Two months after 9/11, Marvel Comics published an issue of The Amazing Spider-Man depicting reactions to the attack on the World Trade Center. In this issue, writer Michael J. Straczynski and penciler John Romita Jr., the regular creative team for the series, depict Spider-Man wandering in the ruins of the World Trade Center, helping survivors alongside firemen, policemen and paramedics, while a monologue mostly in captions elaborates on the meaning of the event. This article seeks to examine the tension between the will to celebrate a unique event and the use the formula of the super-hero genre. It starts by delineating the specific constraints of the Spider‑Man comics of that period, in order to chart the ways in which this issue adjusts the formula (regarding pacing, the use of captions, etc.). The article then examines the various discourses surrounding this comic book. Fans and creators expressed their concern about genre and commemoration, with on the one hand a strong resistance to a perceived misuse of the super-hero genre and on the other hand a resistance to the idea that a conventional super-hero narrative may adequately represent an event of the magnitude of 9/11.
