'The Thousand'

[cyberghostface]

Since S_D seems to be on an Ennis kick atm I figured I'd repost an entry I did a while back for his Spider-Man story 'The Thousand' which was part of the 'Tangled Web' anthology book.

While it's more SFW than your average Ennis book, there is quite a bit of gruesome body horror that wouldn't be out of place in a Cronenberg film, so take that as a warning.

Disclaimer: Three issues, seven pages from each.

The story opens with a surly guy at a diner watching Spider-Man battle the Rhino outside his window.





We go to Peter at the Bugle where Jonah's turning down his photo of Spider-Man and the Rhino.





She attempts to mace him when she sees Carl but it doesn't do anything.







#2...

Beginning of the issue has "Miss Patton" telling Peter that she needs a place to stay for the night. Peter offers her his.







She throws Peter out the window. He manages to get dressed up as Spider-Man and takes on "Miss Patton" who identifies herself as "The Thousand". The Thousand ends up biting Spidey on the neck, paralyzing and knocking him out. He wakes up tied to a chair.



Heh, so Jessica Jones was there when Pete got bit by the spider and so was this guy. Wonder if there have been any other retconned characters present?

EDIT: And since writing this we now have Cindy Moon AKA Silk who was present.







#3...

The issue opens with Mr. Ambrose, the super, coming in and seeing Spider-Man surrounded by the spiders. Spidey tells him to run but it's too late as the spiders jump down his throat and devour him from the inside.



(Back to Silk, this is one of the reasons why "Someone else got powers from the spider" never bothered me like it did others because this guy beat her to it.)

Carl tells him that his body began to break down as his insides were being consumed by a thousand spiders with his consciousness. He eventually moves onto his own parents, first his mother and then his father. Each time he moves from a body he gets stronger.

Spider-Man tells him that all his time he's been monologuing, the poison has worn off.



The battle goes outside. Carl tells Peter he doesn't know how easy he's had it. "The death-defying exploits. The lethal array of colorful villains. The string of beautiful girlfriends -- all because some nerd gets bitten by a spider? You know what happened to my beautiful girlfriend? I had to eat her."







Carl, in his rage, doesn't realize he's about to hit a high-voltage box. Spider-Man tries to warn him but Carl ends up electrocuting himself.

Comments

[captainbellman]

I still have fond memories of coming across this in a comic book store when I was, like, 12.

Still, it occupies a weird space in continuity because it's not quite different enough to be an Elseworlds, but on multiple readings you realise Ennis probably originally wrote it with Peter's extended cast in mind (Flash Thompson, Betty Brant, a bit you missed out at a fashion party that Peter would usually only be invited to by MJ) - and for one reason or another they had him just use expys instead.

[silverhammerman]

Well I think the reason they didn't use Flash Thompson is that this story fundamentally runs counter to what the character was created to express. The point of Flash Thompson, even back during the borderline misanthropic Ditko years, is that he's a shithead, but not actually evil, hence why Spider-Man can't just beat the shit out of him. The fact that in later years we saw Flash grow up, reconcile with Peter, and join the military to live up to his own ideals, acknowledges that some people might be shitty teens, but most of them just grow up.

Honestly that's part of what makes this story fall kind flat for me. Flash Thompson is a character whose story shows maturity, empathy and growth, whereas this just reads like an elaborate high school revenge fantasy, which isn't what Spider-Man is about for me.

[crinos]

I actually really like this. Ir kind of surprises me how Good Ennis can write when he gets past his whole "Har Har Superheroes are stupid and you're stupid for liking them" bit.

[cyberghostface]

Or "beating someone to death with a severed HORSECOCK".

[crinos]

Yeah, Ennis strikes me as one of those creative types who needs someone to tell them "No!" once in a while.

[shadur]

In Ennis' case, they'll need a plant mister filled with holy water and a rolled-up newspaper at the ready.

[lucean]

Same here. It's so rare, that is actually astonishing to see, but also quite pleasant since Ennis is a really good comic book writer.

Now if I could only forget his Batman story.

[espanolbot]

The one that was intended as a homage to 70s/80s cop movies? I was going to post some of that...

