Matthew Wayne Selznick's Blog, page 20

Worldbuilding For Writers Number Two: Finding The Habitable Zone

In this installment of Worldbuilding for Writers, Gamers and Other Creatives, we're going to determine the habitable zone for the planet you're building for your storyworld. It's going to take us a few steps to get there, and yes, there is some math, but it's nothing your calculator or spreadsheet software can't handle. Hang in there!

What Is The Habitable Zone

In brief, the habitable zone is the minimum and maximum distance a planet should orbit its star in order to be most hospitable for life as we know it. For our purposes, it's the orbital distance from the star that will permit an Earth-like planet. In particular, the planet should receive enough heat energy from its star to allow for the presence of liquid water. The opinions of astronomers vary on just what this "Goldilocks zone" should be for any given star, but many agree that the habitable zone of Sol is between 0.725 to 1.24 astronomical units from the Sun — that is, about three-quarters to one and a quarter times the distance of the Earth from the Sun.

Understand that this is an estimation drawn from science-based extrapolation. There are many, many factors that go into what makes a world suitable for life (some of which we'll get into in later installments of Worldbuilding for Writers) but for the purposes of building our worlds, we're going to go with this range and play with it.

Gathering Data

Given the acceptance of a range of distances determining the habitable zone around Sol, we can determine the habitable zones of other stars. Since it all comes down the the amount of heat received from the star at a given distance, we need to know a little bit more about the star our world orbits.

Mass and Luminosity

Specifically, we need to determine the star's luminosity and temperature. For stars between F5 and K5 on the main sequence, we can determine both from the star's mass. Here are approximate masses (relative to Sol) for our eligible stars:

Spectral Class
Mass
Spectral Class
Mass
Spectral Class
Mass


F5
1.201
G2
1.000
G9
0.810


F6
1.161
G3
0.973
K0
0.790


F7
1.121
G4
0.946
K1
0.752


F8
1.081
G5
0.919
K2
0.714


F9
1.041
G6
0.891
K3
0.677


G0
1.039
G7
0.864
K4
0.639


G1
1.020
G8
0.837
K5
0.601

From this, we can determine the luminosity of the star by taking the mass and raising it to the 3.5 power. If you recall, the Shaper's World's star, Tah, is a G3 star, which gives it a mass of .973.

.973^3.5 = .9086

So Tah, the star of the Shaper's World, has a luminosity of .9086 relative to Sol.

Finding the Habitable Zone

Now that we have the star's luminosity and know the suggested upper (closest to the star) and lower (farthest from the star) limits of the habitable zone, we can find the range of the habitable zone in astronomical units (AU) within which our planet must orbit to have a chance at being Earth-like. Here's how it works:

Inner Limit

The inner limit of the habitable zone of our own solar system is suggested to be 0.725 AU. At that point in space, a planet would receive 1.9 times the energy (or insolation) received by the Earth. We figure that out by dividing luminosity by the distance of the planet squared, or

1 / .725^2 = 1.9024

We can turn that around to see how the insolation can reveal the distance by dividing the luminosity by the insolation and taking the square root of the result:

1 / 1.9024 = 0.5256. The square root of 0.5256 = 0.725

Given that, we can now determine the inner limit of the habitable zone of Tah, the star of the Shaper's World. Remember that Tah is a G3 star with a luminosity of .9086.

0.9086 / 1.9024 = 0.4776. The square root of 0.4776 = 0.6911

The inner limit of Tah's habitable zone is 0.6911 AU.

The Outer Limit

For the outer limit, we figure the insolation at the maximum suggested distance for Sol's habitable zone, which is 0.6503:

1 / 1.24^2 = 0.6503

From that, we can see that the outer limit of the habitable zone of Tah is 1.1820 AU:

0.9086 / 0.6503 = 1.3972. The square root of 1.3972 = 1.1820

The Earth Twin Distance

Let's say you want to determine the distance a planet needs to be from your star in order receive the same amount of energy the Earth receives from Sol. This is an easy one — take the square root of your star's luminosity and you have the distance in AU!

For the Shaper's World, the Earth Twin distance is 0.9532 AU.

Wrapping It Up

The habitable zone of Sol is between .725 and 1.24 astronomical units from the sun, with the Earth sitting pretty at 1 AU. The habitable zone of the Shaper's World is between 0.6911 and 1.1820 astronomical units from Tah, with the "Earth Twin" distance — the distance where the Shaper's World would receive the same energy the Earth does from Sol — at 0.9532 AU. What is the habitable zone of your world? Tell us in the comments!

Next

Now that we know the habitable zone for our star, we can play around with orbital distances for our planet, which will help determine the length of the year and the base temperature… next week!

Matthew Wayne Selznick - Telling stories with words, music, pictures and people.

Reading The Amazing Spider-Man: Issue Number Two Part Two

As we continue reading The Amazing Spider-Man from the number one through number 500 in an effort to examine a modern mythology and explore how a storyworld and story franchise is built from the ground up, this week we pick up with the second story in issue number two: "The Uncanny Threat of the Terrible Tinkerer!"

This ten page story begins with another great splash page: In an underground passage, the amazing Spider-Man is blasted in the back a funky purple ray-gun brandished by an old man with an improbably long chin. Spider-Man thinks:

He looks so harmless — and yet the Tinkerer is one of the greatest menaces I've ever faced!

The caption in the lower right corner of the page teases at the action to come, once again in breathless past-tense:

Everybody loves a bargain! But sometimes it can be dangerous to accept a bargain which is too good to be true! Especially if the bargain is being offered by someone like the Tinkerer, who — but wait! Let's see how it all began — and how it took Spider-Man to finish it!

Man, but Stan Lee was wordy in those days. I'm itching to edit that baby down for brevity. I'll spare you that… let's get to the story.

Synopsis

It's the end of the school day at Midtown High (this is the first time Peter Parker's school is given a name) and the science lab teacher introduces our boy genius to Professor Cobbwell, the "most famous electronics expert in town." Cobbwell's looking for a bright lad to assist him with some urgent experiments over the weekend, and Peter's only too happy to help.

Cobbwell gives Peter his address and asks him to "stop at the radio repair shop to pick up a small radio" on his way. Cobbwell and the science teacher leave, bully Flash Thompson and Peter trade verbal jabs ("You're a teacher's pet!" "You're a dumbhead!"), and we jump to the next day.

Peter's getting the hang of being a teen super-hero. He slips his costume on under his clothes, because he never knows when he might need it and "I feel almost undressed without it!"

He heads into town and stops at "The Tinkerer Repair Shop," a quaint little brick building. Peter, talking to himself as he often does, remarks that it's an off-beat name and wonders what kind of kookie character runs the place. Considering that a tinkerer is someone who, well, tinkers with and, presumably, fixes things, it's not really that odd of a name… is it? What we have here is a bit of lazy telegraphing on the part of Stan Lee. He's telling us to expect weird things from this place… in case you missed the big splash page at the beginning of the story.

