A Sincere But Futile Attempt To Engage With Ayn Rand (1)

If I am going to talk about Steve Ditko, I suppose am going to have to try and talk about Ayn Rand. 

I know that this is a bad idea. My left wing friends are already telling me that even thinking about Rand gives her a spurious credibility. My Objectivist friends, of whom I have none, will soon be telling me that this is exactly the kind of thing you’d expect liberals to say, which proves their point...

This is not a response to the whole of Ayn Rand’s, or indeed Steve Ditko’s world view: it couldn’t possibly be. It’s really just an attempt to show how the first few chapters of The Virtue of Selfishness — particularly the essay entitled The Ethics of Emergencies — strike me. Think of it as an atheist reading through St Mark’s Gospel or a Tory reading The Communist Manifesto.

*

“I’m thru getting pushed around — by anyone. From now on I just look out for number one — that means — me!”

        Amazing Fantasy #15

I swear by swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine

        Atlas Shrugged

Rand claims to have devised or discovered a rational system of ethics. Since it is an objective fact that all human beings are alive, their first moral obligation is to stay alive. Since it is an objective fact that all human beings are conscious, their second moral obligation is to be happy. But they should only be concerned with their own life and their own happiness. I have no duty to help anyone else; no-one else has a duty to help me.

“Just as life is an end in itself, so every living human being is an end in himself, not the means to the ends or the welfare of others — and therefore the man must live for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. To live for his own sake means that the achievement of his own happiness is man’s highest moral purpose.”

I grok that, if I don’t believe in conventional morality, or religion, or mysticism, or some great big idea like Communism or the Singularity, then all I have left to believe in is me. And I think I can also see the romantic appeal of the great objectivist man, whether it's Rorschach never compromising, even in the face of Armageddon, or Del-Boy Trotter taking nothing from the government and giving nothing to the government. I owe no man anything and no man owes anything to me. Hurrah!

What I don’t know is how you get logically or rationally from “human beings are alive” to “human beings ought to try to stay alive.” I agree that human beings do on the whole mostly try to stay alive, but I don't know how you get logically or rationally from that to "Human beings should always try to stay alive." And if, by some alchemy, “I am alive” implies “I ought to try to stay alive” I still do not understand why “You are alive” does not equally imply “I ought to try to keep you alive” — why "We are all alive" doesn't imply "We all ought to try to keep each other alive."

Even if me being alive and you being alive were mutually exclusive alternatives — say, if Titanic had just struck an iceberg and there were only one spare seat on the lifeboat — I don’t know why I ought to prefer my life to yours. I don't know why Rand's morality (I ought to preserve my own life at the cost of yours) is more rational than everyone else's morality (I ought to preserve your life at the cost of my own).

I would certainly prefer it if you decided to stop being alive and allowed me to carry on, but I don’t know how I can rationally infer, from the fact that we are both alive, that pushing you out of the lifeboat is the moral thing to do. It’s equally true that I can’t rationally demonstrate that I ought to give my place on the lifeboat to you. Without some premises to work from, I can't rationally or logically demonstrate why I ought to do anything at all. I don't know how to get from any kind of "is" to any kind of "ought".

I understand that David Hume didn't, either.

I might decide to let you have the spare place on the lifeboat for all sorts of reasons — because you have dependent kids and I don’t; or because I want history to remember me as a good guy and not a bad guy; or because it wouldn’t be British to push to the front of a queue. But that's because I have a totally irrational belief that not depriving kids of their father, achieving posthumous honour and displaying good manners are more important that mere longevity. 

I doubt that such a things as rational ethics exists, in the same way that I doubt that such a thing as vegan beef casserole exists. Why should you give the other guy your place on the life boat? Because it is the right thing to do. Why should  we refuse to drop bombs on civilians in wars? Because it is the right thing to do. Why did Valjean admit that he was the escaped convict and Champmathieu was innocent? Because it was the right thing to do. Why should you stop a burglar who runs past you in a TV studio, even if no-one is paying you? Because it is the right thing to do. 

