So, I’ve been thinking a lot about spideytorch lately (as I am one to do) and a question popped into my head:
What is the most important spideytorch comic panel?
There’s a ton of great options in my opinion, but I think there also is an answer (at least for me) so now I am going to subject all of you to my thought process. Get ready for a way to long post breaking this down.
The most obvious starting point has to be this classic
Johnny Storm is going full house husband for Peter Parker, I mean c’mon! add in the fact that he’s in his undies and the way that he’s leaning over peter… yeah this is a classic. This might be the most famous spideytorch panel out there, but I don’t think it’s the most important one.
Another classic (but more antagonistic?) one takes place, of course, at the usual place.
To me this is peak identity shenanigans and the stuff that fanfics are made of. The betrayal, the heartbreak, the complications that go into the conflicting way these two view identity, oh boy I could talk about that shit for hours, but as an individual moment, it doesn’t really crack most important for me, it needs a bit more affection (they’re very bad at affection sometimes).
Another panel that came to mind very quickly for me is this set.
Johnny literally only had to say his name and Peter knew exactly what he meant and what he needed. This is top tier levels of communication, both between them and from the creators to us. I think this is another one that I could talk about for hours. That being said, it doesn’t feel important enough to me.
A friend in the spideytorch discord server posed this panel as the most important spideytorch moment in the comics.
I’m just gonna put their quote in cause it’s great. “I think this is one of my favorite panels cause Johnny was just speaking generally and Peter was like ‘oh my god! Actual wise words form johnny’ but also, I love that this was a more important moment for Peter than Johnny.” I must say, this entry is extremely important to spideytorch and gave my choice a run for its money. I don’t have a huge reason for not making this one the most important, other than personal taste. For their relationship, this is a key moment and sets them on the path to actually being friends (at least on Peter’s end), but idk it just wasn’t doing it for me.
Another panel I was reminded of thanks to this submission was this moment.
It’s not quite as impactful as the past one by a long shot but I do think it’s important. After being rivals for so long, to see Johnny give a genuine heartfelt compliment to Peter is fantastic (haha). This feels like the other half of the previous set of panels. There we had Johnny encouraging a stranger and here he’s encouraging his friend.
Some other friends in the discord server suggested the moment that Johnny invites Peter over to watch his sex tape (yes this is canon).
(Not pictured, Peter swinging away and saying he needs to take a cold shower). Now I’m not saying that the most important spideytorch moment needs to be serious, but I think this moment might be too unserious to claim that title. This moment was huge for the fanbase because holy shit did, he actually say that, but for their relationship, I just don’t think it was as important as it was to us.
Now I do want to knock out a few honorable mentions that I would hate to miss.
First, this look given to Spidey by Johnny, I mean yeah, he’s in love.
And to balance the lovesick flirty scales I must expose Peter as well.
Next, this heartbreaking moment that basically admits to the audience that Peter’s world becomes chaos when he loses Johnny. That shit hits.
Of course, the moment that gave us the ship name.
A panel that lives in my head rent-free because honestly marvel what were you attempting to convey here other than the fact that Peter really wants to have hate sex with Johnny Storm?
To take us outside of our duo, this quote from Ben Grimm (EDIT: it’s was Peter’s clone Ben Reilly, which honestly only adds more drama), because honestly same.
And of course, I have to include the panel which showed us the first time (on page) that Peter told Johnny he loved him AND gave us canon proof that these two have “date night,” many a fic writer was fed well.
And how could we forget! THE USUAL PLACE! Literally any panel mentioning this is top tier because its so good, like the core of the fandom honestly.
Lastly, before moving on to my own more serious contenders I have to share this parallel that @sciderman shared because I love it.
Now to my serious contenders for the title of most important spideytorch panel (please remember this is all my opinion and I mean no shade). This will be a top 5, but just know some of these rankings are pretty flexible (even flexible with some panels from the beginning), and this question should not be taken as seriously as I am taking it, I am fully aware of that.
Number 5!
