Scrying Quentin Beck, Part II: Psychedelic Crisis

"Lay down all thought, surrender to the void..."

So in Part I, I wrote that Mysterio is a compelling foe because A) he's a glimpse at what Spider-Man would have become if Uncle Ben hadn't died and Peter hadn't learned that "with great power comes great responsibility"; B) he posits that putting on a costume, building web-shooters and fighting crime is, in fact, probably one of the most irresponsible ways Peter could apply his powers. Self-doubt always was Spidey's biggest foe, after all.

So now that we've nailed down Mysterio's character, let's see how his powers and abilities color the stories we read.

Be warned: things are about to get trippy.


Bad writers tend to handle Mysterio's illusions as if it were the Scarecrow's fear gas, which itself is usually handled poorly. It often amounts to stereotypical psychoactive/psychedelic visions coupled with hallucinations of zombie Uncle Ben or Gwen Stacy chastising Peter for not saving them, of all his friends and loved ones telling him he's a big ol' failure.
So. Fucking. Trite. We've all seen this a bajillion times before, probably one reason why the most recent issue of Amazing (#655 at time of writing) was kind of meh. Thank God for Marcos Martin's art, though. Good stuff.

Anyway, Mysterio's smoke and mirrors shouldn't be handled that way. It shouldn't start out as nightmarish visions - the worst trips never do (if you've never had the pleasure, I happen to be something of an authority on trips both good and bad). No, at first Mysterio's madness should be a euphoric break from reality, a literalization of the careless escape from responsibility the villain represents. It should bring Peter back to the roar of the crowds, to the TV exec handing Peter his business card and telling him he could be a star on the small screen, to the head rush of celebrity, the affirming, endorphin-pumping thrill of being on top of the world. He's amazing! He's a star!

He's accidentally destroyed midtown while trippin' balls! But let's not get ahead of ourselves. First Peter must, in his doped-up mind, relive the one moment that changed everything. No, not Uncle Ben's death. Earlier. When Peter walks backstage to the thunderous applause of a captivated audience. When he sees the security guard chasing the burglar and, in a moment of ego-fueled indifference, does nothing. Lets him get away. When he looks that guard in the eye and declares "That's your job! I'm thru being pushed around...by anyone!"

We all know what happens next.

And now we've entered the bad trip. But it's only just begun.


Lee and Ditko really did something genius in their 38-issue run together on Amazing - they crafted a unique formula that to this day remains the foundation of all Spider-Man stories. This formula consists of Spidey first encountering a villain and quickly getting the fucking shit knocked out of him, sometimes close to the point of death, only to somehow rise up and beat his foe in their next encounter. It happened with the Vulture in #2, Doc Ock in #3, the Sandman in #4, the Vulture again in #7, Electro in #9, Dock Ock again in #12, Mysterio in #13, Kraven the Hunter in #15, the list goes on and on. You have to understand that this was revolutionary at the time; a superhero never, NEVER lost their first match against a foe (well, sometimes they did, but it was never a codified occurrence like with webhead nor so humiliatingly decisive). Anyway what I'm trying to get at is that Spider-Man is the personification of fortitude, of humanity's capacity to endure beating after beating from life and come out a better person.

Mysterio fills an interesting niche, then, because the two key qualities of endurance are A) that one knows the nature of what they are enduring (an illness, an interrogation, a workout, a test, a fight, etc.) and B) that they know at some point there will be an end to it. Well, A and B are both thrown out the window on a bad trip. One's perception of time becomes completely skewed; seconds seem like hours amidst a relentless sensory assault that feels like an eternity (also, why the fuck wasn't this film nominated for anything at the Oscars? No visual effects, no cinematography, nuffin...). During the worst trips, when you forget that you've taken a drug and forget you are only tripping, when you're lost in a crossroads of drifting, nauseatingly fractured realities (remember Spice the day after Comic-Con, prooker?) you become convinced that the bad trip will never end, that from now on you'll be stuck in a never-ending nightmare. And what you see is beyond anything you could possibly comprehend or imagine sober, let alone know how to confront. Remember we're not talking about some fine arts major here, we're talking about Peter Parker: left-brained bookworm, devotee of science and math and all the very safe, monotonous, organized things that drugs blow wide open.

The Spider-Man mythos has always been explicitly anti-drug, going so far as to say "I would rather face a hundred super-villains than throw my life away on hard drugs, because it is a battle you cannot win!" This extremely eloquent page from Amazing Spider-Man - Extra! #2 sums up the crux of the situation:


In response to being offered booze, Spidey says, "I don't drink...I mean, with the spider-strength and everything, I don't think it would be responsible." Of course since that comic, writers have portrayed Peter as getting sloppy drunk at his aunt's wedding for comedic effect, but I'd like to think that the "real" Peter Parker doesn't drink for the reason above (and in light of "One More Day", anything can be rewritten out of the canon). In fact, I like to think that his powers have forced him into the misery of straightedge - perhaps why he gets such a thrill out of dressing up in a costume and fighting crime. Christ, what if a small part of him looks forward to fighting Mysterio just for the possibility of getting ensnared in his drug-addled, psychedelic gas?

Anyway, this anti-drug stuff all comes back to the Marvel Universe's foundation in social activism - it's not a world of good vs. evil like DC, but one contextualized by forces of empathy and action fighting against inaction/indifference. But that is a gargantuan post for another time. Look out for it soon.

I guess I'd like to end this all by pointing out that technically Quentin Beck is still supposedly dead in the Marvel Universe, despite the "real" Mysterio's recent reappearance in the Spidey books. This isn't a bad thing. First off, no one stays dead in comics. More importantly, it literally makes Mysterio an illusion brought to life, a hallucination that willed itself into our reality. Bad trip incarnate, IN 3-D!

If he can do that, what chance do any of us have?

"Big ones, little ones, fat ones, skinny ones/Protect me from their venomous drugs..."