This month, the PPSM crew is back to single issue stories for awhile. Which are generally what they did best and what this run is remembered for. Villains like Typeface and Fusion weren’t necessarily setting the comics world aflame, but stories like this one really stuck with people. We begin with a distraught Spider-Man letting us know today is the day Uncle Ben died. As we have seen, he usually goes to Ben’s grave for the occasion, but this year, he’s downtown. A 2-page montage details how he died and how Peter still blames himself, and how this day hits him pretty hard every year. Peter might not be keeping up tradition, but May is.
I think it’s funny when comics get to a point where they don’t bother to put years on tombstones.
I mean, you have gone with her before. TAC 68, for example. And they were accidentally there at the same time in ASM 181. But anyway, as of this issue (and probably not for long after it), Peter’s tradition for this day is to go to a Mets game. Peter has never exactly been portrayed as a sports fan, but here he is riding a train to the game among his “fellow baseball cognoscente,” calling all the assembled Mets fans “my team, my extended family of misfits.” Uh-huh. Seems to me like being a baseball fan would’ve helped him fit in with the kids in school.
In a fun page, we see Peter approach and enter the ticket office, and Uncle Ben and a very young Peter emerge, as we’ve gone back in time.
The revelation of Peter Parker: Baseball Fan is kinda hard to swallow for me, personally. As this story is sentimental and touching in an era where people were used to Spider-Man being empty spectacle, it had a big impact on readers. But if anything, it’s harder to swallow now, having read literally everything that came before, than it was at the time. We have not previously even known Peter to own a hat, let alone be a huge Mets fan. But, whatever, I guess. Peter details how he fell in love with the game, how Uncle Ben taught him typically crazy fan rituals to make the team win, trying to catch pop flies and all that, and then how, after all that, his team lost.
And so, Ben & Peter continued to go to one game every year (Which is a nice touch, since it’s not like they should’ve been able to afford season passes or anything), and every game they attended, the Mets lost terribly. The Ol’ Parker Luck hit a whole baseball team. We see Peter getting older with the games, until one year, when he went to catch a ball and got hit right in the head.
We’re told Peter getting hit was the highlight of the game, which the Mets lost terribly. He says he still swings by sometimes when the city is quiet over a figure that suggests Buckingham is going back to Romita, Sr. for swipes now. He says when he looks down at the crowd, he’s always reminded of one very important day…
I mean, if Buckingham can do this great acting, SURELY he can draw Spider-Man without stealing it from somewhere sometime…
The amount of poignant things that have been added to Peter’s life in the days leading up to Ben’s death borders on comical, but I guess most people won’t have seen all of them in a relatively short period like I have these last few years.
But it’s a sweet issue. And with almost no Spider-Man in it, a good looking one, too. Jenkins was really trying to get to the soul of Peter Parker, and he did some really interesting things. What I like most is how he has Peter remember Uncle Ben joyfully. Yeah yeah, he blames himself, pathos, but Ben & May represent everything good in his life up til Ben died. These fond remembrances instead of just wallowing in guilt are fun to read and frankly more realistic. Anyone who’s lost a loved one will tell you, sometimes the memories are sad, sometimes they’re happy. It’s not one thing all the time. But it’s basically been one thing for 40 years before this, so I appreciate it.