I Wanted to be Spider-Man When I Grew Up

But I Eventually Settled for an Ex-Con, an Ex-Pimp, and a Black Panther

Baye McNeil
THOSE PEOPLE
8 min readOct 5, 2015

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I started collecting Marvel Comic books when I was about 8.

My first ambition in life was to be a motor man on a train, but soon I tabled that dream and shot for the stars:

I decided that I would be Spider-Man.

And not later in life. As far as I was concerned, I was already ready.

I’d cut the pin-ups out of my Spider-Man comics — I had no idea what it meant to be a true collector then — and paste them up in a cabinet that had fallen into disuse once my mother had gotten her hands on a new dining room set and wound up storing it in the room I shared with my two older brothers.

My plan:

I would build an altar to Spider-Man, light some candles and pray every night for a radioactive spider to come bite me so I could kick my brother Sekou’s ass.

Then my life would have balance and all would be right. His bullying ass would never fuck with me again. If he did, I would toy with him, making snappy one-liners while I beat him silly and webbed his ass up on the wall like a house fly.

Simple and brilliant.

But, alas, it didn’t work.

The first night, Sekou came in while I was in an almost meditative state in our darkened bedroom, and heard the litany I was repeating over and over before the flickering candlelight. It went something like:

“Please, Lord of radioactivity, grant me spidey powers! I understand that with great power comes great responsibility, so I promise not to hurt Sekou too badly!”

Bang, boom, bam! Maaaaaaaaaa!!!

So, I decided to do my own version of “fake it til you can make it” meets “prove your mettle” and started climbing all over everything. Trees, furniture, jumping from my second floor apartment to the ground floor below, all kinds of shit.

I wouldn’t walk down streets if I could help it.

I would scale staircases and climb banisters all up and down the brownstone lined streets, annoying the hell out of our neighbors. But I didn’t care. I was on a mission, and they would thank me later — for I was destined to protect the block, the community, hell, the whole of Brooklyn from evildoers (in those days, superheroes were neighborhood / city based).

I truly believed that if I kept it up, one day suddenly I would develop the ability to stick to surfaces and sense danger.

Soon I began the practice of dressing up in my spidey pajamas and attaching cassette tape cartridges from tapes I’d cracked open to my wrist and using them as makeshift web cartridges, tossing them around the house, practicing my aim on my little brother and sister. What a thrill it was to watch these streams soaring across the room, un-reeling in flight, leaving a trail of tape glimmering like tinsel.

I felt very close to my dream. I was proving my worthiness of this great gift to the powers that be. How could they not bestow upon me this power I’d demonstrated I clearly deserve?

“What the fuck did you do to my Earth, Wind & Fire tape?” Sekou asked one day, his foot already in my ass.

Bang, Boom, Bam…Maaaaaaaaa!

That wasn’t working out, either. So, after having a good cry and cursing the powers that be for ignoring my prayers, I resolved myself to just follow the adventures of Peter Parker as he lived out my dream.

One day, my mother went shopping at the Salvation Army, as she often did and I believe still does, and came back with a bicycle for me. My first.

My previous vehicle had been a Big Wheel, and…well, I’d outgrown it, eerily quick. The adjustable seat back had long since exhausted its three measly adjustments and the seat of the vehicle, which at one time had bore my weight admirably, had finally, and noisily, conceded to gravity’s demands and begun dragging noisily along the ground as I rode. If it were made of metal, and not plastic, I would have probably left a fiery trail behind me like the Ghost Rider. Instead I was burning plastic daily and people knew when Baye and his Big Wheel were in or had been in the vicinity for the ruckus would announce my arrival and a stench would linger in my wake wherever I went.

So, yeah, my Moms bought me a bike, bless her heart.

The great thing about the Salvation Army is the prices are really low and though it’s second-hand stuff, sometimes you can really catch some great finds.

The not-so great thing about the Salvation Army is it’s second-hand stuff, and generally if stuff is still in fit condition, it remains first-hand stuff.

My bike was not in fit condition, especially in one crucial area: the chain. It had a faulty master link. That is to say, the first time I put some significant pressure on the link (which is exactly what one must do to, say, pop a wheelie or use the back-breaks to stop it) it broke and my chain came loose as I was cruising down the hill on Green Avenue from the handball court, on my way home. And since the bike, as I mentioned, had back brakes and not hand brakes, I was on a runaway bike on a fairly steep hill (they don’t call it “Clinton Hill” for nothing) and this way early in my biking career.