As you are presumably aware, Prof. C.S. Lewis (who Rand, rather pleasingly, abominated) thought that "doing the right thing" meant acting in accordance with the tao. By the tao he simply meant everything which human beings have always thought are the right things to do. He wasn't interested in Chinese philosophy: he just wanted to avoid specifically Christian terms. Christians don't have the monopoly on doing the right thing.

To say that something is the right thing to do because it is part of the tao is to admit that I can't say why it is the right thing to do: it just is.  Rand will only convince me that she has come up with a rational basis for ethics if she can teach me how I ought to behave without ever appealing to the tao. And that includes explaining what she means by what that pesky little word ought.

*

All I can tell you is that when it came to the point whether I would take my own neck out of the noose and put another man's into it, I could not do it.

                                 Shaw, "The Devils Disciple"

It is a fact that, in an extreme situation like a shipwreck, some people act unselfishly. They allow someone else to take their place in the lifeboat or swim into dangerous waters to prevent someone else from drowning. And some people act selfishly — save their own lives without a thought for who else perishes. And some people make a dash for the lifeboat but feel guilty about it afterwards: lots of us know what the right thing to do would be, but don't actually do it. How do we decide which group are doing the right thing and doing the wrong thing? If we ought to do unto others as we would like other to do unto us, then the group who allowed others to live did the right thing. ("Do unto others" is the whole basis of the tao.) But if morality is the same as self-interest we have to say that the person who forced his way into the boat did the right thing. Indeed, we have to say that those who sacrificed or risked their own lives acted wickedly. Billy Zane is the hero and Leo DiCapprio is the bad guy.

Rand appears to agree that this would be absurd. She argues:

1: That the question is illegitimate, and the very fact that we are asking it proves the superiority of objectivists to altruists.

2: That the rational way of behaving in a shipwreck is in any case very much like that dictated by the tao: the rational man will rescue his friends, loved-ones, and possibly even strangers.

3: But this doesn’t make any difference because emergencies are special cases where special rules apply.

Turning the argument round and attacking the moral character of the people making it is not necessarily the hallmark of a serious philosophical essay. It smacks of "Weak case: insult opposing lawyer." What bad people these altruists must be to test a new theory by examining edge-cases! Lack of self-esteem, lack of respect for others, nightmare view of existence…

“A lethargic indifference to ethics, a hopelessly cynical amorality—since his questions involve situations which he is not likely ever to encounter, which bear no relation to the actual problems of his own life and thus leave him to live without any moral principles whatever.”

On no possible view could it be true to say that altruists have no moral principals. Even by Rand’s own arguments, they have lots of moral principals — just the wrong ones. But that aside: how do you get from “altruists point to extreme cases" to “altruists have no moral principals whatsoever.”

I suppose you would have to construct an argument along these lines:

1: Altruists point to extreme cases like fires and shipwrecks to refute the idea that we have no duty to help anyone else.

2: Therefore, extreme cases like fires and shipwrecks must be the only exceptions to the general rule that we have no duty to help anyone else.

3: It is intrinsically unlikely that any individual will ever experience a shipwreck or earthquake.

4: Principals drawn from improbable circumstances have no application to probable ones.

5: Therefore any attempt to infer the correct behavior in probably circumstance from the correct behavior in an improbably one is necessarily false.

6: Therefore people who argue from extreme cases have no basis for their conclusions.

7: Since people who believe in altruism argue from extreme cases, altruists have no basis for their belief in altruism.

8: Since people who believe in altruism have no basis for their belief in altruism, they have no basis for any of their other beliefs either. 

But this doesn’t work at all. Point 1 is not necessarily true. Because I raise one example, it doesn't mean there aren't any others I could have raised. You can believe something for more than one reason. Point 4 begs the question: it might be that the same rules apply in the exceptional case as in the normal one, or it might not. And point 8 is obviously nonsense: it doesn't follow at all that if I have one false belief, all my other beliefs are false as well. 