Inside, the Tinkerer (he announces himself with that name) is a gaunt, elderly man in a woolen sweater and green slacks who wouldn't look out of place in one of the horror comics Steve Ditko drew in the first two years of his career. He tells Peter to hang on a minute and goes to get the radio.

Peter's spider sense "picks up odd electrical impulses," but he brushes off the feeling, chalking it up to the Tinkerer's testing equipment and chiding himself for being suspicious of someone "about as dangerous as a second-hand creampuff!"

Observation: A second-hand creampuff might be dangerous. It might have spoiled! You could get sick!

Anyway, we follow the Tinkerer downstairs an into his stone-walled laboratory, where a scaly green alien dude in a too-small black tank-top lets the Tinkerer know that the "special device" is in the radio. Turns out the Tinkerer is in cahoots with these creatures and they've inserted devices into the electrical appliances of several "special" customers in anticipation of some secret plan.

The Tinkerer brings the radio back up to Peter, who is astonished to learn that the repair will only cost a dime! Dr. Cobbwell isn't surprised — he had heard the Tinkerer was a bargain; that's why he had the radio repaired there. Peter's bewildered, and try as he might to concentrate on helping the professor, he can't shake the feeling that something's wrong.

Before we get to that, though, I have to mention that we've already established that Dr. Cobbwell is an electronics expert. However, Peter is specifically shown mucking about with test tubes and chemistry equipment — the room is full of it. Shouldn't they be messing with circuit boards and vacuum tubes?

Anyway, Cobbwell leaves Peter alone to go "lecture at the Institute," (apparently the experiments aren't so urgent they can't be left in the hands of a teenager who has exhibited a tendency to be distracted) and that gives our hero a chance to act. He realizes he's sensing the electrical impulses he noticed back at the Tinkerer's shop. He pries open the radio and notices it's full of odd gadgets. Something's up!

Peter changes into the amazing Spider-Man and swings over to the Tinkerer's shop. It's closed, but he easily breaks in through a convenient skylight. Following the trail of the electrical impulses with his spider-sense, Spider-Man finds himself descending the stairs to the mysterious workroom below.

Inside, the Tinkerer and three green aliens reveal the whole dastardly plan in one panel. They've been learning about the strengths and weaknesses of Earth before they attack. One alien hushes the Tinkerer because:

Quiet! I am processing the latest pictures relayed back to us by our pin-point TV spy device which you planted in the radio of a military leader!

Spider-Man hears it all, but before he can absorb what should be the mind-numbing confirmation of intelligent life from other planets and their plan to conquer Earth, his spider-sense warns him of an ambush from behind.

Avoiding a ray-gun blast sends the amazing Spider-Man into the fray, where he begins to fight the aliens. They're astonished that he can climb walls (except for the Tinkerer, who knows the score) but use an "inverter device" to dislodge him. They try to dogpile him, but he's too strong. Finally, it's the Tinkerer himself who stuns the amazing Spider-Man with a cowardly shot from behind. It's the scene we've been waiting for since the splash page.

They stuff Spider-Man into a specimen cage made of "resisto-glass" and decide he must be destroyed lest he reveal their secret. They're going to asphyxiate him by forcing the air out of tiny holes in the cage.

Logic check: what are they using to force the air out of those holes? More… air..?

Never mind. Spider-Man's awake now, and he realizes he can use those holes to escape. He takes aim (with his left hand — is the amazing Spider-Man a southpaw?) and shoots his web in a thin line through the hole and onto the control panel that opens the cage. Nice shot; the bottom drops out of the cage and he's free.

The amazing Spider-Man punches one alien into another, and a ray gun discharges, destroying the control panel and starting a fire. The aliens turn tail — "Spider-Man is too powerful!" — leaving the Tinkerer behind.

The Tinkerer struggles with Spider-Man in the thickening smoke, and somehow the boy with the proportional strength of a spider — the same kid who tore the door off of a helicopter with one hand — can't hold on to one scrawny old man. Nearly overcome by smoke, Spider-Man webs away from the burning building (just in time for some bystanders to wonder if he started the blaze.)

The aliens decide to abandon their plan to invade. Not only do they leave in a spiffy blue spaceship, they destroy all their spy devices via remote control, despairing that

We can never again return to earth — they will be on guard from this day on!

Back at the lab, Peter's changed back into his civilian clothes in time to meet Dr. Cobbwell, who has just returned from his lecture. Cobbwell tells Peter he thought he saw a spaceship fading into the atmosphere, but after some thought, the good doctor decides he must have imagined it… "I have no proof!"

Peter has proof, though. As it turns out, he yanked a mask off the old man during their struggle in the burning building. A mask depicting… the face of the terrible Tinkerer! He keeps this to himself, since explaining how he came to have it might reveal his secret identity.

So ends what might be the first pure act of super-heroics by young master Parker. It's the first time we see him act as Spider-Man with no thought of reward or financial gain. Finally, he accepts, with no caveats, the responsibility that comes with his great power.

Thoughts On Issue Two Part Two of The Amazing Spider-Man

This is a pretty damn weak story. I submit that it was an idea Stan and Steve had filed for one of the Marvel monster or horror comics that was taken out of mothballs and freshened up with a little dash of the amazing Spider-Man. I'd love to know if I'm correct… but even if I'm not, it's still a lazy effort.

Stan Lee, and future stewards of the mythology of the amazing Spider-Man and the growing, rapidly intertwining Marvel Universe, must have recognized that this story was just plain silly, for they revised the the events of this issue — in particular the nature of the aliens (hint — they weren't really aliens) — and established the Tinkerer as an important and influential, if infrequently appearing, supporting character.

In the comics, that's an example of applying a "retcon," or "retroactive continuity." It's the kind of thing you should avoid as the steward of your own storyworld, as it damages the integrity of your creation and erodes the trust of your audience.

Granted, all the pre-planning in the world isn't going to keep you from making a few mis-steps with your creation. If avoiding a retcon will take your storyworld too far afield from what you want, or, conversely, you realize a ways down the path that you want your storyworld to be something other than what it is, at least take pains to not insult the intelligence of your audience when you tell them things were not quite what they were led to believe.

What are examples of poorly handled retcons from your favorite story franchises? Let's talk about it in the comments! Please avoid talking about comic books; though there are many, many examples to be had there, they might not be as familiar to a wider audience as instances from movies, television series, and book series. I'll proclaim now that the comments thread may contain spoilers, at least as necessary to explain the retcon in question.

Discuss!

The Amazing Spider-Man number two part two
"The Uncanny Threat of the Terrible Tinkerer!"
Cover Date: May, 1963
Script: Stan Lee
Art: Steve Ditko
Lettering: Art Simek

Join Me In Reading The Amazing Spider-Man

Click the cover to buy the first twenty issues of The Amazing Spider-Man in an inexpensive trade paperback from Barnes & Noble Booksellers:


Your purchase helps support this series and all my creative endeavors — thanks!

