Why Hollywood Needs to Go Back to Saying "Remake" Instead of "Reboot"

There are innumerable articles and blogs out there addressing the troubles and woes of Hollywood rebooting everything they have ever made, and lately it seems that studios are trying harder than ever to cash in on the nostalgia of the past. I’m not going to rant about why this doesn’t need to be done. Instead, I’m going to focus on the misuse of the term “reboot” and how that directly, or indirectly effects what the studio is trying to do versus what the fans are expecting. More specifically, I’m going to address the new Ghostbusters film currently in production under the direction of Paul Feig for Sony. Please note that I’m not going to bash what I haven’t seen. I will also not whine and lament specific issues unless they directly relate to my topic (something other critics seem to forget to do).

            Sony is one of the most notorious offenders when it comes to trying to take an existing property and do it all over again. Besides Ghostbusters, they are about to embark on a third big-screen iteration of Spider-Man (another bit of source material I hold near and dear). Briefly, studios taking another shot at a movie is nothing new—The Maltese Falcon was released in 1931, and again in 1941 (the latter being the more infamous for starring Humphrey Bogart). Though in last fifteen years, it seems that executives are more focused on trying to continue a franchise that on one involved in the original is willing to be involved with, so they decide to “reboot it.” But I think that this terminology is completely wrong! What they are doing is a remake, not a reboot.

            Think of it this way: if you “reboot” your computer because it isn’t working right, when it comes back on everything should be pretty much the same as it was, right? Same programs, same background, same settings. All you’ve done is restart your experience from the beginning, with the knowledge that it will be the same. Imagine how pissed you’d be if, when the screen came back to life, only the names of the files had stayed the same. I’m talking about new background, settings, and even new images representing your common icons. How frustrating would it be to spend several minutes looking for the familiar internet icon, only to discover that it had been completely replaced by the image of a tree for no defined reason? The same thing is true for movies, and it is the main reason why fans of the original source material are usually so upset when they learn that things are being changed in the “reboot.” The studio isn’t rebooting, they are remaking; but the term “remake” gained such a negative connotation ten years ago, that they had to come up with something new. However it correct it may be.

            Now, getting back to Ghostbusters, it’s time to take a look at why lots of fans are more than a little ticked off.

            For the last 25 years, there have been talks about a third film in the Ghostbusters franchise. Dan Aykroyd always said that he and co-writer and co-star Harold Ramis were working on a script and that they were in talks with the studio. But mostly, it was understood that this was his go-to answer. Then, a few years ago, major headway was being made revolving around a third film with the original cast. All of this stemming from not only the 25^th anniversary of the first film’s release, but also the huge success of the video game (that featured the voices of the original cast). The script was, as always, being polished and Ivan Reitman, who directed the first two films, was onboard to get behind the camera. This news, however, was taken with a grain of salt for the die-hard fans, because they (read: we) had been hearing the same thing for a quarter century. But then the talk kept going, and it seemed the only real hang-up was with Bill Murray reprising his role of Dr. Peter Venkman.

            Then Harold Ramis passed away. Not only was half of  the creative force behind the characters gone, but the fictional brains of the outfit was gone, too (Ramis played the dry-witted Egon Spengler). Then Ivan Reitman left the project. Then many others involved in spearheading the third film left as well. And it the idea should have died right then, and Sony should have been just as happy raking in all the cash from releasing merchandise with the logo on it. Yet, as the studio proved with Spider-Man, they weren’t ready to give up on the already sunk ship. Not when they could spin it and make it a submarine. So the studio announced they were moving forward with the franchise and that they were seeking a new director.

            And now for the real trouble with calling this venture a “reboot” and not a remake.

            Almost as soon as Paul Feig came aboard to direct, it was revealed that he was going to have an all-female cast. The director also went out of his way on social media to put fans’ minds at ease, saying that his was going to be a completely new story with new characters and that it would exist in a world that did not coincide with the world of the first films. He was going to remake everything from the ground up so that there was no link between the two franchises. But that wasn’t exactly the case.

