Alex Ross, ya’ll.

My good friend David posted a well-reasoned column “What’s so great about high school Spider-Man?” last week, which you should read here before reading this rebuttal because, well, that’s how these things work.

So go do that.

…

OK, welcome back.

And for those of you who can’t follow instructions, I offer you a brief synopsis: David not only doesn’t like the somewhat-recent news that MARVEL and SONY are reportedly going with a 16-year-old version of Peter Parker, he also doesn’t understand the fascination with high-school era Pete (hopefully you gathered that by the title of his column).

Now that you’re ready to see the other side of the coin presented, I must preface my response by saying I agree almost entirely with David’s post.

You’re probably thinking: “Ryan, I don’t think you understand what ‘rebuttal’ means…”

I do! I promise. Hence the “almost,” but David makes a number of points I agree with. I, too, wanted Miles Morales. I also think a college-aged Pete would have been more believable in the existing MCU. I agree that three origin stories (all starting in high school) in roughly a decade is excessive.

And he’s right, you can accomplish all of the same life conflicts by placing him at a university instead of a high school… almost.

Which brings us back to his prevailing inquiry: “What’s so great about high school Spider-Man?”

I’ll begin answering that question by borrowing words from somebody else and taking them out of context (strong start!). Current Amazing Spider-Man scribe Dan Slott recently said in an interview that, “Whichever Spider-Man you care about is the real Spider-Man.”

Some people love Miles Morales. Some people love Miguel O’Hara. Some probably even love Spider-Ham. Surely a good number of fans love the committed Mr. and Mrs. Parker version, while others like to see Spidey sticking his Peter in Felicia Hardy. But what about the general movie-going public? The masses who will flock to see a Spider-Man who belongs in the MCU with the Avengers, who do they want in the costume?

The answer: teenage Spider-Man because, as David quoted me as saying in his post, that is when the character seems to be “at his most magical.”

But why?

For starters, in many people’s eyes, Peter Parker is the quintessential “teen superhero.”

Spider-Man has one of the three most recognizable origins in comic book history, alongside DC juggernauts Batman and Superman. But Spidey has something up his web shooters the other two don’t thanks to his station in life — relatability.

High school Peter has no money. Few friends. Homework. Pimples. Awkward changes to his body. He’s struggling to talk girls and a bullying victim. He has sticky white stuff shooting out of him (In the Ultimate Universe, at least).

I realize David used this in his, too. But it helps prove my point!

Of all the great superhero origin stories, Peter most closely resembles the “everyman.”

Sure, you feel bad for the kid who just lost his planet and his parents and is forced to grow up in rural Kansas, but who can relate to Kal-El when he’s lifting tractors over his head in diapers? And, yeah, you feel for Bruce when his parents are gunned down but very few can relate to the billion-dollar trust fund he inherits. It’s also hard to put yourself in the shoes of  a guy who immerses himself into world-traveling, hyper-obsessive training over the better part of a decade to become the world’s greatest detective and the master of 127 martial arts.

Spider-Man is also the only one of the “Big Three” who becomes a superhero immediately after his tragic event. Spider-Man had to learn what he was doing on the fly (accidental spider pun!).

This tremendous origin has helped Spider-Man defy the odds by overcoming years of sub-par story lines, nearly irreparable continuity and a seriously bloated roster of Spider-Beings.

Surely this wouldn’t seem overwhelming to a newcomer, right?

He is dealing with all of these struggles that we all must endure when he gains his powers. His origin takes place smack dab in the middle of one of the most confusing and trying times we all go through in life.

As much as I agree with David’s sentiment that this will make it hard to believe he belongs with the way-older Avengers in the MCU, you could also argue that it adds an element of youth that is missing from the group.

That time in life is ripe for good stories. And one man saw this and updated it for the modern era, creating one of the most beloved versions of Spider-Man ever: Brian Michael Bendis.

