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
And on the prior subject, yes, I actually liked original Gwen Stacy, specifically because she was boring and kind of bad person. That's exactly the kind of girlfriend I'd have given Peter Parker, and it's why I don't like any of the alternate hers running around, except for the kind of but understandably miserable Spider-Girl in the X-Books. She's the best Gwen Stacy. Original Gwen Stacy was the right mix of annoying enough to want Peter Parker to find someone else but sympathetic enough to still not want bad things to happen to. Like the little brother in The Last Dragon. Like what JK Rowling tried and failed to do with Cho Chang.
Buldogue's lawyerHuh.
Interesting to hear. When it really comes down to it, Gwen may have been a lousy romantic option (though Peter wasn't always good to her) but she still had some potential as a character that never got realized because they slammed the door on her.
I've said many stars aligned to make her the one they chose to kill (thinking MJ was better, wanting to kill someone significant, and of course, the dreaded we can't let Peter get married, because it would age him reason), but I wonder what she'd be doing in a world where she survived and maybe learned Pete's identity but didn't stay with him.
One Strip! One Strip!![]()
The overabundance of universal events is hilariously lampshaded in Marvels when Phil Sheldon hears about Galactus' second attack on Earth. The first appearance of him sent the world into a terrified panic, but by the second, people have gotten so used to the super stuff that most don't really care that much. Phil himself goes fishing like nothing is happening, figuring that the superheroes will save the day again like usual and practically says "no duh" when his wife tells him it was resolved.
The general problem Gwen faces is that her original self mostly sucked, the attempts to rewrite her into some kind of Purity Sue suck even worse, and adaptations that make her actually good do so by either creating entirely new characters with the same name or giving her all of MJ's personality traits.
Edited by immortaleditor on Jun 18th 2024 at 5:48:18 AM
The end of Zeb Wells' ASM run as we know it begins this September!
And Dan Slott is not feeling fine!
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Lampshading how many world-shattering events happen in the MU goes back decades earlier! The very first Shi'ar arc in X-Men begins with Lilandra piloting a spaceship to Earth, with her evil brother's assassins in hot pursuit. It seems Lilandra's doomed... but then a random techie on the assassins' ship pulls up his database and discovers the seemingly random planet she's chosen as her place of refuge has beaten Galactus not once, not twice, but four times. The assassins turn tail, and that's how mutants can into space.
Tombstone's the final boss? Interesting choice.
Edited by HamburgerTime on Jun 18th 2024 at 6:14:13 AM
Apparently, Wells likes to go full circle, so if Tombstone was the focus in the first arc, being the final boss was only logical.
(If they're being this quick about revealing the final arc, it makes me wonder how soon will we learn about the next ASM run.)
Again, Gwen's flaws in her original depiction are greatly overstated by fans and she suffers from a seriously bad case of Ron the Death Eater (like a lot of superhero love interests who are less than perfect). She wasn't any worse than original MJ (who is no prize herself and often has her unpleasant qualities sanded off in adaptations and retellings) and definitely nowhere near as bad as Felicia can be.
As for adaptations changing Gwen, she is far from the only love interest that this has happened to. In fact, I can't think of any adaptation of Gwen that stole anything from MJ, but I can think of at least two iterations of MJ that copied Gwen. The MJ from the 1967 animated series is a niece of police captain Ned Stacy and the one from the 90s animated series takes Gwen's place in that show's adaptation of The Night Gwen Stacy died. In fact, MJ in the latter show acts an awful lot like the melodramatic Purity Sue Gwen is reimagined as after her death.
Plenty of characters have been reinterpreted in ways different from their original depiction because of how dated some aspects were and this includes women. So why is it an issue when it's done to Gwen Stacy? Especially since this fandom hates how much editors and writers refuse to let go of the past?
Was really expecting that to be held on to for longer and then used for big drama down the road... really glad that hasn't happened.
It seems Kingpin is explicitly enhanced, which I like compared to just saying he's a big guy, but I don't like that it seemed to have made him completely stronger than Peter.
I never implied original Mary Jane was perfect, or even, really ideal for Peter Parker. Quite the opposite, the original was too good for Peter Parker, and that he'd never actually have her was funny, but that she was also a bit of a dork whose sensibilities were that of the previous decade's counter culture was funny. That she had any interest in and also caused trouble for Peter, in a more deliberate than Gwen Stacy, but playful manner that usually just bothered Peter rather than Spider-Man, was cute. Her own flaws emphasized Peter's. The one you'll never get was a beatnik in the 1960s/70s, yous a dork! Well look at that, you got her! And you're cute together, but yous still a dork!
