Okay, so first let's get the obvious stuff out the way: that a radioactive spider can give you superpowers, that a man frozen like popsicle in the thirties can be revived now, that spandex is the best thing to wear whilst fighting crime. There's a certain amount of internal logic and leaps of faith you make when you're reading cape comics. They're larger than life, they're of a certain genre, and they were originally created, y'know, for kids. Marvel still has a lot of specific stuff about their huge, shared universe that stretches the bounds of disbelief at times, whether that's because of a wholly boned continuity (some of these characters have been around for sixty years at this point), bad ideas that stuck or just, well, the sixties. You need to suspend that disbelief, however, if you're going to get any enjoyment out of Marvel Comics at all. And there's so much to enjoy! A lot of fans read comic books as a sort of wish-fulfilment, imagining what it'd be like to have superpowers of our own. Well, it turns out we do: the latent ability to accept a lot of crazy, nonsensical stuff, and still love it. Here's ten facts about the Marvel Universe you just have to let those abilities deal with.
10. People Believe Spider-Man Is A Menace
SPIDER-MAN: HERO OR MENACE? For the past fifty years New York's Daily Bugle has printed countless headlines that are variations on that question, usually leaning towards the latter option. And by leaning, I mean outright declaring it, with J Jonah Jameson's one-man crusade against the wall-crawler never really explained, but never really abating either. Daily Bugle has quite a reach in the city - since it's the only paper we ever really see - so there's a significant percentage of the population that agree. Spider-Man? He is a total menace! ...That's despite the fact that, in those same fifty years, there have been countless documented examples of Spidey saving individuals, the city, the world - heck - even the whole universe from time to time! Surely all these superheroic adventures would convince people of the webhead's honourable intentions, trumping the op-eds of a cranky tabloid newspaper? Apparently not. The recent Superior Spider-Man did a good job giving a reason for the general public to distrust Spidey - he did some pretty dodgy stuff when his mind had been switched with enemy Doctor Octopus - but that doesn't really explain the several decades of haters before that. I guess it's like people who hate Anne Hathaway...
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