If we accepted Rand's position, we would have to say that any argument involving a hypothetical or a thought experiment is automatically invalid: that you can only make moral judgement about specific, concrete events. (I believe that some anarchists are reluctant to state general principals for this reason: because there are no general cases, only an infinite number of unique ones.) But extreme and unlikely cases are frequently useful because they help us to visualize a question. Conscientious objectors were always asked “What would you do if a German officer were raping your grandmother?”— not because there was much chance of the German army molesting that particular pacifist’s elderly relative, but because the proposition “I will not join the army because killing is wrong under all possible circumstances” is refuted if you can come up with even one circumstance where it might be right. When asked what he understood courage to mean, Socrates asked “Well, suppose you were a passenger at sea in a terrible storm….?” Would a rational man have replied “But I am not in a terrible storm, so obviously you have to live your life without any understand of courage whatsoever. See where this 'philosophy' stuff gets you!”

But this is a distraction, because it turns out that if a group of Randian objectivists really were on a sinking ship they would be just as likely to pull each other out of the water, give up their places in lifeboats, and generally act in accordance with the tao as anybody else.

In the first place, says Rand, this rule that you should look out for yourself and not for others doesn’t apply to friends and lovers. But this isn't really an exception: when you do a good turn for someone you love, you are acting selfishly, because:  

“It is one’s own personal selfish happiness that one seeks, earns and derives from love.”

Ah, so: objectivists are cynical people, choosing their friends and wives in anticipation of some tangible return — money, social status, career advancement, someone to look after the kids, invitations to the best parties, sex etc? Not a bit of it. What you get out of a loved one is “a profoundly personal, private joy” and “personal, selfish happiness”. So when you help someone else, you are really acting to preserve that “private joy” and “personal happiness”. If a rich man spends a fortune to save his wife’s life, he is not acting altruistically, but selfishly. He wants her to live because he derives happiness from her; he doesn’t want her to die because he would then be less happy than he would be if she were still alive:

"In the above example, his wife’s survival is of greater value to the husband than anything else that his money could buy, it is of greatest importance to his own happiness and, therefore, his action is not a sacrifice." 

But all this does is re-frame altruistic actions as selfish ones: instead of saying “I will save your life because I don’t want you to die” we have to say “I will save your life because I don’t want to be sad". It might be possible, and it might also be interesting, to re-frame all moral choices in that way. You say "I donate money to feed a starving child because it is the right thing to do": I say "You donate money to feed a starving child because you selfishly dislike the sensations of guilt you experience when imagining the child starving to death." But that hasn't told us anything new about how we ought to behave. Either way, the wife gets the surgery and the child gets a bowl of rice. 

We assume that the man who pays for his wife’s operation honestly loves his wife, and will truly have less happiness and less joy if she dies than if she stays alive. But supposing he does not have those feelings? Supposing he he actually sick to death of the crabby old ratbag, is quite sure he'd be happier as a widower, but stomps up the money because it’s the right thing to do. Do we have to say that he's acted immorally? Or suppose he’s with us on that sinking ship and says “I will save my baby rather than my wife, because I honestly think that the baby is more important to my personal happiness than the woman”? Does his wife get a say? Supposing he says “I will save my mistress rather than my wife” or even “I will save my puppy rather than my baby”? Assuming that his dog really was important to his personal private joy and happiness and the baby wasn't, do we have to say that he acted in rational self-interest and therefore morally?

Or are we allowed to say “Maybe you did love your dog more than your child, but you ought not to have done”?

If we take the first line, then what set out to be rational theory of ethics turns out to mean “be guided by your emotions: do whatever will make you happy”. Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law, without even the qualification about harming none. This is exactly what Prof. Lewis warned us would happen. There is a certain irony about how much of our rational ethic comes down to emotions like love, joy and happiness. 

