Peter Parker: Spider-Man is a superhero comic from Marvel that ran from 1998 to 2003, and was relaunched from Spider-Man (Vol. 1).note Written by Howard Mackie, Paul Jenkins, and Zeb Wells and illustrated by a variety of artists including John Romita Jr., Mark Buckingham, Joe Bennett, Charlie Adlard, Staz Johnson, Michael O'Hare, and Francisco Herrera; the series ties in closely with the other Spider-Man comics of the late 1990s, The Amazing Spider-Man (Vol. 2) and The Spectacular Spider-Man (Vol. 1).
Spider-Man's run of bad luck hits rock-bottom as he finds himself dealing with the appearance of an all-new surprisingly feminine Spider-Man—unmasked as J. Jonah Jameson's teenaged niece Mattie Franklin, teaming up with the X-Men, and fending off Venom's relapse into brain-eating villainy and attempt to devour the other members of the Sinister Six—all while struggling with depression following the apparent death of Mary Jane, his wife. Although Mary Jane's return puts the spark of hope back into Peter's life, Spider-Man finds himself swept up in a corporate conspiracy while dealing with the return of villains such as the Green Goblin, the Scorpion, and the rebirth of the Sandman.
Peter Parker: Spider-Man includes examples of the following tropes:
- Actually Pretty Funny: In Peter Parker: Spider-Man #47, when Green Goblin tells Spider-Man what he was briefly going to call himself, they both start laughing.Green Goblin: I wasn't always going to call myself "Green Goblin". At first, I was going to call myself "Mister Coffee". Can you imagine how weird the last few years would have been if I'd done that?
[pause]
[both crack up laughing]
Spidey: Heh-ha-ha! Look out kids, it's Mister Coffee and his latte of doom!
Goblin: Oh God, stop! - Affirmative-Action Legacy: When Peter quits being Spider-Man at the end of the previous volume, a new Spider-Man pops up—one with a surprisingly feminine figure. She's eventually unmasked as J. Jonah Jameson's teenaged niece Mattie Franklin, who obtained spider-powers as a result of the Gathering of Five ritual that happened at the end of Spider-Man.
- Anti-Hero: Tara Virango was a survivor of AGK Corporation's illegal bioweapons experiments, where they unleashed a nanometal virus on the Bangladeshi village of Malpura—killing four thousand people. The virus unlocking her latent mutant powers, Tara came to New York seeking revenge and encountered Spider-Man in the process.
- Assimilation Backfire: Venom rips the Carnage symbiote out of Cletus Kasady and eats it in order to grow more powerful by assimilating it, but the Carnage symbiote fights back—giving him hiccups and causing red Tainted Veins to form across his body. On the brink of killing both Spider-Man and J. Jonah Jameson, Venom is so put off by this development that he decides to retreat until his indigestion subsides.
- Brought Down to Normal: After being stripped of the Carnage symbiote by Venom, Cletus Kasady still tries to operate as Carnage by drenching himself in red paint and going on a killing spree... but is easily shut-down by Spider-Man.
- Continuity Overlap: During the end of the 1990s, the series crossed over with the concurrently published The Amazing Spider-Man (Vol. 2) and The Spectacular Spider-Man (Vol. 1).
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Venom easily tears through dozens of guards armed with anti-symbiote weaponry, boasting that he's effectively immune now, and rips the Carnage symbiote out of the terrified Cletus Kasady. Despite this, six issues later Spider-Man hands him a humiliating defeat by turning a rolled-up newspaper into a torch.
- Disney Death: The Sandman, alias Flint Marko/William Baker, is fatally injured after Venom bites a chunk out of him. He crumbles to pieces lamenting having led a life of crime... only to more-or-less come back from the dead at the end of the series.
- Enlightened Antagonist: Enigma, aka Tara Virango, from Peter Parker: Spider-Man #48-#49, is a woman from Bangladesh who gained supernatural powers and a mystical connection to the Buddhist goddess Tara after being infected with a nano-virus (she is a survivor of an environmental disaster during which her native village was exposed to the viral outbreak). She starts out as a semi-antagonist to Spider-Man, having stolen the precious Star of Persia diamond and even physically attacking Peter on one occasion. However, he soon learns that her motives are noble: she seeks to prove that the outbreak was not an accident, but a deliberate release of a biological agent ordered by the Corrupt Corporate Executives of the company that developed the virus (and the reason why she stole the diamond was that she wanted to demand a large compensation to the survivors to be paid as ransom for it). Once Spider-Man realizes the truth, he joins Enigma's side and helps her defeat the corporate executives.
- Evil vs. Evil: Venom, having relapsed into villainy, hunts down and tries to kill Kraven the Hunter and the Sandman for mocking the symbiote's weaknesses during their short-lived tenure as a member of the Sinister Six.
- Face–Heel Turn: After operating as an antihero throughout most of the 1990s, Eddie Brock relapses into gleeful villainy after getting amnesia in Venom: The Finale, even murdering innocents and eating people, while hellbent on revenge against the Sinister Six for mocking the symbiote's weaknesses.
- Heroic Spirit: In Peter Parker: Spider-Man #30-#32, Spidey also fought off a broken neck. Of course, it wasn't really broken, but with the villain in question (Fusion) being a Master of Illusion, he didn't know that until he was clenching his fists and standing up for another go.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: #16 has a depressed Spider-Man going through the motions of fighting crime while complaining about all the tropes and clichés that have accompanied him since he became Spider-Man.
- Literal Split Personality: Sandman had this happen to him in the finale of Peter Parker: Spider-Man. He got split into his core, his childhood self, his feminine side, and unfortunately, his evil side in order to handwave why he stayed a crook.
- Make Way for the New Villains: Or rather, the return of the old. Eddie Brock's relapse into villainy was prefigured by Venom ripping the Carnage symbiote out of Cletus Kasady and devouring it to become more powerful than ever.
- No-Sell: Venom unleashes a Curb-Stomp Battle on guards armed with anti-symbiote weaponry in order to get to Carnage, who is utterly terrified of him and begs for mercy only to have the symbiote ripped out of him. Six issues later, however, Spider-Man chases him off with a newspaper torch.
- Put on a Bus: Enigma (Tara Virango) and Virus (Mr. Corman) disappeared after #49 and neither have been seen or mentioned since, leaving their plot arc unresolved.
- Recycled Title: While relaunched from the adjective-less Spider-Man, the series shares a name with a series of short comics Stan Lee and Steve Ditko penned in the 1960s.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: After Venom starts eating him during their brawl, Sandman bails in horror and disgust.
- Suspiciously Similar Substitute:
- New villain the Squid (Donald Callahan) is effectively a discount Doctor Octopus with organic cephalopod powers, which Spider-Man mockingly points out in #16.
- The nanometal virus the AGK Corporation created resembles and behaves a lot like a symbiote, even bonding to Mr. Corman like one, but is completely unrelated.
- To Serve Man: Having relapsed into villainy, Venom has zero compunctions about killing innocents or eating people this time, picking off the Daily Bugle employees while hunting for the Sandman and taking a huge bite out of Flint Marko during their fight.