Though admittedly it's early Ennis, so the glorification of macho behaviour is still there to an extent. That's kind of what was interesting about the Boys' non-superhero plot, as it was about Hughie actively learning that acting like Butcher isn't healthy and being a more rounded, emotional person who can make genuine connections to other people rather than stoic sadism of character like Billy.

[lucean]

Interesting, I was also considering posting a pieces of it, but I did once before and dear lord I hated that story. To you it might be a homage to those cop movies, and I can see where the interpretation comes from, but to me it was just awful. Ennis a three issue Batman story where Batman or any other actual GCPD police officers are side characters to his awesome, violent, uber-machismo former NYPD officers can stroll in to the city and be all that awesomeness. I especially love the scene where they lure GCPD officers in to a trap to create a distraction from themselves and then have the gall to be angry at those officers, or the scene where they try to execute a criminal in front of people and have the audacity to ask what crime was done. Or where the god of all men was so awesome that he could hear Batman lurking around, because hey, it's not that it was a Batmna book or anything.

And I've seen you raise the point that Ennis glorification of macho behaviour at early stages of his career, although I struggle to comprehend how it was only there for some extent in the story in question, but I think here's were we disagree at a fundamental level. For me, it is still there in his current work. He has done some really great stories, I will never deny that, but almost all of his stories which don't glorify that kind of behaviour involve war and people in them. To him, it almost seem that the only people who matter are people who experienced war and they always echo the same character traits. I can pick up an Ennis story by random and pretty much guess spot on what his main character is going to be like and how everything is going to be solved.

As for The Boys, I can again see why that would an interpretation of Ennis's story, but to me, it is a hypocritical story as the only person that really solves anything in the story is Billy through the use of sadistic violence. So while the story may have shown Billy to be a traumatized veteran uncapable of real human interaction, quite similar to Ennis's Punisher, it also makes Butcher and his methods the only effective ways to combat the threats of the world. That is why to me Ennis's story glorify violence and uber-machismo, as they are shown as the only solution to almost anything and the people using them as more of martyrs than sociopaths.

[espanolbot]

Though Billy's methods are ultimate proven to be wrong though, as his targets begin including not just non-violent superheroes (the group in the Innocents, for example, where both harmless and good people and he was fully prepared to murder them if not for Hughie's intervention) but EVERYONE who had traces of the superpower compound in their blood stream.

This didn't just include superheroes, but also his friends and just regular people with the misfortune of getting exposed to it by accident (the daughter of one of the Boys suffered from hormone problems due to her dad's infected bloodstream, which he only had because his mother was herself infected by working in a factory that used to produce the stuff).

Billy IS a hypocrite (his solo story implied that he got it from his abusive dad to an extent), and he's not so much a traumatised veteran as he is an inherently violent person willing to do anything he likes to get what he wants. The fact that the story comes down to Hughie (who is a normal, decent person) versus Billy (an uber-macho psychopath) seems to underline that Billy isn't really the person we should be attaching ourselves to as an audience, it's Hughie.

He seemed to be making a point regarding what kind of person would it take to be a stoic retro-action film badass when it came to Billy... whether he succeeded or not is another matter entirely.

The contrast between "old fashioned male protagonist versus reality" was also made in his first Nick Fury series for Marvel... which seemed partly a satire of how the 1990s had removed the teeth from the action/spy genre, with Traditional Action Protagonist Nick Fury quickly realising that the world neither needs nor wants him anymore... Personally I prefer his WW2-set Peacemaker series more, as it's more of a straight homage to films like the Dirty Dozen and Where Eagles Dare without the tedious "Why isn't life like an Arnie movie anymore?" commentary.

[lucean]

First of all Billy's methods and goals are completely separate issues. The fact that Billy's ultimate goal was to kill everyone didn't implicate anything about the effectiveness of Billy's methods to eliminate Supers in the story. Before that, Billy and his methods are the ways every Super is eliminated and how the Voight-American is taken down. Brutal, sadistic violence achieved that. The fact that it then started to spin out of control is kind of a moot point, because again, you conflate methods and objectives.

