 I believe there's a hero in all of us that keeps us honest, gives us strength, makes us noble. Even though sometimes we have to be steady and give up the thing we want the most. Among the many modern myths created during the 20th century, few have the enduring appeal of Spider-Man. Born during the boom of the superhero comic book Renaissance, Spider-Man quickly became one of the most popular characters in the medium. In the years since his debut, he has gone on to inspire countless generations of children and adults alike, with his high-flying antics and colourful battles against terrifying foes. Spider-Man has a long history of embracing media forms beyond the printed page. From his earliest appearances in animation to the more recent adventures on the big screen, he's shown up anywhere that fans may want him. Now a brand new video game tackles the ongoing challenge to accurately convey what it genuinely would feel like to be Spider-Man. Fans love the thrill of Spidey's powers of his web-swinging and wall-crawling, but there is another reason why the character has remained so relevant for so many years. While there are many comic book characters with special slogans and catchphrases, none are quite as iconic as Peter Parker's moral epithet. With great power comes great responsibility. Here at Video Game Storytime we love to find the morals hidden within stories. The inspiration that can be taken from the struggles of others can help us all to hold on just a little longer. So out of Spider-Man's moral, a message that has been communicated both in print and multimedia for over 50 years, what in essence is the true moral that drives this character? And what can we learn about ourselves by studying Spider-Man's ongoing, ever-evolving story? I'm not the usual voice for the channel, but this is a video that's very dear to my heart, and I felt that I needed to say this myself. Let's take a look at what it truly means to be Spider-Man, and why great power must also bring great responsibility. It's important to remember that Spider-Man's comic book origin was not originally meant to be a superhero story. Spidey debuted in the very final issue of Amazing Adult Fantasy, a comic book that was aimed at a slightly older audience than the exploits of established heroes like the Fantastic Four. The book was about to fold due to poor sales, and as such, for its final issue, Stan Lee shortened the title to Simply Amazing Fantasy, and used it as a vehicle to push out a character that his boss had rejected. Peter Parker's story is not a happy one. Rather than enjoying a typical hero character's arc, his tale is more akin to a Shakespearean tragedy in which fate, coupled with his own fatal character weakness, conspire to ruin his life. This isn't to say that Spider-Man doesn't show all the classic traits of a superhero, including phenomenal powers and a colorful costume. But in writing this tale, Lee created a subversion of the typical story. Peter Parker is shown to have a comfortable home life with loving surrogate parents. He's smart, but an outsider, mercilessly picked on by his classmates and unable to find friends. In essence, he's a stand-in for the audience. Years before it became cliche, Amazing Fantasy XV posits an answer to the question, what if a real person gained superpowers? We'd all like to pretend that, given amazing strength and abilities, we'd act heroic and serve others. But in practice it's easy to imagine that many of us would do as Peter does in the comic, getting caught up in a web of fame and celebrity, ignoring the plight of the little people that he deems unimportant. This, as we all know, leads to tragedy, when Peter's refusal to prevent a crime ends up leading to the death of his beloved uncle. The message of the story is succinctly summed up in its final panel. With great power, there must also come great responsibility. Or, to phrase it another way, if we have genuine talents, abilities and privilege, it is our duty to use these to help others. If we don't do so, we have nobody to blame but ourselves if we fail to help make society better. This is a heavy theme to throw into a comic book and the tone of the story is a lot darker and more depressing than much of the comics from this era that remain popular to this day. It's essentially designed as a wake-up call to the audience. You think you'd do great things if you could become a superhero, the story says, but what are you doing to help those with the power that you already hold? Originally Spider-Man's story was meant to end here, with the depressing final note right at the end of a cancelled anthology comic book. But the story connected with people. The character stood out among busy newsstands. Sales figures eventually proved that Spider-Man was a hit. So Stanley had a challenge on his hands. How do you turn a one-shot tragic story into an ongoing comic series? As the amazing Spider-Man issue one hit newsstands, Peter Parker's moral development continued to evolve. One thing that stands out about Amazing Spider-Man number one is that Peter still isn't a righteous hero. In his early career as Spider-Man he quickly focused his attention on wealth and fame. In his ongoing comic book he continues to struggle to let go of these selfish desires. Spider-Man attempts to join the world-famous Fantastic Four and does so in perhaps the worst way possible. He breaks into their home and picks a fight with them to prove his strength. An uncharacteristically relaxed Reed Richards attempts to give him the benefit of the doubt. But Peter leaves angrily when he finds