So, I raced helpless and screaming down the hill, in traffic, wishing I was Spider-Man so I could do a back flip off the bike then snag it with my web in mid flip. But, being spidey-powerless, I crashed, but hard, and flipped Starsky & Hutch style over the hood of a car and on my ass.

My brothers, who I’d been riding with, had a good laugh. I decided I hated both of them and I would never ride with them again.

After I got my bike fixed (which required my oldest brother to remove the master link from another bike — one he’d stolen just for that purpose — and place it on mine) I was back in action. But, it had a flat.

There was a reason why I only went riding with my brothers and I had forgotten that reason in my hatred of them, but I would be reminded this day. I patched up the tire and since we didn’t have a pump I took a walk over to the nearest gas station, which was over on Fulton Street. Halfway there I remembered why I never really travelled off the block without a big bro in tow: We lived in a hairy-scary fucking community! I forgave them everything they’d ever done by about the three-quarter way mark, and actually started liking Sekou by the time I arrived. He’s not so bad…

“Hey Yo!”

I ignored the voice. I didn’t know anybody on Fulton Street. And didn’t wanna know anyone up there, either, truth be told.

I bent down and grabbed the tube for the air pump and realized that I’d actually never done this shit before. My brothers had always done it for me. I knew if you did it too much, then it would go boom – and I’d be outta commission until I could get a new inner tube.

Which in my household, as far as disposable income went, I might as well wait for a new bike.

I studied the hose and tried to recall how my brothers would do it, cursing myself for not paying careful attention when they did…

“Yo, you need some help with that?”

The voice came again, and I felt the hose being pulled from my hand. He squatted down before the wheel, removed the cap on the tire and began filling it, deftly.

Wow, a good Samaritan! And here I was all scared of him. I felt almost ashamed of myself.

“Here, squeeze that! Is that enough air?”

I squeezed it. It was tight! I looked up at the face of my hero. He was smiling, but he didn’t look as kind as this act of kindness suggested. My makeshift spider sense was tingling, but I told myself I’m not spidey. The gods had ignored my prayers.

“It sure is!, I said. Thank you…”

“No sweat…” he said, and looked around like he was looking for someone.

“Hey, can I get a ride? I just wanna go around the corner…”

I was getting ready to say what I had been trained to say to people I don’t know, which is, ‘my mother said don’t let anybody she don’t know ride my bike.’

But I’d never been in this situation, and when I looked up into his eyes I saw just a hint of ‘I’m gonna ride your bike one way or another, and believe me this is the easy way for you!” But I admonished myself for being so suspicious. Don’t be a jerk! He just helped you out of a fix. Where are your manners? Return his kindness.

So, my gullible ass said sure and handed it over. And I never saw him or my first bike again.

When I got home I told my brothers what had happened…

“And then he…, and then he…”

“You just gave him your bike???” Sekou snapped. “We gotta toughen your ass up!”

Bang, Boom, Bam…Maaaaaa!

I cried for a week, maybe longer, and every time I stopped to think I would wonder, where the fuck were the cops? Where are the superheroes in the black community? Goddamn comic books! White people have superheroes out the ass. They save their cats in trees, help them out of all kinds of shit. But in my community a kid can’t even go get air at a gas station three blocks from his house without being mugged!

In the months to come I would begin to actively seek black superheroes.

Amazing Spider-Man had a couple of black characters, but none were superheroes. A search of some comic book stores however revealed that there were several, and I became a fan and collector of three of them.

There was Luke Cage, Hero For Hire, an ex-con turned superhero…

And The Falcon, ex-pimp turned superhero…

And, my fave, T’Challa, The Black Panther, chief of the Panther Tribe of the advanced (fictional) African nation of Wakanda.

Not much imagination here, but at least Marvel tried. I give them credit for that. Hell, even in the real world, Malcolm X was a drug dealing pimp thieving ex-con before he got himself together and started doing heroic deeds, right? (Marvel has announced that a new Black Panther series, written by none other than Ta-Nehisi Coates, will begin in 2016…looking fwd to that!)

These three were the first black superheroes in my life. They weren’t there for me when my bike got stolen, or when my brother would torture me, but they were there when I needed to see us in tights, with rippling muscles and altruistic hearts, fighting crime and helping make our communities safe…if only in the Marvel universe.

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Baye McNeil
THOSE PEOPLE

Author, Columnist for the Japan Times, Brooklyn-bred expat. www.bayemcneil.com