Of Great Power and Greater Responsibility

If I could, I would like to beg you all for a moment of time, while I utilize this space to ply my craft as a wordsmith and to exorcise myself of a few of my own personal demons. The following is a (re-edited) version of an article that I wrote for Comics Values Annual 2002. I’ve shortened it (quite) a bit, excising a good portion of the comicbook-specific passages, in order to make it relevant to a wider audience. Needless to say, as this article is not only my aforementioned 9/11 tribute, it (obviously) concerns itself with heroes.

“With great power comes great responsibility.”
—Stan Lee; 1961

My dictionary (The New Lexicon Webster’s Dictionary of the English Language: Encyclopedic Edition, 1988 edition) offers up the following for its listing of the word “hero”:

Hero; (n), a man of exceptional quality who wins admiration by noble deeds, especially deeds of courage. The male character of a play, novel, etc., about whom the action turns and in whose fate the readers or audience are sympathetically involved. A man of superhuman powers, regarded as a demigod after his death.

Robert Mayer’s hilarious 1977 book Super-Folks (currently and exclusively available from Diamond Comics Distributors, FM International, and Cold Cut Publishing, with a retail price of $19.95) whets our appetite for more with his opening sentence, “There were no more heroes”.

No more heroes? How could that possibly be? The line itself seemed to mirror a line spoken but five years earlier by Clint Eastwood’s signature character “Dirty” Harry Callahan in the violent 1973 cop flick and Dirty Harry sequel, Magnum Force, when Eastwood’s Harry Callahan character challenges a trio of rogue cops who have formed a Death Squad in a misguided attempt to rid LA of it’s more unpleasant elements, by executing them, Callahan says to them, “You ‘heroes’ have killed a dozen people this week.” One of rogue cops responds by saying, “All our heroes are dead. We’re the first generation of a new breed of hero.”

We as a people — especially those of us who read comicbooks, speculative fiction, fantasy, action/adventure, and other related genres — are steeped in the lore and credo of heroes. On both a professional and a personal level, I am enthralled with the notion of heroes. They are larger than life, and — like the Seventh Calvary — are always there in the nickel of time. In all forms of heroic fiction, the hero, against all odds, and when all seems lost, always manages to rally that one last move to save the day, rescue the innocent, and bring the guilty to justice. It is part of the formula. It is written in the handbook, it is part of the code.

I truly believe that it was my gosh-wow infatuation with the very notion of heroes — coupled with the visual impact of the four-color page — that first attracted me to comics.

To be sure, while that is what got me in the door, it was the all-too-human, feet-of-clay approach to storytelling of Stan Lee’s new Parthenon that kept me coming back month-after-month, and year-after-year. It has now been better than 40 years since I picked up my first comicbook, and today I still love the medium every bit as much as I did when I first discovered it. Superman, Batman, Aquaman, Green Lantern, Green Arrow, Doom Patrol, heck, even Wonder Woman were some of the first superhero comics that I read.

Still, for me anyway, the greatest hero was yet to come.

Several years ago now, I had the pleasure of sitting in on one of my son’s All School Meetings. Dylan was eight, I believe, and I decided to drop in on his school’s weekly All School Meeting where the school children gathered together as a community for a school-wide sharing, or special presentation. At the end of the meeting, the Principal, as usual, called up all the children who had birthdays that week. The procedure was that she would recognize each child the week of their birthday by bringing them up in front of the assembled school, asking them a couple of quick questions (name, age, date of birth, teacher, and some ubiquitous follow-up question), then presented them with a birthday pencil. That particular week, it had been my birthday, and Dylan challenged me to go up (“Are you going up dad?” “Nope.” “What’s the matter? Are you chicken?” Unable to beat the logic of an eight-year-old, (or pass up the challenge) up I went.)

As the last person in line, the principal was somewhat surprised when she looked up to see, not a child, but an adult standing to receive his pencil. Needless to say, she asked me all the standard questions, including the final question, which that year was “Do you have any heroes?” I had noticed that most of the kids who had preceded me didn’t respond to the question (I feel that they either didn’t quite comprehend the importance of the question, or had not yet latched onto a hero figure in their lives).