But if you take the second line — that the sensible, rational, selfish thing to do is indeed to save the lives of the people who you love but if, and only if, you love the people you ought to love and do not love the people you ought not to love — then Rand hasn’t said anything very new. Ethics is about arranging your values in the correct order — loving the most important things most; the second most important things second most; the least important things least; and the unimportant things not at all. Isn't this exactly what Aristotle told us all those months ago?

[to be continued]

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A Close Reading of the First Great Graphic Novel in American Literature

by

Andrew Rilstone

Andrew Rilstone is a writer and critic from Bristol, England. This essay forms part of his critical study of Stan Lee and Steve Ditko's original Spider-Man comic book. 

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Amazing Spider-Man was written and drawn by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko and is copyright Marvel Comics. All quotes and illustrations are use for the purpose of criticism under the principle of fair dealing and fair use, and remain the property of the copywriter holder.

 Please do not feed the troll. 

Cadburys Ban Easter (April Fool!)

We are all familiar with the War on Christmas, when (according to an ancient tradition going back to pagan times) a journalist stands in front of a Christmas tree next to a man dressed as Father Christmas in a Christmas market and says “Christmas has been banned again.”

This year, we have an excellent War on Easter as well. 

It takes two forms. The first, and more benign, goes something like this:

My kids have just asked me why the word Easter no longer appears on Cadburys Easter Egg boxes. What should I tell them, please?

I'm not saying a Cadbury Easter Egg has much to do with Easter or Jesus but have they really banned the word Easter to avoid offendin people?

The more malignant version goes more like this:

Just seen a pic of a halal certificate being proudly held aloft by Cadbury. You don't seem to realise this is offensive to many.

Cadbury Accused of Anti-Christian Conspiracy Over Rumours of 'Halal' Creme Eggs 

Muslim Easter Eggs with the word "Easter" taken off!  Almost as good as the terribly funny "Kosher Mince Pies" which comes up every year. Because everyone knows that only observant Christians eat chocolate in the spring time and little fruit pies in the winter and that fine old hymn Easter Bonnet was definitely not composed by a religious Jew. 

Cadburys bans Easter contains at least 5 factoids (*):

1: Up to now, all Cadburys chocolate eggs have had the word “Easter” printed on them.

2:This year, no Cadburys chocolate egg has the word "Easter" printed on it. 

3:The word Easter is offensive to Muslims.

4: Someone — Muslims, government censors, "the PC brigade", Big Brother — has the power to make companies change the design of products which offend people. 

5: Changing something because it offends people is a wrong and crazy to thing to do. 

I don't think that you can pass on the "Cadburys no longer labels its chocolate eggs as Easter eggs" message without passing on the other 5 claims with it. That is why this sort of thing is so pernicious.

In fact:

1: By no means all chocolate eggs have ever had the word “Easter” printed on them. Cadburys Creme Eggs were always Cadburys Creme Eggs, and branded eggs seem always to have taken the name of their brand — Maltesers Eggs or Smarties Eggs or Quality Street Eggs.

2: Many chocolate eggs still have the word Easter prominently displayed on the packaging. My impression is that very elaborate, decorated products are likely to be called “Easter Eggs” but cheap branded ones are likely not to be. If fewer eggs have the Easter branding than was the case 50 years ago, that would be an interesting (and not particularly surprising) piece of information. 

It is certainly the case that Creme Eggs used to be sold only at Easter, but are now available all year round, because people are prepared to buy them all year round. It might be that Cadburys want to encourage the idea that a 99p “Cadburys Flake Egg” is an acceptable treat at any time between January and May, while you would probably only buy the £10 Easter Egg with elaborate ribbons and flowers as a gift for Easter itself. I used to quite like it when you could literally only get Hot Cross Buns on Good Friday (and the baker shop opened specially to sell them, and wasn’t allowed to sell anything else). But companies want to sell as many of their products as they possibly can.

