Spiderman 3 came out on DVD yesterday, and while the reviews of it were extremely mixed, the film slammed me hard in the chest. I came home and immediately wrote the following column in a fit of inspiration, which printed in the Mercury last Spring. So, in case you missed it first time around, here again is my Spiderman column.

Like anyone else who lived through it, I will never forget the day terrorists attacked America on September 11, 2001. It replays over and over in my mind like a film reel, sitting in my 12^th grade English class watching the horrific events unfold live on television.

I felt a collective chill rip through the room as the first tower collapsed into a terrifying storm of rubble tumbling to the streets of Manhattan below. We froze in our seats, our minds scrambling for something to say, anything to make sense of the horror. It was the only time I ever heard a silence so loud.

Months later, many of us were still reeling from that day and the politics which followed. We became tangled in a web of pain, sadness, confusion, fury and vengeance. But above all else, we were lost. As a nation, we needed a hero, a resounding symbol of hope and strength to pick us up and dust us off. An athlete, a singer, a political leader, a family member, a teacher, God—anything or anyone to hold the torch high for us as we soldiered through our darkest hour.

For me, and many others, it was Spiderman who came to the rescue. That May, he came swinging through theatres and spun a web in our hearts. He donned a sleek patriotic outfit of red and blue while defending New York City from every doom it faced, whether it was a gang of easily dispensable bank robbers or a jacked-up bipolar madman armed with pumpkin bombs.

But it's not even the cunning heroics which make Spiderman the man for us to look up to. It's his unrelenting bouts with growing up, love, work, school, friends and family that have made him so genuine and endearing to us. Sure, he's got superhuman strength and can see things before they happen, but he's still a man who faces down the same demons we do.

Unlike the typical Supermen and Batmen, Peter Parker is a college student who struggles for work as a freelance photographer while living in a dilapidated city apartment where he barely makes rent. Not to mention, the thing which stirs him most is his complicated but unrequited love for a girl, Mary Jane Watson.

In high school, he was the uber-dork of the class before he transformed into the perfectly capable Spiderman who could climb walls and swing across the New York City skyline like a schoolyard jungle-gym.

Surely the details are different, but there's a little bit of Parker in all of us. Maybe we haven't been bitten by radioactive super spiders and given such awesome power, but we all try to make sense of what we have been given. And we all struggle to grow up and deal with the curves life throws us, like 9/11 for instance. Or maybe the death of a family member, like Parker's uncle Ben.

Thus, it isn't hard to understand life as Spiderman because a lot of us already are Peter Parker. Sure, he's got superpowers, but his superhero weakness is a greater vulnerability than kryptonite—he is just a guy. He is as capable of love as he is of hate, as capable of making mistakes as he is doing the right thing. I don't know about you, but that sounds a lot like me.

And the evil-doers which Spidey battles throughout his three movies hold this idea up just as well. The likes of Doc Ock (from Spiderman 2) and The Sandman (Spiderman 3) become just as endearing as ol' Spidey himself. These villains are shown as good-natured people at heart but become demented by bad circumstances and lose sight of themselves in their own madness. This happens to Spidey himself in Spiderman 3 as fame and love go to his head, turning him into an arrogant headspun jerk fueled by hatred and vengeance, not unlike his foes.

These movies show there is a monster within all of us. And when we feed ourselves with anger and revenge for the troubles we face, we lose sight of what matters to us most. That's why these movies were so important for us in the wake of 9/11, and continue to be. If we let disasters batter us, we end up becoming the demons we try to shake off.

But more importantly, these movies show there is a little hero in all of us as well. One person can make a difference if they choose to, but they have to choose to. Bad things will always happen to good people. Wearing masks and possessing super talents is not what transforms one into a hero, but making the most out of what you've been given and knowing how to forgive even the baddest of bad guys is what makes one a real hero.

Maybe most people haven't read as deeply into Spiderman as I have. But over these past five years, these movies taught me a great deal about dealing with the tragedies of life and moving on. About happily swinging through life from one moment to the next while trying not to get tangled in one of life's unfortunate webs.

And if I ever do get stuck, a web-slinging slickster comes along and helps me out by reminding me how much the two of us are actually alike, even if I don't got sticky silly string flying out of my wrists.
--by Chris March / cmarch@pottsmerc.com

TUNES: Muddy Waters / blues classics
FILM: Hostel 2, Trainspotting