Thousand Faces

This guy on the right is the Spectacular Spider-Man. He has super powers and a bitchin' theme-song but what people really recognise about him is his outfit. The red and blue costume is recognised all over the world, second perhaps only to Superman in terms of iconic status. It doesn't matter how many people read the actual comics, Spider-Man is instantly known because of his distinctive garb.

Secret Identity: sometimes more 'off' than 'on.'

 Less immediately recognisable is his civilian (and on-again-off-again secret) identity, Peter Parker. Peter Parker looks like this guy on the left.

Pink shirt/blue tie combo? Costume mystery solved: the guy is clearly colour-blind.

Except he also looks like this (if you like your Marvel Comics in 'Ultimate' flavour, anyway):

Peter Parker: humble enough to allow medical progress.

Or perhaps he even looks like this. While this guy is a lot more stylized and cartoon-y, he's certainly the coolest looking and the one I much prefer. My point is: all of these are Peter Parker. As long as we, the reader, understand who we are looking at, then that's who it is. This idea is particularly acute in comic books, where different writers and, crucially, artists, take the reigns over a particular character all the time. This can be a problem if you have a vested interest in the particular depiction. The guy on the left is drawn by Humberto Ramos, an artist whose very personal and exaggerated style tends to divide fans.

I'm a comic book guy so I'm used to dealing with this all the time. I've therefore become used to the fact that, for most people, Peter Parker looks like this:

"Are these my hands? Man, I am high as balls."

This sort of thing is obviously not limited to comic books. Any visual representation of an established fictional character is going to divide a few opinions. Partly this is to do with the gap between words and images. Peter Parker is 5'10, with brown hair and eyes. He has size 8 feet. As physical descriptions go this is pretty vague, but is all comic book artists have to go on when they draw him. This can lead, as previously shown, to some pretty different interpretations. Even when the verbal description is much more comprehensive there's still plenty of room for some visual wiggling.

Sometimes it hardly matters. Sometimes a writer leaves the physical description so sparse that you could envision pretty much anything you like. James Patterson's most famous creation is Alex Cross, a black detective working in Washington DC. Now, Patterson normally runs pretty light on the physical description anyway, but he says remarkably little about what Cross looks like in any of the books, save that he is black. Patterson should justly be applauded for not making a huge deal out of the race of his protagonist, but even by his standards Alex Cross is thinly drawn at best. So for most people with an interest, Cross looks like this:

Morgan Freeman: left the gas on.

But to me, that's just Morgan Freeman. I have actually read a few James Patterson novels, but I found the depiction of Cross so nebulous that I had no idea what he looked like. He was just an androgynous outline, like a gingerbread man. I found that I didn't really have a picture of him in my head at all. I think that this, more than anything, is the reason I thought it was a crap book. When I flicked through some of the same books a minute ago I still found it difficult to picture him, even with the film image of Morgan Freeman in my head.

Soon, to most people, Alex Cross will look like this:

"Peace."

That's Idris Elba from The Wire, by the way. He will be playing the part of Alex Cross soon but I'm pretty sure that if I ever read another Patterson novel (unlikely) he won't be filling in the silhouette left by the flaws in Patterson's writing.

Does any of this really matter? Possibly not: everyone is entitled to their own imaginings, and so fictional characters can look like whatever you decide. Just because they have been depicted in a certain way in a certain medium, doesn't mean you have to adopt that depiction yourself. You can just ignore it. If anything, this is the major positive about verbal descriptions: they can mean a thousand different things to a thousand different people. A strongly written character can have a generally recognised personality but a thousand different faces, and it's part of the fun.

But one thing I have noticed is that visual depictions tend to stick faster when they accompany an artistically credible piece of work. Therefore: the more you like something, the more that version of a character is destined to stick with you. James Bond is a good example: when people imagine him, they tend to envision their favourite actor as the model for his appearance, ignoring the Bond films that show him otherwise.

Disliking a piece of work can have the opposite effect. In my case, I was pretty sold on Tobey Maguire as Peter Parker after Spider-Man 2, a film I enjoyed immensely. However I thought the sequel painfully, embarrassingly bad, and was very disappointed in Maguire's performance. Now when I see him, I don't see Peter Parker at all; in fact I'm somewhat aggrieved that he occupies that space for so many people.

The best example I can think of is the Lord of the Rings trilogy of films. Those movies were incredibly well researched, a labour of love in some respects, and it shows in the effect it has had on the fans of the books. Gandalf the Grey now looks like Ian Mckellen, at least to me (and my dad). The films were a) so close to the vague imaginings in my head and b) so engrossing and inspiring and all the rest that it essentially taped over all the visuals I had and replaced them, and it matters to me not a jot. I can totally accept this because I enjoyed the films so much.

It is because of a particular piece of writing and art that I know what Peter Parker looks like. When I see him drawn otherwise I can accept it, but I find that how much I like a particular version of him depends on how closely it sticks to the idea I have in my head. That idea was put there by one of the best Spider-Man comics I ever read, a one-shot by Paul Jenkins that was mostly about a young man with cerebral palsy. Spider-Man unmasks at the end for a single moment, but such was the quality of the writing and art that it has stuck with me ever since. It's not enough to show people a picture. You have to paint it for them if you want it to stay.

Peter Parker: The Amazing Spider-Man

Leaks

Here it is. It's called Leaks. The Ship in was a real place, and the flood in it occurred and was related to me by a friend. None of the other people or events are real, and the narrator is not me... at least, no more than he normally is.

Stall for Saturday

I realise I haven't put any fiction on here in a while. So you can have a short story tomorrow (try to still your thumping hearts) once I've finished proof-reading it.