Matthew Wayne Selznick - Telling stories with words, music, pictures and people.

Worldbuilding For Writers Number One: Selecting A Star

Every week in the Worldbuilding for Writers series, I present a step-by-step guide to creating a realistic, Earth-like planet for use as a core setting for your storyworld.

For the purposes of Worldbuilding for Writers, "Earth-like" means the following:

Close enough in size and density to the Earth to allow for a similar gravityOrbiting in the "habitable zone" of it's star and having appropriate orbital characteristics to allow for a climate similar to that of EarthHaving an active, self-replenishing crust to allow for geologic processes similar to EarthHaving an atmosphere similar in composition and density to the EarthBeing an age sufficient to allow for the development of complex organisms, including at least one sentient species

The first step in creating an imaginary Earth-like planet is to assign an appropriate star to orbit.

Selecting An Appropriate Star For Your World

Creators of science fiction and fantasy worlds in books, movies, television and comics love to present an exotic setting with plenty of unusual and stunning details to convey a sense of the alien or fantastic. It's not uncommon to start with the sun… or suns… up in the sky. Nothing says "another world" like a lurid, balefully glowing red ball smoldering in the sky, or perhaps a pair of blistering white stars hovering above the horizon.

Unfortunately, a creator's choices when thinking about their milieu's star very often simply don't make good sense when you take into account the features of the world orbiting that star. When it comes to building a planetary system that includes an Earth-like planet (including a diverse ecosystem that features sentient native life) our choices are apparently rather limited.

Too Hot, Too Cold, Too Quick, Too Old

Stars, generally, are classified from hot and bright to cool and dim. While all the details of stellar classification are beyond the scope of this series, it's enough to understand that spectral classes are designated O, B, A, F, G, K and M, with each letter being further divided by numbers from zero to nine and the entire sequence ranging from hot and bright to dim and cool.

Hot, bright stars — O2 through F4, perhaps — burn themselves out in less than two billion years, which, if we consider the timescale of life's development here on Earth to be typical, is probably too short a time for complex life to develop. Even though stars from the upper K range through M-class exist for billions of years, they may not produce enough energy at a distance appropriate to place a planet and still consider it Earth-like.

The Best Star For Your World

The most likely stars for your Earth-like planet? Stellar classes F5 through K5. These include stars roughly +/- 20% the temperature of Earth's Sun that exist in a stable state for three to fifteen billion years or longer. Scientists like Jill Tarter and Margaret Turnbull think these stars are excellent candidates for Earth-like planets.

Our own Earth orbits Sol, a G2 star with a surface temperature of about 5,770 Kelvin and a predicted lifespan of approximately ten billion years. My creation, The Shaper's World, orbits Tah, a G3 star with a temperature of about 5,690 K and an even longer predicted stable lifespan than Sol.

What about your world? Here are some stars and their approximate temperatures to get you started:

Spectral ClassTemperature in KelvinsSpectral ClassTemperature In KelvinsSpectral ClassTemperature In KelvinsF56767G25770G95300F66600G35703K05200F76433G45636K15056F86267G55569K24911F96100G65501K34767G06000G75434K44622G15885G85367K54478

Next:

Your star's class and temperature directly affect its habitable zone, where conditions are best suited for an Earthlike planet. That's what we'll examine next week!

Matthew Wayne Selznick - Telling stories with words, music, pictures and people.

Reading The Amazing Spider-Man: Issue Number Two Part One

It's time once again to glean the secrets of storyworld and story franchise creation by reading The Amazing Spider-Man! In this week's installment we tackle part one of issue number two: "Duel to the Death With the Vulture!"

This issue's splash page is less abstract than those found in issue one. High above the concrete and steel canyons of New York City, the amazing Spider-Man is ready to throw a punch as he keeps a firm grip on the ankle of an old, bald man in a green bird suit. The caption tells us…

The most colorful super-hero of all… Spider-Man! His name makes the under-world tremble! But there is one who does not tremble! What fantastic power can the Vulture have which makes him so sure he can defeat… Spider-Man?

I'm going to bet that fantastic power is… flight?

I'm more interested in the fact that, somewhere between the end of issue one, when Spider-Man was whining about nothing turning out right for him, and this splash page, the star of the comic apparently developed a reputation for frightening the bad guys.

How… when… did this happen? So far, the amazing Spider-Man has fought the burglar who killed his uncle and the Chameleon. Maybe both those guys have been talking in prison, and the word is spreading? Or has the amazing Spider-Man finally become a stalwart vigilante?

Synopsis

Let's see. Turn the page, and we learn that a "new, awesome threat" is stealing briefcases full of bonds and whatnot from businessmen in broad daylight. He swoops down out of the sky "without a sound — without any effort" and the city's all a-tingle.

In fact, J. Jonah Jameson, head of Jameson Publications, wants to devote an entire issue of Now Magazine to the Vulture… but no one can get a decent picture of the swift, airborne bad guy.

Switch scenes to a "nearby high school," where Peter Parker (test tube in one hand while he takes notes with the other!) overhears his classmates gushing that a photo of the Vulture would be worth "a fortune."

You can almost see the dollar signs roll up behind Peter's big round glasses. He thinks,

Say! That's an idea! I never thought of it before! Magazines pay big money for hard-to-get photos! And I know how to get them!

Let's ignore Peter's entrepreneurial impulses for the moment, for some important stuff happens in the next panels.

First, a puffy-faced red-haired lad tosses his Now Magazine at our hero. The two exchange insults: the kid calls Peter a bookworm who can't read anything but scientific formulas; Peter declares his relief that at least his brain isn't muscle-bound "like that fat head of yours!"

We've just met Flash Thompson, the class bully who delights in tormenting Peter Parker even while he declares himself Spider-Man's biggest fan. Flash and Peter will have a long, complicated history, and it officially starts here.

Witty repartee finished for now, Peter pours over the magazine while daydreaming that the amazing Spider-Man could get close enough to take pictures of the Vulture and earn some money. He's so distracted, he ruins the experiment he was working on and gets chewed out by the teacher.

This is the first example of one of the major themes in The Amazing Spider-Man: the super-hero always gets in the way of Peter Parker's potential success in academia or, really, a steady professional life of any kind. Remember, Peter Parker is very, very intelligent. He's a brilliant molecular chemist, mechanical engineer and handy as a fabricator and he's not even sixteen years old. Without the distractions and driving guilt associated with his Spider-Man identity to repeatedly pull him off track, this is a kid who should go on to be a peer of Bill Gates or Stephen Hawking. Instead, as we'll see, he'll allow the red and blue costume to almost always come first. We'll return to this below.

Back to the story!

At home, Peter Parker gets a portable camera that belonged to his uncle, figures out a way to attach it to his costume, and heads into the city as the amazing Spider-Man. Meanwhile, the Vulture flies into town after learning that the Park Avenue Jewelry Exchange is moving "a million dollars worth of diamonds to their new offices across town."