So, I know that I discounted the sex tape scene earlier because I didn’t think it was serious enough and it didn’t do enough for their actual relationship, but I had to include this one I’m sorry. A lot of this is personal taste but the implications here are *chefs kiss* The first time I saw this panel was actually on Pinterest with the caption “wait a second, did spider-man and the human torch have sex?” which says it all for me.
Beyond that, this moment also shows how they reach out to each other when they have problems. Strange children show up in Peter’s life and the first person he calls about it is Johnny. Again, this is not the most serious, but I love it. This moment shows the banter of their relationship, how they care about and rely on each other, and also potentially reveals that they’ve had sex. There’s a lot to take in.
Number 4!
I will be honest with you all, this moment is here almost entirely because Ben’s quote lives in my head rent-free. Everyone around them sees how they feel about each other besides them. When they were rivals others could tell they actually liked each other and when they became friends others could tell that it was deeper than that. I think I especially love this panel because it conforms that we’re not crazy for thinking there’s something there but also because Ben specifically cites the way Johnny looks at peter. That is very specific and says a lot. I can’t imagine Ben would say this if the looks Johnny gave Peter were purely platonic, and just ahhhh, there’s so much said here just in one line from Ben. There was of course the Ben moment earlier, which I also love, but something about this one, the more specific phrasing of it I think just shoots it up my rankings a lot.
Number 3!
If you’ve been following me for a while I don’t think this is a surprise at all, I have already done a very in depth post about this panel so I’ll keep my thoughts brief. Red Skull knows that hurting Johnny will hurt Peter, Peter’s Spidey senses go off FOR JOHNNY, and we are given so much angst potential, I love it.
Number 2!
This one is probably a more popular choice than my number one, and I totally get it. The excitement and joy bursting out of Peter when he finally realizes that Johnny is here, he’s real, and he’s alive really gets me. Plus, the added context to the uniform comment being that Johnny literally left Peter his family and his spot on the team in his will. The amount of pure love in this moment and its larger context is abundant, platonic or romantic, it’s there. I feel like everything I could say about this panel has probably been said before, but it is definitely worthy of being the most important spideytorch moment, even if I have one that beats it for me.
Number 1!
For those of you who don’t know, this panel comes from Peter visiting Gwen’s grave and talking to her. That fact alone breaks me in half but then the things he says to her shatter me. Every spider-man fan knows how much Gwen’s death broke Peter, it destroyed him to lose her. Just the fact that Peter admits Johnny brings part of him back is amazing (haha) because that is a hug feat. But then he shatters me even more with his final sentences. After Gwen’s death, we often get a peter who spends too much time as Spidey in order to avoid having to cope with Gwen’s death as Peter, but also as a way to cope with the loss (he’s a complicate man). Spideypool also gets a lot from that arc because of Wade’s reaction to Spider-Man not holding back as much and becoming less of a friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, and that’s true. The fact that Peter feels like he’s becoming who Spidey is supposed to be again when he’s around johnny is huge! But then! He corrects himself. He’s not Spidey again, he’s Peter. The real person, the man behind the mask, comes back. And then you get the final correction. He’s not just peter again, he’s *Gwen’s* peter again. He is the him that existed with Gwen when he’s with Johnny. That speaks volumes and breaks whatever parts of me are left. How am I expected to read this and not think that Johnny and Peter are soulmates?
Now, I will acknowledge that this is much more of a peter moment than a joint spideytorch moment, much like the moment suggested by discord friend earlier. If that disqualifies it for you as the most important spideytorch panel, I get it. However, for me that doesn’t matter mainly for one key reason. So many classic spideytorch moments show a lot of Johnny having feelings for Peter or making a move on Peter. There have been a lot of times when I’m trying to get a friend into spideytorch, and I feel like I have to clarify that its not as one sided as it seems. Johnny is much more out there with who he is and doesn’t hide his feelings very well (except maybe from himself). So, when we get any spideytorch moment that hones in on peter’s feelings and love for Johnny, that feels so huge to me. This moment alone proves that it isn’t one sided, Peter has deep feelings for Johnny, even if he’s not sure what they are yet, he knows that what they have is special, he wouldn’t be telling Gwen about it otherwise. While it may not be as famous of a spideytorch moment, its an important one, and for me it’s probably the most important one.
