This thread's for the Spider-Man comics and spin-offs, whether they're decades old or brand new.
- Apart from the main Marvel Universe titles, Ultimate Spider-Man, Spider-Man "What If?" stories, crossovers, guest appearances in other books, Alternate Universe tales and things like Marvel's manga adaptations are all on-topic here.
- Spider-Man 'family' books are on-topic (as are their own crossovers, guest appearances etc.) - e.g. Spider-Man 2099, Miles Morales, Spider-Woman, Silk, Spider-Gwen, Venom, Carnage, Black Cat, Red Goblin and Spider-Verse.
- Characters and comics that originated in Spider-Man but are no longer directly connected to the spider-franchise (e.g. Punisher, Silver Sable) are not on-topic, unless you're discussing historical connections and crossovers. If in doubt, check before you write a long post. If this isn't the right place, there's a more general Marvel Comics thread
which covers them.
Technically, Marvel's Infinity Comics (and their predecessors, Infinite Comics) are webcomics, not comic books, but it's fine to talk about their Spider-Man stories here.
Discussions that are only about Spider-Man adaptations in other media (films, video games etc.) are off-topic, but discussing the differences between the adaptations and the original comics is fine - as long as spoilers for the adaptations are tagged.
Please follow the spoiler policy rules
- tag spoilers for the latest issues, for any previews or content leaks, and for off-topic comics. When including spoiler tags, try to write so that tropers can make an informed decision before viewing them (e.g. which series and issue will they spoil?).
Edited by MacronNotes on Jul 10th 2023 at 10:58:13 AM
The Incredibles is set in a liability nightmare alternate reality: the past
Forever liveblogging the AvengersSeems the latest letter-bombing campaign from fans has annoyed Brevoort
okay hear me out
I can actually understand sueing Mr. Incredible for saving your life
Because being injured probably left him with completely crippling medical debt that he may not be able to escape due to a) not being able to kill himself due to his injuries, or b) even if he did kill himself now, the medical debt would move onto a loved one
In which case Mr. Incredible legitimately made things worse for him
Edited by Saiga on Nov 6th 2023 at 12:17:50 PM
"Was it Civil War, with the heroes getting the blame for blowing up that town rather than the exploding villain who was blatantly the actual culprit?" In fairness, a lot of people died, on TV because a few people tried to take down supervillains in a residential area as part of a ratings grab. The fact that it was part of a TV show made the New Warriors look like glory hogs. Doing it in a residential area made them look reckless. It gave the impression that they didn't really care if they were putting anyone else at risk. Especially since the villains were not actively engaged in any violent crimes when it happened.
The Warriors actually did handle things mostly fine, though Namorita really shouldn't have knocked Nitro in the direction of a school. They had no way of knowing that Nitro had boosted his power, and if he was at his normal strength, they probably would've been able to subdue the whole group of villains without any serious collateral damage.
But, he wasn't at his normal strength. So, they looked like reckless jackasses who didn't know what they were getting into, and chose to start a brawl with dangerous supervillains in the middle of a residential area, for the sake of TV ratings.
Yeah, no shit people blamed them for that.
X-Men X-Pert, my blog where I talk about X-Men comics.NGL, after watching the Boys, that def sounds like something the seven would do if they ever had to fight actual supervillains.
Though I remember Wolverine uncovered that Nitro was given drugs to destroy Stanford as a supervillain plot.
And that went nowhere.
"The Black Rage makes us strong, because we must resist its temptations every day of our lives or be forever damned!"It was also noted that Coldheart fought Spider-Man a while ago and Speedfreak almost took down the Hulk. Microbe wanted to leave them alone, but Speedball convinced everyone to stay and fight for the ratings.
They were doing well in the fight, though, until Nitro exploded.
Edited by lalalei2001 on Nov 6th 2023 at 4:08:31 AM
The Protomen enhanced my life.
Yeah, Damage Control had a corrupt new CEO who was deliberately engineering supervillain incidents for them to fix to pad the company’s wallet, and the Destruction of Stamford was just the time it went too far. Wolverine finds out and takes the guy down.
I think it says a lot about how unimportant the Stamford incident actually was to the plot of Civil War though, that Wolverine — a guy otherwise totally uninvolved with the event — was the only person who said “wait shouldn’t somebody try and figure out why Nitro was suddenly so much stronger?”.
Didn't they also have the pro registration side recruit villains forcefully which also explains what the bad guys are doing during all these hero vs hero events.
Norman Osborn became head of thunderbolts because of this event IIRC.
"The Black Rage makes us strong, because we must resist its temptations every day of our lives or be forever damned!"Yeah, that's the start of when Green Goblin took long breaks from the Spider-Man corner of the universe.
Legit, the next time he had a major Spider-Man storyline as the big bad was in Superior. On the topic of Thunderbolts, I am planning on adding it to my reading list since I like the idea supervillains forced to work for the government and hunt down heroes.
Suicide Squad just doesn't do it for me.
Edited by RedHunter543 on Nov 6th 2023 at 11:13:58 PM
"The Black Rage makes us strong, because we must resist its temptations every day of our lives or be forever damned!"The Warren Ellis Thunderbolts run with Venom (Gargan), Osborn and Steel Spider (previously Spider-Kid / Kid Ock) is pretty good.
That comes with the caveat that Ellis himself is problematic due to later news about his behaviour. But the comic is well crafted.
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The four Thunderbolts runs to read are the Kurt Busiek Post-Onslaught run (which doesn’t use the Boxed Crook gimmick), the Warren Ellis Civil War run, the Andy Diggle Dark Reign run, and the Jeff Parker Heroic Age run. Those are the best, everything else can be gladly ignored.
Ellis is indeed a dickhead, but compared to some other dickheads he’s on the lower end of the scale. To my memory, even a lot of the people he wronged felt like he wasn’t that bad and said they wanted him to get better rather than be punished, and to his credit when he was exposed and called out, he just owned up to his mistakes and apologized and promised he would be putting effort into trying to better himself. In any case I despise most of his work BECAUSE his dickishness bleeds into the writing, but his Thunderbolts and Moon Knight runs are my two big exceptions.
Edited by immortaleditor on Nov 6th 2023 at 7:26:44 AM
Yeah, I remember the Thunderbolts originated as supervillains pretending to be heroes and then realizing they actually enjoy being heroes. I only know Songbird from MUA 2.
Goblin's tenure on the team does sound like a wild time though, that's when they really focused on Norman and Gobby being two different personalities like the Raimi movies.
But they keep Norman a terrible person so that's fun.
"The Black Rage makes us strong, because we must resist its temptations every day of our lives or be forever damned!"Honestly, there was a better story there with the Pro-Registration side where Tony was attempting to mitigate damage as much as humanly possible while the public rode a tide of violent bigotry against heroes and giving the government too much authority.
And yeah, you could easily have looked at the New Warriors actions as better than it seemed as they wanted to get Nitro AWAY from a school district.
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.

In fairness, both of those movies are set before Good Samaritan laws were a thing (and, as the first movie's Fridge page points out, they're set after the Federal Tort Claims Act was enacted, thus allowing people to sue the US federal government for reasons other than negligence and discrimination [previously the only exceptions to the federal government's sovereign immunity]; the Supers were government-backed, thus the government got sued along with the Supers, which led to the setting's ban against the Supers).
Edited by TrashJack on Nov 5th 2023 at 9:00:25 AM
"Cynic, n. — A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be." - The Devil's Dictionary