Sure, there are a ton of Bendis haters out there for some of his controversial work on some of MARVEL’s big event comics (House of M, Avengers Disassembled, Age of Ultron, etc., as well as his recent polarizing run on the various X-Men titles) and some of the criticism is certainly earned. But Bendis knocked it out of the park(er) with Ultimate Spider-Man.

This scene kinda gets my point across in a nutshell: Peter tells MJ he’s Spider-Man. It’s powerful, emotional stuff.

When I was reading Ultimate Spider-Man in high school, I just felt it come to life off the pages. As a big comic fan myself, few runs have resonated with me in such a meaningful way.

WARNING: spoilers for a nearly 15-year-old comic incoming!!!

Also, just know that if they do choose to go the Ultimate Spidey route, it offers subject material from which they can draw without treading through the exact same stuff as the first two series: Gwen Stacy is a troubled teen, the symbiotes aren’t of alien origin. Peter’s web shooters are organic, not mechanical. Spidey dies.

It’s entirely Bendis’ world and it’s still going strong, albeit with Miles Morales swinging through NYC.

But why Miles and not Peter now? Because adult Peter lost its magic. So Bendis took the series back to what makes Spider-Man so special — high school. Young, relatable, malleable, fun.

Now just as a support for using the Ultimate Comics as inspiration, I’d like to point you to “The Avengers” film.

If you didn’t know, it closely resembles Mark Millar’s stellar run on The Ultimates. (But as David fairly pointed out to me in a recent conversation, the film benefitted greatly from Joss Whedon’s sense of humor.)

Look at the Wikipedia synopsis of Vol. 1 of The Ultimates: “General Nick Fury of S.H.I.E.L.D. establishes a strike force of government-sponsored metahumans which includes Captain America; scientist couple Henry and Janet Pym (Giant-Man and the Wasp); Bruce Banner (the Hulk) and Tony Stark (Iron Man). Together they are based at the S.H.I.E.L.D facility, the Triskelion. When Banner injects himself with the super-soldier serum and goes on a bloody rampage as the Hulk, he is eventually stopped by the other metahumans with the aid of Thor. The team then join forces with the mutants Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch and agents Hawkeye and Black Widow against the alien shape-shifters the Chitauri, who are defeated.”

Look at that roster: Captain America, Ant-Man, Wasp, Hulk, Iron Man, Thor, Black Widow, Hawkeye, Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver…. sound familiar? Well it should considering every one of them (I’m guessing Evangeline Lily will eventually be Wasp, but that’s a guess) is in the MCU.

Here are a few other tidbits the MCU borrowed from The Ultimates: a black Nick Fury, the Triskelion, S.H.I.E.L.D. establishing the Avengers by way of piecing together a metahuman strike force. Oh and stopping alien invaders named the Chitauri? Yep, check!

The Ultimate universe hasn’t exactly failed on the silver screen. They got to step out from under the weight of decades of main-universe continuity with battle-tested, modern source material to back them up.

Now that there is access to Spider-Man, I could definitely see MARVEL looking back toward the Ultimate universe to breath life back into the franchise in order to spin a different web, as it were, in the third re-telling of Peter’s origin in roughly a decade.

It’s not like the one they just abandoned was going anywhere special (except for maybe the rumored Aunt May spinoff! I wanted it to be “The Aunt-May-zing Spider-Man.”)

Ok, this is exceedingly long at this point. I promise I’m wrapping it up. As Uncle Ben once said, “With great word count, comes great unreadability.”

After the disaster that was Spider-Man 3 or the poorly-executed Amazing Spider-Man 2, this franchise needs a jolt and that will come from belonging to the MCU, not from making him older.

And if those aforementioned duds and a few decades of polarizing continuity decisions in the comics (second Clone Saga, Sins Past, One More Day, etc.) have taught us anything, maybe it’s that the question really is: “What’s so special about Spider-Man after high school?”

The defense rests.