Anyway, this has been a way too long post about this topic but if you made it to the end thank you so much! I would love to hear other people’s thoughts on this topic so feel free to share those. Also, just a reminder that these are my opinions, and I am not in charge at all so don’t take it too seriously (unless you want to).
If you’re interested in hearing me, go more in depth on any of these panels (or any other spideytorch panels) shoot me an ask because I could honestly talk in depth for a while about most of these panels and I would love to do so. Thank you again for reading this way to long post and good night spideytorch nation.
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Todays rip: 30/04/2024
guess what????????
Season 2
Featured on: Haltmann's Highest Quality Video Game Rips
Ripped by alden wolf
Requested by eg_9371! (Request Form)
It's Gonna Be May!
Saying that SiIvaGunner has in-jokes is perhaps the most obvious statement of all time - it is an in-joke upon which the entire channel is built upon. Yet there's obviously always different LAYERS to each joke, how obvious each of them are - and even today, there are many running gags on the channel that fly over people's heads despite having followed along for so long. Indeed, such is the case today with guess what????????, as requestee eg_9371 made me aware of a channel in-joke that's been running quietly in the background for the better part of seven years as of today. All of it built on one simple truth - tomorrow, it's gonna be may.
To reiterate - beyond the funny ha-ha memes we all know like Mr. Grand Dad and more, the SiIvaGunner channel is filled with little nods and gags that oft go overlooked. I of course covered 5 Nights of Snop Dog recently which is a great example of one, there's how rips like Kill & Learn (Recut Ver.) reference a running joke by long-time mashup artist Triple-Q about how Sonic Adventure 2 and Kill la Kill have an immeasurable amount of similarities, rips like Kermit in the Ocean being spiritual successors to very specific years-old rips on the channel - you get the jist. Some of these gags eventually get special attention on the channel through specific channel events, but such has not yet been the case with guess what????????'s joke - it's a gag that's stayed in the background since its very beginnings, and is only being kept running by a select few rippers. If you're listening to the rip now and it still hasn't landed yet, you may need to be enlightened to the ways of hit boy band *NSYNC. Or, well, really the band itself matters very little compared to the song of choice - It's Gonna Be Me.
Boy band music has a pretty interesting track record on SiIva in general, honestly. One Direction, Backstreet Boys, Boyzone, *NSYNC - to me the typical audience that obsesses over these kinds of bands feels at odds with my image of the average SiIvaGunner fan, and yet whenever they're prominently pushed I get reminded of just how good their music can be when wielded by good rippers. We've had two explosively quality events focusing on two bands in particular, the Big Time Rush takeover of Season 5 with Famous Surprise and the One Direction day of Season 7 with Beautiful Dreamer. *NSYNC hasn't had the same explosion of notoriety, but It's Gonna Be Me in particular has stealthily appeared on the channel every year since 2017 on April 30th. The joke is originally an ancient Tumblr meme from 2012, based on the way singer Justin Timberlake (yes!) pronounces the titular line in the song as "It's gonna be May" - the joke writes itself, and so Tumblr users have annually celebrated the day-before-May in Timberlake's honor.
eg_9371 writes in his request for this post that he's actually one of the most active rippers in keeping this joke going on SiIva for all these years, which I find extremely commendable, and it all started in Season 2, with guess what????????. It's a rearrangement of the song in the style of Donkey Kong Country 2's Mining Melancholy, a track most notable for its rhythmic percussion of steel drums sounding like steadily-working pickaxes deep in the mines. Its a fantastic track on its own, yet that percussion especially is a shockingly natural fit for the harpsichord(?) backing prominent throughout It's Gonna Be Me. Mining Melancholy's usual percussion and other parts of its melody stick around for large parts of the rip, making it more of a melody swap/mashup of the two than a full rearrangement a la Sog-Gee Ambiance - but it only serves to enhance the two tracks used, giving It's Gonna Be Me a more melancholic sound and Mining Melancholy a more self-assured feel in return, a super interesting blend of moods. I don't think the It's gonna be May bit would have worked nearly as well if the rip it was paired with wasn't of high quality, and guess what???????? clears that threshold effortlessly - its a great rip that's made me appreciate the quality in both songs used.
