Do Superheroes Need to Suffer? (Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and Canon Events)
Spider-Man and Canonical Suffering
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse was recently released, the sequel to the groundbreaking 2018 Oscar-winning animated hit Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Not only does the new film equal its predecessor in terms of story and animation quality but it even surpasses it by building on its previously established themes and visual styles. If you buy into the idea of superhero fatigue when it comes to the oversaturation of these comic book movies then this film is a breath of fresh air, which some critics have even compared to classic films like The Dark Knight and The Empire Strikes Back.
If you haven’t seen the film yet, then please, I beg you, do not continue on. Spoilers are inevitably ahead. If you have seen it, then you may be aware of the concept of “canon events” which Spider-Man 2099 AKA Miguel O’Hara explains as shared experiences that bind the Spider-Verse together and make each Spider-Man, essentially, Spider-Man. These include getting bit by a radioactive spider, losing a parental figure, and the death of a police captain close to Spider-Man.
It’s a challenging and difficult notion to accept, since it requires a certain surrender to suffering and tragedy in your own life. Philosophically speaking, this is quite a deterministic and fatalistic outlook on life, where everything that happens — whether bad or good — is meant to happen, no choice about it. For some worldviews, this is considered for our own ultimate benefit, or in the case of the Across the Spider-Verse, for the salvation of the entire Multiverse. It’s a classic ethical conundrum: to which is most valued, our own sake and self-interest or the sake of others?
Literature of all kinds have, of course, glorified the hero as selfless and self-sacrificing, especially the superhero archetype whose role is literally to save the world. No doubt, the superhero Spider-man fits this mold, but when the protagonist Miles Morales inadvertently learns that his own father, who is on the cusp of being a police captain himself, is “destined” to die, he rejects and defies the necessity of this imminent tragedy about to befall him. Miguel, the head of the dimensional-hopping Spider Society that governs and protects the Multiverse, insists — nay, enforces — that every Spider-man must suffer. This begs the question: does every superhero have to suffer to be a superhero?
Can Batman be Happy?
This idea of a suffering superhero was explored not too long ago during Tom King’s run on the Batman series for DC Comics, particularly the lead-up to Batman’s eventful wedding to Catwoman. The Eisner award-winning comic book writer thematically posited the question if Batman can ever be happy because, arguably, a happy Batman isn’t Batman anymore.
As an almost mythological embodiment of vengeance itself, the effectiveness of the Batman as a crime-fighting hero is that the childhood trauma of losing his parents to a tragic crime is what fuels the Dark Knight to be what he is. In other words, he needs his misery to do what he does best. Yes, in many ways, this suffering does define him and what he does. For example, he did pledge a one-man war on crime and sought to rid the kind of injustice that befell his parents. He also has a no-gun policy, vowing not to use the same kind of weapon that gunned his parents down, despite all the high-tech armaments and gadgetry at his disposal. And lastly, he has an unbreakable rule to never resort to killing his enemies, lest he lose himself in the abyss and become the monster he has vowed to fight.
Amongst the pantheon of gods and metahumans, Batman remains to be one of the most formidable and powerful characters in the DC Universe because of his razor sharp intellect, indomitable spirit, and unflinching drive for justice. His colleagues and super-friends know this, but most of all, his enemies know this. That’s why the Joker, Batman’s most dangerous arch-nemesis, wants to stop the wedding and “save” Batman from happiness, because the deranged supervillain understands that without Batman’s misery there will be no one to stand between him and killing everyone. Plus, he said, it wouldn’t be fun anymore.
The bumbling time-traveling superhero Booster Gold even offers a weird wedding gift to Batman by showing him a kind of “It’s A Beautiful Life” what-if scenario of what Bruce Wayne’s life would look like if his parents didn’t die. Indeed, Bruce would lead a happy and contented life without becoming a masked vigilante, but at the cost of the world around him falling to ruins, with the Penguin as the President of the United States, deadly Joker gangs terrorizing Gotham City, and even an immoral gun-toting Batman running around, this time with Dick Grayson in the costume.
And so it is, for the sake of saving the man who saves everyone including the world, Catwoman makes the ultimate sacrifice of ditching Batman at the altar — or in this case, the rooftop — because she knows that the Batman is an engine that turns pain into hope and marrying him — making him happy — would kill that engine. Batman cannot be both Batman and happy.