The supernatural leporine being who delivers the eggs is universally referred to as the Easter Bunny (and hidden features in computer games are always called Easter eggs).

3: There is not the slightest evidence that the word Easter does offend Muslims, just as there is not the slightest evidence that Muslims turn into pillars of salt if you throw pork sausages at them. The racist right is again creating an evil mirror image of itself. Because racists are freaked out by anything even slightly Muslim — by the word Ramadan, by the presence of a Mosque in the same city as them, by the existence of halal options in cafes — they assume that Muslims are freaked out by anything even slightly Christian. 

I swear to Buddha that there is a travel agent in Bristol offering package trips to Mecca as part of an Easter special. Because "Easter" is a time of year as well as a religious festival. 

4: So, obviously, there is no reason to think that Cadburys have taken the word Easter off their chocolate, which they haven’t, because it offends Muslim, because it doesn’t.

5: If Cadburys had in fact made Easter Eggs without the word Easter on them available so that people who don't like the word Easter could still enjoy overpriced chocolate wrapped in foil during the spring equinox, this would not actually be a wrong or crazy thing to do. It would be both kind and good business sense. If there were people with a deep religious conviction that they were only allowed to eat chocolate in the springtime if the word "Easter" appeared somewhere on the packaging, and if that Christian-friendly chocolate had somehow ceased to be available, then Christians might have the right to feel aggrieved. But there aren't and it hasn't and they don't.

It's like our old friend who still moans about the BBC cancelling the Black and White Minstrel show "because it wasn't PC". It's true that the BBC used to show blackface minstrel shows, and it's true that they don't any more. But the "PC" part smuggles in the idea that no-one sensible could possibly object to blackface entertainments, and that some mysterious but unidentified force (usually known simply as "they") forced the BBC to stop showing them, in the teeth of Common Sense and the Will of the People. Which is why no fair-minded person should ever use the term "PC" in any context: there is always a less evil way of expressing the same thought. ("The text of some of Enid Blyton's stories have been slightly changed to make them more inclusive" or "Some old comic books contain words that nice people wouldn't use any more" or "This comedian tells racist jokes".)

The halal thing, is even more tricksy. When someone starts telling you that Cadburys Creme Eggs are halal they are conflating:

1:Halal = permissible for an observant Muslim to eat

2: Halal certified = Some expert in the Muslim law has issued a certificate saying that it is permissible for an observant Muslim to eat them

3: Halal slaughter = a method of killing animals which some people consider to be cruel

The trick is that you can assert, truly, that Cadburys Creme eggs are halal (Muslims are allowed to eat them); while smuggling in the idea that Cadburys are being nice to brown-skinned people (by making chocolate that they are allowed to eat) and even that a civilised person wouldn’t eat one of these heathen eggs which you have to torture a poor moo-cow to make (even though they don't contain any meat products). As Cadburys indefatigable social media team have been saying all week: all their chocolate is halal, because all chocolate is halal, in the same way that all water is halal and all bread is halal; but none of their products is halal certified; they haven't changed the recipe in order to make it halal; and certainly no ritual slaughter is involved in the manufacture of chocolate.

But again, the trick works: the idea is smuggled in that some kinds of chocolate have been Muslimified, and the racist right starts to assert that if you buy Cadburys products you are obviously no Christian; extremely unpleasant tweets start to circulate asking shopkeepers to please stack their Creme Eggs near their Pork Scratchings so that Muslims won't be able to eat them.

I wonder how many of the people passing on these messages will be taking Holy Communion on Easter Sunday? Come to that, what are they doing eating Creme Eggs in Lent in the first place?

(*) Factoid — Widely believed lie; a thing which everyone thinks is true but ain't. NOT "a trivial fact".

Why should I trust anything the Rev. Giles Fraser says about the Bible when he can’t even understand the text of Winnie-the-Pooh? 