He learns this in the newspaper. Because when you're moving a million dollars worth of diamonds, you want the whole world to know. Yeah.

In town, Spider-Man is fussing with his new camera when his "amazing spider senses" pick up something coming through the air. It's the Vulture, intent on a mission of bravado. He tosses notes through the windows of the Jameson Publishing Company, the radio network, and the police chief, all boasting that he will "steal the diamond shipment from under your noses!"

All this time, he's been followed by the amazing Spider-Man, who works on setting up his camera just behind where the Vulture has come to roost on a rooftop. Spider-Man is so intent on his photography, he makes a little too much noise. The Vulture takes to the air, flips behind Spider-Man, and kicks him unconscious.

Amazed that "this is almost too easy," the Vulture drops Spider-Man into a rooftop water tower so that "with Spider-Man out of the Way, the city will be mine!"

The cold water wakes up Spider-Man. He figures it's a simple matter to use his web to shoot a line to the top of the inside of the tower and climb out, but… guess what! He forgot to refill his web shooters! Just like last issue! D'oh!

No big deal, though. Spider-Man remembers he has the proportional strength of a spider, dives to the bottom of the tank, and just jumps out of the water tower. He even manages to retrieve his camera.

Back home, he discovers the pictures came out fine. He decides it would be a kick to sell them to J. Jonah Jameson, the man who hates Spider-Man. Then, he uses that big brain of his to make some practical modifications to his uniform — he redesigns his belt to hold additional web-fluid cartridges (this still won't stop him from running out when the plot calls for it) and works out a way to attach the camera to his belt buckle.

He's not done yet! It takes hours, but he cobbles together a little device to stop the Vulture. We have to assume he conceives, designs and fabricates this electronic gizmo from stuff he already had in his bedroom… you know, Erector Set parts, Radio Shack circuit board kits, and stuff. Just like the Chameleon's display of brilliance last issue, here is a person with remarkably talent… utterly misdirected.

The next day, J. Jonah Jameson (who already met Spider-Man during the affair with John Jameson's space capsule) meets Peter Parker for the first time. Peter sells Jonah his pictures of the Vulture, under the condition that Jameson never asks how Parker gets the pictures he takes and the photos are always simply credited to "a Now Magazine staff photographer."

It's the beginning of a beautifully complex relationship. The friction between Jameson, Parker and Spider-Man will fuel dozens of story arcs across the next forty years.

The day after that, after school, all the kids rush over to join the news media and watch the diamonds being moved. Everyone is waiting for the Vulture to makes his move. Police helicopters hover at the ready as the heavily escorted armored van makes its way across the city.

Peter ducks out so he can be ready for action, prompting Flash Thompson to caw,

Look, gang! Little Petey is chickening out! Guess the excitement is too much for his delicate little self!

As the jewels are transferred to the truck, the Vulture surprises everyone by attacking from underground — through a manhole! He snatches a briefcase full of diamonds and zips back below, where he uses the sewer tunnels to make his escape to the other end of town, taking to the air through a subway exit.

Peter Parker hears what happened and does a quick-change into the amazing Spider-Man. He's excited, because "if I can get some new pictures of him now, I'll be able to name my own price for them!"

The amazing Spider-Man's handy spider senses help him track the Vulture. They do a little cat and mouse, and Spider-Man grabs hold of the Vulture's ankle. The Vulture scoffs, "You fool! Here in the sky we're in my element!" but Spider-Man has a trick up his sleeve in the form of that little gadget he cooked up.

Once it's activated, the Vulture can't stay aloft. He freaks out and spirals to the ground, while Spider-Man uses his web to swing to safety.

A police helicopter spots where the Vulture has fallen, the wind knocked out of him. While the cops snicker about the Vulture having a tailspin, the humiliated villain gets the biggest laugh of the series so far when he begs, "Please — no jokes!" Hidden nearby, the amazing Spider-Man covertly snaps pictures of the whole affair.

The issue ends with almost nothing but positives for Peter Parker, the amazing Spider-Man. We learn the boy genius deducted that the Vulture used magnetic power to fly, which Peter thwarted with his gizmo, an anti-magnetic inverter. Peter gets so much money from J. Jonah Jameson for the Vulture pictures, he pays Aunt May's rent for a whole year and promises "tomrrow I'm buying you the newest kitchen appliances you ever drooled over!"

Can someone tell me what the rent on a small two bedroom house in Forest Hills, Queens would have been in 1963? Because… that seems like a heck of a lot of money. As we'll see, J. Jonah Jameson won't always pay so much for Peter's pictures, since Peter's perennial money problems are another trope of the series.

All in all, though… a rare good day for the amazing Spider-Man! The only cloud in this silver lining is the dour Vulture, who swears vengeance on our hero from behind bars.

Thoughts On Issue Two Part One of The Amazing Spider-Man

After the bummer time of issue one of The Amazing Spider-Man (and, for that matter, Amazing Fantasy number 15), this first story in issue two comes up almost entirely aces for our hero… while establishing more foundation upon which future stories will be built. In thirteen pages, we get:

The first bona-fide appearance of Flash Thompson and the establishment of their rivalry.The first example of the Spider-Man identity sabotaging Peter Parker's success or progress in the real world.The beginning of Peter Parker and J. Jonah Jameson's relationship.The second animal-based bad guy in a row. Still to come are villains based on an octopus, a lizard, a rhino, a razorback hog, a fly, a cat, a dinosaur, a jackal, a tarantula, bees… there are so many animal-based villains for our animal-based hero to fight, one writer will work a rationalization into the plot. But that's hundreds of issues into the future…

While I still don't buy that Stan Lee and Steve Ditko were deliberately setting up elements that would become easy go-to plot devices for future stories… you can when you plan your story worlds. The important thing happening here in these early issues of The Amazing Spider-Man is that opportunities for conflict are being introduced everywhere possible: Spider-Man's biggest fan is Peter Parker's biggest rival. Peter Parker chooses to sell his photographs to Spider-Man's most vocal enemy. And the biggest conflict of all: Peter Parker versus Spider-Man.

Self-sabotage is a big part of Parker's personality (say "part of Parker's personality" ten times, fast). We'll see the "specter of Spider-Man" cause girlfriends to break up with him, ruin his academic record, put his loved ones in danger, keep him just this side of the poor-house well into what should be responsible adulthood, and worse. As things go on, we have to wonder if Peter Parker prefers (there I go again with the helpless alliteration) to fail because — as the person responsible for the death of the man who loved him like a father — he doesn't deserve to succeed.

While this issue is a nice switch from the emotional roller-coaster we saw in the first issue of The Amazing Spider-Man, it's hardly representative of the status quo. Peter Parker, we will see, can't be happy for long. Granted, a happy Peter would make for a less entertaining story because no one wants to read "The Amazingly Content Spider-Man." But as creators, we have to dig deeply into our characters and understand why nothing ever goes quite right for them. Many times, the reason will be some outside force or influence. I recommend making sure the character is also, at least to a degree, in their own way as well.