And yeah, absolutely Hughie was the one we were supposed to see as the hero, but it also important to note that at that point of the story, he was much closer to that uber-macho approach to problem solving than he was in the beginning and that the other large problem, the supers and Vaughn-American, had already been stopped literally due to Billy's uber-macho psychopath approach.

The thing is Ennis's main characters are almost always presented as damaged individuals who are not supposed to be characters you wish to be. That is not at the base of the accusation of glorification. The reason I write that he glorifies such characters is that they are almost always the only people in his stories who achieve anything of value. Other characters who are not psychotic or violent may at times be shown as in a positive light, yet they never achieve anything of any worth in those stories.

I mean if we honestly have to start making asterisks about Ennis's work at different times, with the Batman story being somehow a homage to 70s/80s cop movies or how his Nick Fury was partially a satire, to explain why same themes are constantly repeating in his stories. This isn't to say that I think you or anyone can't enjoy Ennis's stories, to me in the narrow area he inhabits he is a really good comic book writer, but rather that, to me personally, a lot of these defenses I've seen posted for him seem almost dismissive to people's complaints about him and his style.

[espanolbot]

Oh I totally get your complaints and I really didn't intend to come off as dismissive of your opinions on the subject. I can see why people would dislike his work, and I'll admit that there are ones I'm not to fond of either. That Fury satire series, for example, or that comedy series Adventures of the Rifle Brigade (which was intended as a parody of British warcomics like Commando). Or large chunks of Preacher.

I can see why people like them, and I admit that he seems to like a lot of the same kinds of films that I grew up watching, but I do understand that a lot of the themes carried over are hella problematic in some cases (rewatching the early Bond films for example... sheesh).

I suppose that the question becomes whether he's homaging something, or is just writing something in the same style of as another piece of media that he liked... although I personally think that there is a marked difference in his writing from earlier in his carrier compared to now, for example.

As said elsewhere, it really seems to boil down to whether he's writing something that he personally finds interesting or not. Hence, his Dan Dare, Shadow etc stories are generally high quality, while stuff written because he was hired to write something in the vein of Preacher... Yeah.

[lucean]

I must begin by apologizing for being slightly oversensitive on the dismissive issue. I was reading at the same time another discussion concerning MoS, which have a tendency to make my head hurt so, so bad, and I fear my reaction from it bled over to this discussion. My sincerest apologies for that.

After some pondering, I actually have to agree that there has been a change in his stories, but I perhaps believe it is more due to the fact that he is no able to write more of the stories that he wanted to then, as you pointed out in your last paragraph. Even then, though, I feel there is a constant presence of the same character types and glorification of certain actions/approaches as the only ways to really solve anything.

I do, to repeat myself, completely understand why people like Ennis's work. He is an excellent writer with a good grasp of pacing and scene building in the medium of his work. For me personally, the reason I can never really consider him a great writer is that he remains so nestled in his comfort area to truly ever challenge him to tell a different story or to use a different perspective.

And by the way, I agree that Adventures of the Rifle Brigade was truly ghastly and to me perhaps illustrated a larger problem with when Ellis tries to something satirical as his work as he, for me, rarely manages to truly make fun of those character types at the heart of them. Although I do have to admit that despite my many problems with The Boys, it is probably the closest Ennis has ever gone to examine his problematic main characters.

[locuatico]

Ennis is someone who seems to have, to the very least, respect to other people's works and creations (some, not so much). I remember he actually wrote a very moving scene in Hitman about why Superman was such a great character.

[crinos]

Yeah, he likes Superman, but not most super heroes.

[locuatico]

but even characters like Kyle Rayner he has shown in a positive light at least once. years of difference to "The Boys".

[cyberghostface]

Well he also implied that Kyle was raped by Bueno Excellente.

[lucean]

Wait, are you talking about Kyle's visit in Hitman where he is portrayed is to be barely functional idiot?

[stolisomancer]

He'd go on to write Kyle in the JLA/Hitman two-issue miniseries as a generally well-meaning, inexperienced hero whose biggest problem was that he was getting shit on by the rest of his team.

