Stand Tall[1]

Spider-Man has just witnessed the collapse of the World Trade Center towers after a terrorist attack. Swinging down to the street two passers-by ask him why he wasn’t there to prevent this tragedy from happening, Spider-Man has no words to tell them. Walking through the smoke, Spider-Man arrives at the rubble where emergency crews and New York’s superhero community are digging through the rubble for survivors. As Spider-Man watches others he wonders how a group of people could do something so evil. As Spider-Man begins helping, he notices that the tragedy has brought out the likes of Doctor Doom, Magneto, Doctor Octopus, the Juggernaut, and the Kingpin. Surveying the damage even they cannot believe someone would commit such a horrific act of violence. Doctor Doom is so moved he event sheds tears for the fallen.[2]

As he works on the relief efforts, Spider-Man can’t help but think that the real heroes are the first responders. The firefighters, police officers, and medics that first arrived on the scene to help, many of whom died when the towers fell.[F1] He thinks about the ordinary people who acted with bravery to get people to safety. He thinks about the passengers who tried to stop the terrorists from hijacking the planes.[F2] He is surprised to see people acting selflessly when there are self-serving self-proclaimed “Holy Warriors” on both sides saying we had this coming. How decent people all over the world, people of all faiths, have looked at the atrocities committed with nothing but condemnation.[F3]

As Spider-Man continues to help with the search efforts, he spots a little boy sitting amidst the rubble. Checking to see how the boy is doing, Spider-Man learns that his father went into the World Trade Center to get something and told him to stay put. Moments later, they both see firefighters carrying out the lifeless body of the boy’s father. Spider-Man tries to comfort the boy, but he can find no words.

Taking a break to drink some water, Spider-Man is asked by one of the inured if this is going to happen again. Still, Spider-Man can find no answers. He sees Captain America angrily surveying the destruction and remembers that Captain America has lived through such a tragedy twice in his lifetime and can’t imagine what that could be like.[3] He thinks about what people will tell their children about this tragedy.

He thinks about all of the complex issues that will come as a result of this terror attack and knows that for a just people they must remember that there are victims on every side of war and that to lower themselves to the level of their attackers is to lose sight of what was lost. To be strong, everyone needs to stand tall.

Recurring Characters

Spider-Man, Avengers (Captain America, Thor, Vision, Scarlet Witch, Hawkeye), X-Men (Cyclops, Storm, Wolverine), Thing, Mister Fantastic, Daredevil, Doctor Doom, Juggernaut, Doctor Octopus, Kingpin, Magneto

Continuity Notes

1. This issue is a story commemorating the victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center that occurred on September 11, 2001. Some facts about this story:

   • Print editions and digital reprints of the single issue does not present a title. However, the collected volumes of this run of Amazing Spider-Man give call this story “Stand Tall”.

   • Continuity wise, this story takes place following the events of Amazing Spider-Man (vol. 2) #25.

   • At the time of this writing, the 9/11 terror attacks are just about 20 years old. Obviously, all the references to that event in this story should be considered topical references. That means a lot of aspects of this story should be considered topical. For the sake of summarizing this story in a way that makes sense I’m not doing my usual generalization topical references.

2. The villains appearing here to mourn the loss of life are quite hypocritical here given the fact that most of these villains have at one time or another committed equal or larger acts of terror during their careers. Magneto in particular, for example, who once decimated the entire planet with a massive electromagnetic pulse in X-Men (vol. 2) #25. I could make a laundry list of examples here, but I won’t. A lot of fans complain about how this scene of out of character for these villains, I’d say that’s short-sighted. There a lot of hypocrites who shed crocodile tears over 9/11 IRL, so why not super-villains in a fictional story?

3. Spider-Man is referring to the attacks on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese that occurred during World War II on December 7, 1941. As Captain America was active during World War II, he was alive when the attack happened. Captain America’s reaction to Pearl Harbor was first depicted in Captain America Comics #13. As revealed in Marvels Project #8, Captain America wasn’t present at Pearl Harbor because he was busy preventing the second prong of that attack, an invasion of the eastern coast of the United States by Atlantean warriors led by U-Man.

Factual References

F1. Of the 2977 victims who were killed when the twin towers fell, 412 were first responders

F2. This is a specific reference to United Airlines Flight 93, one of the planes hijacked by al-Queda terrorists. The hijacking was interrupted by passengers who fought back. Although the plane still crashed killing everyone on board, it never reached it’s intended target and no others were harmed. The intended target has never been definitively determined.

F3. The narrative makes mention bodies in freefall on the evening news. Since the terrorist attack was widely captured on video and photographed, there was initially a lot of live footage of people leaping from the burning towers to their deaths. These upsetting images resulted in a public outcry and the news media collectively agreed to stop airing the disturbing images.

Putting 9/11 Into Context of the Marvel Universe

As I said above, the events of 9/11 happened almost 20 years ago (at the time of this writing). It was a big fucking deal. If affected everyone on the day that it happened. As Marvel Comics and many of its creative team reside in New York City, 9/11 and the War on Terror that followed thereafter heavily influenced stories from that point forward. Other than this issue of Amazing Spider-Man, themes inspired by 9/11 were very prominent in the pages of Captain America which had an entire story arc about Captain America fighting al-Queda terrorists in Captain America (vol. 4) #1-11. Iron Man’s origins were temporarily retconned so that it took place in the Middle East and his captors were the Taliban in Iron Man (vol. 4) #1.

With the passage of time, a lot of these references have become dated and cannot be taken literally without prematurely aging various Marvel heroes. It would also negate the rules of the Sliding Timescale. As such they have to remain topical.

So how do you put 9/11 inspired stories into context of the Sliding Timescale? That’s all a matter of interpretation because, obviously, nobody at Marvel is going to come up with an official statement and I don’t think they should have to in this lifetime, because to a lot of the staff there it is still a sensitive subject. So much so, it led to a lot of debate when Peter David paid homage to the original Twin Towers in Symbiote Spider-Man #1 in 2019. It’s still raw.

But allow me to give you my take on it. There’s no official basis here, just opinion.

The thing about the World Trade Center it’s place in the Marvel Universe has always changed. Marvel stories have been published when the WTC was under construction between 1966 and 1975. The original twin towers were part of the New York City skyline in many Marvel publications pre-911. “Ground Zero” (the remains of the twin towers) was also featured in many stories. Likewise, the construction of the new Freedom Tower between 2006 and 2012. All current Marvel publications now feature the One World Trade Center — aka the Freedom Tower — as part of the New York skyline.

For modern readers, all direct references to the 9/11 terror attacks happening in this story should be considered a terrorist attack on New York City, not the 9/11 attacks. It would have to be just as horrific an attack for this story to still have the same dramatic impact. Comics published in September 2001 are designated as the 10th year of Marvel’s Modern Age of heroes. As such, my interpretation is that 10 years after the birth of the Fantastic Four there was a terrorist attack that happened in Lower Manhattan that was just as bad as 9/11 committed by an unspecified terrorist organization from the Middle East. That’s about as specific as you can get without dating the characters and generalizing the story just enough that you don’t have to start trying to retcon the whole thing.