Spider Man Vindicated

[Reggie Lamborn]

Becauseof this I will also be reusing several relevant images throughout each part to refresh your memory, maybe help out any new readers brave enough to dive in and to just more clearly illustrate my points; the same goes for some of my general points.

In the mid-1980s writer David Michelinie was given the chance to write the recently launched Web of Spider-Man ongoing series. It was during his tenure as the writer of that series that he originally conceived of a new villain for Spider-Man who was a prototype for Venom.

In the Marvel Super Heroes: Secret Wars maxi-series Spider-Man (among other characters) finds himself transported to the patchwork planet Battleworld to fight a group of super villains. Over time his costume is damaged and, on advice from other heroes, he seeks out what he believes to be an alien clothing machine. However he gets far more than he bargained for. Instead of simply replacing his traditional red and blue outfit Spidey now sports a sleek new black and white costume seemingly made of an extraterrestrial material that flows like liquid and responds to his very thoughts.

After taking the costume back to Earth and going through various other twists and turns in his life, Peter takes the costume to be analyzed by Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four where he discovers the truth about it. That is it not in fact a piece of clothing but in symbiotic alien life form that does not wish to separate itself from Spider-Man.

A similar incident to the above occurs in Web of Spider-Man #24. Peter (sans his costume) is using his powers to walk on the outside wall of a building when a mysterious figure abruptly grabs his leg and detaches him from the wall sending him falling. Peter is alright but again he is alarmed by the lack of warning from his spider sense and presumes that the culprit of this incident and the one at the train station are one and the same.

Though no readers knew it at the time, we got our next look at this assailant in Amazing Spider-Man #298 where he observed news clippings about Spidey and spoke about how he ruined his life and how he will soon return the favour.

Losing his job, status and reputation Brock hit very hard times and blamed Spider-Man for his misfortune, nursing a burning hatred for the wall-crawler as he eked out a dissatisfying living and relentlessly exercised in a futile attempt to manage his stress.

Trying and failing to end his own life, Brock found himself in the same church that Peter rid himself of the symbiote. Like Brock, the symbiote had grown to resent Spider-Man and sensing a mutual hatred in Brock bonded with him, granting him powers similar to the wall-crawler as well rendering themselves undetectable to his spider sense.

My haste was vindicated a moment later as the spider pounced. Predator and prey together were instantly suspended beneath the leaf on a strand of silk, the wasp struggling but quickly losing any capacity to escape:

New information on an existing topic is normally added as a comment on an older post rather than as a new post on the same topic. It keeps everything together and should help everyone find things more quickly.

I was sitting reading a book by a window in what we call our morning room when my peripheral vision informed me of activity in the upper right-hand corner of the window. Adjourning reading for the moment, I looked closely enough to see a little drama being enacted.

An unalert honey bee strayed from her appointed rounds (``her'' because worker bees are female) and found herself caught in a spider's web strung across the corner of the window. Perhaps she was remote kin to James Thurber's ``fairly intelligent fly'' who, you may recall, made the same in-flight mistake with flypaper. But there she was, thrashing about, both sets of wings humming, but gradually getting herself tied up tighter and tighter in the spider's web.

Now, as a reader of both Ralph Waldo Emerson and William Wordsworth, I have been primed to believe that nature never shows a mean appearance. But when a snake swallows a field mouse or a black spider salivates (so to speak) over a snared bee, I have some reservations. So I decided to play the part of deus ex machina in the drama.

Out the morning-room door I went, picked up a small twig with which I could reach the bee, and lifted her and the entangling piece of web from the window. I placed both on the edge of the sundial in the adjacent garden. The bee continued to flutter her sets of wings furiously, but could not immediately free herself from the piece of web, which clung both to her and to the surface of the sundial.

In time, with dogged persistence, she managed to get all save one leg loose, but a last filament of web held her from freedom. She would launch out, only to be pulled back again and again by the tenacious elasticity of the strand. I confess that I completely forgot my errand of mercy in favor of an abstract fascination with the bee's repeated strains and defeats.

When I returned to my book, I could still see the black spider on the far edge of the window, ruefully (as I fancied) contemplating the lost meal. As for myself, I wryly speculated that in saving the bee, if not in cheating the spider, I may have vindicated the views of both Emerson and Wordsworth.

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After a year working in a museum, blogger Ellie has recently returned to her PhD study. After her first whirlwind month, she has sat down to share some of her experiences and tips on coming back to research after a break.

People take temporary withdrawal for many different reasons, and for me it certainly was an incredible opportunity and a really positive experience. But sooner or later, we have to return to our research, which can be daunting. For me, I was actually wrapped up in a project of evaluation (my research area) that I was working on with the museum, so a lot of my attention went onto that for the first few weeks. I had a real buzz: evaluation work was what I loved doing most, and what I was best at, so it gave me a real boost of confidence early on and vindicated me in why I was doing this PhD in the first place. But after the bulk of this work was finished, I really settled into life as a research student.

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Things have already gone wrong, Murphy is vindicated! Corona Virus (Scientifically called COVID-19) has moved from a far fetched imagination happening in distant lands to a reality we now live with in all parts of the world. In fact, it has already been declared a pandemic by WHO and governments in suit, leading to unprecedented disruptions to life in more ways than we could have ever imagined.

The gory stories of death, desperation, disruption of livelihoods, job losses, working from home phenomenon, the largest lock-down in history (limiting people freedom of movement and association) changed social habits like avoiding handshakes are all too depressing. The 24 hour coverage on local and international TV channels, Radio Stations, Newspapers and News Websites and social media on the crisis have dominated our already lengthened and depressed work day.

In all this torrid of confusion, the professional is expected to remain so and handle the situation like a seasoned expert. The bottom line is that professionals are themselves interacting with this situation for the first time in their lives. The crisis has deepened human fears, uncertainties and worries to levels never experienced before and professionals are first humans before they become professionals.

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