I didn’t want to hijack this thread, but it got me thinking about this.
I have no idea whether the concept had previously been used in the comics, but the 2002 Spider-Man film was the first time I’d seen a Spider-Man who could actually shoot webs directly out of his wrists. I watched the old TV cartoon and used to read the newspaper comic strip – admittedly I’m not big on comic books – and in these versions, Peter Parker used his scientific wizardry to create an artificial web-shooter.
I actually prefer the organic version. The scenes in the movie where he’s learning to control his new web-shooting ability were fun, and it seems to fit well enough into the radioactive-spider-powers explanation. In fact, I think it’s even less plausible that a college kid was able to figure out how to a) develop a fluid that could do what Spidey’s webs did, and b) construct a small mechanism that could shoot the fluid for what seemed to be hundreds of feet at times.
So anyway, this thread is partly me asking if the idea of the organic web-shooter originated with the movie or not, and party inviting anyone to discuss this interesting aspect of Peter Parker’s powers in general.
I’m pretty sure the organic web shooters were first used in the film, but the just recently changed it in the comic books to where they are organic now.
In the new reboot movie, apparently they’re going back to mechanical shooters.
Really, organic makes more sense. Way back when they were first creating it, did someone say, “Ok, I deal with someone who can walk up walls, has super strength (while still being skinny), and has psychic powers. But creating spider webs? Now that’s ridiculous.”
It was original to the movie, but was later (briefly) adopted in the comic books. I’m pretty sure he’s back to mechanical shooters now.
I’m kind of mixed on the concept. A big part of Peter Parker’s character is that he’s a legitimate scientific genius. Not on the level of Tony Stark or Reed Richards, but good enough that both of them respect his ideas. That’s been part of his characterization since his very beginning. Taking away the web shooters takes away from that aspect of his character.
On the other hand, it does kind of overload his origin story. He’s a super-hero level super genius, who just happens to also have been caught in a freak accident that he had no hand in creating. As an origin story, it works better if everything super normal about him comes from the same origin - either he was a regular guy who got a full suite of powers from a single freak accident, or he was a super-genius who gave himself a full suite of powers through his inventions and experiments. Doing both to the same character stretches credibility a bit, even relative to a universe that has things like this in it.
Ultimately, though, the fact that Spiderman has been around as long as he has indicates that the character simply works, regardless of his origin story. Probably better not to muck around with it, at least not in the primary text.
I prefer the organic version. I seem to recall that with the mechanical version, he makes several different varieties with different capabilities, and there’s a ready-made ‘oh noes! I’m awl outs of web fluid!’ plot device waiting in the wings at all times.
Therefore, organic forces the writers to think harder and come up with more natural plots.
I wonder if his web fluid tastes better if he drinks a lot of pineapple juice. Has MJ ever said?
The organic should run out, too. It would just be harder to predict. Does it depend on how much water he drinks, or how tired he is? How much can his body produce in one day? At one point he installed an LED low level alarm on the mechanical ones, and he also built a belt with extra cartridges for under his suit.
Also, it was the Scarlet Spider during the Clone Saga that came up with impact webbing (and knock out stingers). The cartoon have been guilty of him building all kinds of things out of webs, but in the comic it was mostly just long thin strands or wide spray and controlled by the nozzle setting, not the formula.
I prefer the mechanical version, along with the ongoing implication that Peter Parker, given just a few more years (of course, given the frozen comic timeline, this is never quite realized), could rival Tony Stark and Henry Pym for cleverness and even make Reed Richards take note.
I vote mechanical as well. Like mentioned above, I like the idea that Peter’s kind of smart and the shooters are there because of that.
In the 90s Spider-Man cartoon, he does mention at some point that he got the ability to construct them after getting bitten – like the spider passed that on to him as well. I kind of like that idea as you can imagine that the spider kind of nudged him along, but his mechanical inventiveness was there to help him get it all together. That kind of lessens his inventiveness though.
When you think about it, the web comes from their spinneret glands in their abdomen, so if Spidey’s ability was natural he’d be shoothing them out of his butt or belly button.
