To aid cleanup of some Wall of Text examples from YMMV.Dark Web
- Unintentionally Unsympathetic: The crossover's two main villains are unwanted clones who have been subject to many years of mistreatment from the universe and just want to regain the memories that were taken from them, but they end up draining their sympathy.
- Madelyne Pryor, the Goblin Queen, wants the X-Men (and Jean Grey in particular) to pay for stealing her happy life. She uses Chasm, Hallows' Eve, a brainwashed Venom, and the legions of Limbo as a distraction so that she can retrieve a Cerebro unit holding her memories of her son Cable's childhood, which were once given to Jean Grey. Once Jean and the X-Men talk Madelyne down, and Jean shares the memories with her - with the caveat that Madelyne must stop her invasion. The narrative tries to paint Madelyne's actions in a sympathetic light, but her sudden Heel–Face Turn not only flies in the face of decades of needless antagonism towards the X-Men, but also fails to recognize the sheer scale of collateral damage her plan caused, particularly for Eddie Brock who was blackmailed into participation just to find his son again. From here, joining the X-Men in stopping the invasion of Limbo could be interpreted either as wanting to make amends for her constant needless antagonism of the X-Men or deciding that Ben and Janine have fulfilled their purpose as distractions and thus no longer worth helping. In the end, Madelyne regains her role as Queen of Limbo, back on good relations with the X-Men, and is even allowed to keep a portal to Limbo open as a new embassy. All in all, considering the amount of help she gave Chasm and Hallows' Eve, how she and Chasm share responsibility in turning Eddie Brock into Bedlam, and the number of deaths caused by the demons of Limbo, many fans think she was far too Easily Forgiven, especially as she effectively got everything she wanted.
- Chasm wants to steal his memories back from Spider-Man, even starting with extra sympathy points for the accident that turned him into Chasm and his stay in Limbo causing him to suffer nightmares and hallucinations, painting him as not evil for its own sake but someone who is extremely mentally ill and in need of help but pushed to extremes due to paranoia and no longer being able to trust anyone save those who he feels have suffered like he has i.e. Madelyne Pryor and Janine. However, once Chasm actually springs into action, the reader begins to find it impossible to retain their sympathies because his own plans and motives become impossible to follow. Between his initial plan to use the invasion of Limbo to draw Spider-Man into a fight for revenge and to make him give up his memories, being sidetracked to beat down the reformed Norman Osborn as revenge for killing him and antagonize members of Spider-Man's supporting cast, his second major plan to use demons to psychologically torment Peter Parker through an over-the-top reenactment of his life working at the Daily Bugle into eating a demon fruit to give up his soul, his third major plan to transform random demons into Limbo-themed versions of Spier-Man's rogue's gallery to prolong his torment along with enhancing the chaos of the demon invasion, and his final off-the-cuff plan to simply take over Limbo with Hallows' Eve and destroy New York City as its new king, it becomes impossible for readers to keep track of what he's even trying to accomplish, let alone whether he still wants his memories back or if he just wants to torment Spider-Man. If it were the former goal, not only has he been shown using magic to steal memories before with Madelyne Pryor's help, fans have pointed out that the X-Men (with Peter's permission) could easily have pacified Chasm by offering to copy Peter's portion of Ben's missing memories into him like they did to help Madelyne. If it were the latter, then Peter himself points out that Chasm not only did not need to involve anyone else in their quarrel, but that all of his attempts to torture Peter are a massive waste of time due to hinging on a fundamental misunderstanding of Peter Parker/Spider-Man's nature as the Determinator. It really doesn't help that the story itself comments through Spider-Man and Madelyne that Chasm's frayed sanity and obsession with Spider-Man mean none of his plans ever had any internal logic behind them beyond making Peter Parker and New York City as a whole suffer. On a lesser scale, compared to Madelyne Pryor, Hallows' Eve, and the brainwashed Venom, Chasm still carries Ben's/Peter's tendency to joke and quip in all but the most serious situations, making it ambiguous whether the reader is meant to take Chasm's angst and gallows humor regarding his losses at face value or to laugh along with the dark humor and over-the-top hamminess he engages in with abundance during the story. In essence, the narrative's attempts to establish Chasm as Eviler than Thou compared to Madelyne Pryor, along with his general Sanity Slippage, makes Chasm impossible to root for due to falling into Stupid Evil territory right at the start and never stopping. Even Chasm's ultimate fate is confused on whether the reader is meant to pity or scorn Chasm, as he's made to take the entirety of the blame for planning the invasion of Limbo, left imprisoned and alone in the new embassy in comfortable surroundings as a small concession on Madelyne's part for involving him in all of this, before the story seemingly tries to slam the door shut on any remaining sympathy points by showing Chasm giving Madelyne and Peter's offers to help him the silent treatment in favor of angrily brooding over his losses. Overall, readers are left confused on whether to consider the narrative is asking them to consider Ben a sympathetic victim of circumstance due to his clear mental illness and being an ignorant pawn in someone else's conflict until he was discarded, or an irredeemable monster due to his gleeful slide down into Stupid Evil once cut loose by Madelyne and unrepentant nature. Many can't even decide if Ben would even go to such extreme measures in the first place were he not crazy-town banana-pants for the sake of having a final villain.
- To a lesser degree, the X-Men and Spider-Man themselves have been called out by the readers for their seeming initial lack of sympathy for Madelyne and Chasm's plights and shared history between them, although it's eventually subverted by the X-Men taking the time to talk to Madelyne and help her instead of just beating her down and Spider-Man making it clear that he ultimately wants to help Ben, but his priorities lie with stopping Chasm from destroying New York first before he can do that.