            I won’t speculate on why certain decisions were made over others, but I’ll bet that the studio executives were plenty pushy for him to go in one direction over another so as best to promote brand-recognition. And specifically, you can’t make a Ghostbusters movie without five very important things: 1) the logo 2) proton packs 3) the car 4) ghosts and 5) the song. Sadly, though, since Feig had spent so much time saying that he was going to distance his story from the original films that every time new information is released about this new version, it is unclear exactly how “original” his version is going to be. I believe this could have been avoided if they hadn’t used the term “reboot.” Let me breakdown the five essential items for a Ghostbusters story and then actually “reboot” them, using a correct definition of “reboot.”

            The logo. It is among the most recognizable symbols on earth. A plump specter who looks a little surprised to be trapped behind a red “No” icon. Styled after all of the No Smoking signs that started popping up in New York in the 1980s, the no-ghost logo is brand marketing at its finest. It is simple, saying everything you need to know in a single image. It is also cheap to print on white paper—requiring only red and black ink. It is the strongest and most obvious link to the original. This is also probably one of the biggest issues he studio is pushing on this film so that it connects the brand to the merchandise. In actuality, it is just a lazy copout.

            To fix this problem, all they had to do was spend a little time researching the design phase of the logo and go from there. While not exactly the well-known icon that is known today, there were a few designs that both are similar yet altogether different. One of my favorites was a much more menacing ghost, with his arms raised to frighten, being held back by a X. Still says the same thing, only separates the films. Really, Sony could have done anything and earned a bit more respect than reusing the classic symbol as nothing more than a consumer fishing lure. Again, this whole thing is all about “reboot” versus “remake,” and the inclusion of the logo screams remake!

            The proton packs. They are the single most important tool for the capture and elimination of paranormal entities. Not to mention the first item on many a childhood Christmas list in the mid-1980s. The pack is bulky, unsymmetrical, and just looks like it was welded together in the basement of a mad scientist. It is supposed to look dangerous and complicated. Yet, the new props from the film are, while not direct copies, are close enough to the original that there isn’t anything special about them. Yeah, they’re a little smaller (more comparable to the female form wearing them?), but overall they fit the audiences’ preconceived notion of what a ghost-busting backpack should look like—they fit the design of a “rectangle with some boxes and wires and things, and a big round thing on it.” With the release of the images of this new design, it seems that the production is refusing to challenge the viewers to look at something original and just accept that it works in the same way as the design that came before. In 1984, no one had any idea what these devices did, or how they worked. Then, the characters on screen shot an unstable orange beam forked with blue lightning at a ghost, and the audience was like “Oh, okay. Looks cool,” and I kind of wish there had been more images released of the pre-production phase. There was a missed opportunity to address the proton packs in a way that modernizes them and still keeps the whole wacky, unbelievable science.

            My recommendation would have been to streamline the design by taking all that gangly bulk and shoving it neatly into a stylish and sleek shell. Think of it like a computer. It’s an unassuming box, but when you take the box away, it’s a total mishmash of circuit boards, wires, and alien-looking technology. Or what about a high-end sports car? Imagine what a Lamborghini looks like without the shell. It’s a weird-shaped frame with an obtuse motor hung in the back with some tires. But put what is essentially the body of a spaceship on it and you’ve really got something. For me, the proton packs should be no different. We live in a high-tech world where one of the characters could have easily 3-D printed a nice looking case to house all that sceincey stuff, so that when the casing is removed (to make repairs or whatever), we see inside at all the congested and ugly parts—which might also be a clever visual metaphor for the character who designs them.

            Yet another way to update the proton packs and (if they absolutely must) reference back to the original films, though much more slightly, would be to have these characters use Dan Aykroyd’s original plan where the Ghostbusters sport sleek backpacks that have wires running to wands extending from their wrists. Not only does this give true fans a glimpse of what might have been back in 1984, but truly embraces what Hollywood wants us to think they mean when they say “reboot.”

            The car. Yet another visual icon of the original film, the Ecto-1 is a ghost-white ambulance/hearse from 1959, with bright red tailfins and trimmed in gleaming chrome. Blue emergency lights swirl ethereally as the siren wails its haunting call. It is also one of the better un-sung gags of Ghostbusters in that four live guys are riding around in a vehicle used to transport the dead while on their way to deal with the dead, who may have had their previous ride in that car (do you see the genius of that little joke?). So when production began on Feig’s version, he said that he was exploring all options for the kind of transport his team of paranormal eliminators would be using. Alas, it was recently revealed that the four Ghostbusters would once again canter about in an old hearse—only this one from the 1980s instead of the 1950s—with a bunch of unspecified crap thrown on top that the story won’t relate what it does or why it is there. Again, I think this is a major stumble for this production with so many kinds of vehicles to choose from.