Let's talk about this in the comments: name a main character from a story franchise — books, comics, movies, television, whatever you like — with a powerful external force to struggle against and a deeply ingrained personal issue that proves almost as detrimental to that character's success or even survival. Discuss!

The Amazing Spider-Man number two part one
"Duel to the Death With the Vulture!"
Cover Date: May, 1963
Script: Stan Lee
Art: Steve Ditko
Lettering: John Duffy

Join Me In Reading The Amazing Spider-Man

Click the cover to buy the first twenty issues of The Amazing Spider-Man in an inexpensive trade paperback from Barnes & Noble Booksellers:


Your purchase helps support this series and all my creative endeavors — thanks!

Matthew Wayne Selznick - Telling stories with words, music, pictures and people.

Introducing Worldbuilding For Writers

I'm excited to announce a new blog series: "Worldbuilding for Writers, Gamers and Other Creators." Every Wednesday — Worldbuilding Wednesday, if you will — I'll present a step-by-step guide to creating your own realistic, Earthlike planet for use as a core setting in the storyworld for your book, game, movie, transmedia experience, or other creative endeavor.

I'm going to attempt to cover everything, and I'll be using the "top down" approach: starting with the wide view and allowing each macro topic to lead to closer examination of related topics. That means we'll be starting not with the creation of the world… our worldbuilding will begin with the star your planet orbits.

Yes, there will be math. It scares me, too… but the math required is more basic than you might expect, and there are lots of tools and offboard brains (it's that Internet thing you're soaking in…) to help us in that regard, so how bad could it be?

My aim, more often than not, is to show how to build a world that obeys the laws of physics and is in line with our most current science. As we select an appropriate star, muse on the size, mass, and orbit of your world, its geography, climate, weather, biomes and habitats for life (including the sentient variety!) and more, I'll use my own storyworld setting, The Shaper's World, to provide examples. Together, we'll share resources and information to make this series a dynamic repository of worldbuilding knowledge.

Throughout, it's my intention to keep a big part of the focus on how and why a realistic and internally consistent setting is critical to the success of your storyworld, whether you're a writer, role playing gamer, video game designer or some other variety of storyteller.

Next up: Selecting A Star. See you next week!

Matthew Wayne Selznick - Telling stories with words, music, pictures and people.

Reading The Amazing Spider-Man: Issue Number One Part Two

Part Two of the The Amazing Spider-Man issue number one begins with another abstract splash page: it's "Spider-Man vs. The Chameleon!" with the Chameleon looming menacingly and larger than life over the city as the amazing Spider-Man swings in to deliver a well-placed shot of webbing directly in the villain's eye slits.

The cover copy asks breathlessly,

How can you catch a man who can change his identity before you can catch him?? Perhaps you don't know the answer, but Spider-Man was determined to find out — no matter what the cost!

It's interesting that Stan Lee (we assume) opted to use the past-tense in that copy, as if the story had already happened and this is just a recap… perhaps of actual events? As in part one of issue number one, it's got a very pulp magazine feel.

A big chunk of this splash page is dedicated to an "Extra bonus extra!!" enthusiastically (to say the least) informing us this story will also feature "America's most famous, most colorful group of super-adventurers The Fantastic Four!!" What's kind of funny is that the Fantastic Four isn't really all that colorful in a literal sense…they all wore blue jumpsuits except for the Thing, who had to settle for blue boxing trunks. Yawn!

Synopsis

Turn the page and start the story… straight away, young Peter Parker demonstrates his entrepreneurial spirit when it occurs to him that he can make money by joining the Fantastic Four. At the very least, I suppose, he could add some red to their roster and help them live up to that "most colorful" claim.

Interestingly, he visits the headquarters of the Fantastic Four as Peter Parker. Maybe after the story in The Amazing Spider-Man number one part one, he realizes he won't be able to cash a paycheck as anyone but his true identity and decides that's worth dropping the secret, at least as far as his prospective employers are concerned?

We'll never know. He can't get into the Fantastic Four's private elevator without one of their key-gizmos, so he switches to the amazing Spider-man and uses a web line to walk to the Fantastic Four's penthouse digs from an adjoining building.

The Fantastic Four have had some bad luck with security (their entire building was stolen by Doctor Doom) and so have a sophisticated security system in place. Alarms go off and cameras show that Spider-Man is on his way. The team is bewildered he didn't "phone for an appointment, like anyone else," so even though they leave a window open for him, they activate defense measure B "just to be safe."

Spider-Man swings through the window frame, only to find himself in a plexiglass cage that drops from the ceiling. He quickly pries the glass open, causing the thrifty leader of the Fantastic Four, the modestly monikered "Mister Fantastic," to cry,

That device cost us thousands! If you wreck it–

The Thing lightly swings at Spider-Man to teach him some manners, but our hero easily tosses the giant rocky strongman into the Human Torch, who must be the slowest-reacting flying human in the Marvel universe. More fighting happens, though Spider-Man claims it's only a demonstration of what he can do. Finally, he spells it out for them:

I came up here to join up with you! I wanna be a member of the Fantastic Four! So, now, let's get down to business… how much does the job pay? I figure I'm worth your top salary!

Man, that Peter Parker… what a dick. The Fantastic Four basically agree… and they bring up that little matter of the amazing Spider-Man being wanted by the police! Embarrassed and offended, Spider-Man swings out the way he came in, a pouty "Who needs you?" on his lips. The Invisible Girl regrets the way things turned out, but Mister Fantastic, being the genius of the group, has a feeling "we'll be hearing more from that young man in the future!"

That's a great place to switch scenes. In the very next panel, in "a defense installation at the edge of town," the villain of our piece employs a little verbal exposition when he tells the man he's tied up,

With my multi-pocket disguise vest, it will be an easy matter for the Chameleon to become you, friend janitor!

The Chameleon gains access to a restricted area, utilizes a terrible wig, fake beard and Groucho Marx glasses to impersonate a professor, and steals the first half of some missile defense plans right under the noses of the scientists in the room.

Back at the Chameleon's hideout, he learns of the amazing Spider-Man's drop-in on the Fantastic Four and, in a Holmesian demonstration of deduction, figures out that our hero must have been looking for a job because being wanted by the police makes it impossible to earn a "legitimate living." It's almost as if the Chameleon has been reading Stan Lee's scripts.

Hm. Come to think of it, has anyone ever seen Stan and the Chameleon in the same place at the same time? You don't think…

Never mind.

The Chameleon decides Spider-Man will make the perfect fall guy when he steals the second half of the missile defense plans. At this point we learn there's much more to the Chameleon than we'd been led to believe so far.

Apparently the Chameleon is some kind of genius of electronics and biomechanics. He susses out that the amazing Spider-Man has the "powers and instincts of a spider" and creates a transmitter specially designed to send a message in english that only Spider-Man will hear.

Calling Spider-Man! Meet me on the roof of the Lark Building at ten tonight! It will be very profitable for you!