out that the Fantastic Four is a non-profit organization. Clearly this is a character that still has a lot of growing to do. Peter is not particularly heroic, or indeed very likeable for much of the story. He's begun to realize the importance of doing the right thing, but he doesn't yet know what that looks like. The comic even features a panel in which Peter considers using his powers to become a supervillain in order to steal from banks to support his family. He quickly dismisses this idea though at the thought of what his poor old Aunt May would do if he ended up in prison. While Uncle Ben gets the majority of the praise as Peter's wise old Obi-Wan figure, Aunt May does just as much if not more to shape the development of her nephew over the coming years of comics. Her quiet, confident faith in his abilities helps to keep him on the straight and narrow, as Peter does his best to live worthy of her trust in him. Over the next few years, Peter slowly begins acting like the hero that we recognize from more modern stories. He helps save an astronaut in danger because he's the only person who can do so. He faces off against supervillains not out of a desire for glory, but because he knows that he needs to help. He makes plenty of mistakes. He's incredibly petty in his ongoing feud with his greatest rival, newspaper editor Jay Jonah Jameson. Ultimately, he acts like a teenager, sometimes dependable and responsible, while at other times still very emotionally immature. As an aside, it's probably significant that Spider-Man's greatest, most pervasive threat comes from a newspaper. Anyone who's ever swatted a real spider with a rolled-up paper can see the irony here. Modern adaptations of the Spider-Man mythos tend to focus on this time period. Of the three Peter Parker's that we've seen in live-action films, only one is older than College Age. There's something powerful about making Spider-Man a direct metaphor for puberty, and this has somewhat overwhelmed the discussion of the character. But the Peter of the comics doesn't stay as a high school student forever. Just a few years after his debut, the story takes Peter to college, where his stories are increasingly focused on relationships both romantic and platonic. He discovers himself and develops as a person, before ultimately getting married and settling down. This is the point where I personally first started reading Spider-Man comics, and it's during this era that I first became aware of the character in other media. As with many children of the 90s, my love of Spider-Man was fueled by the animated television series. I also played a pretty terrible video game on the Sega Master System. I never did get the hang of it, and the unforgiving design hardly helped me to feel like I was really the friendly neighborhood web-head. The original appeal for the character, for me at least, was his cool powers and his colorful costume. It was only as I got older that I began to appreciate Peter's challenges. As a teenager, I saw Spider-Man swinging across the silver screen for the very first time, and it was everything I could have ever imagined. One thing that struck me was just how hard Spider-Man has to work to balance everything in his life. His superhero adventures are never shown as fun or enjoyable. Instead, they come at great personal cost. The Sam Raimi Spider-Man films of my teens remain the most relatable to me. I remember being a teenager, seeing this character getting perpetually kicked and beaten by the pressures of life, and feeling like he stood as a reflection of my own challenges. I was Peter Parker. I was a teenager with a lot of book smarts, but I struggled to make friends. And then I got my webs for real. I remember the excitement when Spider-Man 2 was released. Not the film, although that is absolutely wonderful and remains one of my favorite movies to this day. But the buzz within the gaming world was phenomenal. Journalists were calling Spider-Man 2 the game GT Arachnid, Grand Theft Arachnid, in reference to its big open world. I bought the game a few days before Spider-Man the movie arrived in cinemas. The staff behind the desk in the shop were all crowded around a TV screen as they took turns playing. The guy who served me told me that I had made a really smart decision, and I wholeheartedly believed him. This game felt like being Spider-Man. While I'd played the previous movie tie-in game, it was Spider-Man 2 that made the experience feel real. I spent hours and hours webbing my way through New York, exploring every nook and cranny, and saving countless civilians who were constantly getting into trouble. Sometimes I'd be halfway up a skyscraper, searching for hidden tokens, when I was needed on the ground below. Maybe someone needed to go to the hospital, or maybe a mugger had stolen someone's bag. It was always a challenge to tear myself away from what I was doing, but I figured that was what it meant to be Spider-Man, right? Putting other people's needs before my own, even if they were only simulated people with simulated problems. Although, to be honest, I eventually stopped helping kids who lost balloons. I was a busy Spider-Man, and I did not have time for that. At the time, that was as far as my musings on responsibility went. But little by little, from movies and TV shows and comics, and most especially this video game, I was being taught to see myself as Spider-Man. To appreciate that I had great power, and that I needed to use it for the benefit of all humanity. Whatever that meant. This slogan likely means different things to different