Amazing Spider-Man #36

[cyberghostface]

"It was not Doc Doom and other villains at ground zero, just like it was not a young child crying for his fallen father. It was a representation...a symbol...a metaphor for real feelings and thoughts. It was, excuse the sugar-coating, JMS' and my heart and soul on those pages. I didn't ever cringe at the thought of those characters being in that spot. To me, it made sense. This kind of cowardly, unspeakable horror effects all of us...ALL OF US! I don't want to say..."Lighten Up"! I want everyone to concentrate on what happened on 9/11. Don't forget...Don't EVER forget!" -- John Romita Jr.

Comments

[gnarll]

Seems a bit of cognitive dissonance there. Surely things like that are fairly commonplace in the Marvel Universe?

[cyberghostface]

I don't know, the MU isn't so much of a crapsack world that the deaths of over 2,000 people wouldn't just be "another day" for most of the people living in New York.

[starwolf_oakley]

I think the "hook" would be it wasn't super-villains who did it, just "regular" people. INCREDIBLE HULK: FUTURE IMPERFECT by Peter David has this, where Elderly Rick Jones tells Time Travelling Hulk that World War III wasn't a plot by the Leader, the Red Skull or the Mandarin. It was just regular people who ended the world.

[laughing_tree]

I don't think this is actually supposed to be an in-continuity story. If I understand correctly, it doesn't get referenced in any subsequent issue, makes no reference to previous issues of the run, and the first page even starts with something like "We interrupt your regularly scheduled broadcast..."

[cyberghostface]

It hasn't been explicitly stated either way but given that Flash lost his legs in the war in Iraq 9/11 had to have occurred in the MU and given that this is the only Marvel title to showcase the Marvel characters reacting to it Occam's razor would indicate this is canon as for how it went down.

[deepspaceartist]

IIRC 9/11is how Aunt May discovered Peter's secret identity. He goes home exhausted and just crashes into bed in his Spidey suit. May comes into his apartment worried about him because she hasn't heard from him all day and finds him sleeping while unmasked but otherwise still suited up. She finally puts the pieces together and Peter can't plausibly deny it anymore.

[cyberghostface]

No he came home after defeating Morlun. The 9/11 issue was just wedged in between the issues.

[deepspaceartist]

Ah, my mistake. It's been a while since I read that story, and I think this story was in the same trade paperback.

[wizardru]

Which led to one of my favorite issues of the JMS run, with Aunt May doing some soul searching, gets a coffee, thinks long and hard about her opinions of Peter and Spiderman, reads back issues of the Daily Bugle and then writes JJJ an irate letter on his biased journalism. Then she goes to have a talk with Peter.

I thought it was a pretty great issue.

[shadowpsykie]

can we see this? I don't think I've ever read that issue....

[wizardru]

I'll have to get some scans when I get home. It's from Amazing Spiderman #37, iirc, followed by #38: "The Conversation", in which May confronts Peter and they have a long talk about Uncle Ben, Spiderman, their shared survivor's guilt and the nature of secrets.

JMS's run had some bumpy spots, to be sure, but when he was on his game, he was firing on all cylinders.

[zero_elec]

Doom and Magneto wouldn't give two shits about that, tho. I'm 90% sure they've done worse things in their careers.

The Kingpin might care inasmuch as it affects his bottom line.

Dr. Octopus might care if anyone he cared about was inside, but other than that, I don't think he'd care much.

The Juggernaut, I don't know enough about his personality to know if he'd care honestly. He's always been kinda one-note in my mind. Also the colourist forgot to colour him in one panel.

[cyberghostface]

IDK about Doom but Magneto hasn't, he was outraged when people thought him capable of what Xorneto did (the mass slaughter of humans).

Kingpin isn't a complete sociopath and he thinks that he's making the city stronger so I think such a large act of destruction would affect him on some level.

It varies with Doc Ock but later in JMS's run he helped Spider-Man rescue some civilians from being crushed by rubble so him assisting the 9/11 rescue workers isn't that OOC for him.

As for Juggernaut he's basically a hero/antihero now since Chuck Austen unless things changed since then.

[glprime]

That's right, Magneto only kills swathes of people when they (indirectly) attack him first.

[mrstatham]

And he's totally fine rallying an entire nation for a war that could kill millions; and viciously torturing his former best friend in the world. That was pre-Xorneto, too.

[flint_marko]

clearly Xavier got over it (and he's done worse to Mags).

[flint_marko]

I'm not seeing a problem there.

[reveen]

Considering how many smaller time supervillains are New Yorkers, there's probably a shitload of good candidates for this. Though Dooms the only one I think is out there.

[gnarll]

I don't see Doom caring one whit.

Magneto though... he has personal reasons to be quite upset by genocide or this kind of mass murder. He also has a horror of people being trapped and dying. Even Wolverines remarked on that.

If hes in a "lets help out" mode, I can see his powers being quite effective, especially if directed by Wolverine or Daredevil.

Juggernaut has tried to topple the towers himself. I could actually see him being horrified by the amount of death and suffering it resulted in.

The Kingpin almost certainly lost a lot of money. He'd cry.

[flint_marko]

Where did Wolverine say that?

[gnarll]

Secret Wars I, their base collapses and not everyone thinks about the prisoners.

