Got any cheese?
- The Greatest Black Geek of All Time

"With Great Power Comes Great Possibility"
I got a B in Astronomy.

I really expected to get a C, if for no other reasons than because I refused to buy the textbook and I spent most of my time in lecture drawing the first issue of what I thought was going to be my greatest stick-figure comic book ever.

Steve Urkel: Spider-Man.

It's finally occurred to me that with everything I've got going on (or -- more accurately -- everything I should got going on [I said "more accurately", not "grammatically correct"), I really don't have time to waste on these type of things anymore, so I'm hoping that if I just tell you what I wanted to do with SU:SM, I can put it behind me and get to work on more productive -- and hopefully, lucrative -- projects, or at least go out and get myself a real goddamn life.

The Little Black Duck Universe version of Spider-Man was introduced in the now classic, and largely unread Along Came a Spider. In the opening pages of the story, the Little Black Duck, having recently returned from his temporal-traversing misadventure chronicled in Time Quack goes to visit Albert Einstein in the Chronospere, only to find that the good professor and his new lab assistant, Steven Q. Urkel, are experimenting with radiation. During the Duck's visit, he's bitten by a radioactive spider, and shortly thereafter, Spider-Man battles Doctor Octopus in a manner very reminiscent to the infamous Jesse Hall Fight Scene in the currently MIA Unhappy Duckling.

What was supposed to be the beauty of Along Came a Spider is that the reader is supposed to believe that Spider-Man, who narrates the story, is none other than the Little Black Duck, when he is, in fact, Steve Urkel. And when the Green Goblin shows up, riding a bat-shaped glider, shortly after Batman tells Spider-Man to get out of his town, you're supposed to assume that the Goblin's actually the Dark Knight when it's really the Little Black Duck, who's become insanely jealous of the wall-crawler because Erin Turtle's become infatuated with him.

Whether or not the story works on this level, I'm not sure. Again. Nobody read it.

Anyway, by the end of Along Came a Spider, the Little Black Duck's getting treated in Arkham Asylum, and the amazing fantasy of Spider-Man's secret origin is revealed, which is the same as it ever was, but with Family Matter's indispensible nubian nerd standing in for Peter Parker, and beat cop and infamous Urkel-neighbor Carl Winslow taking a dirt nap instead of Uncle Ben. Steve Urkel: Spider-Man would have picked up where Along Came a Spider left off, with Steve trying to make a life for himself in Wonderland. In the first issue, however, he catches wind of a museum heist in his native Never-Neverland, and returns to his hometown, telling himself that he'll return to Wonderland right after he straightens this out. Of course, during the ensuing aerial battle with the Vulture, Steve realizes what a crime-ridden shithole Never-Neverland's become in his absense, and realizes that he's got to stay.

Steve's greatest concern in the series -- a concern set-up in Along Came a Spider -- would have been that he's lost himself in his role as a superhero. That he's become so comfortable with being Spider-Man, that he doesn't know how to just be Steve Urkel anymore, and this conflict would have come to the foreground in issue #2, "Die Hard in a Dorm," in which Steve, having recently re-enrolled at Never-Neverland University, would attempt to have a nice, quiet evening getting to know the people in his dormitory, only to see it taken over by the Sinister Six, who've laid siege to the building for some bullshit reason I would have come up with eventually. Unable to don his costume without revealing his secret identity, it would have been up to the unmasked Urkel to find a way to save everyone, which he would have done relatively successfully, coming to terms with his civilian identity, though the dorm would have been razed to the ground.

This would have led Steve to move to an apartment building in issue #3, where he would have roomed with the Little Black Penguin, the Little Black Duck's doppelganger introduced in the long-winded and vehemently hated Never-Neverland sequence from The Unhappy Duckling (whereabouts still unknown). The boys would get along smashingly at first, until they meet the girl across the hall, none other than Lana Lang form hit WB series Smallville, the affections of whom they'd both find themselves vying for. At the end of issue #3, after saving Lana from the Sandman as Spider-Man, Steve would receive an package from Batman filled with the bat-glider and other weapons of the Green Goblin sent to him under the auspices of "safe-keeping" on the part of the Dark Knight. The receipt of said package would force him to realize the similarities between the LBP and LBD, and he'd start to wonder if the Penguin would eventually go as nuts over Lana as the Duck ended up going over Erin Turtle, setting up a tension between the two roommates that would carry through as a subplot throughout the first year.

