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
I mean ideally the main continuity wouldn't devolve into for all intents and purpose, licensed books that are pretentious.
But good books are worth it regardless whether they are part of a wider line or not and can grow if readers don't limit themselves to the longtime familiar titles.
I'm still kind of partial to the idea that it wasn't OMD that killed Peter's character, but the very end of the Clone Saga. OMD was him finally falling into the coffin and being buried, but Osborn's return coupled with them undoing and sweeping away most of the big status quo changes (like May's death, Ben Reilly's life, and Mayday's birth) was essentially the bullet that tore right through him and the idea of perpetual movement.
Most of the Clone Saga might have been walking in circles, or two steps forward one step back, but at least it wasn't a complete regression.
I'm probably those elite 0.1% of fans who still think it's a good idea to bring back Norman.
Been really enjoying his time as the leader of Thunderbolts.
Edited by RedHunter543 on Nov 29th 2023 at 9:16:31 PM
"The Black Rage makes us strong, because we must resist its temptations every day of our lives or be forever damned!"There might be more movement than we think. Not only have we got Hickman's USM and Weisman's SSM next year, but lurking around Twitter has taught me that if Slott is going on tirades on CBR like he is now, that's usually a sign that Marvel is doing something with Spider-Man that he doesn't like, but they'll be stuff we'll really like.
Not holding my breath just yet since this is my first time experiencing this kind of phenomena firsthand, but I will keep my ear close to the ground.
Edited by TargetmasterJoe on Nov 29th 2023 at 9:00:54 AM
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The end of the Clone Saga plus Gathering of the Five was definitely the first pebbles of the rockslide. Up until the 90s, Spidey had NEVER had a bad decade and had kept moving forward at a steady and satisfying pace. And most of the 90s were good for him, even the Clone Saga itself was more good than bad looking back (there are a lot of really great stories that are technically part of it); the only real problems were the Saga being dragged out past its limit by editorial and botching the transition from Peter to Ben, due to editorial succumbing to the pathetic urge to go “see? see?? our young and single favorite Spider-Man is better than that stupid married one!”.
The end of the Clone Saga and The Final Chapter marked the point where Spider-Man suffered its first well and truly AWFUL setback as a series. Years of development and progress thrown away on the whims of the out-of-touch editorial that had ruined the Clone Saga to begin with. Peter was denied his retirement, his grief and closure over his aunt’s death, his victory over Norman, and even his brother and child. And this was shortly followed by their first attempt to take away his wife as well, by putting MJ on a plane and crashing it. It was awful… but by some miracle, the series bounced back, largely because the attempts to drag Peter backwards failed thanks to competent writers like JMS who didn’t play along with the nonsense.
The attempt to kill MJ was wisely undone very quickly. Lemonade was made with the lemons of Aunt May and Norman coming back, with writers doing their best to make them matter and do something interesting and mature with them instead of dragging Peter back to high school like editorial intended. Ben died, but Peter continued mourning him and Kaine lived on. Peter kept growing and aging, such as getting a job as a teacher, learning new things about his powers, and seeing longtime supporting cast and enemies die. In general, the Spider-Office hadn’t become the echo chamber it is now yet, you had plenty of writers willing and able to keep the series on track and stand up to the editorial nonsense.
A big part of why OMD has had such a terrible effect isn’t just because of the massive retcon and terrible writing and blatant Executive Meddling to a point where it’s clear the abusive editors are ghost-writing the book. It’s because OMD was the point where they started forcing their “vision” on the writers and shoving out anybody who didn’t suck up to them and write the book their way.
Edited by immortaleditor on Nov 29th 2023 at 6:09:08 AM
I think OMD is definitely is a bigger detriment to the book and character, but the Clone Saga was what let the genie out of the bottle because it was a huge number of reversions to status quo that showed Marvel's fear of letting Peter grow too much. Aunt May is back, Norman is revived, baby May is written out, attempts are made to get rid of the marriage... several major advancements in the story, all nullified. It really showed that Spider-man had limits how far he could go.
However, I think the comics recovered from there, as much as I think it was a HUGE mistake to bring Norman back, and a mistake to bring back May, I think both have some reasonable stories since then - especially JMS' handling of May, which allowed her character to have growth and made it seem worthwhile to undo her death. That really only left baby May's fate as the glaring flaw of the Clone Saga that I really can't gel with or excuse.
Even if some things were off-limits, at least it still felt like Peter could grow.
But OMD? That took out the biggest change to Spider-man's status quo, and made it so it "never happened" in-universe, while making it extremely clear that Peter cannot grow at all, no worthwhile change can be allowed to stick, and there is nowhere to go from here. And that's clearly been the case since OMD ended, now Peter doesn't really change at all and just goes through massive changes that are intended to be short lived and largely forgotten about once their over, like tech mogul Peter.
