Spider-Man isn’t a cop anymore, he’s a firefighter

You can also find out more about the following: Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, Spidey is a firefighter, a city engineer, a one-man medical airlift, an open-source GMO chemist, and a protector of New York’s precarious bee community. But there’s one thing this Spider-Man is not: a cop.

This is a momentous career shift for Peter Parker, who didn’t help the police in the original Spider-ManHe is a very good man You can learn more about it hereThe police.

To unlock the 2018 game’s map, Spidey powered on NYPD surveillance towers. He arrived first to every crime, with the actual NYPD officers always arriving late — if at all. He jokingly went by “Spider-Cop” and did impressions of hard-boiled detectives. I’m not here to litigate that creative decision (plenty of thoughtful writers have done an excellent job already), but I am here to celebrate the change in the sequel, which is immediate and affecting.

Spider-Man runs past a fire truck in Spider-Man 2.

After the game’s opening sequence, in which a kaiju-sized Sandman demolishes chunks of NYC, Spider-Man gets to the most pressing issue: supporting the survivors. Spider-Man runs through an alley covered with dust and smoke. He passes shocked workers and emergency responders who are battling fires or helping the injured. He then helps transport an old friend to the hospital. It’s a moment that sets the stage: Peter Parker and Miles Morales are now using their talents to heal local communities.

Spidey and his partner carry injured people on their backs to hospital. They learn from neighbors that laws aren’t inherently helpful, and can even punish those who need help. The community members show kindness by listening to those who are often overlooked (especially the elderly). And they fight the prejudicial assumption of recidivism, quite literally spending the bulk of their time protecting reformed supervillains who’ve served their time and just want to get back to normal life.

Hell, Spider-Man’s web now seems to have magical cauterizing and healing powers, along with the ability to extinguish flaming buildings.

I’m especially fond of what the Spideys do for Sandman immediately following history’s most destructive panic attack. Throughout the city, Peter and Miles find shards of Sandman — fire-bejeweled sand, you see! — which, as MJ lets us know over the phone, helps his human alter ego, Flint Marko, recover in a hospital bed across town. I won’t spoil the outcome, but it’s telling that halfway through this smattering of otherwise silly side quests in which Spidey fights little Sandmans, Peter Parker is actively rooting for Marko to rally and reunite with his family.

Miles Morales as Spider-Man, standing on a rooftop in Spider-Man 2, sees an explosion across town

I can’t recall another AAA game so clearly and self-critically in conversation with both its predecessor and its critics. Eurogamer talked to Spider-Man 2 senior creative director Bryan Intihar about the discourse ignited by Spider-Man’s relationship to the police in the first game, which many critics suggested carried a pro-cop message at a time when law enforcement was under intense scrutiny. “You know, obviously that wasn’t our intent,” Intihar said. “I think, just going forward, we think about things.”

After playing the majority of the game I could tell that Intihar’s team was working hard, and sometimes in a very direct manner. Peter Parker’s rhapsodizing about the need to ban guns and instead give hugs is a very early mission. He wallops goons in front of a building labeled “City Gun Club.” When Spider-Man restores a rooftop garden laboratory, he opines to himself, “Can’t believe EMF is making these GMOs open source. Profit shouldn’t be part of the equation when it comes to basic human necessities.” Peter Parker asks a fellow superhero if she has any tattoos. “Just the one of Spider-Cop’s gravestone,” she replies.

Spider-Man’s spidey-senses alert when he sees a sign for the City Gun Club in Spider-Man 2.

The game’s creators have imagined New York as an anti-Gotham City, full of light and love where the criminals have the pleasure of paying absurd apartment rents rather than living behind bars in an asylum.

It balances cheese, sincerity, and a genuine belief in good that recaptures that moment in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2Movie when passengers on the subway pass an unmasked, vulnerable Peter Parker. Miles Morales solves a puzzle by discovering secret messages in the public art of local BIPOC artists, and helps a friend by guiding his favorite pigeons away from the crowded piers of Manhattan’s Battery to a tree-filled park in Queens. Rather than work for J. Jonah Jameson, you take photos of “the real New York” for crosstown editor Robbie Robertson, who muses about beautiful murals, backyard get-togethers, and the mythological NYC spirit.

Spider-Man is shocked to overhear some juicy gossip as two single parents dance around setting up a date. It’s so hard to find love in NYC!

As a youngster, I was enchanted by Spider-Man. As a kid, I couldn’t imagine, let alone relate to, beating up bullies. What about lending a helping hand? That, I understood.

Growing up, I was surrounded by firefighters and paramedics. My dad was a chief in the town’s fire department. I’m ashamed to confess that, only this month, while working through this game, did it hit me why Spider-Man was my superhero: He’s just like my father. Selfless. Constantly putting himself in harm’s way, but never talking about it. He too struggled to balance the job’s hours with his home life, but whenever he was around, he offered a big smile, a listening ear, and unflagging energy to help with the problem of the day. The problem could be as simple as some algebra homework.

Firefighters check on a civilian at the scene of a traumatic event in Spider-Man 2.

Miles Morales, wearing the Bodega Cat Spider-Man costume, talks with two paramedics standing in front of an ambulance in Spider-Man 2.

A paramedic helps a young person to their feet in Spider-Man 2.

Good Guys beat Bad Guys. But the world is increasingly complex, so creating a “good superhero” isn’t as simple as giving someone a mask and telling them to kick a bunch of ass. That’s half the job, and one both Spider-Mans still embody. The game — like practically any Spider-Man text — still believes that the state should have a monopoly on violence.

Every hero also has another part to their role: the work they do once all that asskicking is done. And it’s here where superheroes (and first responders) have the opportunity to serve people, not just a notion of justice.

I’ve always been grateful for my dad’s mentorship in life, but now I can look back deep into my childhood and see that every time we read Spider-Man together, he brought himself to the text. On a deep level, he showed me how to love Spidey.

That’s who I see in Spider-Man 2.

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