*NSYNC rips have, again, continued to show up in all the years since, always on the dot, often even deliberately placed as the LAST rip of April 30th to drive the joke home. I think it's really sweet that the joke has stuck with eg_9371 in particular, likely in part due to alden wolf's initial contribution to the bit - he's even made It's Gonna Be Me rips on dates completely unrelated to the beginning of May, just because its a genuinely fun song to listen to. There's tons of these "secret" gags left to find on the channel, reoccurring dates or rips that reference jokes from other rips that are years-old by now - and really, a huge part of the fun in running this blog is getting to discover so many turning gears of the channel that I'd never been made aware of. Keep an eye out for these gags yourself - and keep an eye out on SiIvaGunner channel itself later today, to see if It's Gonna Be May for yet one more year.
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I don’t have like a ton to say about this but I have mixed feelings- also spoilers ✨
I like Crystal I really do but at times her dialogue bothered me and some of her behavior was kind of obnoxious to me- like at times when she started aggressively inserting herself into situations and just kind of made it about her? Like in episode seven (though this happened many other times too) where she was having a total fit about not going to hell when it’s clearly for her own good and not about her no matter how much she cares? and I totally understand that this is her being written as an immature teenager who hasn’t been dead or a teen for 30-100 years but as a teenager this sort of selfish immature writing kind of gives me icky feelings because I know so many people who are mostly emotionally intelligent not just raging all the time.- and I mean that for a lot of teenagers and teen girls in writing, to make them tough and likable they are made volitile and annoying which to me is not likable (my opinion, I just don’t like the trope that’s not what I’m talking about right now anyway-) I do think she had good development and I liked her a lot better by the end, some people on other forums were saying that her actress was weaker than the rest of the cast and I don’t really know about that? I think maybe she was artificial at times but I’m blaming that on the writing.
I also didn’t like her dialogue about her “crazy demon ex” either, it felt very forced? -Not her emotions about the whole mind cage thing I get that but just all of the “UGH WHY ARE THEY SO FUCKING NOSY IM JUST TRYING TO GET OVER MY STUPID STUPID CRAZY ABUSIVE STALKER DEMON EX BOYFRIEND UGHHH ILL DOUBLE KILL THOSE BOYS IF ITS TGE LAST THING I DO” that felt out of place to me- Lastly I get that this is also an aspect of her teenager-ness but I didn’t like the amount she cursed? I have no qualms with cursing but it felt to me like when little kids and middle schoolers start cursing where they just explosively yell fuck when like literally nothing warranting that kind of expletive has happened? She curses too often it makes her sound really stupid? Like the ep 7 “take me to hell I won’t die” thing, she was screaming at Charles who was being pretty reasonable like “fuck that I’m going he’s my fucking friend too fine then fuck it- fuck you ill find another way to get to hell” like yes she was emotional but that isn’t what teenagers sound like guys?
idk- I’d love to hear what other people think and to be clear I do like her I just focused on the negative- I guess it’s a human thing. She had lots of strong points just I ending up not liking how much she was on screen, this isn’t really about you? It’s about the dead boy detective? Give me more ghosts or Edwin or Charles or Jenny or Niko or Mr walrus please? They were fun I like them? I just felt like there were times where she was over shadowing Edwin and Charles and they are what’s actually important to the show? I think I’d like her more in smaller doses- I felt like I spent too much time having to stop and be like “girl step back this is not about you, you are not the star right now”
and to the argument of her actress being inexperienced or over acting or just not great- I have no specific feelings on this but like the other main cast had for the most part very little screen acting experience and were Fantastic so i don’t know what to feel in that area?
so yes, i think crystal is an interesting character and i think she grew on me and developed in the season but i also definitely think that she’s annoying and I’m conflicted because i don’t want to not like her-..
what are your thoughts? Id love to hear different perspectives but please be nice to me because I’ll probably delete this and cry (unless that was your goal, then carry on)
that was all like super ramble-y sorry- but I hope I communicated semi accurately! Thank you
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