            My idea for the new Ecto-1 would be anything but a hearse. Just from a purely comfort standpoint, they only really seat two, since the back has been designed to hold a coffin. The original Ecto-1 was actually an ambulance, evidenced by the additional seating in the rear compartment and the sliding rack the team utilized to hold their proton packs as they drove. So, if the crew wanted to “update” the idea of the team’s mode of transportation, why not pick one of the 1980s ambulances that had been a converted cargo van? I mean, that way they still get the accompanying lights and siren, as well as storage and extra seating, but they also get the added gloriousness of painting a mural on the side. And honestly, what says “1980s vehicle” more than a van with an epic mural painted on the side? Hey, it worked for Star Trek and Star Wars:

            The ghosts. Actually, I’m giving Feig & Co. free license to do as they please here. The specters in the original films were a nice combo of silly and scary. Part Disney and part Lovecraft. What that did, in effect, was to distance the audience from the realization that these things had once been living people. Reitman took the humanity out of them so they seemed more unearthly and right so. Who wants to sit and ponder the notion that Grandpa’s spirit has just been confined for all eternity to a laser containment grid? It just isn’t fun. As long as the new movie does its best to make the ghosts something we want to see be gotten rid of, they should be fine.

            The song. Oh, the song. The original was written and performed by Ray Parker Jr. and it is a classic. It has been remade so many times over the decades that no one really cares who you’re going to call anymore, just so that won’t have to ask. The brilliance was the catchy question-and-answer. The song literally screamed the name of the movie every five seconds. Again, it’s great marketing. As of now, though, there has been no information regarding the music for the new film, and I doubt that they will have a final decision much before the movie actually premieres. After all, Ray Parker Jr. wrote and recorded Ghostbusters over the course of a weekend, like a month before the film debuted. Though I’d bet dollars to donuts that some version of “Who you gonna call?” will appear somewhere on the title track of the CD (do they even make those anymore?”

            What I’ve tried to express in the above isn’t what I find wrong with forthcoming Ghostbusters, but instead that this is a remake. Paul Feig is telling his version of the story we all already know. If it was a reboot, then it would be four guys named Peter, Ray, Egon, and Winston, battling the supernatural forces of Zuul, minion of Gozer. What Gus Van Sant did with Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho in 1998 was a “reboot.” And maybe that’s the problem in Hollywood, more than just them running out of ideas.

            It seems like every director who is given an existing project to work on has to tell their version of the character. I’m going to pick on superheroes for a minute because they seem to be the most obvious offender to me. Just think about how many times you’ve seen Bruce Wayne’s parents die. I know for me, it has been more than ten. So much so that I’ve become desensitized to it and the importance for the character loses its meaning. The same thing is true for the origin of Superman, and Spider-Man is no different. Every time a new director shoots a movie about these characters, we have to suffer through the boring inevitability of their tragic and up-coming loss. These characters are more than 50 years old and they have had hundreds of thousands of adventures, yet we as the audience get to see the same story told again and again and again. Even when they try to tell a new story, like in Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns, we have to spend several minutes in a completely unnecessary flashback about a young Clark learning to control his powers (which was used in this particular film as nothing more than a metaphor for a young teenage boy coming to terms with his self-realized homosexuality). And this is the problem that I think Feig is going to run into with his “version” of Ghostbusters. He’s trying to tell the story that everyone knows, but changing it up enough to seem updated and original for the times.

            “Rebooting” a franchise does not actually breathe new life into an entity that already has a steady and devout fanbase. It angers them. This film specifically has caused heated debates about gender roles and sexual oppression, and it wasn’t supposed to. The original Ghostbusters was not a platform for political expression. I mean, the biggest metaphor in the whole thing is the giant marshmallow man representing how we are being crushed to death by consumerism—and that is one overt metaphor!