Which wasn't an entirely unpopular interpretation of the character back in the early '90s. Kyle had a rather enthusiastic "hatedom" among some fans and even some writers.

[icon_uk]

Yeah, but is feeding that hatedom a wise idea. Grant Morrison managed to subvert in in less than a panel when someone refers to Kyle as "Almost as good as the real Green Lantern" and Kyle replies "You'd be surprised, save the world a couple of times and you ARE the "real" Green Lantern", which seems a much more likely progression of Kyle's public perception.

[stolisomancer]

I'm confused by what point you're trying to make here. I'm saying that Ennis's characterization of Kyle is in step with several other writers of the period, and is actually kinder than some.

Whether that's a good idea or not is irrelevant to the discussion.

[lucean]

But didn't Hitman/JLA come long after that period, when Kyle had already established himself?

[stolisomancer]

It's an adaptation of a leftover script from Hitman and is nominally set during the "Big Seven" Morrison era. It didn't come out until much later, yeah.

[stolisomancer]

Point being, that Ennis has written Kyle positively at least once, as the post I was replying to stated. The end, no moral.

[icon_uk]

I was attempting (badly I suspect) to suggest that "kinder than some" is still not much of an improvement on the tone.

Portraying him as a "generally well-meaning, inexperienced hero whose biggest problem was that he was getting shit on by the rest of his team" is still feeding the expectations of the parts of the fanbase that assumed that was all he ever was. To me that's still "feeding the haters" and isn't a good idea.

Morrison, who has confessed a deal of liking for Kyle's character ignored that take on him, and showed him as the creative, confident hero, regardless of what the prevalent trend was.

[stolisomancer]

I'm still confused as to what point you're trying to make. Somebody asked what other times Ennis had written Kyle; I said "here, and it's actually pretty good compared to how some people wrote him at the time"; you're talking about "feeding the haters."

You seem to be trying to pick a semantic argument with somebody else.

[icon_uk]

Re-reading it after a (badly needed) nights sleep, you know what, I haven't a bloody clue what point I was trying to make so I throw myself on the mercy of the court, your honour!

[espanolbot]

He wrote an okay Wonder Woman, as he apparently said she was another one of those superheroes that he "got" what they were about.

[laughing_tree]

There was one interview where he said that, aside from Superman, Spider-Man's the only superhero he has any sort of fondness for because he's just an ordinary dude trying to do his best.

Which explains this story, I guess.

[md84]

My favorite part of this story was the ending. The villain retreats and is all set to get ready for a comeback...and he's squashed by an oblivious pedestrian and dies like the pathetic nobody he always was.

[silverhammerman]

This story, or at least the bits that I've seen of it, has never quite clicked for me, personally. It's a very blatant "bullies grow up to be losers" story, and while I can understand the value of that sort of story, it's just way too on the nose for my taste, and I feel like there's a bit of a mixed message in the villain/bully being both an insignificant loser and a literal monster. To me it just wind up feeling like little more than a long festering revenge fantasy that makes it so Spidey can beat up his old bully without looking petty, and it's just not particularly interesting to me.

[espanolbot]

Thing is, didn't they have a Daredevil story recently that had pretty much the same storybeats? Like, there was a kid who picked on Matt both before and after he was blinded, and then seemed to seeth with jealous when Murdock went on to be both a successful lawyer and supehero.

But while Matt went down one path, the bully ended up joining some supervillainous white supremacist group, and somehow acts like his treatment of Matt in their younger days was justified.

I can't really think of any other supervillains who followed these lines, but it is in line with both Hush (whose inferiority complex causes him to target Bruce because his mother somehow managed to make him think that Bruce was flaunting his life in Tommy's face) and versions of Lex Luthor (who depending on the version is also a childhood friend gone bad out of jealousy).

[silverhammerman]

Hey man, the Sons of the Serpent didn't go white supremacist until after he'd joined!

Seriously though, I hadn't thought of that storyline at first, but It's a pretty good example of what the Thousand does wrong in comparison. As a quick synopsis; DD's old bully shows up and asks for his help in taking down the Sons of the Serpent, leading to Murdock finding out about their infiltration of New York and the final story arc of the New York era of Wiad and Samnee.

