Tales of the Parodyverse

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CrazySugarFreakBoy!
Sat Jan 29, 2005 at 09:05:07 am EST
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Lair Legion/Avengers: “I Believe the Metatext Here is Rapidly Becoming Text”
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Peter Parker had only adopted the costumed crimefighting identity of Spider-Man a few short years ago, back when he was still in his teens and still in high school, but so much had happened since that irradiated spider bit him that he sometimes felt as though he’d been a superhero for decades.

He’d been branded a menace to the public by the police and the press, he’d gradually acquired an entire rogues’ gallery of super-powered adversaries and engaged in enough team-ups with his fellow caped-and-cowled do-gooders to fill several series’ worth of stories, he’d witnessed and blamed himself for the deaths of his best friend, his girlfriend, his adoptive father and mother, and his ultimate nemesis (the latter two of whom later wound up coming back to life), he’d fought against cosmic forces who hopelessly outclassed him and countless evil doubles of himself (ranging from psychotics who duplicated his powers by bonding with symbiotic aliens to clones who carried his own genetic material and memories inside of them), he’d met and dated and proposed (more than once) to the woman who would eventually become his wife, before she was kidnapped (more than once), miscarried their unborn child, declared a legal separation from him and finally came back home to him, and as for himself, after graduating college and fitfully making his way through graduate school, he’d gone from paying the bills as a freelance photographer at a tabloid newspaper to teaching science and social studies at the same high school he’d graduated from.

Just recently, though, he’d had one of his strangest adventures yet, as he and a score of other inhabitants of his own world found themselves crossing over with what were apparently their counterparts in a parallel universe, before they joined forces to defeat the nearly omnipotent being who threatened to destroy both of their Earths, but now, for some inexplicable reason, he found himself stranded in yet another alternate reality, albeit one with some surreal and disquietingly disorienting similarities to his own, and to top it all off, he’d been told that his closest counterpart in this plane of existence was a young man clad in fluorescent orange, neon green and day-glo yellow, who seemed to have every single moment of Peter Parker’s career as Spider-Man memorized, because as the relentlessly cheerful and colorful young costumed crimefighter in question was only too happy to inform him, not only Spider-Man, but also the Avengers, Fantastic Four, X-Men and all of the other superheroes and villains from his own universe were entirely fictional (albeit much-beloved) comic book characters in this reality, in which both of the big-budget films about Peter Parker’s trials and travails had gone on to rank among the top ten most money-making movies of all time.

Mary Jane Watson-Parker, Peter’s aspiring actress wife and traveling companion on his trip to this world, expressed equal measures of amusement and envy over the fact that the blonde-haired little girl from Interview With the Vampire had gained such fame and fortune from playing her on the big screen, but Peter himself was a bit less appreciative of all the attention that the people of this Earth seemed to pay to him, especially since the fluorescent orange-haired, neon green-eyed, day-glo yellow-skinned young man who had appointed himself Peter and Mary Jane’s impromptu tour guide was so enthusiastic and eidetically retentive about every aspect of his experiences as Spider-Man.

It went well beyond his awareness of Peter’s secret identity and his relationship with Mary Jane; according to Dreamcatcher Kokopelli Foxglove, the so-called “CrazySugarFreakBoy!” of the Parodyverse’s Lair Legion, there were supposedly countless internet message boards and web site archives set aside to comprehensively chronicle and speculatively debate even the most trivial minutiae of Peter and Mary Jane’s day-to-day existences, as well as a seemingly endless stream of online fan-generated pornographic stories and illustrations devoted to depicting the couple’s most intimate affairs in graphic detail.

April Alice Apple, Dream’s comic book creator girlfriend (whose rich henna red hair, deep aquamarine green eyes and peachy pink skin imbued her with more than a passing resemblance to a fuller-figured version of Mary Jane), had to gently remind her obviously well-meaning but occasionally socially inept boyfriend that not everyone else shared the same absence of sexual inhibitions that he’d been raised with by his mother, although Mary Jane couldn’t help but giggle to herself when she sneaked a few peeks at a couple of those amateurishly written “fanfics,” in which Peter was portrayed as a self-assured stud capable of effortlessly seducing such real-life celebrities as Paris Hilton, Pamela Anderson Lee and even adult entertainment performer Jenna Jameson.

But for Peter himself, this deluge of absurdity was proving to be a bit too much to take in all at once, especially when Dream casually let it slip that Spider-Man had been a comic book character for more than 40 years here in the Parodyverse.

“I haven’t even been alive for 40 years, much less been playing superhero for that long,” Peter protested. “If that were true, it would mean I first became Spider-Man in 1965.”

“1963, actually,” Dream corrected. “Amazing Spider-Man hit the 500-issue mark a little over a year or two ago. And it makes perfect sense. All it means is that time moves differently in the Marvel Universe than it does in the Parodyverse. Think about it; how many years ago did you become Spider-Man? Better yet, what year did it happen in?”

Peter opened his mouth to refute Dream’s claims, but paused when he realized that he couldn’t quite recall exact answers to either one of Dream’s questions. Of course, he remembered that he’d been in his mid-to-late teens when that irradiated spider bit him, and that couldn’t have been much more than a decade ago, since he was in his mid-to-late twenties now, but beyond that, he simply couldn’t assign a specific number to any of those years. Indeed, the more he concentrated on trying to pin down a precise calendar date to his origin as a superhero, the more uncertain he became about how much time had passed since then. Even his age seemed nebulous, the more he really thought about it.

“It’s okay,” Dream reassured him, registering the look of confusion and concern that had crossed Peter’s face. “You know, between you and me, I’m starting to suspect that time just plain goes slower in all universes that have superheroes in them. I mean, it’s like, I’m 21 years old now, right? But that can’t be right, because I was already 21 when I first became a superhero, and that was way more than a year ago.” Glancing from side to side, Dream leaned in close and whispered conspiratorially to Peter, “I think it’s the ones who created us, like Stan Lee and Steve Ditko and John Romita Sr. did for you and Mary Jane, and like … well, hell, I don’t know, but like somebody out there did for me and April and everybody else here in the Parodyverse. They created us, and they want to keep on telling stories about us, and so do the ones who come after them, so we have to stay younger and live longer than they do, so that we can always be there for them. I know how this must sound, but I think they really do exist, because I think I’ve actually seen them, staring right back at me, from the other side of the screen.”

Fortunately for Peter’s further peace of mind, the alarm claxons sounded in the mansion on Parody Island, just before the Thighmaster used the Infinity Gauntlet to take control of the Parodyverse, and take on the combined forces of the Lair Legion and the Avengers …




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