            For me, the problem lies in my inability to come up with an idea for a solution on how to fix the endless rebooting and refreshing and reimagining. There will always be generic plots that will be told and retold, but have we really reached the nexus of human creativity in artistic cinema? I remember when movies with multiple sequels (Friday the 13^th; A Nightmare on Elm Street; Jaws) were laughed at and endlessly parodied—and most of them were horror films. But now, Hollywood has proven that they aren’t really interested in making a movie that does not have franchise potential. But, to be honest, when I look at my DVD rack, I see a lot of things with sequels. The Back to the Future series, Indiana Jones, Star Wars, Rambo, The Terminator, Superman, Toy Story, Die Hard. I can’t help but realize that this isn’t a new problem. The new problem is that these movies that already told their stories, and then continued those stories, are now having their stories retold. To put it simply, every successful film is a contender to have a part two made, continuing the story—or just telling a new story with the same characters. Robert Zemeckis never actually intended to do a sequel to Back to the Future. The original ending had the time machine fly at the camera and then cut to black. It wasn’t until the film did so well that they put “To Be Continued. . .” before the credits on the home video release.

            But I digress, and I said I wouldn’t.

            As fans of popular franchises, or just fans of original cinema altogether, the only way to actually get executives to stop remaking our favorite films is to actually stop going to see the remakes. If you are against the remake of Ghostbusters, then don’t go see it. But that won’t happen. Because as fans, we’re curious.

            My suggestion is that we stop calling things a “reboot.” It just sounds dumb. I mean, why for the love of God, does Spider-Man need a second reboot? We should instead be fighting more for a change in terminology when it comes to what they are really doing. And yes, the Spider-Man movies are basically the closest thing to cinematic reboots that I can think of besides Psycho. I think more directors should follow in J.J. Abrams’ footsteps and take a story that everybody knows and literally turn it around so that it is something new and explosively fresh, like what he did with Star Trek.

            Short of boycotting remakes/reboots we don’t want or like, there isn’t anything that can be done to stop them. Getting online and arguing about it doesn’t help. It only makes those involved defensive and angry.

            Let’s all just sit back and relax and enjoy the show. This isn’t a new phenomenon. It is only just more prevalent because the films many of us grew up on are now having their turn.

SPIDER-MAN: A New Direction

Let me set the stage for you, just in case you’re new to all of this.

            Right now everyone hates me. And I mean hate! Rocks and bottles and curses are hurled at me. I’ve even had a few people pop off a few rounds. Nothing ever struck home—it never does—but that doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt. Especially after all I’ve done for them. But do you think they could focus on that? Nope. Thanks to the media running that damned photo again and again and again I’m right up there with Hitler, Bin Laden, and Von Doom as the most hated men in the country (and I’m aware that two of them are dead, but people still hate them—a lot). Although, I guess it is a little bit of poetic justice: me, a struggling freelance photographer getting scooped with a picture of myself taken by some teenage girl with her phone.

            The image isn’t crystal clear and it’s off center. And there is too much light, washing out most of the contrasting colors. The red looks pink and the vibrant blue is practically black. No shadows, either. Real amateur stuff. If I had taken it, I would have found the beauty in the tragedy. I would have captured the faces (well, the one you could see—the other was masked). I would have adjusted the F-stop so that the colors soaked through the lens and onto the film. Especially the blood. The moment would have been immortalized as not only news, but art. Instead, that millisecond, the one that ruined my life, will forever be a hazy, bleached memory amid a sea of pouty-lipped selfies.

            It’s a curious image. One that, if you ignore the headlines, when you first see it, you aren’t quite sure of what it shows. It kind of looks like hundreds of others that have appeared over the years, only there is something just not right about the posture of the two figures.

            The male figure is identifiable enough, given his audacious costume of red and blue, not to mention the mask that covers his entire face, and those lifeless white/silver eyes that gleam like the gossamer wings of an insect that has been caught in the spider’s web that is printed on the mask. The red and blue fabric of the full body suit is blotched with shreds and tears showing pale white flesh that is red and angry from recent abuse. The head is lowered, looking too heavy to hold up any longer. It is looking down at the other figure. The girl. The young woman.

