but perfectly integrated into this alternative vision of the Wall Clamp.