Watch out - here comes the Spider-Dad

The cunning poignancy of the new Spider-Verse movie

There are hundreds of reasons the Spider-Verse movies are so good. The animation is gorgeous and inventive. The creative use of legacy Marvel characters evocatively builds on fan enthusiasm while always staying accessible to folks who come in off the street. And of course, there’s the inclusively aspirational central conceit: Spider-Man can be anyone, and anyone can be Spider-Man. 

But having just watched the second installment - Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (which of course I loved) - I find myself dwelling on another secret to the films’ crossover success, one that hadn’t hit me nearly as hard while watching the first one nearly five years ago. 

My son was a few months shy of eight when we went to see Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse in 2018, and we were excited to see it with him. We’d always been a Spidey household. Hope grew up in Queens, so she’s always been proud of her hometown hero, while I nurture cherished memories of late nights reading Lee/Ditko reprints and realizing that life could have interesting things in store for a misfit nerd with a penchant for corny one-liners. The fact that Miles Morales, the new arachnid on the block, hails from our adopted borough of Brooklyn only sweetened the pot. Spider-Man’s been there for me since watching Spidey Super-Stories on The Electric Company, and I’ll always be there for him.

But even more significantly, we’ve always been an animation household. Cartoons, in nearly all their varieties, have been a touchstone and a bonding point since the very beginning of Hope’s and my courtship - hell, when we met in college it was during a conversation about Animaniacs. The unlimited palette of animation as a medium - the glimpses into glorious potential as it creates parallel worlds - satisfies us as viewers and inspired us as theater artists. We were excited to bring that obsession to a new generation. 

So that first time around, the Spider-Verse was all about a sense of possibility. Yes, the colorful, collaged visual style was bracingly novel - it would have been a landmark even if the writing were crummy. But there was also possibility on a cultural level. Here, halfway through the Trump administration, was an exciting new variation on a classic character - one who emphatically wasn’t white by default. I was happy for our seven-year-old son to empathize with this guy - and even happier for the Black boy sitting at the end of our row, who would grow up in a world where he could ALWAYS be Spider-Man. 

That the movie lived up to its promise was a minor miracle, and it’s another that the sequel goes even further. This time around, the viewing experience was even more eye-popping and galvanizing - it was gleeful adrenaline from top to bottom. And yet, I walked away feeling older and sadder than I did before. 

I mean, yes, of course - I’m older and sadder now than I was five years ago, who isn’t? But it’s more than that. Our kid’s twelve now. When we saw the first film, Miles and his struggles still felt a long way off for him. I was free to insert myself completely into his story - I’m glad my son enjoyed it too, but I wasn’t about to cede him main-character status. 

This time, both on-and offscreen, the Spider-Verse had expanded. Our son is a full-fledged person now - more mature, more intelligent, more infuriating. So while I was completely invested in Miles’ story - not to mention Gwen’s, which granted welcome dimension and pathos to her co-starring role - I found myself spending even more time living through the eyes of the parents. 

For a property that’s perennially about growth and change, intergenerational relationships have always been key to Spider-Man. But this film, more than its predecessor, more than any other Spidey property I can think of, is a kaleidoscope of parental relationships both literal and figurative. Miles and Gwen both have challenging, heartfelt relationships with parents and mentors, and, even more pointedly, every adult is contending with what it means to care for someone young - even new dad Peter Parker and the very pregnant Spider-Woman, who engages in a fraught mentorship with Gwen. 

Where it all gets especially poignant is in seeing the adults contend with their lack of control over how the children grow. They all mean well, but they all struggle - some with more multiverse-shaking ramifications than others. 

So, just as Miles bridges the demands of different realities, my own identification was split. Part of me will always want to be Miles - or Gwen, or Peter, or whoever’s cracking wise underneath the mask. But this time, I spent more time as Miles’ bewildered dad (who, it turns out, is also named Jeff), exasperated with the inexplicable turn his son’s life was taking. I was also Gwen’s dad, police captain George Stacy, torn between his love for his daughter and the righteousness that blinds him to who she really is. And I was the film’s heavy, Miguel O’Hara, a bereft parent infuriated by Miles’ unwillingness to conform to the script he’s forged from his own pain and desire.

This film is candid about the fact that being a parent - or an uncle, or a teacher, or anyone who feels a sense of responsibility toward someone in their care - is heavy shit. It doesn’t mean being a foil, a plot device, or the butt of a joke. It means being a living person, with your own hangups and anxieties, caught up in the lives of another living person whose own hangups and anxieties are just beginning to take shape - many of which will take after yours. 

I could spend all day lapping up the neon palette and quick-cut creativity of the Spider-Verse. If their perspective began and ended with Miles’ coming of age, they’d still be great. But this multiverse contains multitudes - there’s plenty of room in here for the older generation, torn between living their own story and playing a secondary role in someone else’s, someone they love more than life itself.

I’m clearly not the only one who appreciates this. Across the Spider-Verse illuminates a spectrum of experience that appeals equally to kids, parents, kids aspiring to be adults, and adults fantasizing about being kids again. And that sounds like a hell of a way to make some box office bank.

Bonus Obliquely Parental Comic-Book Content!

I love my Marvel (to a point), but let’s support indie creators too! I just finished reading the wordless graphic novel Step by Bloody Step, by writer Simon Spurrier and aritst Matias Bergara. To say much more would be to say too much, but let’s just say that the pains of parenthood are amply presented in this gorgeously illustrated work. Following the adventures of a young girl and her gigantic armored guardian through a psychedelic landscape, it’s 160 pages of visually sumptuous allegory for growing up, aging, the circle of life, etc. Pick it up from your local comic shop or library!