Based on a novel by Patricia Highsmith, The Two Faces of January is a well-acted, reasonably well made, vaguely Hitchcockian suspense thriller that explores the similarities between star Viggo Mortensen (Lord of the Rings)and a guy who’s been labeled a future star so many times that he’s already leapfrogged over that stage in his career, Oscar Isaac (Inside Llewyn Davis).

Isaac plays Rydal, an ethnically ambiguous man who could very well be Greek, except he’s from Trenton, New Jersey, an ex-patriot who spurned a scholarship to Yale Law School to write never-to-be published poetry, swindle (and commingle with) beguiling young tourists (like actress Daisy Bevan), while acting as a tour guide in and around Athens. The year is 1962, and there’s a whiff of Jack Kerouac and the beat in Rydal’s soul.

Viggo is Chester MacFarland, a wealthy businessman with an exceptionally younger wife (Spider-Man’s Kirsten Dunst, as Colette/scene dressing). When Rydal spots him, patrolling the Parthenon with Colette, he’s reminded of his father. Rydal, of course, has a complicated relationship with his Dad (why else would he be in Greece instead of Law School?), one so difficult Rydal purposefully missed his funeral.

Perhaps because Chester reminds him of his father, Rydal wants to be him, wants his wife, his life. But, appearances can be deceiving. Rydal fashions himself Greek-ish and a friendly, lover of women, yet he never misses an opportunity to skim off the top whenever handling foreign currencies (said women). Chester appears to be a worthy and rich mark, but is it the other way around? Chester’s wealth and prestige is ill-gotten: he’s a con artist who stole money from investors, and he’s now on the run. Why else would he be in Greece? Because Greece is beautiful, you might say, and that’s normally an obligatory statement in such a European feeling movie, but I wasn’t particularly captivated by Athens or the various Crete villages that Rydal, Chester and Colette prance around, as its wonders were ignored or mere backdrop for their downward spiral.

Chester reminds me of Viggo’s character in A History of Violence, except that we know much sooner that Chester is not what he seems to be, that he’s not as good an actor, the simmering anger not far from the surface, particularly with whiskey close at hand.

Colette immediately takes a liking to Rydal, and vice versa, as the trio hatches an outing to explore the flea market. As these things inevitably go, after a wonderful evening (buoyed by Rydal’s date, an alluring Van Buren descendant), a smarmy private detective shows up at Chester’s hotel room, ends up dead, and Rydal finds himself in embroiled in the couple’s escape. Whether it’s for the money, for Colette or merely because he’s bored, waiting for something remarkable to happen, Rydal doesn’t get out, even while he still can.

Operating from his own script, Hossein Amini, an accomplished screenwriter and intriguing talent who wrote Drive, Snow White and the Huntsman and the unfortunate 47 Ronin, makes his directorial debut. The resulting film feels sort of like Anton Corbijn’s The American with more narrative thrust, and a con man instead of an assassin. While Viggo and Oscar get a lot to play with, Kirsten Dunst’s Colette is little more than a prop, a wedge piece between Chester and Rydal, a mutual interest. It’s a shame, because Dunst seems willing and capable of much more than being a bewitching plot device. How much of Chester’s criminal activity is Colette privy to? Why does she stay with him even as her homesickness for Brooklyn grows (and an accompany accent appears)? Chester and Colette’s past is a helluva lot more interesting than its present.

Amini proposes that Rydal and Chester aren’t much different (two sides of the same coin, two faces of January, etc.); in fact, we’re meant to believe that Chester is Rydal’s future, that despite fleeing to Greece, Rydal can’t escape his father, or becoming him. When they first meet, even when we believe what both of them say they are, neither trusts the other, and that never truly changes. The film hinges on this relationship and it doesn’t truly earn it. Despite what seems like a much longer period of time together than it actually is, I didn’t truly believe the characters’ evolution, nor was ever entirely invested in it.

THE TWO FACES OF JANUARY is now available on iTunes/OnDemand and in theaters Friday September 26, 2014.

Optional Music Accompaniment: The theme to the X-MEN animated series. On repeat. 

