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Arachnegrophobia

I was playing Words With Friends and watching Spongebob while lying in my bed when the phone rang. It was one of VICE's editors calling to tell me that some show on NPR wanted me to comment on this new half-black/half-Latin Spider-Man.

I was playing Words With Friends and watching Spongebob while lying in my bed when the phone rang. It was one of VICE's editors calling to tell me that some show on NPR wanted me to comment on this new half-black/half-Latin Spider-Man. I agreed, because getting interviewed is fun and makes me feel like a famous guy. More importantly, it validates my mom's belief that I am not a loser. I told them I would do it, but that I would definitely use the term "arachnegrophobia" on the air. An hour later a charmingly accented man named Gianmaria called me up to make sure I would be a good interviewee.

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We discussed Donald Glover, John Stewart, (the black Green Lantern, not the comedian) and the black Captain America that Kyle Baker created. I said that it's the nature of superheroes to adjust to societal trends because they are America's myths and part of the strength of the superhero genre of comics is their malleability. When I asked him why he wanted me to do this, he said he was a fan of VICE. I like when people say that.

The next morning I woke up to the sound of my phone ringing at 6:30 AM. It was another one of the show's producers. I did a soundcheck in which I counted to five and drank some water to correct my severe case of morning voice.

As I'd been warned, the interview flew by. I haven't been able to listen to it yet out of embarrassment, but I'm told it went OK. I remember at one point I referred to Peter Parker as white and I think the host corrected me with the word "wise-cracking." It's about three minutes and I'm sure it's a fine three minutes of content. I don't know how deep I really got into the topic at hand, though, so here are some thoughts.

Back in those carefree days of the year 2000, Marvel decided to create the Ultimate Marvel imprint featuring their popular characters re-imagined in a way that would make the stories more relatable and free from the half-decades of tangled continuity that make creating a fresh story difficult to tell or enjoy. The Ultimates,, a re-imagining of the Avengers, became more adult and realistic, and Ultimate Spider-Man went out of its way to appeal to a younger crowd. My college roommate would leave copies of Ultimate Spider-Man lying around, and the comic was the dumbest, ugliest piece of shit I've ever seen. I remember that the eyes were always really askew and the haircuts were impossibly stupid-looking and the main attempt at updating it seemed to involve a condescending imitation of the way teenagers speak. At some point the Peter Parker in Ultimate Spider-Man died and now this new character, named Miles Morales, is wearing a Spider-Man costume.

They didn't take Peter Parker, the familiar character, and change his race; they introduced a new, biracial guy. Superheroes already come in many different races, so I guess I don't see what makes it interesting. Newspapers say things like "Superman's dead" or "Spider-Man's black" and they seem to forget that these characters aren't real people. They're fictional characters that editors can manipulate in order to boost press and hopefully sales. It seems like a lot of blogs and news organizations have picked up on this story, but I guess I'm the only non-racist journalist out there because I could honestly give a fuck about it.

Oh yeah, here's the interview if you want to listen to it. Tell me how I was.

NICK GAZIN