With genius-level skills like this, why is the Chameleon slinking around in bad disguises pulled out of his puffy brown vest? He's got the makings of a world-class supervillain, but as we'll see in later decades, he never quite makes the grade despite causing a lot of trouble for the amazing Spider-Man.

Speaking of our hero, he takes the bait since "I can't afford to pass up a chance for profit!" Just before they're to meet, the Chameleon, disguised as Spider-Man and armed with a web-shooting gun, steals the second half of the missile defense plans and zips away in a helicopter he left on the roof.

Spider-Man sees the helicopter leaving right before he arrives at the Lark Building… in time for the cops to rush him, thinking he's the thief! Spider-Man immobilizes the cops with his web and takes off in pursuit of the helicopter.

It's here that we're shown another handy use of his "spider's senses" — not only can he receive radio transmissions tuned to his frequency, he can also "tune in" on the helicopter! Later, the amazing Spider-Man's "spider sense" would be limited to a kind of very short-term early warning system to keep him out of immediate danger. Here in the very first issue of his comic, the creators were apparently still deciding just how versatile his extra-sensory perception would be… and the answer to that is, "as versatile as we need it to be for the purposes of the plot."

This story also shows us how remarkable the amazing Spider-Man's synthetic web could be, too. It's incredibly elastic: Spider-Man uses it as a kind of slingshot to propel him far over the city in his pursuit of the Chameleon's helicopter, all the way to the docks. There, he fashions a parachute out of the webbing to lightly descend.

The Chameleon is on his way to rendezvous with a Soviet submarine that has surfaced off shore, so Spider-Man — no stranger to vehicular theft in the line of duty, as we've already seen — commandeers a speedboat to reach the sub.

When the Russians realize the hatch of the sub's tower has been jammed shut by Spider-Man's webbing, they bail. Spider-Man lets the speedboat ram the sinking sub when he attaches himself to the helicopter with a webline. I feel sorry for the owner of that boat… he'll never know what happened to it!

Despite a lot of loop-dee-loops (I'm no expert, but I don't think helicopters can do that…) the Chameleon can't dislodge our hero. Spider-Man rips the door off the helicopter and — no doubt adopting his best "stern adult super-hero" voice — tells the Chameleon,

End of the line for you, commie! Head this ship towards shore — and I mean now!

The Chameleon knows when he's beat… for now. He pilots the helicopter back to the roof of the Lark Building, where Spider-Man turns him over to waiting police.

But!

The Chameleon drops a smoke pellet, gets away, disguises himself as a cop, douses the lights and tries to slip away. Spider-Man can still sense him in the dark, however (really?) and we're introduced to one of the most enduring tropes of the book: just when he's about to web up the bad guy, Spider-Man runs out of web fluid.

I don't buy it. Peter Parker is crazy smart. He designed this poly-carbon web fluid… stuff that can be sticky enough to "web" people up or pliable enough to shape into a parachute… and he designed and modded up the web shooters to dispense it. Why on earth wouldn't he have thought to include some kind of meter that would let him know he's running low?

But no. Over and over again, especially in the seventies, just when he needs it the most, the amazing Spider-Man runs out of web fluid. Does he run out of web fluid… or do the writers run out of plot twists? Hm.

Anyway, unable to subdue the Chameleon from a distance, the amazing Spider-Man goes for the direct approach. He's grappling with his foe just as the lights go up… and the police see Spider-Man grappling with one of their own!

They jump Spider-Man, thinking he's the Chameleon. That's it for our hero. Frustrated and pissed, he ditches the whole scene, grousing in a thought-bubble,

Every time I try to help, I get into worse trouble! Well, they can catch that spy themselves now!"

The thing is, the police do just that. The Chameleon tore his disguise in the scuffle, revealing the fake Spider-Man costume beneath, and the cops round him up.

Spider-Man's running away by now — I mean "losing himself in the shadows of the silent night" — , actually sobbing and wishing he'd never gotten his super powers.

This story ends much as the first: with the question (this time posed by the concerned Fantastic Four) of whether or not the confused, powerful Spider-Man will turn against the law. With this gun on the mantle piece laid out so often, we should expect that's exactly what will happen before too long. Right? I guess we'll have to wait until the next issue!

Thoughts On Issue One Part Two of The Amazing Spider-Man

Like the first story in issue number one of The Amazing Spider-Man, we see here how Spider-Man isn't really all that heroic just yet. As with the previous tale, his motivations are entirely driven by the need to get get money, not to battle bad guys because it's simply the right thing to do when you're blessed with super-powers.

Fine, I'll give you the fact that he's trying to raise money to help support his doting, widowed aunt… who woudn't be a widow if not for Peter Parker's egotistical negligence. But speaking of that ego… wow! The way he treats the Fantastic Four, it's a wonder they didn't toss him right back out of that window and told him to web himself up a nice hang-glider or something equally improbable and ridiculous before he goes splat.

Then there's how easily he fell into a temper tantrum when the cops turned on him a second time. He actually abandoned the fight! He actually turned his back on a situation where he had the power and opportunity to stop a dangerous criminal. The last time he did this, the bad guys shot his uncle to death. What would make Peter Parker so easily forget that with great power comes great responsibility?

Well, let's think about that one. He's sixteen years old, give or take. A few weeks ago, his life was changed forever when he was blessed with remarkable powers and cursed with the tragedy of his uncle's violent death — a death he could have prevented.

His whole young life, his bookish ways and prodigious intellect have branded him a pariah among his peers… and now he is secretly the object of their admiration and respect… while the authority figures he's respected have turned against him!

Frankly, this kid should be having a nervous breakdown. In fact, in these early issues of The Amazing Spider-Man… he might be. No wonder people suspect him of breaking the law, or fear he'll turn criminal… he comes across as unstable and erratic, the kind of kid you root for, but something's not quite right, too.

Now, I'm not saying Stan Lee and Steve Ditko looked this deeply into Peter Parker's character when they wrote these early tales. I strongly doubt they were after anything other than telling fun, compelling stories. But deliberately or not, they laid the groundwork for a new mythology by presenting a character whose flaws are as deep as his powers are, well, amazing.

As creators crafting story worlds that could become story franchises, we can take a lesson here: flawed characters are compelling characters. Give your hero plenty of un-heroic tendencies, especially if his faults are the result of some tragedy he can (or might not!) overcome. Your audience will come back again and again to see how it will all turn out, just as we've been waiting to see what happens next in the life of the amazing Spider-Man for over four decades.

So! Is your hero imperfect, flawed, troubled, a little bit of a jerk? Does he need to be to make your story more compelling? Let's talk about it in the comments!

The Amazing Spider-Man number one part two

"Spider Man vs. The Chameleon!"

Cover Date: March, 1963

Script: Stan Lee

Art: Steve Ditko

Lettering: John Duffi

Join Me In Reading The Amazing Spider-Man

Click the cover to buy the first twenty issues of The Amazing Spider-Man in an inexpensive trade paperback:





Your purchase helps support this series and all my creative endeavors — thanks!

