Line #6 Fridge/SpiderMan


1	!!Comics
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3	[[AC:Fridge Brilliance]]
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5	* In the first Carnage comic, Carnage escapes an attack by Spider-Man and Venom by grabbing a baby and throwing it out of the window. As they jump after it and realise they won't get to it in time, they both shoot webs, both hitting the baby - one in the head and one in the chest, catching it before it hits the ground. It seems hitting the forehead was an accident - until you realise this was exactly what they needed to (very narrowly) avoid a Gwen Stacy scenario. How did Venom know how to aim? Symbiote memories.
6	* Fridge/OneMoreDay
7	* The Venom symbiote bonding to Mac Gargan (the former Scorpion) makes perfect sense in hindsight. The symbiote originally bonded to Spider-Man and got hooked on his enhanced spider powers. Ever since they were separated, it always secretly wanted to return to him. It settled for Eddie Brock because he had a certain kind of cancer which provided the adrenaline the symbiote needed as a substitute and he also shared the symbiote's hatred of Spider-Man. With Gargan, it has the best of both worlds! Gargan has genetically-engineered arachnid powers similar to Spider-Man, and shares the symbiote's hate for him.
8	* I just realized that it's likely that Spidey chose red and blue deliberately, and why he doesn't switch to a black costume all that often. He's wearing a full-body suit (no skin showing), and he slinks around in odd postures. He looks downright creepy. The red and blue outfit could be his way of lightening up his appearance so others aren't freaked out by him.
9	** It was originally a costume made for performing on television, so it needed to be flamboyant and exciting.
10	** This can also get turned on its head when you look at [[BlueOniRedOni Venom and Carnage.]] Carnage is red, and Venom is, DependingOnTheArtist, blue. Since they're both {{Evil Counterpart}}s to Spidey ([[EvilVersusEvil and each other]]), it's almost convenient that they're colored in a way that can turn Spidey's bright coloring and flip it ''right'' back to the frightening level he was actively trying to avoid.
11	*** But they also have a lot of overtones of black. Carnage is red with a lot of black mixed in, and Venom is dark blue at best, but almost always black. Even if they are meant to be Spider-Man's own colours, they're more grimy, ugly, evil versions of them (fitting since that's what both Venom and Carnage technically are: evil versions of Spider-Man)
12	* After a decade and a half long mystery, the true identity of the Hobgoblin ended up being Roderick Kingsley, the fashion designer. And back in the Hobgoblin's first issue, when the mysterious figure finds the Green Goblin's stuff, what's the very first thing he does? He didn't upgrade the weapons, he didn't improve the glider; no, the very first thing he did was ''change the costume.''
13	* Spider-Man's most notable enemies are demonically possessed. Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus, The Lizard, and Venom all have some element of duality to them: Norman Osborn and The Green Goblin are distinct personalities, Curt Connors and The Lizard are similarly two separate entities, Venom is composed of Eddie Brock and The Symbiote, as is Carnage only with Cletus Cassidy and Doctor Octopus is (at least in the second film) being controlled by his A.I. robotic arms. This may not seem overly significant at first, but each of them can also represent one of the seven deadly sins: Greed (Green Goblin), Pride (Doc Ock), Envy (The Lizard), Wrath (Venom), Lust (Carnage) and Gluttony (Kingpin). Each character becomes a villain (and thus gains their dualistic nature) by way of their sin: Green Goblin used himself as a test subject for a process that he hoped to make money off of, Doctor Octopus was out to prove what a genius he was, Curt Connors wanted to re-grow his arm to be "normal", it was Eddie Brock's irrational hatred of Spider-Man that attracts, and feeds, the symbiote, Carnage was formed because of Cletus Cassidy's unquenchable thirst for destruction and bloodshed and, while not dualistic, the Kingpin has been taken over by his ever-consuming desire to expand and diversify his already exceedingly large criminal empire. If you look at the dual identity of each villain as the patron demon of their particular sin, each character "called" the demon to them through their sins, and became possessed. As yet, I can't think of any Spider-Man villains that represent the other Deadly Sin, maybe because Sloth would probably make a really stupid villain.
14	** Black Cat could also count as a representative for Lust. After all, she and Spider-Man have had sex a few times.
15	** Mysterio would be sloth, considering he prefers to sit back & let his illusions take care of the fighting as opposed to get his hands dirty, and the he became Mysterio because it was an easy (read: lazy) way to get famous.