For me the difference between the two stories comes down to what the character is there to do narratively; DD's old bully dredges up some issues for Murdock, but the guy's just a sadsack loser now, someone who Daredevil has to put up with and help rather than a villain that he gets to cathartically punch in the face. More importantly the character sets a larger story in motion, he's not really the focus.

The Thousand on the other hand is pretty obviously written primarily to create a scenario where Peter Parker can be justified beating up his schoolyard bully. In doing so the story tries to have it both ways by painting the Thousand as both an insignificant loser yet also literal monster bent on tormenting Peter Parker, because that's something Spider-Man can punch. It's little more than an elaborate revenge fantasy about getting back at people who sucked in high school.

[palgrave_goldenrod]

Can't it actually be both ways, though? I mean, in the broader scheme of things most bullies ultimately are insignificant -- which, to play armchair psychologist for a moment, is arguably one reason why they bully -- but on the personal level, if you were to ask any of their victims how insignificant they were you'd get a very different answer. To a victim, a bully can indeed be seem at times like a terrifying monster hell-bent on tormenting them, no matter how big a loser they are in actuality or how meaningless they are to the world at general, because bullies generally do go out of their way to pick on particular victims. I'm not going to claim that this the most complex or well-rounded of characterisations, but as superhero comics go the idea of a pathetic-yet-terrifying childhood tormenter as literal monster is a reasonably serviceable metaphor; a bit obvious, perhaps, but not that different to, say, Buffy the Vampire Slayer dealing with various high school problems in the form of various monsters.

As for a revenge fantasy, well, I can't really argue that it isn't, but on the other hand that kind of narrative is potent for a reason. The psychological scars from bullying can last a long time for the victim, and not every bully undergoes or deserves a convenient redemption narrative. It might not be the most complex or high-minded of fantasies, but getting even with someone who made / makes your life utterly miserable for what may seem like little reason other than spite can be an attractive narrative. Sometimes a bit of vicarious wish-fulfilment through a fantasy character like Spider-Man might just be what a victim needs or the only form of justice they're likely to get.

I'm also not entirely certain that Spider-Man is as unsuitable a character for this kind of narrative as you seem to think, since the whole essence of Peter Parker is that he's an everyman who the world tends to crap on and who tends to be a target, but who ultimately overcomes it and triumphs, and frequently does so (given that he's a superhero) by using his fists. Having Peter Parker confront his childhood bully as a literal monster and ultimately overcome it might not be the most deep or complex of Spider-Man narratives, but it's not a glaringly egregious one either IMO.

[silverhammerman]

You're right, and honestly I've been a little harsh on this story, probably because we've had a lot of The Boys posted on here recently and that's not a series that raises my opinion of Ennis.

As I said below, the emotions that this story tries to play on don't really "work" on me, but I can understand and appreciate that it could have value to someone who did actually experience things like Peter Parker does in the story. I still don't think it's particularly ambitious and it's a little contrived, but if the catharsis comes through for someone I wouldn't want to take that away from them.

[liliaeth]

thing is though that a lot of bullies are like that. And as a former victim of bullying, I'm kind of tired of stories about the poor misunderstood bully who's only lashing out because they're 'in so much pain.

[silverhammerman]

My problem isn't that the villain doesn't have a Freudian excuse for his behavior (I agree that not every character needs one) but that Ennis is essentially mashing up two fundamentally different kinds of stories about bullying and growth. On the one hand you've got the "it gets better" stuff with Peter Parker growing up and having a good life, and the broken jerk who tormented him becoming a twisted nobody. But at the same time you've got what is, again, a revenge fantasy specifically engineered to make it so Spidey can beat up his bully without seeming petty. It's cathartic yes, but it doesn't quite mesh.

Full disclosure though, I never had much trouble with bullying growing up, so the catharsis that this story is built on simply doesn't work for me. Even though I don't care for it, my intention is not to invalidate anyone else's reaction to or enjoyment of the story.

[liliaeth]

You know, when even Garth Ennis can write a better Spider-man, then it says something about how much Slott sucks at writing the char.