I’ve always been a man defined by his hobbies and obsessions, whether it be Ninja Turtles, baseball, Beanie Babies, Star Wars, fantasy sports, or TV. From 2000 to 2007, my Northstar was comic books, and I’d argue, was the most important hobby I ever had, irrevocably changing how I view pop culture and discovering what kind of stories and worlds and characters that I love.

I’m a devourer of superhero-related pop culture, someone whose calendar is dictated by big movie releases or TV premieres. My consumption of sci-fi, fantasy and comics has paralleled the incredible rise to prominence that these genres have imprinted on our culture. I like to think I had something to do with it all, because the timing is uncanny (sorry).

But without the original X-MEN, the superhero film that in many ways, started it all, we might never have seen a world where comic book heroes are the most popular characters in the world, where movie theaters are filled with the biggest characters from our youth, or the most eclectic. ANT-MAN is going to have his own movie, and that’s not weird. That’s exciting. The best filmmakers and actors in the world do some of their best work bringing to life characters that we grew up so urgently pretending they were real. Perhaps even without X-MEN, another movie would’ve sparked a superhero renaissance, an age when Captain America or Iron Man shares equal footing (or towers above) James Bond, Sherlock Holmes, Darth Vader and Indiana Jones. But maybe we’d still be waiting for AVENGERS. Or JUSTICE LEAGUE, because the punch line writes itself.

X-MEN’s success led to Sam Raimi getting his hands on SPIDER-MAN, and that paved the way for Christopher Nolan to reboot BATMAN, and for all of our movie going lives to change forever. It certainly mutated mine (oops).

If I hadn’t seen X-MEN, or if it hadn’t had a profound impact on me, I might not have been as invested in the incredible fantasy world that we geeks live in today. When the film came out in 2000, I had never read a comic book before. I was aware of them, having spent most of my money on MAGIC: THE GATHERING, POKEMON and baseball cards at Bigfoot’s Cards & Comics (now and forever closed ). I think I knew I’d like them, but I didn’t know if I was ready to fully commit to my nerd-dom, or admit to myself that that was the path I was going down. I was an extremely shy person back then, and not at all comfortable in my own skin, preferring to shield my personality from other people.

I was also a fairly accomplished baseball player at the time (but I was only 12, so that means nothing), and I’m not sure if I was able to reconcile the two worlds together. Being a LORD OF THE RINGS geek on your baseball team in 2000 was a hard sell, and I don’t think it’s an accident that my playing days became more frustrating, difficult and fewer and far between once I embraced comic books and the like. I wish I had juggled the two better (one of my bigger regrets), but I wasn’t very good at managing my obsessions.

When Bryan Singer, a director known for THE USUAL SUSPECTS, took on X-MEN, and brought it into theaters in 2000, I was more than familiar with the X-MEN. Like almost everyone in my generation, I had grown up on the awesome aforementioned cartoon. Jubilee was the worst, Cyclops was lame, the Phoenix Saga was fucking great, etc. I would’ve told you Wolverine was my favorite character (revel in his best quotes, though none top “JEEAANNNNNNN”), but I probably secretly believed Beast to be my fave, since he was the most Donatello-like of the mutant brigade.

Every summer, I’d go with my family to visit Granny in North Lake Tahoe. After a day spent on the beach (likely playing “amazing catches,” a forced childish version of ESPN’s Web Gems with a splash ball), we’d often play a round or two of miniature (don’t call it pee wee) golf at Magic Carpet Golf. While there were many highlights of the experience (including some shooting game that featured a terrifying cowboy/drunk that shot water and hollered at you), I was never satisfied until AFTER I got done in the Arcade Room. Why? Because they had the X-MEN Arcade Game. Magic Carpet was probably one of two places I’ve ever seen it, or played it (until very recently, it was still there; now my childhood is dead).

