Throughout history every society has had their own heroes of myth and legend; from the Greek heroes of Hercules and Achilles, to the Medieval English heroes King Arthur and Lancelot, and the Early American heroes of Paul Bunyan and Daniel Boone, there have always been and there will always be heroes. Heroes are pillars of a societies values, what a society finds important is what will be found in the overall makeup of the heroes themselves. In today’s society, we have two heroes of comic book legend that stand above all others—Batman and Spider-Man. Superheroes share a common trait: motivation.
For example, Spider-Man has a great sense of responsibility, Batman has a personal vendetta against criminals, and Superman has a strong belief in justice and humanitarian service. In brief, superheroes are challenged with a great deal of responsibility. It was Peter Parker who said, “Whatever life holds in store for me, I will never forget these words: ‘With great power comes great responsibility. ‘ This is my gift, my curse. ” How the two carry out these duties, differs entirely. Batman has a childish fantasy about completely being the answer to end crime, entirely on his own.
Spider-Man is rooted in his teenager being. He feels like an outsider who’s isolated from everyone around him. When he gets the one thing he wants — the power that makes him stronger, faster and more popular than anyone else — he ends up losing one of the only people that truly cared about him. Similarly, both of these hero’s have well known back stories touching on the deaths of their parents. Bruce lost both of his parents on the same night while he was barely ten years old; Peter lost Uncle Ben as a teenager and leaves him with only his Aunt as the remaining parental figure.
An sup -hero interesting contrast in this similarity is that Spider-Man’s story doesn’t romanticize the death of his parents in the ways that Bruce’s does. The death of Batman’s parents is a tragedy, and it has to be horrible in order to be the catalyst for what sends him down the path to spending his entire life fighting crime, but it’s also something that frees him. It’s what gives him his fortune, and gets him out of school so that he can travel the world learning to be awesome. Spider-Man’s history doesn’t read like a st, not one that you would’ve expected in 1962.
There’s no triumph, no Batman posing on the rooftop; not even a vow to use his powers to benefit mankind. Instead, the last panel of Spider-Man’s first appearance is a teenager walking alone down a dark street, crying because his uncle died and it’s all his fault. Yet when Batman’s family dies, he bounces back. There was nothing he could’ve done to stop his parents from being killed — mostly because he was a childso he makes himself into someone that could serve justice, and could do it for others instead.
Spider-Man never gets over it. He never goes back to life as it was before Uncle Ben died. Of course, there was something he could’ve done to stop it, but he chose not to. Now, he does anything and everything he can to keep it from happening to anyone else. It’s an atonement, but no matter what he does, it’ll never be enough. He’s not determined, he’s driven. It’s also another aspect of Spider-Man’s teenage mindset, too. Peter can never get over that death, because when you’re a teenager, nothing ever feels like you’ll get over it.
Everything is important, and everything is the end of the world. An imperiative difference between the two is the way they continue to grow up during their childhood, or teen years for Peter, and began forming their everlasting idenities. Batman’s essentially Batman from the moment his parents die, he just needs to go learn kung fu and how to be a detective. But at the start of Parker’s story, he’s not a hero — he’s not even close. He’s a shy outcast, and while those things aren’t really his fault, they lead him to become pretty vindictive.
He only wants to benefit himself, so he uses these phenomenal abilities he’s gotten to go on TV and do tricks for an audience. When Uncle Ben dies, he pays for all that and sets off on a mission to do better — and part of that is basically him pretending to be this quick-witted, fast-talking hero who was the complete opposite of his own personality. He creates Spider-Man to be the person he wants to be. Bruce had metaphorically put on the bat earred cowl from the moment his parents where shot dead before him.
As a final note in this epic comparison is what you can take away from these two. Batman teaches you that if you’re determined enough, and if you try your hardest, one man can change the world. Spider-Man teaches you that you’re going to mess up in life. You’re going to make bad decisions and it’s going to feel like they’re crushing you, but he also teaches you that the only way to get through it is to never quit. It’s not going to be easy, but even if it seems impossible, you can beat anything that stands in your way. You can become the person you want to be.