Christopher Robin is not one of those evil bottom-thwacking evangelicals who thinks that prayer is about asking God for favours. He practices the kind of prayer which Fraser approves of: taking a few silent moments to contemplate the events of the day (”oh, wasn’t it fun in the bath tonight!”); to think non-specifically warm thoughts about the people close to you (”God bless mummy, God bless Daddy") and even to become more aware of the things around you (”it’s a beautiful blue but it hasn’t a hood”.) One might even think that the idea of shutting my eyes and curling up small (”so nobody knows I am there at all”) is a juvenile attempt at mindfulness. 

The real-life Christopher Milne didn’t believe in God (although he did believe in The Force). His Nanny was called Olive rather than Alice, which doesn’t rhyme with so many things, but her dressing gown really was blue. As a grown up, he correctly spotted that Vespers is not a mawkish poem about a good little boy saying his prayers, but a rather cynical poem about a naughty little boy not saying his prayers. The grown up thinks he looks cute and pious but he’s actually thinking about everything except God. A.A Milne felt that was what went on during most so-called prayer.

Fraser may be right that the true Christian view of prayer is that it’s “just a jolly good excuse to shut up for a while and think.” Some people have run away with the idea that it makes some kind of difference. I couldn’t say where this idea comes from; but I really don’t think we ought to blame Christopher Robin. 

Amazing Spider-Man #19

Spidey Strikes Back! 

Villains: 

Sandman, the Enforcers 

Supporting Cast: 

Aunt May, Liz Allan, J.Jonah Jameson, Betty Brant, Flash Thompson, Ned Leeds, “Wormly” 

Guest Stars: 

The Human Torch, again. 

Observations 

p6: “I couldn’t take a chance on ever having to eat someone else’s pancakes” 

“Wheatcakes” are simply pancakes made with buckwheat flour, so these are presumably the same breakfast food that Peter Parker liked so much in Amazing Fantasy # 15.

p9 “All hail the Spider, a hardy breed is he”. 

This sound like it should be a parody of a popular song, but I can’t work out what Stan has in mind: can anyone help? 

p9 “Hey, Amscray, you guys” 

More Pig Latin (Amscray = Scram = Scramble I.e “Everyone run away!”) 

p17 “You sure took your own sweet time about freeing me” 

“Count your blessings, mister.” 

These are both arguably references to hymns. (”Father, lead me day by day / ever in thy own sweet way” “Count your blessings, one by one.”) Perhaps part of the Spider-Man / Torch feud is a clash between their Jewish and Protestant heritages? 

Peter Parker’s Financial Position: 

Jameson thinks that the pictures of Spider-Man fighting the Enforcers are “sensational”; so he probably gets the same $2,000 he did for the pictures of the Vulture.

One of the wrongest things which has ever been said (by Andrew Garfield, among others) is that Spider-Man is a Christ figure. 

The Jesus-story is about a divine being who condescends to come down to earth from heaven to be our Saviour. That’s why characters like the Silver Surfer and Adam Warlock and Superman (who have supernatural origins and come from the sky) find it so hard to avoid being Christ-like. 

Spider-Man doesn’t descend from heaven; he pulls him self up from the earth. On webs. Which he made in his bedroom. His story is about an all-too-human Everyman who struggles to do what is right with the hand that life has dealt him. His situation isn’t fundamentally different from yours or mine. If it were, we wouldn’t be very interested in it. 

Throughout 1963 and 1964 one of the key themes of the comic has been perseverance. Spider-Man gets knocked down, but he gets back up again. Up until now, this has largely consisted of Spider-Man being beaten by a baddie but coming back and beating the baddie on the second attempt. But it is now going to take a slightly new — and much more inward looking — form. From now on the formula is going to be:

• Spider-Man suffers a set-back
• Spider-Man despairs
• Spider-Man quits being Spider-Man
• Spider-Man changes his mind and swears that he will remain Spider-Man forever. 