While I loved playing as Wolverine (in his spectacular brown and tan/yellow duds that need to make it on film) and Nightcrawler (also one of my faves; I wasn’t too creative in my choices), Colossus was the true breakout character of that game in my mind. I would play him the most, and would yell “Hyogen” to emulate the yell Piotr Rasputin makes when he explodes/whatever the fuck he does to destroy all competition. For awhile I think I just figured his name was Hyogen, and that became a talking point with my father for years (he’ll still say it). I shouted Hyogen around the house well after I should’ve stopped, and am still a little upset how awful my ears were, since my approximation of his yell left a lot to be desired in translation:

I like Hyogen better, but there’s a lot to be said for MAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUGH. Or maybe it’s WHOOOOOOOOREE. One of life’s greatest mysteries.

All of this was a long-winded, rambling way to say that I had been primed, and ready for the moment a young Erik Lehnnsherr mangled barb-wire fence at a Nazi internment camp to open X-MEN, and tearing down the barrier to comics and genre in my life forever.

I was thrilled to discover the absolute perfect Wolverine on screen, perhaps the best unknown casting of all-time. One of the biggest travesties of the constant missteps of the X-franchise after X2 has been wasting a willing, loyal and brilliant Hugh Jackman in his prime on a bunch of shitty movies. That, more than anything, is why we need X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST to be awesome, and why I’m totally fine that Wolverine’s role in the film is beefed up. There’s only so much longer that Hugh Jackman can do this, and like Robert Downey Jr. with Iron Man, I want to see as much of him as possible in the role that made us love him.

While Anna Paquin’s Rogue was annoying, I still loved Wolverine and Rogue’s relationship. Patrick Stewart. Ian McKellan. Most associate P-Stew with Captain Picard, or McKellan with Gandalf. This is likely heresy/wrong, but for me, they’ll always be Professor X and Magneto, as X-MEN was my first introduction to them as actors that stuck, and physical evidence that true love exists.

You could go on an on about what’s wrong with the X-MEN movies (Toad, Storm, Rogue, the bazillion plotholes and timeline inconsistencies), but it doesn’t matter. In 2000, when I saw X-MEN for the first time as a 12 year old, it changed my life.

X-MEN was my Gateway drug into comic books. The next week I was in Bigfoot’s, buying comics for the first time. Since that moment, I’ve listened to Joe Quesada or some other boner talk about how these movies try to get kids to read comic books countless times, and they always seem so desperate and laughable, but with X-MEN, the tactic worked.

While the first comic book character and series I fell in love with based on the merit of the character and the writing was GREEN ARROW, thanks to Kevin Smith and Phil Hester’s genius resurrection of Oliver Queen, they weren’t the first comics I ever read.

That would be X-MEN #110-113 and UNCANNY X-MEN #392-393, a unique and interesting period of X-Men comics that people would prefer to forget.

Somehow, Scott Lobdell’s “Eve of Destruction” arc didn’t ruin comic books for me forever. At the time, tt was seen as the last big crossover between the X-titles, while simultaneously being “filler” before Grant Morrison and Joe Casey (blergh) took over the flagship books for Marvel and revolutionized the mutants (one of them did). I honestly don’t remember Eve of Destruction in the slightest, except for their covers (and the brilliant song Lobdell was referencing), which is probably for the best. I do remember being kind of bummed out that Hyogen/Colossus had just died (sacrificing himself to save mutant kind from the Legacy Virus), right when I was started reading. Figures. Of course, years later, Joss Whedon would prove perhaps for the first time that he would always have my back, resurrecting my Arcade fave in ASTONISHING X-MEN.

Pretty soon, I was spending all of my allowance and savings on comic books, broadening out to AVENGERS, FANTASTIC FOUR, JUSTICE LEAGUE, and in a couple years, onto Vertigo titles like FABLES and Y: THE LAST MAN that really showed me the kind of diverse storytelling that could take place in a medium that I had always thought was devoted solely to masked heroes and villains.