Quantum Change and Post-Traumatic Growth (PTG)
The idea of suffering and the radical transformation from trauma was also explored in M. Night Shyamalan’s 2017 film Split, a quasi-comic book film that introduced a villain with the uncanny mental condition of accessing 24 different personalities. In the film, James McAvoy’s fascinating yet broken character, Kevin Crumb, preys on victims who have never truly suffered. He believes that it is the “broken” who are more evolved, where his own psychological disorder, a result of childhood abuse and personal trauma, has transformed not only his mind but also his body, making him impervious to most pain and possessing extraordinary strength — a real supervillain. Dr. Fletcher, the compassionate psychiatrist who is treating Kevin’s dissociative identity disorder (DID), believes such so-called “disorders” may actually be the next step of an evolutionary process. “We look at people who have been shattered and different as less than,” she empathetically explains, “[but] what if they are more than us?”
In the real world we live in, suffering is an inescapable reality. But it’s not always or necessarily a bad thing. In Positive Psychology, there is a thing called post-traumatic growth, or PTG for short, which describes a positive effect or change that happens to a person after a highly stressful or traumatic event. Similar to PTG, there is a psychological (and sometimes physiological) phenomenon called “quantum change” which, according to its pioneering researcher, William R. Miller, is an abrupt or rapid restructuring of the entire personality, sometimes towards the direction of greater health or recovery, such as from drug addiction. Miller describes the triggering event that causes a quantum change as “the watershed event around which life is remembered as before versus after.”
The effects of post-traumatic growth and quantum change are literally life-changing — a dramatic psychological shift that re-transfigures a person’s life and outlook at the world that results in a drastically new person. This is not dissimilar to the kind of life-changing turns all the different Spider-Men (and Women) have to go through to become the hero they are. Without the tragic death of Uncle Ben, for instance, Peter Parker would not have learned the important lesson of “With great power must come great responsibility.” From that moment, a new man was born, not because of a radioactive spider bite, but because of a traumatic event, or in the language of Across the Spider-Verse, a canon event.
Religion and the Value of Suffering
On a side note, apart from psychology and philosophy, religion and spirituality have also long explored the theme of suffering and its potential to yield positive change. Religious teachings from the likes of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam attempt to give meaning to suffering as well as its potential power for transformation. Perhaps no other religion in the world is more preoccupied with suffering than Christianity where suffering (and the triumph over it) is sublimely epitomized in the symbol of the Cross.
Christianity, and Catholicism in particular, speaks of the value of suffering, of how personal pain and suffering has the power to redeem our own sins as well as the sins of others and ultimately attain us salvation. This is only possible because Jesus Christ himself did it first. He took on suffering himself during his Passion and Crucifixion so that others would be spared from the eternal suffering of damnation.
Did Jesus have to suffer so much as he did, with the canon event of his crucifixion and death, just so he could save the world and humanity? Theological discourse aside, what really is the most critical aspect of the suffering of Jesus (who might just be the very first superhero ever) is his choice to accept it, to embrace his Cross. If God simply thrusted this suffering upon him without his free consent, there wouldn’t have been any merit to Christ’s sacrifice.
Kneeling, weeping and sweating blood in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus supposedly saw, according to some Christian mystics, not only the betrayal and torture he would receive over the next 12 hours of his life, but all the sins of mankind, all the injustices, and all the suffering in the world, past, present and future. It was there and then where he made the choice, the submission, to take on this suffering, and use it to fix a broken world. Without that free choice, that acceptance, there would be no salvation.
A Multiverse of Choices
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is yet another film that has entered the pop culture zeitgeist to use the Multiverse concept as a plot device. No doubt, employing the idea of the multiverse springs up unlimited possibilities for storytelling, but more existentially, it is the perfect way to explore the power of choices and its infinite consequences.
Miguel, as the strong-willed leader of the Spider Society, who governs the stability of the Multiverse by preserving canon events in the lives of all Spider-People is essentially robbing people like Miles Morales of their free choice to be a genuine sacrificing hero. Miguel would have Miles do nothing, and allow tragedy to run its course. But the defiant Miles, exercising his free independent will, chooses to write his own history and do everything in his power to save the people around him, including his police captain father. Isn’t that the very heart of Uncle Ben’s power and responsibility message? That if you have the power to do the right thing, then it’s your responsibility to do it?
Whether you’re Spider-Man, Batman, or just a regular human being, it’s not your suffering that defines you, but rather it is the choices you make in life. Not all choices will be good or perfect, but the very fact that you can choose, and also learn and grow from your choices, is a superpower in itself. The next time suffering comes your way, you have the choice to give meaning to it. The easy nonchalant belief of “It is what it is” doesn’t have to be your reality. It’s your universe. Be like Miles Morales and choose to do you.