[silicondream]

Magneto would be thinking, “Idiot flatscans killing each other again. Why don’t they just let mutants take over and run everything properly?”

Doom would be thinking, “This would never happen in Latveria. Richards is stupid and his stupid country's security apparatus is stupid. Bah!”

Kingpin would be thinking, “You damage MY CITY, the CITY THAT I OWN, and I will destroy—ooh, disaster relief money and contracts for reconstruction. Time to get a piece of that.”

[an_idol_mind]

The Juggernaut has actually knocked the World Trade Center down himself, then laughed about it.

It's one of those moments that are very uncomfortable in hindsight.

[crinos]

Every time I see this I can't help but comment:

If Dr. Doom was so offended by 9/11 to be moved to tears, then the war on terror would have never happened.

because on 9/12 Doom would have walked up to the steps of the UN with the heads of Osama Bin Laden and the other Al Qaeda leaders in a duffelbag.

[mizerous]

B-ut real world events can't let Doom do that this is a comic book remember. :V

[sarahnewlin]

:(

I used to think it was so cool how all the different comics in DC and Marvel had 9/11 tributes (Wonder Woman for example)

[mizerous]

"Lighten Up"

Yeah look at this horrible event it's not like there has been anything like this in the Marvel universe before or since, and see Doom is crying here surely this one panel excuses manipulating a woman into giving him god-like power!

-.-

[cyberghostface]

Plenty of horrible stuff happens in the MU but at the end of the day it's not a common occurrence for over 2,000 people to be killed in a terrorist attack.

[shakalooloo]

Blue eyes. That ain't Doom, that's a weeping Doombot.

[walkingthroughforest]

I've always enjoyed this story much more as an allegory, rather than an in-continuity story. I like that it's the idea of the heroes being there, that their spirit was helping through the rubble to hope, and to believe. This story was an outlet for grief by the marvel writers, using the characters in the same way Paul Dini did in his "Dark Night" story.

I know people rip on this story a lot, but it's one of my favourites

[icon_uk]

I can only see it as allegorical, for the aforementioned reasons that the villains shedding tears of grief for an event which is the sort of thing the MU has seen many times over wouldn't work within the MY itself.

[icon_uk]

The 9-11 tribute which stuck with me was the one Alex Ross did, based on a Norman Rockwell original.

[silicondream]

Cop: “Uh, control, there’s a famous crime boss, a mutant terrorist and a foreign tyrant standing next to ground zero. Should we maybe bring them in for questioning or something?”

Dispatcher: “Nah, don’t worry. They’re just there symbolically. You can tell by the tears.”

[cyberghostface]

Were any of those three at least wanted by the police or for questioning?

[silicondream]

How often are Magneto and villain-era Juggernaut not wanted by law enforcement?

And if they weren't wanted already, they certainly would be as soon as witnesses placed them at the recent location of a major terrorist attack. I mean, Magneto and Doom would be prime suspects...never mind all the supervillains hanging out around NYC normally. It'd be really, really hard not to be a 9/11 Truther in 616.

[mrstatham]

Magneto's a genocidal mutant who had most recently rallied Genosha to war. Kingpin is always a wanted criminal. Doom has the only excuse because diplomatic immunity.

[cyberghostface]

1. Magneto's never committed genocide.
2. 90% of the time Fisk is NOT a wanted criminal because nothing can stick to him. And when he does get arrested he's usually out moments later.

[flint_marko]

Magneto was left in a wheelchair after Eve of Destruction, so I'm assuming this took place before.

[an_idol_mind]

This is one of the reasons that I wish comics would tone back the scale of violence. Doom and Magneto shedding a tear for something like this would have more weight to it if they didn't routinely do stuff worse than this.

[arthur_wynne]

As an actual in-continuity story this is just laughable, and as "symbolic tribute" it still feels saccharine and dishonest. It just doesn't work in the Marvel Universe.

And I DO want to say "lighten up" because I think the reaction to the September 11th attacks, even now 15 years down the line, has been completely disproportionate to reality.

The deaths of almost 3000 people at the hands of terrorists was an awful crime and an awful tragedy, of course.

But this sort of "never forget, never forgive, nothing worse has ever happened" rhetoric is in dire need of some perspective, considering all the other victims of war, terrorism and preventable disasters who never get anyone standing up to trumpet grief and moral outrage on their behalf.

3000 people were murdered, and that is terrible beyond my capacity to express with sufficient emphasis. But that's what it was. Nothing less, but nothing more. The world goes on and so should we.

[cyberghostface]

I really don't get comments like this. First off, people have mostly 'moved' on at this point in comparison to earlier years. But it hasn't even been twenty years and it's still a huge American tragedy. Of course people will still discuss it each year.

[arthur_wynne]

I don't mean people shouldn't discuss it, of course they will and well they should. That is unreservedly a good thing.

But I do think they shouldn't discuss it in terms like those of these scans and the page quote. It's not the worst thing that has ever happened. It's certainly not the worst thing you could imagine. And it's not some historically unique tragedy to unite all humankind.

Have some awareness.

(I don't mean you, I don't mean the OP, I mean people who say things like what Romita says here. Yes, this was a decade and more ago and there are less of them these days, but they still exist.)