Art by Alex Saviuk
“What’s wrong with this picture?” the opening page of The Amazing Spider-Man #292 rhetorically asks. “Spider-man swinging above a city skyline is normally a familiar sight – in New York. But the stadium in this background is not Shea, and residents are more used to heroes called ‘Steelers’ and ‘Pirates’ than ‘Spider-Man.’ For this is Pittsburgh, the metropolis Rand-McNally chose as the best city in America in which to live. Unfortunately, it is may soon be known by a rather more sinister legend: as the city where Spider-Man died!”
Pittsburgh has been known by many monikers through the years, from the Steel City to the City of Bridges, to even the City of Champions. Fortunately, the City Where Spider-Man Died never made the list, for although the famed webslinger did indeed face an old nemesis during his visit to Pittsburgh, he not only survived but found time to take in the sights and sounds of the city as well.
As The Amazing Spider-Man #292 notes, the superhero’s sojourn to the Steel City coincided with Rand-McNally naming Pittsburgh as “most livable city” in its 1985 Places Rated Almanac. Gone were the steel mills and the gritty residue of old, replaced by a metropolis that embraced technology, education, and healthcare instead. And it wasn’t just Rand-McNally taking notice – National Geographic Adventure Magazine and Forbes Magazine have likewise lauded the Steel City’s transformation over the years.
Spider-Man didn’t need to read about Pittsburgh in a magazine, however, as he was able to experience the city in person during his 1987 visit. Upon arriving at the airport, for instance, Peter Parker decides to travel to his hotel using his web slinging abilities as Spider-Man as opposed to taking a taxi. As a result, his journey takes him past two Steel City landmarks – Three Rivers Stadium and the University of Pittsburgh’s Cathedral of Learning – before arriving at his lodgings.
Three Rivers Stadium opened on the North Shore of Pittsburgh in July 1970 and served as the home to the Pittsburgh Pirates baseball team and Pittsburgh Steelers football team for the next thirty years. The 1970s were especially fruitful, as the Pirates won two World Series championships and the Steelers racked up four Super Bowl victories during the decade. Conceived as an all-purpose stadium, such legendary musical acts as Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Rolling Stones, and The Who performed at Three Rivers Stadium as well. On August 11, 1985, meanwhile, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band set a Steel City concert record at the time with 65,935 fans in attendance.
While Three Rivers Stadium was imploded in February 2001 to make way for separate baseball and football stadiums, the second landmark passed by a web-slinging Spider-Man remains – the Cathedral of Learning at the University of Pittsburgh. Located in the Oakland neighborhood of the Steel City, the forty-two-story schoolhouse was conceived in 1926 by Chancellor John Bowman, who believed that the neo-Gothic structure would alleviate overcrowding at the university as well serve as a symbol for not only education but the growing city of Pittsburgh as well.
After settling into his hotel room, Peter Parker heads to the suburbs and the home of Mary Jane Watson’s older sister, Gayle. During her youth, MJ’s father Phillip was a college literature professor who couldn’t find success as serious novelist. He took out his frustrations on his wife Madeline and then Gayle. When Madeline finally filed for divorce, she relocated to Pittsburgh, where she died a few years afterwards.
Gayle, meanwhile, married her high school sweetheart and had two children. In Mary Jane’s mind, her older sister was giving up on her dreams for a domesticated life instead, just like their mother. Determined to embrace a different lifestyle, MJ left Pittsburgh for New York City and never looked back. She only now returns to the Steel City because her father – who has since made a career out of stealing historical manuscripts and selling them to private collectors – has ensnared Gayle into his latest criminal escapade.
Mary Jane explains her family’s predicament to Peter Parker while the two walk along the outer path of Point State Park, where the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers meet to form the Ohio River. The strategic value of the location was not lost on either the British or the French when they expanded into the New World. The French initially gained the upper hand in 1754 with the establishment Fort Duquesne, which then fell to the British during the French and Indian War and rebuilt as Fort Pitt.
Unfortunately, the area slowly deteriorated over the next 150 years, becoming overridden with abandoned warehouses and rusty railroad tracks by the 1930s. The city purchased the property in the 1950s and constructed a park in its place, with a fountain installed at the tip of the triangle-shaped landmass. The path that Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson traverse within the pages of The Amazing Spider-Man #292 take them directly past the now iconic fountain.
Mary Jane’s sister Gayle works as a career counselor at Duquesne University. When a rare monograph written by Benjamin Franklin is loaned to the university, Phillip Watson convinces Gayle to steal it. She hid the document until she could sneak it off campus, but security cameras caught her in the act and she was arrested. MJ’s father has now asked his youngest daughter to find the monograph, after which he will leave both siblings alone. Peter Parker agrees to help Mary Jane, and the two soon find themselves at the entrance to the school’s Administration Building.
Duquesne University is located in the Uptown neighborhood of Pittsburgh, on the Bluff of what was first known as Ayer’s Hill and then Boyd’s Hill by early colonists. Established by German immigrant Father Joseph Strub as the Pittsburgh Catholic College of the Holy Ghost in October 1878, it was renamed Duquesne University of the Holy Ghost in 1911. The school opened with forty students and six faculty members but has since grown to over 9,300 graduate and undergraduate students spread out over ten schools, including Business, Education, Law, Music, Pharmacy, and Liberal Arts. The Administration Building, affectionately known as Old Main, was constructed in 1885 and features a statue of Father Strub standing outside.
J. Jonah Jameson – the bombastic editor-in-chief of the Daily Bugle who believes that Spider-Man is a menace to society – once commissioned a robotic suit called a Spider-Slayer from engineer Spencer Smythe, who later became obsessed with killing Spider-Man. When the elder Smythe died, his son Alistair continued both his work and obsession. Alistair Smythe has thus followed Peter Parker to Pittsburgh, where the Spider-Slayer crashes its way into Old Main in pursuit of the superhero.
Parker quickly turns into his alter ego and the resulting clash between Spider-Man and Spider-Slayer leads them away from Duquesne University and into the city itself. Spying one of Pittsburgh’s many bridges – only this one is painted gray as opposed to the more traditional yellow that can be found in the Steel City – Spider-Man quicky heads across it before climbing the Duquesne Incline, which opened in 1877 and still uses it original cars to carry passengers up and down the hill.
Instead of finding an open area to battle the Spider-Slayer, the webslinger discovers the residential neighborhood of Mount Washington when he reaches the top. With the Monongahela River directly below and the downtown Pittsburgh landscape laying before it, Mount Washington offers some of the most spectacular views of the Steel City and is a must-see for any visitor to the ’Burgh. Spider-Man has more pressing concerns, however, and is finally able to defeat Alistair Smythe and his Spider-Slayer before anyone can get hurt.
Afterwards, Peter Parker accompanies Mary Jane Watson to her sister’s house. MJ hands the Benjamin Franklin monograph to her father while extracting a confession from him, which is overheard by police officers standing outside. With Phillip Watson now locked up in jail, MJ’s sister Gayle is merely facing a suspended sentence for her role in the theft – bringing Spider-Man’s adventures in the Steel City, as well as his unintentional sightseeing of the region, to an end.
Anthony Letizia