YMMV / The Amazing Spider-Man (J. Michael Straczynski)

• Audience-Alienating Ending: Straczynski's run was critically acclaimed and, alongside Raimi's Spider-Man Trilogy and Bendis' Ultimate Spider-Man, was a major contributor to Spider-Man's popularity during The 2000s. However, a significant amount of readers advise new fans to skip it (or at least its second half), since the story reaches its conclusion in One More Day, widely regarded as the worst Spider-Man story ever written.
• Catharsis Factor: Spider-Man giving Kingpin a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown in prison with his mask off for him indirectly shooting Aunt May, then choosing to spare him so everyone will know he can be beaten is ABSOLUTELY SATISFYING.
• The Chris Carter Effect: Nothing was ever really explained regarding the whole Totem thing, and eventually it grew into a Kudzu Plot, thanks to The Other (why did Morlun come back from the dead? What was Miss Arrow? Why did the Spider-God resurrect Peter after he was 'killed' by Morlun when it would have violated the natural order?) Sad part is that everything was explained in an acceptable way before the Other came and threw loads of questions. Which is one of the reasons why many people consider it the point the run started going downhill.
• Complete Monster: "Shade", real name Jacob "Jake" Nash, from issues #40-42, is a criminal who betrayed his cultist cellmate Richard Cranston to steal his ritual that enables access to the Astral Plane. When the ritual was tampered with, Shade gained the abilities of phase shifting and super strength, and began accessing the physical plane by trapping innocents inside the Astral Plane and feeding off their life energy—most often runaway or homeless children—and then uses his time on the physical realm to commit crimes and hire himself out to gang members. When Spider-Man demands to know why Shade is subjecting hundreds of people to the terrible torment of the Astral Plane prison he has constructed, Shade smirks and proclaims "Just for kicks".
• Fanon Discontinuity: Different groups of fans consider different parts of the run as discontinuity. Many fans would rather just forget anything to do with Sins Past or the Totem issue and don't consider them part of Spidey's official universe, for some only Sins Past didn't happen, for certain parts of the fandom The Other and/or everything after it happens in "Quesadaverse" is not regular continuity, and for loads of people there's no such thing as One More Day.
• Faux Symbolism: According to John Romita Jr., it was him who wanted to do the crying Doctor Doom scene (JMS only wanted to put Doom there, the other villains and crying were JR Jr.'s idea). He also claims that it was only a symbolic expression of how he felt about 9/11.
• Harsher in Hindsight: After May finds out Peter's secret and tells him gravely that they need to talk, Peter starts worrying and thinking of all the things that she could need to tell him so direly. His mind flashes between "I have six months to live", "Mary Jane has six months to live", "the planet has six months to live"... and then in a moment of levity, to "Doctor Octopus has six months to live. So, do you want to go out for pizza?" Now, over a decade after the scene in question, consider how Amazing Spider-Man ends with Doctor Octopus having only a short time to live... and deciding to take the world with him. Then revealing this was a distraction for his true plan: pulling a Grand Theft Me on Spider-Man, and that it works. Not so funny now, is it Pete?
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The original intent of "Sins Past" was to have Peter be the father of Gwen's kids, but Marvel vetoed that. In other words, a comic book company objected to a development in which their flagship character would've been labelled a deadbeat dad. Heh, heh, heh...
• Memetic Mutation: Norman Osborn's O-face ^{Explanation (spoilers and slightly NSFW)}When Peter is learning of Norman and Gwen's affair that produced Sarah and Gabriel, we are shown them doing the deed, with Norman making this face◊. For obvious reasons, this became extremely infamous.
• Never Live It Down:
  • Some people cannot stand that Spider-Man told Morlun that he is the first villain who ever pissed him off. Hyperbole is to be expected, but considering that there's a certain villain that killed his first love it's no wonder that people are pissed at blatant Villain Shilling. There was also the "never been hit that hard before" moment in the same story. Reaction was similar and Peter David couldn't resist poking fun in a Friendly Neighborhood issue.
  • Doctor Doom crying over 9/11 despite the fact that he does much worse things on the regular with zero regrets.
• Seasonal Rot: The JMS run is generally agreed to have started out very good, with some cool new additions to Spidey's Rogues Gallery and the introduction of a solid Myth Arc. But then much of his goodwill ended with storylines like Sins Past, and The Other. The Myth Arc thus became a tangled mess and the book's quality severely degraded from there, which took several years to recover from completely. On top of it all, Civil War came along, and Joe Quesada began ruthlessly meddling in nearly everything with the storyline ending with One More Day, one of all the time worst stories, not only in Spider-Man but comics and any media.
• Signature Scene:
  • The entire issue where Peter and Aunt May discuss his Secret Identity and his past. Known as "The Conversation". It was so well liked that a version of it appeared in Ultimate Spider-Man and Kevin Feige cited it as his inspiration for the end of Spider-Man: Homecoming where May learns about Peter's double life.
  • "Doomed Affairs" (Issue #50 of Amazing Spider-Man Vol. 2) is known and liked for its instant classic cover art, and for being the issue where Peter and MJ reconcile at the airport and commit to their marriage, while in-between Peter has to stop some assassins from attacking Doctor Doom and later tells the ruler of Latveria to take his gratitude and stuff it.
  • Captain America's "Plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth and tell the whole world 'No. You move.'" speech is from ASM #537, the tie-in with Civil War. It's so iconic it got adapted into the movie.
  • The fight scene at the prison in Back in Black between an unmasked Peter and The Kingpin where Peter gives Fisk the beating of a lifetime is considered the high point of the run.
• Squick: The Reveal from Sins Past. Gwen Stacy slept with Norman Osborn, and has children with him. Needless to say, more than a few fans don't take kindly to that. Even those who ship Peter/MJ disapproved of this change and consider it disrespectful to make Gwen cheat on Peter, least of all with the older man who killed her.
• Tear Jerker:
  • In the 9/11 issue, when Spider-Man is trying to take a young boy from Ground Zero. The kid explains that he is waiting for his dad, a firefighter, when he sees his father's dead body begin being moved from the rubble. Cue the scream of despair.
  • Peter's fury when he finds out about Gwen and Norman in Sins Past.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • The 9/11 issue, where it's revealed that even numerous big-shot supervillains were horrified by all the innocent lives lost in the attack and pitched in to help. Problem here is that many of these villains (namely Doctor Doom, who the narrative specifically focuses on) have had little to no qualms against the mass loss of innocent lives in the past and routinely make Al-Qaeda look like playground bullies in scope, making this come across as more insincere hypocrisy than any genuine standards.
  • It's especially noticable that Juggernaut is one of the villains put in here, as a decade before the events of 9/11, he destroyed one of the twin towers in an issue of X-Force (1991) and bursted out in laughter after the fact. That makes his presence here, mourning the damage and death of the people caused by the destruction even more awkward and out of place.

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