As you can expect, I did indeed have an answer. “So, do you have a hero?” she asked me. “Why, yes I do,” I responded. Pleased to finally get someone who understood the question and had an answer she unhesitatingly asked, “Who?” “Spider-Man,” I responded. (I could see her eyes roll with this one. Even as the assembled students roared with laughter.) “Is there a reason he’s your hero,” she asked, somewhat more warily. “Yes there is,” I replied. “And what’s your reason?” She asked. I looked out over the crowd of young faces, and gave the same response that I had learned over three decades earlier exactly the same way that Stan had given it to us, all those years ago. “Because, ‘With great power, comes great responsibility’.”

There was a round of applause, and the Principal smiled.

I walked away knowing what I had always known. I”m addicted to not just heroes themselves, but the very concept of heroes, and not just the fictional ones who wear spandex; but the flesh-and-blood kind as well.

Back in 1987 The Grateful Dead issued In the Dark, which was something, like their 21st album in 20 years. That album, contained the song Throwing Stones, sung by Bob Weir. Shortly before originally writing this piece I had heard that song on the radio. For those of you who haven’t heard it, the second chorus goes like this:

There’s a fear down here we can’t forget.
Hasn’t got a name just yet.
Always awake, always around,
Singing ashes, ashes, all fall down.
Ashes, ashes, all fall down.

As I listened to this song I was driving my car, but in my mind’s eye I had flashed back to two experiences; initially to 1987 when I first heard the song, and those lyrics struck a chord in my psyche that I couldn’t quite place; and second to September 11th as I watched in abject horror while the World Trade Tower collapsed into a pile of debris, dust, and death. It was then, while driving that I that I put those two disparate images together for the very first time; and a single thought ran through my head. “We have a name for that fear now.”

Almost immediately, I jumped to Jackson Browne’s 1980 album Hold Out. On that album was the song Boulevard, which contained the lyrics “Everybody walks right by like they’re safe or something/They don’t know”. Given the horrific events of September 11th, I personally couldn’t think of a more chillingly apt couplet of lyrics. Given 9/11 and the Anthrax-laden U.S. Mail fear campaign that followed, as well as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, along with the collateral terror attacks around the world; I don’t think that I’ll get much argument on this point.

Boys and girls; ladies and gents, we all live in a four-color, paper-thin world of heroes. As stated, my personal hero is Spider-Man. I first discovered him back in 1962 in my Uncle’s grocery store/deli in Westport, CT. My father would work at my Uncle’s every Sunday, and some of my earliest memories are of accompanying my father to my Uncle’s on Sunday, helping to bag the hard rolls that got delivered Sunday morning, and then sitting around for hours reading the comics. I didn’t actually start actively collecting comics until I was a High School Junior.

It is easy to say what initially attracted me to Spider-Man. It was the diametric differences between Peter Parker and his red and blue alter ego. Spider-Man was a hero. He could swing through the air with the greatest of ease. He could climb walls, fight villains, right wrongs, be admired. Peter parker was a wallflower (that’s a pre-Fonzie nerd). He was bright, brainy, shy, and, very often, the object of ridicule by the “popular” kids in school. Flash Thompson, the school jock, picked on him all the time. I emphasized with Peter. I too wore glasses, was a bookworm, and (if you can believe this) not very popular (and often picked on by jocks).

Peter however had two things I never had, first, he was Spider-Man, and second, for reasons that no one could ever properly explain, he always seemed to attract very good-looking women; Betty Brant, Mary Jane Watson (easily the best ever looking woman in comics), and of course Gwen Stacy (the queen babe of all babes). Then, of course, he was Spider-Man.

Spider-Man hit a very big responsive chord with me. He appealed to the everyman element in the hero mythos. He wasn’t all-powerful (Superman, Thor), extraordinarily wealthy (Batman, Iron Man), or exceedingly brilliant (Mr. Fantastic). He was just some kid that had the misfortune to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

For me, Spider-Man is everything a hero is supposed to be. He is honest, upright, and honorable, and he does what he does with no thought of himself, never looking for what he is going to get out of the exchange. He is fiercely dedicated to justice, and is concerned with common people. Yeah, Yeah, he goes up against supervillains and all, but Spidey is one of those superheroes that fights on a street level (unlike say Thor, Iron Man, or the FF).