Matthew Wayne Selznick - Telling stories with words, music, pictures and people.

Two Lessons Learned. Again

Lesson One: Don't use your blogging platform to write the first draft of a blog post. Especially a long blog post. Most especially a long blog post that is the second installment of an extended series. Really most especially when you're trying to establish consistency in the posting of the extended series in order to build traffic and reader confidence. Always, always, always do your first draft in a text editor with auto-save enabled.

Lesson Two: Don't write the second installment of an extended blog series the night before you expect to post it, because unexpected things might happen and you could lose pretty much everything with no recourse, especially if you didn't learn lesson one, above.  Get two or three installments in the can well ahead of their publication date so you have some space to allow for fuck-ups.

I'll be in the corner, on the stool. I'll be the one with the pointy hat on my head. Facing the wall.

Matthew Wayne Selznick - Telling stories with words, music, pictures and people.

Tend To Your Dreams

Neil deGrasse Tyson spoke with passion about what's become of the United States space program, and why, on a recent episode of Real Time with Bill Maher. Here's the clip:

When Tyson claims, "We stopped dreaming," he refers to the shift in the United States' culture away from both imagining and striving for and actually achieving the future and instead assigning greater import to near-term, more immediately graspable concerns. In other words, worrying about the fourth quarter and not the next quarter century.

The idea stayed with me, though in a different, more personal context.

Lately, circumstances has me thinking about how easy it is to downgrade the importance of life's enriching ambitions in the face of the short-term obligations and assumed responsibilities around which we build increasingly powerful routines and habits. The tragedy is that it's likely for most of us that the really important things we'd hoped to do will not even be started by the time we drop dead.

Rather than completing, or even beginning, the grand ambition of their life, most people will die having accomplished a million tiny, practical things that did nothing whatsoever to fuel their soul, respond to the call of their dreams, or establish a legacy.

How many grocery lists can one complete in a lifetime, compared to the items checked off on a bucket list? How many forgotten and often immediately unimportant projects can you finish on behalf of your employer compared to the number of novels written, paintings painted, or countries visited?

How easy is it for you to de-prioritize your dreams in favor of things you "have" to do, until, finally, you forget to dream at all?

Your Dreams Get A Line On The To-Do List

It's dangerously easy to put your dreams aside to address the mounting demands of the everyday. How to avoid it?

Simply, we must make tending to our dreams part of the everyday. Working on your dreams and passions needs to just be another one of those things you do, little by little, every single day… like weeding the side yard. You must believe that nurturing your dreams is just as important as feeding the pets, watering the lawn, or helping your kids with their homework or your spouse with the dishes.

We all have responsibilities and obligations to others… but your dreams and ambitions constitute a responsibility to yourself, and an obligation to your memory. If you assign an importance to your dreams at least equal to being gainfully employed at a job you care for not at all, and you follow through, you'll fulfill an obligation to the person you'll be moments before you die, when you look back and ask yourself if you made the most of the time you just ran out of.

Don't let that person down. They have nothing else to live for.

How Are You Tending To Your Dreams?

When was the last time you remembered to dream? What are you doing to feed your dreams? Where on the list of obligations and responsibilities real and assumed have you placed the most important things in your life — the things that you'll wish you had accomplished when you draw your last breath?

Tell me, tell the world, in the comments.

Matthew Wayne Selznick - Telling stories with words, music, pictures and people.

Reading The Amazing Spider-Man: Issue Number One Part One

The Amazing Spider-Man number one begins with a wonderful splash page depicting our hero clinging to a wall while an angry mob, all pointing fingers and clenched fists and led by J. Jonah Jameson, declare him a "Freak! Public Menace!" We're promised "there's never been a hero like… Spider-Man!"

The first actual page of story is a neat seven-panel recap of Amazing Fantasy number 15, the book where the amazing Spider-Man's story truly began. We learn:

"Uncle Ben is dead! All because I was too late to stop him! My Spider-Man costume! I wish there was no such thing!"
Peter Parker, teen-age student assumed to be a shy bookworm, was bitten by a radioactive spider, found he had the powers of a spider, and tried to use his new talents to get into show business and cash in.
While Peter was off grandstanding as Spider-Man, a burglar he earlier couldn't be bothered to stop shoots his Uncle dead right in front of his Aunt. These two people raised Peter, and thanks to him, one of them is dead and the other is a widow.
With Uncle Ben gone, the bills are piling up. To emphasize this, we see Aunt May promising a dour landlord that they'll pay the rent next week.

Everything you need to know about the amazing Spider-Man is right here on this page:

He's a bookworm who, when given the miraculous lucky break of falling into super-powers, lets his ego get the best of him. His obsession with stardom blinds him to his civic duty to stop a criminal when he has the chance, and he sometimes shifts the blame for that lapse of character over to the Spider-Man persona.
Peter is punished for this self-centered attitude — which will return again and again to get in the way of Peter Parker's development as a person — when it directly results in the violent death of the man who raised him. Peter learns a valuable lesson, the punchline of Amazing Fantasy number 15. Say it with me:

With great power comes great responsibility.

The amazing Spider-Man really is a hero like no other. He's driven to fight crime and do good not out of a desire for vengeance, or a sense of justice. Peter Parker is the amazing Spider-Man to sooth a massive, traumatizing sense…. of guilt.

We'll see him subsume this driving anguish now and then, but over and over again something happens that brings it back. Guilt, obligation and imposed responsibility are his burden.

Synopsis

With the rent due and no money coming in, Peter is tempted to use his Spider-powers to become a criminal. The biggest thing that stops him? A fear that if he were caught it would break Aunt May's heart. Instead, he books another performance as the amazing Spider-Man.

The gang at Midtown High is excited to see Spider-Man, but when Peter necessarily tells them to count him out, it gives us an opportunity to see that the kids didn't really want him there. It's going to take a while for any of the kids to warm to our boy. For now, he's a pariah. "Aw, who needs that walkin' bookworm anyway!"

Spider-Man wows the crowd that night, but when it comes time to get paid, the manager of the auditorium or club or whatever insists on giving him a check "So there's a record for taxes!" The check is made out to Spider-Man, but when he goes to the bank the next day in his Spider-Man costume in broad daylight, the bank teller refuses to cash the check without identification. Poor teen-aged Peter Parker insists his costume is identification enough, but that doesn't fly.

Let's pause a moment to consider the scene for its audaciousness. It's 1963. New York has been exposed to some wild stuff lately — a giant underground creature attacked the city not long before, only to be driven off by a guy who could stretch like a rubber band, the Human Torch (but not the one who fought alongside poor lost Captain America twenty years before), a lumpy orange monster and a woman who could make herself invisible. All the same, the bank teller — all spectacles and neat red bow tie — is absolutely dismissive of our hero, who… so far… is no hero at all. It's hilarious, really… for everyone except young master Parker.