people, but there is a fundamental element of Spider-Man's moral that relates to everyone. It turns out that I wasn't alone in seeing myself as a courageous Spider-Man. The rest of the world was learning the very same lesson. With analyzing history, context is key. It's worth pointing out that Spider-Man's origin story was published at a time of great paranoia surrounding the threat of communism and nuclear war. There is a reason, after all, why Peter Parker gains his powers from a radioactive spider bite. The sentiment of the time suggested that anybody who observed a crime, whether domestic or international in nature, had a civic duty to report it. Amazing Fantasy XV reinforces the message of unity against external threats that was the prevailing cultural narrative of the time. Indeed, we can see this idea of patriotism rippling through Spider-Man's stories to this day. There is a reason why this character is shown against an American flag and important cultural landmarks with such regularity. Sam Raimi's Spider-Man movies came along in the immediate wake of a horrific terrorist attack that was perpetrated in the hero's home city. The message of these films echoes the Cold War sentiment. There is a foreign threat to our stable way of life and it is our responsibility to remain vigilant in the face of danger. All of this is in subtext, and it's important to note that this message is not interpreted the same way all around the world. Take, for example, the film Siriana, released a year after Spider-Man 2. A scene in the movie shows a pair of Middle Eastern men, very removed from Western culture, who are debating the merits of Spider-Man while playing football, or soccer, to our American friends. The pair focus on their cultural views that spiders are evil creatures, as they conclude that the appeal of Spider-Man is the way he balances the evil within himself with his more righteous humanity. The point of this scene is to show that different cultures will interpret the same piece of media differently depending on context. But this isn't necessarily the case with the great power, great responsibility concept. Stanley has stated in the past that he believes that one of the reasons why Spider-Man is so popular is because everyone can identify with him. People of any race or background could imagine themselves underneath his mask. This holds true of his catchphrase. No matter who you are or where you come from, you likely appreciate the importance of responsibility. Ultimately, regardless of our disparate backgrounds, we can all agree that everyone has a responsibility to try and make the world a better place. Comic book heroes are essentially metaphors. Wonder Woman exists as an allegory for feminine power. Captain America is a symbol of patriotism. Superman is a perfect ideal to strive for. Batman is justice personified. Iron Man teaches a somewhat problematic message about big business and wealthy billionaires, but then, unlike Breton Stripe's Iron Team cap, so I would say that. Spider-Man, though, is a metaphor for all of us. The great power that's described in his motto isn't just a reference to the ability to climb walls. We all have a great power in some form or other. Whether it's our talents, our intelligence, or simply our ability to affect others through simple conversation. I'm now older, and I have to say, I don't relate to Spider-Man as strongly as I once did. While the Peter Parker of the comics was once a young husband like myself, he's since been retconned, turned back into a carefree bachelor. This change is understandable, but it did kill my interest in his progression. Specifically because there is no progression. Peter cannot learn any new lessons about the meaning of responsibility. He's trapped as a perpetual man-child. This is a shame. I'd love to see how this character would handle the next stage of life. This is part of the reason why Insomniac Spider-Man game is so appealing. It's about time we got another version of the character who isn't in high school, and who struggles with more mature relationships and the pressures of adulthood. But here's what I mean. In preparation for this video, I took off the shelf a children's book that tells Spider-Man's origin. My daughter wanted me to read it to her, and read it again, and again, and again. The book has always been one of her favourites. So there I was, trying to explain the message of the story to a three-year-old. In my telling of the story, Peter's uncle Ben is simply hurt, rather than killed. But beside that, how can I make this story's message relatable to a child? I told her that we are very blessed. We have a comfortable home, clothes to wear, toys to play with, and food to eat. But not everybody has these things. The moral of Spider-Man is that we have a duty to share what we have with others, to make the world a better place. I told her that we all have the power to change the world, even if it's just the power of a smile that can brighten one person's day. With that power comes a responsibility to help others. We can't live insular lives, keeping all of our talents and skills and money and resources for ourselves. We need to rise above selfishness, look around us, and find a way to make things better for everyone. That's what I told my daughter anyway. I hope she listened. Considering the ubiquity of Spider-Man and his enduring legacy, I suspect that she'll hear a similar message again, and again, and again. Because we all need to work together to share what we have in order to benefit others. With great power comes great responsibility.