The story is there in embryo in Spider-Man Annual #1, when Peter wishes his powers away; and it forms the moral center of the triptych. It will crop up over and over again for the rest of the comic's history (most notably in Spider-Man #50, which forms the basis for the second and best Spider-Man movie. )

And most versions of the story do indeed contain a de profundis moment. 

Long before Joseph Campbell turned the whole thing into colossal bore, Northrop Frye (a proper literary critic, who was examined by C.S Lewis) had argued that heroic stories typically have a V shaped pattern of descent and ascent. This could be literal — a hero might go down and face an enemy in a cave, or a dungeon, or an undersea base, or a giant glass fish-bowl and then come up into the light. But it could also be metaphorical — a hero might descend to the depths of despair and then have his faith and confidence restored. That “V” movement of descent and ascent does have a structural resemblance to Christ’s Passion and Resurrection, even if the hero in question is very un-Christ-like indeed. Frye called these kinds of romances Secular Scriptures, although perhaps he would have been better off saying that the Gospels are sacred romances. 

Many of Spider-Man’s greatest adventures clearly do have that “V” shaped structure. And many of his finest moments do take place at the nadir of the “V”. It’s when he doesn’t have any powers and faces Electro anyway that he is most like Spider-Man; it is when he has chucked his Spider-Costume in the dustbin that he realizes who he irreducibly is. The Sinister Six story has a moment when he very nearly calls out "my powers, my powers, why have you forsaken me?"

*

Spider-Man #19 is not as highly regarded as the other two stories in the triptych: but it is essential, and a marvelous comic in its own right. Together, the three parts show us the fall and rise of Spider-Man in beautiful slow motion. Amazing Spider-Man #17 showed us Spider-Man humiliating himself in front of the biggest audience possible; #18 showed us him at the very depths of despair; so issue #19 has to show us a truly confident Spidey bouncing back, and showing the Human Torch a thing or two. 

Stan Lee’s claims about “non stop action” would normally presage an extended fight scene — but the truth is that this issue is more violent and kinetic than the comic has been in months. Ditko seems to be reveling in the Spider-Man-ness of Spider-Man. The character can too easily become merely a strong guy with a web-shooter-full of plot devices; but Ditko spends this issue thinking of new poses for Spider-Man to strike and new angles to look at him from. Instead of taking it for granted, we keep being surprised and delighted by the fact that Peter Parker can stick to walls.

Amazing Spider-Man 19
Ditko at his most kinetic

Look at pages 12 and 13: Spider-Man is in every panel, and every panel puts him in an imaginative pose: crouched on the wall outside Jameson’s office; hanging upside down to interrogate the hood; caught mid leap, letting go of a web at the apex of a swing and propelling himself forward, feet first. Panel 4 on page 13 has Spidey swinging straight at us: an iconic image that would be used over and over again both in the movies and the TV series. If you ever imagined that Spider-Man was just a hipper, younger version of Superman then you need to look at these pages, and see the uniqueness of the character. It’s all in the energy. There is a realism here that even Kirby would struggle to compete with. (An apparent realism, at any rate: a circus performer or a gymnast could tell us which of Spider-Man's manoeuvres are physically possible.) 

Look at the choreography of the fight against the Enforcers and the thugs on page 8: Spider-Man on the ceiling, on all fours. Spider-Man spotted by the Enforcers, now sticking to the ceiling with just his feet. Ox throwing Montana at Spider-Man, knocking him down. Spider-Man landing in a handstand position; three thugs running at him from different directions; Spider-Man springing up again so the thugs knock each other out. Granted, the “jumping away from two guys who are running at you” motif has been used before: and it probably works better in slapstick than an actual fight. But quite brilliantly, Montana catches Spider-Man in his lasso as he jumps — so Spider-Man escapes from one peril (the thugs) and into another (Montana) in a single frame. 