In issue #4, Steve would have finally decided to start selling pictures of his exploits as Spider-Man to the local newspaper, and I would have introduced the Daily Bugle staff, complete with the curmudgeonly J. Jonah Jameson, and intern Rory Gilmore from that adorable Gilmore Girls series. Hitting it off with Rory right away, Steve would have found himself in a bizarre love triangle between her and Lana, which would have been further complicated in issue #9, in which a battle between Spider-Man and Doctor Octopus has grave consequences for Rory's vivacious visiting mother, and as a result, she blames Spider-Man. So Rory would love Steve, but hate Spider-Man, while Lana loves Spider-Man, and has no idea what to think of the shy geek who lives across the hall.

Issues #10 and #11 would have been the big crossover with the Justice League and Little Black Duck. In issue #10, Gorilla Grodd would have led an army of flying monkey's from Oz to conquer Never-Neverland. So when the Justice League shows up, Spider-Man helps out, meeting back up with Batman, who would tell Spider-Man about the Little Black Duck's erratic behaviour (currently being chronicled in "Saga of the Alien Afro" in Scenes from the Next), so in issue #11, he could have returned to Wonderland to help Batman shut the Little Black Duck down. In issue #12, he would have returned to Never-Neverland, only to find himself with a mysterious new black costume that gives him fantastic augmented abilities he would have enjoyed until issue #17, when Batman returns, telling him that he's got important information about his new costume that he'll only give Steve if he agrees to help him avenge the JLA, who've fallen to the might of none other than erstwhile actor and current criminal mastermind John Cusack. This story, "The Coming of the Avengers" would have also crossed over with Scenes from the Next, chronicling an epic battle between Batman's Avengers -- with a rather surprising roster of heroes including Dildo the Drunken Monkey, Clark Kent of Smallville to reconcile his existence with that of the JLA Superman, and Hogwarts trained witch Erin Turtle-- and John Cusack's vast army of Tin Soldiers, with the Little Black Duck and Penny Lane running around in the middle, trying to save Tin. By the conclusion of the story, Steve would have done a patch-work repair job on the JLA Watchtower teleporter to send Penny and the Duck home which would have switched their bodies for what I'm sure will be a hilarious and vaguely disturbing episode in the forthcoming Scenes from the Next. Oh, and Batman would have revealed that Spidey's new costume was an alien parasite, and Steve would have ditched the freaky thing upon his return to Never-Neverland, only for it to bond with Urkel's class rival, Samuel "Screech" Powers, creating Venom.

The sky really would have been the limit after that.

What I'd really been looking forward to in Steve Urkel: Spider-Man would have been the little touches. I was going to have these two low level criminals who get humiliated by Spider-Man throughout the series named Brian and Michael Bendis, eventually building up the Bendis Boys to be a real threat in issue #25. Steve's narration would have made constant references to his grandfather, October Josiah Urkel, a cantakerous old coot who also happened to lead the worker's strikes in the racially-divided Never-Neverland city back in the 50's, and I would have told a flashback tale in which we learn that October Urkel had been close friends with the Little Black Duck's grandfather. And I was going to throw as many classic Urkel catch-phrases into the fight scenes as I could. You know, like "Did I do that?" and "I don't have to take this... I'm going home." And trust me, issue #37's epic battle between Spider-Man and the Urkel-bot would have made you wet your pants.

But I guess it's best to leave all this in Lucien's library of dreams. After all, this all just goes to show my greatest failing as a writer -- and perhaps as a human being:

I'd much rather fuck with other people's characters than create my own.