When I was first delving in, I craved more. I wanted to talk about them, I wanted to pretend like I knew what I was talking about, and I wanted to meet other people like me. That’s when I found the Marvel message boards, and stumbled upon a world of role playing, constant threads filled with silly arguments debating your dream X-MEN team, or what mutant powers you wish you had, or who you’d want to fuck, along with various get to know you games with nerds of all shapes, sizes and ages. My moniker was DrDoom2099; to this day, I’ve never read a comic book with the 2099 version of Doctor Doom. Very soon, I had created my own message board called Comic Castle, that brought with it several iterations, a lot of wasted time, and a few long time members and friends.

One of whom was ShadowWolf214, or David Youngblood, a name you might recognize. He writes about owls and Red Pandas on this very site, and mind-bloggingly does so without any encouragement from me. 13-14 years after I first met him on the Marvel message boards and talked to him on AIM, I probably text David more than I do my Mom, Dad or best friends that I actually see on a consistent basis. David has been my nigh constant online companion ever since I learned to stop worrying and love the genre, and the bizarre, incredible, and life-giving worlds that that has opened up. In many ways, because he was so much older (it’s a one year difference, but it seemed/seems like a decade of difference when I was 12) and had been reading comics for longer, he kind of clued me in on what to read and what to shit on, until I was able to stand on my two feet in the comics community (I don’t know if I ever did). Whenever the other watches a new show, or movie, we’re likely the first to know about it, or receive a snarky comment. We practically have a symbiotic relationship when it comes to pop culture, and there are few people I trust more than him when it comes to recommendations.

It’s one of the weirder and cooler friendships and stories I’ve had the good fortune to stumble upon. I “met” David when I was 12 years old (though we both lied about our ages for at least a year or so), and we both stunningly turned out to be who we said we were, and kept in contact long enough to the point where it wasn’t weird when we finally met. I went to his wedding in August of 2012, finally meeting David and learning his disturbing predilection for chicken fingers in person for the first time. Here I was, the night before his wedding, crashing on his couch. It was surreal, kinda awkward, yet undeniably wonderful to be chatting about THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN, THE DARK KNIGHT RISES and PROMETHEUS with David and his drunk friends during the most important days of his life.

It’s reassuring to have someone in your life that not only knows you and has your back, but loves all the same things you do. It’s creepy/insane how similar David and I are in our pop culture consumption. He will get all the jokes, all the references. And that all came, in part, because of Bryan Singer’s first X-MEN. Without seeing it, I would have 100% less dragon socks, Edward James Olmos t-shirts and people to talk Agent 355 with, things no one should live without.

Before I became comfortable waving around my hobbies, and personality for all to see (which came in senior year of high school and college), the Marvel message boards were the first lifeline to who I really was. Nowadays, I don’t care what other people think about the weird or girly or nerdy things I like (MARY POPPINS, DAWSON’S CREEK, etc.), and am in fact proud of it, since I never shut up about them.

But without the Marvel Messageboards, and discovering the internet as this bastion of reflection, discussion and access to knowledge and people I’d never be able to meet in Edmonds, WA when I was in middle school, I never would’ve made Comic Castle or discovered things that truly inspired me. I might never would’ve written about comics, movies and the things I love, and without that, I don’t know if I ever would’ve realized how much I like not just writing online, but writing in general.

You could make the argument that seeing X-MEN was the most impactful thing that happened to me in my childhood, aside from a non-serious car accident that happened to me when I was 15 that robbed me of my license for a year and inadvertently introduced me to DAWSON’S CREEK, or not making the baseball team my freshman year of High School. Oh, and being loved and raised by a pair of wonderful parents, I guess.

While X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST has the potential to be awful, and I’ve kind of held my expectations in check because of that, I’m optimistic. It’s actually snuck up on me how happy and ecstatic I am to see this crazy ballsy sequel/prequel/reboot/eraser fourteen years later, with Bryan Singer back in the saddle.

Maybe afterwards, I’ll find myself wandering right back into a comic shop, ready to restart the addiction. What’s Scott Lobdell doing these days?