And his troubles are just beginning. The next night, he finds "there'll be no show tonight — or any night!"

It seems J. Jonah Jameson, publisher of The Daily Bugle, has taken it upon himself to smear the amazing Spider-Man in editorials and lectures. Perhaps taking a cue from Fredric Wertham's "Seduction of the Innocent," the anti-comic book volume that might still have been on writer Stan Lee's mind nine years later, Jonah fears that Spider-Man is a bad influence on the kids, and should be outlawed. He insists that "the youth of the nation must learn to respect real heroes — men such as my son, John Jameson, the test pilot!"

John Jameson's going to have a rough time of it over the next five hundred issues, by the way. Stay tuned.

Peter's chances of making money as the amazing Spider-Man are shot. He can't find a part-time job. He covertly sees his Aunt pawning her jewelry with a sad little smile, and then hears a newsboy mention that J. Jonah Jameson's son, "the test pilot" is about to orbit the earth.

Mention of the elder Jameson sends Peter into a little temper tantrum, but he's focused in his frustration. "I can't let Aunt May down! Even it means the Spider-Man will again stalk the city by night!"

Gotta interject on myself again, here. Have you noticed teen-aged Peter Parker talks like middle-aged Stan Lee trying to sound like a dime novel writer? I mean, c'mon. "…will again stalk the city by night??" Who talks like that?

Despite what should have been a nice cue to, well, see the amazing Spider-Man again stalking the city by night, we turn the page and it's the next day. Peter Parker, "having nothing better to do," (what happened to all that stalking??) is in the crowd gathered to watch John Jameson's rocket take off.

It's a flawless takeoff, but the guidance package goes pear-shaped and the capsule careens out of control. It's going to crash into the earth, and the best efforts of the "space technicians" (including trying to stop the capsule by dropping a steel net attached to a parachute!!!) fail.

Fortunately, Peter Parker is ready to jump into action. In fact, he's wildly confident that he can save John Jameson. He gets to mission control (which looks a lot like an office in a midtown skyscraper) and, despite J. Jonah Jameson's protestation, convinces the military to give him a replacement part to take to the capsule… somehow.

The amazing Spider-Man — a teen-aged boy who up until now has distinguished himself by doing stunts for money and deliberately not putting himself in harm's way — commandeers a plane and a pilot, gets the pilot to fly close to the passing capsule, and, using his web line, hitches a ride. What inspires him to save the life of the son of the man who is causing him so much trouble?

Guilt, of course. The last time he stood idly by while bad things happened, the man who raised him was shot to death in his living room. He has to act, or he'll probably lose his mind. Of course that's not mentioned at all in the book… but we have to assume that's his motivation. Up until that moment of opportunity, he's almost exclusively used his power for his own benefit. Now he has a chance to do something purely good… and as we'll see, even now, his motivations are not entirely without ulterior motive.

It's a bit of a wild ride across a page or so, but Spider-Man reaches the capsule, slides the unit into place, and saves the day. He makes himself scarce when the capsule lands, since "I'd just be embarrassed if everyone wants to congratulate me…"

That's right. The amazing Spider-Man's main concern is not the safety of the astronaut. His mind is on the positive effect his derring-do will have on public opinion. Peter, a teen-ager to the core, is selfish despite himself.

Of course, it doesn't go his way. J. Jonah Jameson has a new editorial on the front page of his paper the very next day, demanding Spider-Man's arrest for the very real crimes of breaking into a military base, kidnapping a pilot, and commandeering a plane. It works. There's a reward for Spider-Man's capture… and the shadow of the law is something that will dog our hero across 185 issues of the comic.

When the story ends, even Aunt May hopes they catch "that horrible Spider-Man." Peter is at a loss, wondering again if he must turn to crime to help his Aunt. We're left to believe that this is a real threat:

And so, a lonely boy sits and broods, with the fate of society at stake! What will his decision be? What will Spider-Man do next? Only time will tell!

Not that much time, really, The Amazing Spider-Man number one is a double issue! The next story is on the next page… but we're going to wait until next week to find out what happens.

Thoughts On Issue One of The Amazing Spider-Man

The thing that strikes me about this first issue is how just about every element that will shape the stories in The Amazing Spider-Man for decades to come is laid out in thirteen pages of comics. Of course, Stan Lee and Steve Ditko almost certainly didn't have anything like that degree of foresight in mind… and that makes it even more remarkable.

The material presented here is a recipe for all kinds of drama and pathos — enough, in fact, to carry a character across almost fifty years of storytelling. This is a foundation on which to build a mythology: the temptation of power versus the chains of psychological trauma… societal pressure… a powerful, popular enemy… family conflict… we're all set to go!

For writers, this first issue of The Amazing Spider-Man is a textbook on how to devise entire storyworlds that will support long-lived franchises based on our content. No matter what happens in the comic book issues, books, cartoons, television shows, movies and video games to come, we know all or most of the ingredients presented here will be tossed in the pot.

When you're designing your characters and your storyworlds, are you giving some thought to the elements that you'll depend on to sustain and drive your stories forward? Let's talk about it in the comments.

The Amazing Spider-Man number one part one

"Spider Man"

Cover Date: March, 1963

Script: Stan Lee

Art: Steve Ditko

Lettering: Johnny Dee

Join Me In Reading The Amazing Spider-Man

Click the cover to buy the first twenty issues of The Amazing Spider-Man in an inexpensive trade paperback:





Your purchase helps support this series and all my creative endeavors — thanks!

Matthew Wayne Selznick - Telling stories with words, music, pictures and people.

Let's Read The Amazing Spider-Man

Since I was six or seven years old and I thumbed through my first issue in a drug store in McKeesport, Pennsylvania while my grandmother picked up her prescriptions, I have loved the amazing Spider-Man.

I loved that he was a picked-on smart kid with too-big glasses who would rather study than play sports. That was just like me!

I loved that he wise-cracked his way through tough spots, his wit covering up his fear. That was just like me!

I loved that he was flawed… sometimes selfish, sometimes unkind to his friends, always neurotic and second-guessing himself. That was… hopefully was… just like me!

"The Amazing Spider-Man," especially the wonderfully corny, soap-opera-tastic issues written by Len Wein and drawn by Ross Andru, was the manual for my young life. I love Peter Parker. The Amazing Spider-Man is my hero.

Reading The Amazing Spider-Man

For months, I've had an idea that would not go away. When an idea sticks with you, it's probably worth pursuing. Here it is:

I'm going to read "The Amazing Spider-Man," from issue one through issue 545. Once a week, every Tuesday, I'll post my thoughts and observations, issue by issue, from the perspective of a writer, a creator and most importantly, a fan. I think I'll learn things about episodic storytelling, long-form character arcs, creating comics, and, yes, I'll go ahead and also add "myself."

I think it'll be fun.

Join me! We'll start with the debut issue of "The Amazing Spider-Man," cover dated March 1963, next Tuesday.

Matthew Wayne Selznick - Telling stories with words, music, pictures and people.