Well, the high drama couldn’t be kept up forever, I guess. Bendis has continually been upping the personal and heroic stakes for Peter, taking his life through a gauntlet of traumas and having him question the value of his heroic career after recent crises. Then comes this volume, where the weight of previous stories hangs around the edges and Peter faces a fairly scattered conflict against a mutant named Geldoff. It takes a more light-hearted tone that doesn’t work and feels like a trifle affair after the rollercoaster Bendis has brought us through. I suppose I’m weaned on wonderful runs like Bendis and Ed Brubaker on Daredevil, where the model of storytelling was to continually up the stakes and make things worse for the lead character, through deep, long-form character arcs. Bendis has expertly done the same thing up to this point on this book. I’m all for more light-hearted fare, but it doesn’t feel earned here and this isn’t nearly a strong enough story to derail the drama we’ve had up to this point.The strongest elements of this volume deal with the characters, even if the character work is not as uniformly strong as usual. Surprisingly, the strongest thread here is Peter’s quest to replace his destroyed costume. It has a humour that rings true and is in line with this Peter as a do-gooder still in over his head. He has no plan for when a costume gets ruined and struggles with what to do next. It’s a story thread that is amusingly continued over several of these issues and works much better as an attempt at levity than the general tone of this volume did, as it rung true for the character and felt earned – it was a natural problem that this Peter would face and stood out as one of Bendis’ better ideas here, despite how simple it was.
Peter and Mary Jane’s reconciliation is also a major plot point. There’s good fun had when she tries to change type and wear an over-the-top outfit to a party, and their talk on the bus ride home from that party is amusing. All of this leads up to a letter that she writes him, one that, for all its sappiness, shows the heart that this book wears on its sleeve and is a nice turning point for Peter. I really like how Peter’s narration later on, when faced with the Geldoff problem, is still full of elation over being back with MJ.
There are other character bits here. Flash continually tries to talk to Peter alone, only to be rebuffed because Peter doesn’t want to walk into a bullying attempt. Liz Allan reappears, and continues her discomfort with mutants/superheroes. Having Gwen live at the Parker home
remains a strong choice for this series. Gwen is easily the most interesting of the supporting cast. The interaction between her and Peter is full of life, because she brings out the inner miserable, anti-social outcast within him. It’s refreshing to have Bendis acknowledge those qualities within Peter, instead of glossing over them with the ‘loveable loser’ label, and Gwen is key to us seeing that different side to Peter.So the set-ups here with the characters are largely pretty good. It’s when Geldoff enters the story that things take a turn for the dull. He’s a mutant who causes explosions and destruction at a party and Spider-Man later confronts him when he takes this behaviour to the streets. The point here, according to the description on the back of the trade, is that Geldoff is the opposite of Peter’s “great power, great responsibility” mantra – he feels no responsibility, or any sense that he should have greater concerns, when he uses his powers. Unfortunately, the back of the trade conveys this message with more power and weight than the actual story does. There’s nothing wrong with Peter’s rooftop lecture to Geldoff on power and responsibility, it’s just lifeless in how perfunctory it is. It doesn’t sound like Peter speaks from the heart, no matter how much Bendis has him scream. Given his recent trials, he should really feel the weight of this mantra. Yet here, it’s a dull speech to a guy with a badly-written accent. Geldoff is such a nothing character that I have to wonder what the whole point of this exercise was.
The X-Men then enter the story, and, unfortunately, things don’t get better. In their early scenes, Bendis goes way overboard with his quippy dialogue from the X-females. There’s a lot of fluffy talk, centering on the inane Geldoff. Now the idea of Peter being excited to visit the X-Mansion and meet other youth with powers really worked for me. But Bendis doesn’t seem to know where to take the story after Peter leaves in the X-Men’s jet. Geldoff has another freak-out on the jet, eating up some pages with aerial fighting, and May tries to look for the absent Peter (which is admittedly much better material).
Once in the presence of the full team of X-Men, Bendis still fails to inspire. Xavier learns that Geldoff’s mutation was the result of genetic manipulations, which is at least a direction of some sort to take that story in. Peter is less than happy about Xavier’s proposal to turn Geldoff over to the UN and investigate the issue, feeling his basic human rights will be stripped from him if he’s treated as a pawn in investigating this scheme. This is all well and good, but I badly lost interest at this point. The drive of this entire series has been Peter as a character. This conflict feels so removed from him and his life, and the fact that he just drops his opposition to Xavier’s idea so quickly makes the whole trip to the X-Mansion seem pointless. It’s the first major interaction Peter’s has had with heroes outside of Nick Fury and it badly lost its potential.
The final issue spotlights Aunt May, and is also fraught with problems. The build up to her confrontation with Peter on his whereabouts had been quite good. The resolution is hokey and illogical. First, May drops her anger at Peter when he reveals he’d skipped class to read a
book of his mother’s. Of course, this is all a lie, so who do we feel bad for – May for lashing out at Peter and realizing the error (it wasn’t an error) of her ways? Peter for being yelled at, even though he’s lying and, inadvertently, guilt-tripping his aunt? Then May gets into her hatred of Spider-Man, and, to me, the majority of her reasons seemed completely illogical and at odds with her character. She feels he’s been around her life too much, wonders if he had anything to do with Ben’s murder, and worries that he’s hurting Peter when Peter goes missing. In the midst of what I feel is a completely botched character study are moments of clarity and truth – May admits guilt over feeling attracted to Captain Stacy, she feels she’s keeping Gwen around as a crutch for her own loneliness, and the video of the Parker/Brock picnic from volume 6 is brought up as a moment that really made her feel alone. It’s these naked moments of emotion that cut to the heart of the character, not her forced hatred of Spider-Man. She tries to relax and be warm with Peter at the very end, and it’s a great moment, but these wonderful character insights are wrapped around some truly bizarre character choices that seemed forced and illogical.I can’t deny a disappointment with Irresponsible. The book feels like it has lost gravity in its plotting. The strength is in the character moments, which are currently holding the book together. The last few arcs thrived because characterization was woven into some highly dramatic plotlines. This volume almost completely divorces them, and the plotting reveals itself to be lightweight, weak, and hollow. The character moments are good, despite some hiccups, but the story really faltered for me.
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