It would be an interesting exercise for an artist to redraw these twelve panels (pages 8 and 9) in a more contemporary, decompressed style. I suspect that it would be impossible. The action probably wouldn’t make realistic or cinematic sense: Ditko thinks in terms of individual frames, and the whole thing would break down if you had to work out where everyone is standing. (What happens to the bodies of the thugs Spider-Man knocks out?) An 11 panel fight in which slightly more is happening than you can easily keep track of is precisely what is necessary to to create the sense of exhilaration which Ditko is aiming at. It's the sensation of being released, the feeling that Spider-Man is now free and can do anything he likes… 

Spider-Man’s dialogue reflects the pictures. It’s punchy, it’s funny, and it confirms that Spider-Man has embraced his identity and is having a good time. We sometimes criticize Stan Lee for being too wordy; we sometimes point out that dialogue which would take ten or fifteen seconds to speak is superimposed over a frame representing a fraction of a second of action. But it isn’t really possible to imagine a Spider-Man fight without a running commentary — 

“Ha! I thought that would rattle ya a little!” 

“You were right, meathead! It did rattle me..but just a little!” 

Lee and Ditko are delivering on the promise made at the end of last issue. Spider-Man really has dropped the self-pity. He’s kind and funny with Aunt May ("what’s a pretty young girl doing here in my Aunt May’s kitchen?") relaxed with Flash Thompson ("I heard the whole routine before, I could recite it by heart!") and only mildly unpleasant to J.J.J. ("Sometimes, I suspect that man just doesn’t like me!"). Betty remarks that “he seems to have a new confidence in himself”. 

As a story, though, there is not very much to it. The Sandman, who Spider-Man ran away from last issue, teams up with reliable division-two baddies the Enforcers to kidnap the Human Torch. They cleverly use asbestos rope to pull him down; chemical foam to douse his flame; before Sandman deposits him in a specially constructed glass jar – which lets in just enough air to keep Johnny alive, but not quite enough to let him 'Flame On'. (It would be interesting to know who constructed all this hardware — the Judo expert, the Big Strong Guy, the Rope Trick Guy, or the Habitual Thug Who Never Finished High School?) But of course, Spider-Man comes along and rescues the Torch — which is a kind of pay-back for all the times he's been upstaged by him.

Perhaps the highlight of the whole comic — of the whole trilogy — is Jameson falling on his arse one more time. He spent the whole of last issue with a terrible grin on his face, telling Betty to forgive Peter for apparently two-timing him, and telling his “loyal employees” they were welcome to ask their “tender-hearted employer” for help and advice. He hears that Spider-Man is back in action just before he is supposed to give a lecture entitled “How I proved that Spider-Man is a cowardly fraud.” The three-frame sequence in which the smile falls from his face — eyes drooping, frown lines appearing — is a little masterpiece. (It also reminds us that olden days arts could do decompression if they wanted to.) When we next see Jonah, he’s wondering if he’s “too old to join the foreign legion.” 

Amazing Spider-Man #19
Ditko does comedy. 

In January 1964, Spider-Man threw away his glasses and punched Flash Thompson. The Return of the Green Goblin, The End of Spider-Man and Spidey Strikes Back bring the year to a triumphant end. They tell us the tale of a hero who loses his confidence, regains his confidence and bounces back just about as well as it could be told. 

But we are left with a dangling question.

Has whiny Pete really quit the stage for good? Is this new, self-confident Peter going to be who the comic is about from now on? 

Or will we have to go through the whole thing again this time next year? 

Listen Bud

A Close Reading of the First Great Graphic Novel in American Literature

by

Andrew Rilstone

Andrew Rilstone is a writer and critic from Bristol, England. This essay forms part of his critical study of Stan Lee and Steve Ditko's original Spider-Man comic book. 

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Amazing Spider-Man was written and drawn by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko and is copyright Marvel Comics. All quotes and illustrations are use for the purpose of criticism under the principle of fair dealing and fair use, and remain the property of the copywriter holder.

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