Scrying Quentin Beck, Part I: Theatre of Cruelty

I've been thinking a lot about fishbowl-head lately.

It started out as a dumb joke where I attributed weird, random occurrences in my nerd friends' lives to THE WORK OF MYSTERIO. Stupid enough (amirite?), but it got me wondering. Okay, so I get how most of the great Spidey villains - the Doc Ocks and Venoms and Lizards, et al. - riff off of various aspects of Spider-Man and the larger things he metonymically represents. Something that's always bugged me is that I could never make that connection between webhead and Mysterio. How does he contextualize our hero? What dynamic are the two caught in, playing off of each other with?

Then I remembered what made me start looking at superhero comics as "legitimate" literature and art in the first place - the Mindless Ones, the first in what would become a long list of academic comics blogs I started reading instead of taking notes in AP US History. Back in '08, the Mindless Ones started posting in-depth analyses of Spider-Man's villains (their reviews of the Spider-Slayers and the Vulture are absolutely breathtaking, completely changed my entire understanding of the Spider-Man mythos. The Green Goblin post is also excellent, although I prefer this one from another great comics blog. I disagree with a lot of their take on Kraven the Hunter, but it's still an enlightening read.) Every time they finished a review, they promised their next one would be Mysterio. Since I never really got the guy, I looked forward to what they had to say about him. I mean, I knew he was a big deal - he was the final boss of Mysterio's Menance for Christ's sake, that's a big fucking deal when you've just turned nine. But I could never quite make sense of him, how he fit in to the larger fabric of the Spider-Man story. I knew the Mindless Ones did, but after their Vulture post, they stopped the Spiderogues Reviews completely. That was circa Thanksgiving 2008.

But now our dear prooker has begun a comics blog and invited me to write on it. So here we are. Just me, you, and a comic book supervillain.

Let's make sense of all this, shall we?


There are two things that define our crystal ball-helmeted foe. Obviously one is the whole master of illusions shtick, the smoke and mirrors, hallucinatory gas, hypnotism, psychedelic special effects, etc. etc. That stuff's all very interesting, and it'll be the focus of Part II, but for now I want to focus on a more subtle aspect of Quentin Beck's character that, I think, is essential to understanding what makes him a great Spider-Man foe: the Performer.

We're first introduced to Mysterio in Amazing Spider-Man #13, where he is established as a jack-of-all trades in Hollywood, a true auteur - special effects wiz, stage magician, stuntman, actor, the whole nine yards. His motivation to move to New York City and become a supervillain? Spider-Man's getting all the headlines and stealing his spotlight. It's that simple. That spectacularly vain. Mysterio dons a costume for fame and wealth; he's Spider-Man before he was Spider-Man, when he was going up against Crusher Hogan for $100 and becoming a TV celebrity in Amazing Fantasy #15. Mysterio is what Spidey would have become if Uncle Ben hadn't taken that bullet and, like in Artaud's Theatre of Cruelty, violently shattered the false reality that had gone to Peter's head.

But things get even juicier. Mysterio is not just a dark mirror to webhead, but his very existence undermines the moral code Spider-Man has built his life around. When Quentin Beck dons his costume and commits crimes, he does so with a sense of theatricality none of the other Spidey villains possess. For him, it's all a performance; he's all about the spectacle, the thrill, the rush - the fantastical escape from the real world. Like a drug, appropriately enough. Mysterio should be very consciously theatrical and spectacular in his machinations, as if he was constantly wrapped up in the performance of his life.


RELEVANT DIGRESSION. When I was in middle school, I had a bit part in a play at the Folger Shakespeare Library in DC (yes, the same Folger that makes those Shakespeare books they force you to read in high school. Sorry guys). Being an angsty, histrionic tween, I had a lot of miserable shit going on my life. Every day I would look forward to the show because for a few hours I could completely abandon my life. I could escape, become enveloped in another world and leave all the crap and troubles forgotten at the door.

That's Mysterio right there, and I imagine that same feeling is also one of the things that drives Peter to keep donning his costume and fight crime, at least unconsciously. The Spider-Man mythos is so heavily predicated on Peter's personal life being totally messed up, of course he sees his "great responsibility" as an escape, even when it only leads to more trouble for him (again, much like a drug addiction). Why else would he be so wisecracking and jovial as Spider-Man? Swinging through the air in between skyscrapers, playing a hero, beating up two-bit thugs - it's every bullied adolescent's fantasy realized; once he puts on that mask he can become totally, euphorically free in a way most could only dream of.

What makes Mysterio so great is that he causes us to realize that this idea of escape, even if it is toward a positive goal, can potentially be an incredibly irresponsible way to deal with one's life. Peter interprets his mantra "With great power comes great responsibility" as heroic self-sacrifice, that he must neglect himself for a greater good. But you can't just ignore the bad things going on in your life, you have to actually deal with them authoritatively - anything short of that is greatly irresponsible and, in fact, very dangerous. Not just to yourself either, but to everyone around you, everyone who has or will interact with you. Mysterio, with both his bombastic theatricality and his hallucinogen gases, has taken this idea of immersion into a consequence/baggage-free persona to its most inevitably self-destructive degree, something Spidey must constantly reevaluate his entire life to watch out for.

Well that's all I have to say for now. Tune in for the next installment, where I'll take a look at how Mysterio's trademark abilities play into all of this, in Scrying Quentin Beck, Part II: Psychedelic Crisis.

It's the technical term for bad trip, OKAY? JEEZ!!