THE FRIDAY FIVE: TOP FIVE WORST SPIDER MAN STORIES OF ALL TIME
It’s Friday, and that means it’s time for another installment of The Friday Five, your weekly countdown from the world of nerd! This week: THE FIVE WORST SPIDER MAN STORIES EVER!
A little background to start, I have been reading Spider Man comics since I was 4 years old. My mother’s fateful decision to buy me a copy of Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider Man # 68 led me down a path of nerdom that has lasted a lifetime and I still ready Spidey to this day. Needless to say, I have seen some highs and lows when it comes to my favorite superhero. Certainly, there are lots of silly and even flat out terrible comics featuring the Wall Crawler over the years, but these stores… are on a whole other level.
Spider Man has one of the best and most timeless origin tales in all of comics. Even non comic readers can give you the basics of Peter refusing to stop a thief who later kills his Uncle. As Marvels Spider Man comic line was limping out of the mess of The Clone Saga (more on that later) and the declining sales and fan anger it brought, they had a great idea: revamp Spider Mans origin to make it more accessible for the late 90s! Fading former superstar artist/writer John Byrne was brought in as sole creator on the mini-series and Marvel declared that this would now be Spider Mans origin going forward. Ok, so, we have a creator who has done legendary work on X Men and Fantastic Four. Byrne even revamped Superman for DC a decade earlier, so there was a precedent for this possibly being good.
The bad starts right away as Peter gets his powers from an explosion instead of a radioactive spider and Doctor Octopus is also there for no apparent reason to receive his powers. The rest of the series continues on nitpicking weird things and answering the questions we all wanted answered like “Why do Norman Osborn and The Sandman have similar hairstyles?” and “Why did the burglar decide to rob Uncle Bens house?” This god awful retcon was compounded by contradicting the popular “Untold Tales of Spider Man” series that was running at the time and Byrne himself being a complete jerk in interviews about the reception to it. This series is completely ignored now by everyone, despite the hoopla around it at the time. It’s lasting legacy is it’s alternate title: Crapter One.
When Spider Man finally got a movie on the big screen, one major change was that he had organic webshooters. In the comic version of his origin, he makes the webshooters and web fluid in his room. People who make way more money than I do decided that this was too much to ask audiences to accept, that being able to create these items was a step too far in a world where a radioactive spider bite gives you superpowers.
Marvel, in their infinite search for the mythical “new readers” who never arrive, decided to make sure the comic version of Spidey had organic webshooters, too. The problem was that he’s had mechanical ones for a long time so they needed a good story based reason for him not to. Yeah.
I barely know where to start with this colossal turd. Spider Man fights a new enemy, The Queen. She’s been around since fighting in World War II and has a bomb that she wants to use to blow up New York City.
So far, so good….. but….she also controls insect genes (wat) and kisses Peter making him start to mutate into a giant spider. Then he actually does turn into a giant spider and gives birth to himself out of the spiders ass. He saves the day and now has organic webshooters. This sounds batshit insane enough, but imagine it stretched out over four issues. All of the new powers Spidey gained from turning into a giant spider that poops himself out were quickly forgotten or never referenced again.
This is a terrible story. That there are 3 more ahead of it in the list is a bit terrifying, but never underestimate Marvels refusal to simply make good Spider Man comics over catastrophically bad “events”.
The biggest comics of the 90s were all about big, major changes to characters. Superman died. Batman had his back broken. Green lantern went crazy and killed the Green Lantern Corps. Marvel wanted in on the action AND they wanted a way to get rid of Peter and Mary Jane Watson being married….and they launched a plan to do just that.
For some reason, Marvel really hates Peter and Mary Jane being married. They feel it makes him appear old and hard to relate to. Of course, they couldn’t have them get divorced so over the years we have been subject to lots of terrible stories trying to unmarry them without offending anyone. (more horribleness to come from this idea)
Their master plan? To take Spider Mans clone from a one off wacky story in the 70s and have him show up and be the real Spider Man! You see, Spider Man fought a clone of himself, won, and that was that. But was it? Maybe the clone really won! You’ve been reading the fake Spider Man all along! Whoops!