So, you could imagine how thrilled I was when Spidey appeared in not one, but two blockbuster films (with a third slated for 2007). Unfortunately, shortly after the events of 9/11 Sony pulled not only the trailer but the Spidey film posters as well. For those of you who did not get to see the trailer to the film (the original trailer), it was boffo. Briefly it involved a bunch of thugs knocking over a bank, and escaping via the roof to a chopper. As they rejoiced in their big haul and clean getaway, suddenly the chopper shuddered. Then began going backwards. Ultimately (as the camera slowly pulls back from a tight shot on the trapped chopper) we see that it is caught in an enormous spider’s web strung between the Twin Towers of the Trade Center. Then we are treated to Spidey web-slinging his way through the steel canyons of NYC.

The poster is an extreme close-up of Spider-Man’s head as he is hanging off a brick wall — was also pulled, because, very small, in the mirrored lenses of Spidey’s mask, you can see the reflection of the chopper strung between the Twin Towers. I eventually did locate a copy of both the poster (at a shop in NYC’s Greenwich Village) and a videodisc of the trailer (off ebay). The disc is stored with my Spidey stuff, while the poster is framed, and hanging in the stairwell of my house.

Peter Parker was an unobtrusive teenager living an unobtrusive life. Had he not attended that particular science demonstration on that particular day, or if he had stood a couple of feet to the left or the right, his whole life would have been different. But he didn’t, did he? He stood right where he stood, and got bitten. Then, days later when he tried to cash in on his new powers and abilities, he let some nameless, faceless guy run past him allowing the man to escape the pursuing guard. Unfortunately for Peter, that man went on to eventually kill his beloved Uncle Ben. It was then that Peter learned the lesson that would haunt him for the rest of his days, and give the rest of us a lesson that we could never forget.

With great power comes great responsibility.

As a professional writer, the parent of two young children, and a heroist (if I may be able to coin a new term — a “Heroist” being someone who subscribes to the notion of heroes and their role in society), I totally subscribe to this core philosophy. The writer in me understands the power of the written word, and the sway those words have over the individuals who read them. As a parent I have the authority over the lives of my children and my responsibility and ability to shape and mold their lives. As someone who subscribes to the notion of what comprises a hero I understand the sheer power of the actual concept of both “great power” and “great responsibility”.

On September 11th men and women in NYC with great power — cops who protect, firefighters who rescue, and EMS workers who save lives — all exhibited their unwavering power, responsibility, and dedication to their jobs and those under their protection, by rushing into two burning buildings simply because “it was their jobs” (think about the last time we had heard that line), and unselfishly lost their own lives in doing so.

Also at the cost of their own lives, a group of ordinary men and women on United Airlines Flight 93 took it upon themselves to defend and protect others they never met to prevent an even greater disaster. These then are the first heroes of the new millennium this is the bar to which the rest of us must aspire.

So as both a writer and a parent (as Lt. Ellen Ripley before me, was forced to admit to Newt in Aliens), I must acknowledge the unspeakable, and admit that not only are there actually real monsters, but — much to my chagrin — admit that these monsters aren’t the kind that sneak around in the dark and take on hideous shapes like Aliens or Predators, but that they look just like you and me. However, as a heroist — someone who believes in the cult of heroes — I know that there are those among us who will rise up and smite those who would attack us in our homes; and ultimately, we will prevail.

This then is for all of the heroes who exist, whether they do so only in our minds and our hearts, on the printed page or the silver screen, or in real life. Thank you all for teaching us that there in fact is a better way, a nobler path to which we can, and should aspire. Thank you all for teaching all of us — myself especially — that the single most important lesson that I learned in my youth is perhaps the single most important lesson that I carry with me every day. That with great power does indeed come great responsibility.

The Perfessor