Spider-man and Power Pack: Spider-Man’s dark past

Spider-Man is one of the greatest super heroes ever created. Geeks can relate to him. He embodies rebellion and youth. He has a smart-mouth and cool super-powers, yet maintains a feeling of an average guy who just can’t seem to catch a break.

Lots has changed for old Spidey in recent times. He’s got a new costume and he’s revealed his secret identity to the world. Now everything is exposed and open. The world knows what we’ve known all along, that Spider-Man is really Peter Parker.

But here’s something you don’t know about Peter Parker, and it’s rather disturbing: Peter Parker was molested as a child… it’s true!

Before I get to the details, let me start at the beginning. I went to the comic shop to buy my latest issues and struck up a conversation with the workers about public service comics. One of them said “have you ever seen the one were Peter Parker gets molested?”. I hadn’t. They had two of these issues on hand. After hearing a brief synopsis dictated to me by one of the workers, I slapped down a dollar bill and became the not-so-proud owner of Spider-Man and Power Pack, a PSA comic on child abuse.

Public service comics are nothing new. The unique thing about this particular comic is that Marvel allowed Peter Parker, their greatest creation, to have a past in which he was molested… by an older guy none-the-less.

It goes down like this:

Geeky Peter Parker becomes friends with an older boy named Skip who lives with his Mother (go figure).

The two hang out all the time until one day Skip shows Peter some dirty magazines.

Then skip makes a move on Peter, who is “too frightened to leave…”. Yuck!

While this comic was created with good intentions in mind, it made me uncomfortable to buy and read. On one hand I say it’s a nobel effort, on the other: a terrible marketing move and really disturbing. It’s also pretty pathetic that kids have to be told these things in comic books, because their parents don’t bother educating them.

A lingering question I’ve had since seeing this is, does this comic have a bearing on continuity? In other words, in the actual Marvel Universe are we to believe that Peter Parker was actually a victim of abuse in his past or was this to be taken outside of the Marvel Universe’s continuity?