            Her body is cradled in the arms of the other like some surrealist version of Michelangelo’s Pieta.  Her head is tilted back, her round chin pointing skyward, her eyes closed. The white gold of her hair that normally bounces and billows around her almond-shaped face falls straight down like molten sunlight. A thin truckle of blood runs from the corner of her mouth. There was even some in her ears—but you can’t see it in the picture.

            Like I said, if I had taken it, it would have been so good you could have even seen the dark stains around those terrifyingly blank eyes.

MURDERER! KILLER!

            Whoever said that words can never hurt you was obviously never called these things. And what twists the knife in my chest is that they are probably right. Although, the one that took my breath away, the bold-face, thirty-four point font bullet to the head was the one that said: FIRST CAPTAIN GEORGE STACEY, NOW HIS DAUGHTER! SPIDER-MAN’S VENDETTA AGAINST ONE FAMILY EXPOSED!

            J. Jonah Jameson and I have never gotten along. Not as J.J and Peter, but especially not as J.J. and Spider-Man. But I was always able to take his ridiculous outrages as pure marketing, intended to sell one more copy of the Bugle. Yet, when I read those words I wanted to kill him. I wanted to crash through his widow and literally tear him apart one piece at a time. To hell with Uncle Ben’s haunting dirge of power and responsibility. I wanted to rid myself of that Dickensian spirit and put things right in my mind. I had followed the old man’s hogwash every day since his death and where had it gotten me?

            But I was too hurt to move from my bed. The inner pain had me trapped in a way that all of my enemies were unable to do. I had been broken. Spider-Man had been broken. And I wondered which of us was the real persona. Was he just my Id, running loose all over the city, making up for what poor Peter Parker had missed out on his whole life? Or was Peter, the weak wallflower, the part the kept Spider-Man from going too far? I know lots of doctors (Richards, Banner, Strange, hell, even Octavius), but none of them understand the fragile psyche of a twenty-year-old with a split personality, superiority complex, abandonment issues, and a huge guilt complex.

            I tried not listening to the news, avoiding the papers, but in New York, the walls are notoriously thin. My neighbors, a lovely old Jewish couple, have their TV turned up so loud I’ll bet Logan can hear it all the way upstate at Xavier’s school. So even in my bleak solitude I am pestered with my most horrible mistake. The anchors do nothing but sit and speculate on my motives. There were several news choppers there that caught most of the incident on film. So why can’t they see that I dropped everything, put the world on pause, while I went after her?

            I remember those chilling seconds as we both fell. Physics says that two objects of unequal mass will fall at the same rate, so I knew that I couldn’t just dive over the edge and catch her. I had to push off. As I hit the edge of the bridge tower, I curled my toes on the lip and used my sticking ability, to shove off at a downward angle, hoping that my increased momentum would give be a chance to catch up with her. But she was too far down already. Even with all of my powers, my increased everything, my body still couldn’t react as fast as my mind and I was just that much too far behind.

            As we fell, I realized I couldn’t catch her, so I used my other tool. I flung out both arms and shot a thin line of webbing in each direction; one towards her, the other towards the tower’s wall. The webbing being pressurized was able to accelerate at a greater velocity than I was and ensnared her feet at the ankles just as the anchoring line struck the wall, and with all of my might, I heaved upward, pulling her toward me.

            And that was my fatal mistake; the one that I can never take back—the one that, if I had had another heartbeat of time, I would have realized what was about to happen and corrected my actions.

            Newton’s first law.

            She had reached terminal velocity, and when the webbing struck and I yanked, her momentum continued in a wave from her toes through her hair. I tried to tell myself that the soft, sucking pop I heard was the wet webbing going taut.

            My webbing, when dry, is stronger than the steel cables holding up the bridge we loomed over, but when it is freshly fired, it is wet and has some elasticity to it. This is how I am able to get such great air when traversing the city. I use it like a bungee cord, propelling myself with increased velocity. It is also how I’m able to catch things that are falling, like pianos, safes, anvils, or anything else out of the ACME catalogue of cartoon mayhem. And had this been anybody else but her, I would have let the line go taut, stretch a little to slow them, then grab them on the rebound. But this was her. I wanted to have her back. I needed her in my arms to know she was safe.