16	** Potentially, ''Spider-Man'' himself represents Sloth. While his powers were an accident he had no control over, he didn't truly become Spider-Man until he ''didn't act'', letting a robber get away which lead to the death of Uncle Ben. He got his powers without doing anything, he lost his uncle because he didn't do anything... and when he decided to start acting, only then did he become a hero.
17	** Applying this theory to the rouges gallery makes me realize that Spidey, at one point or another, has shown to have ALL of these sins and his main enemies represent what he could end up as if he didn't have any self-control or wasn't such a good guy:
18	*** Greed (Green Goblin): Peter's always been on the edge of poverty, becoming Spider-Man in the first place to make cash for himself as well as for his aunt and uncle, but he never goes into full greed mode due to his personal responsibilities. Norman, on the other hand, partly due to how his dad ended up ruining himself and taking his rage out on him, obsessively tries to get more and more power, no matter who he ends up hurting, including his own family.
19	*** Pride (Doc Ock): Peter has pride in his abilities, but balances it out with his humbleness or whenever he gets knocked down a peg in his life; Otto Octavius is so full of himself, he obsessively devotes himself to ruling the world schemes or destroying Spider-Man, at one point taking over Peter's body thinking he could be a "superior" Spider-Man.
20	*** Envy (The Lizard): Peter complains a lot about how balancing a social life and a career along with a superhero's life is, sometimes wanting to flat out retire, doing so for a while, until he realizes that people still need Spider-Man. Curt Connors wants to be normal so bad, he'd risked becoming a human-lizard monster who either tries to take over the world with reptiles or freaking ''eats people''.
21	*** Wrath (Venom): He already beats bad guys up, but God help you when you piss off Spider-man enough that ''murder'' becomes an option. Thankfully, he (for the most part) has never gone too far with the murder thing, at least not to Punisher-levels. Venom, on the other hand, has brutally killed, even eaten, people, including some innocents in his early days. He still kills and eats baddies while operating as an antihero, but usually tries to avoid innocent people.
22	* Spider-Man's strength. It's always been said that Spider-Man has the proportional strength of a spider. But, honestly, a spider's strength isn't nearly the same as Peter. But then I realized, he doesn't have the proportional strength of a spider. He has the proportional strength of a '''radioactive/genetically altered''' spider. That extra change in the spider's DNA might very well have increased its strength by 2, 10, even 50 fold. No wonder he's so strong!
23	* Adaptations tend to make Aunt May younger than she is in the comics; this is likely to add more impact if the writers ever chose to kill her off. After all, a 90-year old May wouldn't have that long left anyway, but if May were around 60, her dying would feel more tragic as she could still have had decades left in her life.
24	** It's also more realstic, since they're meant to be about the same age as Peter's parents would be (being that his Uncle Ben was his father's brother), but they often look more like grandparents. It's actually more sensible to have an aunt / uncle be aged around 50 / 60 than the usual silver-haired versions we get
25	* How come the Daily Bugle gets away with printing so much hatred towards Spider-Man? Surely after a while someone would attempt to sue them for defamation or outright libel, but the answer is very simple: there's no evidence to the contrary. People like Flash Thompson can insist all they want that Spider-Man is a hero, that doesn't mean that they can prove it. All the public sees of Spider-Man is a guy in a mask who patrols the city and assaults civillians, claiming they were committing crimes. Even if the civillians in question wind up being arrested, as Jameson brings up, how do we know Spider-Man isn't in league with the thugs and double-crossing them at the last minute? In short, the Daily Bugle is considered the most trusted opinion on Spider-Man since it represents how the public feels on him.
26	* Norman is the {{Foil}}/EvilCounterpart of Peter in more ways than one. Both are hardworking; (sometimes) aloof geniuses, yes, but it's amazing how they parallel each other as well in many other ways: Peter is working class, and one of the themes of Spider-Man is him struggling his superhero life with normal everyday struggles (work, college, paying bills). While Norman came from a bankrupt family, he eventually rose to power to become an influential billionaire. He almost never struggles in the same manner as Peter does. Peter is responsible, in the way that when a situation gets complicated, he's the first one to make the necessary sacrifices to help his loved ones (while not having much of his own to give away). Norman is a man who has everything; yet when things go crumbling down, instead of admitting his involvement in the problem, he sticks his fingers in his ears and puts on a Halloween costume like a little kid would, completely ignoring the issue. Peter may have really bad luck; but his loved ones genuinely care for him and support him, even when things get rough. Norman instead is only surrounded by asskissers, people who use him for their own benefits, and Harry; who is toxically dependent on him. In short, Norman's ultimate motive is that he wants limitless power without any responsibilities to others whatsoever, and his archfoe is the hero whose motto is literally "with great power comes great responsibility." It makes perfect sense why he is Peter's Arch-Enemy above all the other rogues, he's practically a dark shadow of him.