It's all so incredibly shallow.
In one sense, OMD was just finishing what the Clone Saga started. But god damn, it really finished things.
It's Wednesday, so I guess we gotta talk about Gang War, it kicked off today in a one-shot
Other than Peter getting a dressing down from Miles for ditching him for six months, Hammerhead enlists Janice to kill Randy Robertson, Janice of course can't bring herself to do it, but Randy is then left in a really bad way by Hammerhead's minions, who stalked Janice to check whether or not she'd do the job. Madame Masque is revealed as Hammerhead's valet in disguise and she gets the drop on him, kicking off the gang war
Clone Saga was an attempt at compromising/having cake and eating it too. The basic idea of it seems to have been that editorial could get their precious single and young Spidey while Peter wouldn’t have to be regressed as a character and all his progress wiped away. Peter would retire from the superhero stuff to focus on his family while Ben would be Spider-Man. Essentially dividing the mundane life and superhero life between two characters.
This failed because editorial couldn’t resist themselves and tried to shill Ben as the REAL Spider-Man — down to insisting he was the original and not a clone — essentially saying out loud their incredibly stupid opinions about how Peter getting older was the worst thing ever and that things should’ve just stayed like they were in the Silver Age forever. Predictably, that made fans reject Ben becoming the new Spider-Man by changing his image from a cool new character with an interesting tie to the series’ history to a Poochie-esque Replacement Scrappy and Creator's Pet.
As the above indicates, there’s a weird and pathetic obsession with “legitimacy” amongst Spider-Editorial that fuels this kind of nonsense. Its not enough to have a single, swinging Peter, it has to be THEIR Peter and THEIR Peter has to be only legitimate and real one.
Edited by immortaleditor on Nov 29th 2023 at 7:33:39 AM
I mean it has negatively affected everything after it. And causes problems to the books now. Like at least the other bad marvel books like the crossing had minimal effect on the work as awohle.
"That's right mortal. By channeling my divine rage into power, I have forged a new instrument in which to destroy you."![]()
Believe me, there’s nothing I’d like better than to talk about anything else Spider-Man related. But it’s hard to when the comic is laboring under OMD’s effects in such a way that absolutely refuses to let anyone forget about it. Not to mention the main book so far is so terrible and boring that there’s nothing to really talk about aside from how incompetent it is and how it tries to reinforce OMD. Like, once you cut away the drama aspects around it, the Wells-Lowe run is just plain dull. There’s barely anything of note happening and on the rare occasions something of note does happen it’s godawful.
Edited by immortaleditor on Nov 29th 2023 at 8:44:22 AM
Like let me give you a comparison. The crossing is a garbage comic and one of the worst marvel ever created. But no one talks about it as it's worst effects got neutralizes right after through avengers forever. OMD not so much.
"That's right mortal. By channeling my divine rage into power, I have forged a new instrument in which to destroy you."So... in other news. I've been reading Miles' current comic and it's alright? It definitely feels a little aimless with it jumping from one topic to another, between Rabble making a great first impression as an insanely petty villain to Miles' PTSD. But then it jumps into Carnage, then vampires, and now Gang War.
I do miss more episodic comic stories, but does anyone else feel a little irked by the constantly jumping tone and subjects?
Honestly, yeah. More episodic stories that are more like “a bunch of little stories that tie together into one big one” can be great, but Miles’ current ongoing does it in a way that feels a tad disjointed. Though I would argue that’s been a problem for a lot of Miles’ stories since he got forced into 616. He’s definitely struggled a bit to carve out his own proper niche and his stories have resultantly tended to feel very “throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks”.
Today I learned Black Cat was originally conceived as a Spider-Woman villain
and her inspiration was the Tex Avery cartoon Bad Luck Blackie.
Yeah. I heard that as well. She instead got transferred over into Peter's comics instead and the rest was history.
Can't remember why she got transferred though.
One Strip! One Strip!Read the new Carnage issue.
So Carnage is still on his Godquest, and after a trip to Infinity City has decided to start publicly executing high-profile people in graphic ways.
As civilian's documenting the murders on their phones and spreading them counts as a form of worship, thereby making Carnage more of a full deity.
"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."

Neither MC 2 or RYV are really ideal alternatives for 616 for me. They don't have the same feeling.
Honestly I'm fine with just headcanoning that either Spidey's story ends in ASM 500 (or a few stories after, but that's a really good stopping point) or just accepting that everything post OMD is an alternate continuity, because all the faff about this being the real timeline just changed by Mephisto is nonsense.
Mephisto created a new timeline, that's just time travel for you. Sorry editorial, your explanation is dumb and wrong.