            Through my wall, I heard my neighbors’ TV explain the gruesome details of internal decapitation. How the spinal column is pulled away from the back of the skull resulting in instant (and probably painless) death.

            As Peter, I’m expected to attend the funeral, to show my love for the girl I will never see again. And I wonder if I’m supposed to express outrage over her passing. Should I yell at Spider-Man during her eulogy? Should I damn him to an existence of misery and horror? What good would it do? He’s already damned, and I already hate him. The best I could hope for would be some kind of Shakespearian soliloquy where I parade back and forth before her coffin brandishing balled fists as I argue with myself. Condemning and defending my own actions. Would everyone figure it out then? Would they all know that Peter Parker is Spider-Man? Or would they assume that Peter had lost his mind (though it is really Spider-Man who’s gone mad)?

I woke up this morning with her perfume in my nose. It was mixing with my male stink, but I knew it was her. The floral scent of jasmine and roses wafted up from my chest; a little patch of flesh over my heart where her head had rested for the last time as I lost myself under that bridge.

            It was like she was reminding me that she would always be with me.

            Several months ago, I talked to Doc Strange about the afterlife. At the time I was curious about Uncle Ben. Strange told me that there are hundreds of billions of trillions of dimensions, and that when the spirit energy dies on this plane of existence, there is a distinct probability that it is born again in another; as he pointed out, knowing my love of science, energy, once created, can never be destroyed, it just transitions from one form to another. Being the blatantly over-curious nerd-boy that I am, I asked if that was an explanation for ghosts. Strange laughed one of those laughs where you know the other person feels sorry for your ignorance. He said to think of it like this: the people we love and who love us, if in fact they exist on another plane after death, would miss us as much as we miss them; so it stands to reason that they would stop at nothing to try and get back to us—and just maybe, someone over there has figured out a way for it to happen, albeit ethereally. I left his sanctum convinced that every time I’d heard Uncle Ben’s voice in the back of my head, guiding me, that it was really him, speaking to me from another dimension. So naturally, when I smelled her perfume on my skin, I believed it was her giving me a hug to tell me it was okay, that she didn’t hate me.

            So began my psychosis. All that day I felt better. I was able to eat and bathe. And all the while I talked to her, hoping she was still around, listening. I told her all sorts of things that I hadn’t been able to just several days prior. I told her flat out that I was Spider-Man and that it hadn’t been me that killed her father, but rather Doc Ock. I plowed through the story while chomping on soggy flakes of cereal, describing how Captain Stacy had interrupted a fight between Octavius and me and how Ock had used one of his metal tentacles to throw the older man aside, sending him crashing through a dilapidated brick chimney and over the ledge of the building. I ignored the fight and went for the rescue. I cried into my breakfast as I told her how I’d tried a similar move as the one that took her life, only instead of catching Mr. Stacy, I’d missed by a fraction of an inch and snagged a chunk of the falling debris. The captain hit the pavement and was pummeled by falling bricks as an added insult to his bravery. But the large section I’d stopped would have killed him right then. My actions allowed me enough time to jump to him in order to hear his last words. “You take care of her, Peter.”

            The very last thing her father had said was my name. Not Spider-Man, but Peter. He knew. He’d probably known for a long time, and he’s still trusted me with his daughter.

            After the tears passed, I even felt myself getting a little angry at her for hating my other self so much, for blaming Spider-Man for her father’s death. As if I had happily tossed him over the side of the building like he was a gum wrapper. But I couldn’t stay mad at her for long. I understood, after all, what it was like losing a father-figure. I’d lost two. Even I blamed Spider-Man for Uncle Ben, because if he hadn’t been such a big part of me, I might have been home and able to stop the guy. Or I might have been shot dead instead.

            I still didn’t leave the apartment until the next morning. The morning of her funeral.