27	** It's even visible in their choice of transportation devices, both of which reflect their signature personal inventions: Norman's bat-glider reflects his desire to soar above everything, casting his shadow over it; Peter's webbing is all about how he stays tethered and grounded.
28	* Why does Norman [[spoiler:choose the Goblin identity again despite seeing that SanityHasAdvantages after he is "cured?"]] Because his mental problems weren't wholly caused by the Serum, so [[spoiler:simply having it purged from his system doesn't actually make him sane, despite Norman's perception of it.]]
29	* In one of Steve Ditko's last stories in ''Amazing Spider-Man'', there's a very subtle hint that Norman is the Goblin. Someone fires a rifle at Osborn's former partner, Mendel Stromm, causing a fatal heart attack in Stromm. Spider-Man leaps up to the wind from which the shot was fired, and sees no one. But Ditko's art also shows that it's a window high up on a blank exterior wall, with no way of getting to it. Norman is later shown concealing the rifle. The hint is that Norman would need some method of personal flight to get to the window and make the shot. And since the only two Spider-Man villains at the time who could fly were the Vulture and the Goblin, and the Vulture is a bald old man....
30	* Goblins are known in fiction as a ProudMerchantRace and good with technology. Norman is a rich businessman and GadgeteerGenius super villain.
31	* I can't believe it took me this long to figure this out. So, Spider-Man is an AllLovingHero, right? Now remind me [[http://www.lifeprint.com/asl101/images-signs/i_love_you.jpg what the sign language for "I Love You" is again]]?
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33	[[AC:FridgeHorror]]
34	* The fate of Mary Jane's pregnancies count: drugged and forced to miscarry, with the implication being made that the baby MIGHT have survived and was now in the custody of Norman Osborn (Spider-Man's archenemy) and (due to ExecutiveMeddling) the storyline ended up with the baby's namesake (Aunt May, in a stroke-induced coma) instead being Norman's hostage instead! Oh, and this child got erased from existence by ''ComicBook/OneMoreDay''! That's not all though; during One More Day itself, it's revealed that Mary Jane is pregnant again! And Mephisto SPECIFICALLY torments Peter and MJ, as he seduces them into taking his deal, by taking the form of their second child (another girl) as he taunts them with how their deal with the devil will negate this child's existence!
35	** Um... What? It was never claimed MJ was pregnant, in fact, I seem to recall that shortly after the ''ComicBook/OneMoreDay'' was published that Marvel had to come out & clarify that the form Mephisto took wasn't the baby from the Clone Saga or that Mary Jane was pregnant again, as people immediately began questioning if that meant it was ComicBook/SpiderGirl from the MC2 continuity.
36	* Speaking of ''ComicBook/OneMoreDay'', have you noticed the logo for Creator/JoeQuesada's column, [[http://www.hypergeek.ca/wp-content/gallery/press5/cup-o-joe.jpg "Cup O' Joe"?]] Like, the fact none other than Spidey is behind Quesada? [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything You know what that really means?]] The implied meaning of the logo is about Quesada either threatening, teasing, daring, trolling, provoking or irritating the audience (and other writers alike) with the message, ''"if you want to retcon ComicBook/SpiderMan, you have to get past me"''.
37	** Joe Quesada is willing to wreck the Spider-Man fanbase and message because he wants Spidey to go back to his love triangle routes. [[ItsAllAboutMe He's willing to put his enjoyment over the millions of Spidey fans]], and ''he hasn't been fired.'' That's one massive downer for fan-bases in general.
38	* Similarly, the final fate of Ben Reilly: in order to show fans that Ben was a clone all along, it was decided that Ben wouldn't just die, but die horribly via disintegrating into a puddle of goo in his last moments of life, even though it had been firmly established that Jackal's clones only disintegrate into goo after a long period of time.
39	** WordOfGod states that this happened so that everyone knew for certain that Peter wasn't the clone after all.