Again, this is the same universe that has Galactus, cosmic cubes, and an indestructible shield made during WWII, so anything is possible.
Also with the mechanical shooters you get the chance of the nozzle plugging up, causing hilarity to ensue when it misfires. And the stuff’s gotta be under some serious pressure, meaning it’s great fun when Spidey’s in the middle of a fire or ends up(most likely inadvertently) deflecting a bullet Wonder Woman style with his shooter.
Hell, the montage of him dealing with these problems could be a high point of the film.
Making complex things out of webbing has been around since the early days of the series. For example, in issue 46, March 1967, Peter creates a dummy-body out of webbing which he puts the Spider-Man costume on and swings around a building while he stands next to someone who was theorizing that Peter was Spider-Man.
Also in the early years, he built another dummy he could use to smash through a window, wearing the spider-shirt, where a bunch of mobsters were waiting with tommy guns, then he cleaned them up bare-chested(and masked) after regaining the element of surprise. He also created parachute-webs, and the occasional web shield in the 60’s and 70’s, and other web-dummies to make it look like he was asleep in bed when he was out patrolling, etc.
I liked the organic web-shooter idea better, because while they’re as impossible as his other powers, they don’t have the stink of improbability of the idea that an impoverished high school kid, however brilliant, designed, financed, and built such an amazing invention inside of a week.
Has Peter ever invented anything else of the caliber of the web shooters? it seems a bit silly that he came up with something that awesome on his first day on the job and then nothing else. Organic makes more sense because of that, someone that smart should have lots more super gadgets.
I’d say the spider-tracers are a nice invention, and his spider-signal is fairly powerful for its size. And of course he frequently devises tech solutions to deal with foes who out-power him after he gets his ass kicked. An old friend of mine once called him the king of the rematch.
I’ve heard it said that, as it regards suspension of disbelief at least, that it’s easier to accept the impossible as opposed to the improbable.
I’m a long time comic fan, but I’ve never had any particular attachment to Spider-man. I’ve seen the movies and read a handful of the comics, and I think it has something to do with the distinction between fantasy and the extrapolation of a characters realistic attributes.
I have to agree with Skald here…
Radioactive spider bite results in a set of mutated superpowers (whatever they may contain) = basic premise. But I can’t buy the idea of a poor high school student, regardless of how intelligent he is, in an otherwise realistic world developing/testing/creating a solution capable of all the things we see Peter Parker doing with it. Granted the Marvel Universe is far removed from “reality” but I think it may have to do with that greater context.
It reminds me of a post I saw here on the board before regarding Superman…
Another poster, (I don’t remember who they were off the top of my head, apologies), noted they were a fan of the Superman movies and cartoons in the 1980’s and tried to read a Superman comic and couldn’t get around the idea that Clark was just one of hundreds of flying heroes in a shared universe. It undercut his uniqueness and special abilities.
Likewise, a Peter Parker who develops mechanical webshooters in a world that Reed Richards and Tony Stark exist in is easier to accept than one who exists in an otherwise relatively realistic world that we saw in the Sam Raimi/Tobey Maguire movies.
The mechanical made more sense. The organic requires a whole new set of organs and a whole host of practical issues (are there some sort of giant pores in his wrists? His wrists are covered by gloves; where does the web come out?).
I don’t think it particularly hard to imagine he managed to whip up something mechanical, especially with Spider-Sense to guide him.
Trying to raise enough scratch to buy the ingredients for web fluid has been a fruitful and interesting plot devise in the book for nearly 50 years. Making ends meet is a major element of Parker’s tragic (and kinda hilarious) daily life. If I was a Spidey writer, I would milk the “need-money-for-fluid” premise for all it was worth: searching for spare change under the sofa cushions, panhandling, dumpster diving for returnable bottles, giving blood and inevitably passing his powers on to a hemophiliac toddler…
That said, the best reasons for keeping the mechanical shooters is because that’s the way it was when I was 12 years old.