That somber occasion was almost as bad as losing her again. Not only because I couldn’t talk to her the way I had been in private, but also because I couldn’t talk to anyone else. Who was there for me to commiserate with? Whose ear could I bend to confess my sins, committed behind a mask? If any of the others heroes had come to pay their respects, then the cat would have been out of the bag. And thinking about it now, there probably isn’t one hero out there that I socialize with who has a secret identity. Well, Daredevil, but we aren’t really friends. More like associates who tolerate each other. Though I was surrounded by people I knew and cared about, and those who cared about her—even Flash Thompson—I was completely alone. Mrs. Stacy, so recently widowed, hardly looked at me, as if she knew that I had witnessed the erasure of half of her family. Maybe she sensed that I had some knowledge. Maybe the good captain had confessed his secret—my secret—to her, though I doubted it. There were others, too. The fakes. The phonies. The girls who came because they had walked by her in the halls of Midtown a few times and thought that made them friends; the ones who showed up so they could take selfies of their grief—of their smeared makeup. There were also those there strictly for Mrs. Stacy. They stood behind her like an army waiting for their orders. Blank faces and dark clothes.

            Aunt May was really my only shoulder to lean on. God love her. We stood at the corner of the grave, at the front of the crowd. I could tell that most of the people didn’t know who I was or why I was allowed such a choice spot. They looked at me from the corners of their eyes, behind dark sunglasses, judging me, wondering if I was a cousin they should remember. But then I saw him. The one who’d really killed her—the one who’d knocked her off the bridge as part of some sadistic game where only he was the winner.

That familiar rage twitched inside me. It took literally everything I had to keep from leaping over the crowd in an inhuman arc and strangling him at the foot of her grave. Him. His smugness mocked me from only feet away. Even when we lowered our heads in prayer he continued to glare at me. He didn’t look like a killer right then, but I could see the evil, lurking just in the corner of his mouth; that wicked smile that showed just a few too many teeth. After the “Amen” people shifted and he was gone. I searched for him but he’d slipped away, hanging around just long enough for me to notice him before slithering off.

If he’d ever really been there.

            The whole time Aunt May had her hand in mine, squeezing it gently now and then so that I began to wonder if I were inadvertently using my spider-powers to keep her there. It was an absurd thought. If anything, it was that wonder woman who had the power to keep her hand stuck to mine. No force on earth could move her.

            After the service, several of our old classmates came up and consoled me on my loss, only I knew they had come to see each other. They were probably all going out for drinks and they were in a hurry to get away from me, just in case I asked to go with them, or invited them back to my aunt’s house for flavorless casseroles and awkward silences. Joke’s on them, though, because I want them gone. All they’re doing is reminding of when I first met her, and how easily I’d fallen for her, totally unaware that she’d fallen for me.  

            The rest of that day is mostly a blur. It wasn’t that I’ve repressed the pain or the sorrow. More like I just wasn’t paying attention. I relied on my enhanced reflexes to get me around, but when I woke up the next day, I had no idea how I’d gotten home. I knew I hadn’t put on the costume, that’s for sure. In fact, I wasn’t sure I’d ever put it on again. The one with her blood dried to the chest emblem still hung in the closet like a museum piece.

            I have several, you know? There are three of my classic red and blues; there’s a couple in the same style, but insulated against the colder temperatures—as well as electricity for when Electro pops up; I even have a few in different designs in case I want to change things up. I wish I could say that I’m just that handy with a needle and thread. Really, there are a team of tailors and seamstresses on the payroll of the Fantastic Four who make them for me. It’s all this fantastic material that isn’t lycra or spandex, but fits like a second skin and is really comfortable. It doesn’t bunch or pinch. It practically flows like a liquid. However, my favorite feature was that they breathed so well. I could wear them under my clothes and not breakout in sweats or get itchy. Usually, after a public battle that makes it in the papers or on TV, a new one or two will show up at my door to replace the shredded one.  As I looked at the one I held her in for the last time, I considered the fact that if I were to quit, and I might have to give the suits back. But I’d never let that one go. It was now as much a part of the story of her and I as all the dates and the cuddling and the stories.

            They say that every story has an ending, even if you can’t see it from where you are. I’d have never guessed that would be the end of ours. Then again, I could never guess the next plot point in a movie. She could, though. It was like she’d read every book, seen every movie. Her deductive reasoning was as good as her father’s.

            Looking back, I can’t believe she didn’t know. I can’t believe that she hadn’t put the pieces together. And that makes it hurt that much more—even now.  As she was falling, as eternity reached up for her, did she hate me for letting it happen? Did she hate Peter Parker?

And this is where I begin the next chapter of my story…