40	* The ultimate fate of Ned Leeds: while investigating the hot new villain Hobgoblin, you are grabbed and subjected to MindRape, in which the villain uses you as his stand-in to establish an alliance with the mob in order to overthrow the Kingpin after Hobgoblin made an enemy of him. You have periods of black outs and become more and more aggressive, as the mind rape takes hold of your brain. You become more and more angry, driving your wife into the arms of another man and finally, when the Hobgoblin is ready to make you take the fall for him, has you attack both the wife and her lover, unmasking in front of her and causing her to have a mental breakdown (in part because the Hobgoblin had framed Ned's wife's lover for being the Hobgoblin when Flash publicly dissed him on TV). But you don't remember that because of the blackouts and you head off to Europe where you and your only remaining friend stay at a hotel in Berlin, the middle of communist East Germany! Once alone in your room, you have another blackout and wake up dressed as the Hobgoblin! Suddenly the door is broken down and hired assassins MURDER you in gruesome fashion. While one of the assassins takes pictures of you being beaten up, your arm being broken as you try desperately to defend yourself, and finally death by way of having piano wire used to garrote you. OH, then the costume is taken off of you and you are posed as if you were killed by the KGB by your friend. A friend, when confronted with PICTURES of your death (dressed as one of his major enemies), can't be bothered to fucking remember that said villain HAD SUPER-HUMAN STRENGTH, meaning that there is no way that a bunch of assassins would have been able to break your arm, let alone be able to kill you like they did. And no one would fucking care to ask any questions whatsoever, until the villain who ordered the hit "outs" you as the Hobgoblin in a desperate bid to get several of his convictions overturned, after spending years claiming to be the one true Hobgoblin in order to pad his reputation.
41	* In the ''Spider-Man: Noir'' miniseries, May Parker is a proponent of socialism. Keep in mind in the fifties, this would likely result in Peter being blacklisted by his employers or generally used to screw him over later in life by [=McCarthyism=] tactics.
42	** Of course. It wouldn't be Spider-Man if Peter's life wasn't a pain in the ass.
43	* [[http://www.cracked.com/article_19799_5-creepy-superhero-origin-stories-movies-wisely-left-out.html In this comic]] we find out that when Peter Parker was a child he was [[spoiler: molested by older person named Skip]], it is already creepy and gross, but how do we know that Peter wasn't the first child that [[spoiler: Skip molested]]? And we have no idea what happened to him afterwards, so did he continue to [[spoiler:molest children? Let's hope the Punisher put a bullet in his skull.]]
44	* Morbius is trying his best not only to cure himself, because being a vampire [[{{Pun}} sucks]] (apparently) but to cure his mysterious friend [[spoiler: Curt Connors]]. I makes me shudder when I think that poor man would most likely remember that he [[spoiler: killed his own son.]]
45	** [[FromBadToWorse It gets worse.]] [[spoiler: They do succeed at curing The Lizard, but the Curt Connors personality is, apparently, seemingly dead. "Curt" spends all his time faking being human while trying to undo Morbius' cure, while at the same time experiencing human thoughts, emotions, and life. Finally, The Lizard decides to live as a human, until Spider-Man shows up, at which point The Lizard refuses to go to jail and injects his new, improved, Lizard formula. A new cure is devised, and Peter delivers it. It knocks the Lizard out but fails to revert him to human form. . . but it ''does'' bring Curt Connors' personality back, now in the Lizard's body, doomed to spend the rest of his life in jail as a freakish monster.]]
46	* Roderick Kingsley, the original Hobgoblin, comes back to New York to reestablish himself. He goes into one of his old lairs to get some of his gear, and he's summarily ambushed and killed by Phil Urich, the former heroic Green Goblin, who in turn becomes the new Hobgoblin. Fast forward a few dozen issues, and [[spoiler:it's revealed that the Hobgoblin Phil Urich killed was actually Roderick Kingsley's ''twin brother Daniel'', who Kingsley used as a SacrficialLion to make it seem as if he was really dead.]] Naturally, this explains why the Kingsley Hobgoblin went down so easily.
47	* Speaking of Hobgoblin, imagine being a super villain in the marvel universe. You are hated and despised by the city. If you want to regain the trust of the city, you must perform good deeds, or save the earth from an alien invasion. Once you accomplice this, everyone will love you. They will forget about all your past crimes (including murder).
48	** Unless you're in the Avengers of course. Then they probably will never like you.
49	* The Jackal/Dr. Miles Warren: a creepy StalkerWithACrush who not only obsessively follows his student but also possesses the ability to create clones of her. It raises questions about whether he's doing more than merely feeding and brainwashing these clones.
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52	[[AC:Fridge Logic]]

Context Fridge / SpiderMan