Over the course of an excruciatingly long saga, the Peter we’ve been reading for the last twenty years is revealed to be a fake and a new “Peter” named Ben Reilly shows up and is the real Peter. While Ben is wearing one of the best “so bad it’s good” costumes of all time as the Scarlet Spider (a hoodie over a unitard), Peter is falling into madness, running around declaring “I AM SPIDER”, being a big jerk and HITTING HIS PREGNANT WIFE.
The end result of all of this was Peter and MJ leaving to raise a baby while Ben takes over as the real Spider Man. To say it was a bad story is underselling it. The backlash was enormous, as fans were furious that they were reading the “fake” Spidey for years and sales tanked. I stopped reading Spider Man comics for the first time ever in my life and wrote a profanity laced letter to Marvel.
Eventually Peter came back and Ben was revealed as the actual clone. Then Ben melted into a puddle. It was nearly a decade before any of this would even be mentioned in passing in a Spider Man comic.
2) Sins Past
What could possibly be worse than the Clone Saga? I give to you: Sins Past. In this absolute abomination of a Spider Man story line, we find out that Peters high school sweetheart Gwen Stacy HAD SEX WITH THE GREEN GOBLIN AND GAVE BIRTH TO TWINS. Jesus Christ. Not only did this retroactively happen, but THE TWINS HAVE SUPER FAST AGING SO NOW THEY ARE ADULTS WHO ARE BACK FOR REVENGE. Also: MARY JANE KNEW ABOUT THIS AND NEVER TOLD PETER.
I can only imagine what the pitch for this was. “Hey, I know we hate having Peter married, but what if his high school sweetheart had sex with his greatest enemy?” Needless to say it’s worse than you can imagine, and the art even includes a glimpse of the Goblins O face. Eventually, Spidey defeats his ex-girlfriends super powered kids and then he decides to hang out with the female twin. THEN HE TALKS ABOUT HOW HOT SHE IS. If I defecated on a paper it would be a better comic than this.
In a recurring theme, no one ever mentions this ever again. Behind the scenes, everyone blames the other person for how this could even be published. In over thirty years of reading comics, including buying NFL Superpro off the rack, this is borderline the worst comic story line I have ever read….but, it’s not the worst Spidey story line. Imagine that.
1) One More Day
If we’ve learned one thing so far, it’s that Marvel is willing to write some god awful story lines to achieve what they want editorially. It was decided that Peter and Mary Jane would no longer be married and this complete piece of garbage was how they did it.
In this tale, Aunt May is shot by a sniper aiming for Peter. Being very old, she is dying from the wound. Peter goes to literally ANYONE in the entire universe to try and save her, from Doctor Strange and the High Evolutionary to Reed Richards and Doctor Octopus. Not a single super scientist or sorcerer can save her from a gunshot wound. Not one. The High Evolutionary has made a race of people out of genetic engineering cows, but in this story he can’t save an old lady from a gunshot.
Suddenly a new player enters the game, and it’s Mephisto, Marvels version of the devil. He’s got a hell of a deal on the table: he will save Aunt May in exchange for Peter and Mary Jane’s love and marriage.
Of course, Spidey laughs in his face and we have a happy ending……. Oh. Wait. PETER AND MARY JANE DECIDE THIS IS A GREAT IDEA AND SELL THEIR TRUE LOVE TO SATAN.
Let me repeat that for you, to save the life of his Aunt who is so old she will probably die in a few years anyway, Peter willingly SELLS HIS TRUE LOVE TO SATAN.
Wow. What an uplifting tale. Mephisto gladly accepts and poof, suddenly we’re in a world where Peter is single and Aunt May is alive and no one knows any different. It has never been explained as to how all other heroes who interacted with Spider Man and attended his wedding are affected by this. Marvel editorial simply said “It’s magic!” and moved on.
Personally, this marked the last time I read Spider Man comics on a regular basis. After reading the final part of this story line, I said “Fuck this.” And threw it into the trash where it belongs.
Fan backlash was severe and filled with rage. Marvel this time rode it out and has never changed it. I can’t fathom another story could possibly be worse than this, but we all know that some hack writer is out there dreaming up the next big event!
And that wraps up this week’s Friday Five! Don’t forget to send us feedback through email: sowizardpodcast@yahoo.com or social media and join us back here next week for another top 5 countdown from the world of nerd on The Friday Five!