I also dislike the use of Mary Jane for the decade, just for different reasons than Gwen Stacy. The One More Day-One Moment In Time dreck are of course the apotheosis of miss used Mary Jane. A lot more about her works once you get rid of that Cosmic Retcon polluting the narrative like a sunken oil tanker in the gulf. Killing Gwen Stacy itself was extreme, she already lost her dad and that was sad enough, but it was at least an extreme within reason. There were several ways to break up Peter and Mary Jane, including the extreme of death, but her, being Peter's social and financial superior, simply finding someone who was better and remaining Peter Parker's friend, with him having more trouble with that soft breakup than her at first but eventually moving on, would have been the most logical course of action. But you devil dealt the relationship, which went beyond extreme and into stupid, gave the devil an unborn child, which goes beyond stupid and into actively damaging the narrative, and then said the wife scammed the devil into it, which goes beyond harming your own story's premise and into deliberately insulting the reader. Undo the cosmic devil retcons and break up Peter and Mary Jane in rationale manner, if they must separate. Give Mary Jane another miscarriage if you don't want her keeping Peter's kids! That would be a little extreme, yes, but still within the grounds of sensible story telling.
That could be another acceptable flaw of Mary Jane. That she thinks it's something wrong with Peter, physically, genetically, chemically, that keeps causing her kids to die, rather than her own body. It's something she comes to terms with, possibly even gets fixed since she's rich, but too late, she and Peter are with other people.
Edited by IndirectActiveTransport on Jun 19th 2024 at 5:31:25 AM
Buldogue's lawyerPeter has been too long for him to keep on making sense as immature without rebooting him from the start. Miles is right there, just do the young, green and inexpert stuff with him instead.
It feels like more than any other Marvel title Spider-Man is caught in a cycle of regurgitaing premises that don't move anyone anywhere but rolling in place. No matter how many goblins, symbiotes and clones they throw at it it feels like it's all stuck in a rut.
Please remember that, ultimately, fictional works of entertainment are just that.The whole thing with not aging Peter too much is that it really only became the obsession for Spider-Editorial that it is around the late 90s when the Clone Saga set in and we got the first infestation of anti-marriage writers and editors. The big issue with it being that, up until then, Spider-Man had been going on forward momentum for decades. He'd gone to high school, graduated into college, graduated from that, gotten a steady job, lost his first love and found another, gotten married, and his supporting cast and enemies were also reflecting his growth - characters aged and died off overtime fairly naturally. While there had been people who tried to retard Peter's growth before, they were outliers and never really accomplished that goal, if anything making his maturation even more apparent, and were usually trying to slow his growth, not reverse it entirely.
A big part of why Spider-Man as a series was such a mega-hit was because of that sense of progression. It really felt like we were watching Peter's life grow and advance over years, seeing him grow from a dumbass teen with a chip on his shoulder to a veteran superhero. After that had been happening for decades on end, the attempts to suddenly do a u-turn and install this kind of hard, unending Simpson-esque status quo where nobody ever ages or dies were never going to go over well. The attempts to do it with Clone Saga failed miserably - not least of all because of the anti-marriage group's inability to hide what they were doing - and Peter wound up continuing to grow and progress despite nonsense like genetic actresses and Goblins coming back from the grave, right up until OMD, which also failed, but Spider-Editorial refuses to acknowledge it failed and just wants to keep clinging desperately to it instead of admitting they're wrong out of stupid pride and petty spite. And those feelings are becoming worse than ever now that Ultimate Spider-Man is definitively destroying any and all arguments they used to keep it up and drawing wider attention to the comics, meaning more and more people are getting to see the laughable canyon of quality between Marvel's "golden goose" and the spin-off that's basically just an elaborate excuse to go back to what Spider-Man was like Pre-OMD. And the fact the latter is kicking the former's ass with embarrassing ease, while more and more adaptations choose to hew towards the 80s/90s/2000s era where Peter was well into adulthood, means that for all that Spider-Editorial tried otherwise, the public perception of Spider-Man is increasingly one of him as a grown man with a wife and family.
Edited by immortaleditor on Jun 19th 2024 at 9:55:25 AM
The big question is how sustainable Ultimate Spider-Man is. Will it still hold readers 50 issues in? Will the kids grow up, will Peter's life move on?
Will it get pulled into Spider-Verse crossovers?
It's a great starting point, but that doesn't mean Hickman — or a post-Hickman writer — won't take it in other directions.
It's impossible for us humans to foresee what USM will be seen as in the future, but we can tell what Spider-Man 616 is right now and... the issue is Peter keeps all of his baggage regarding prior continuity but also tries to present himself as a clean slate young single man relatable to boys (most of which don't even buy comics) and that doesn't work.
The editorial keeps on trying to cling onto this convoluted stuff back from the sixties. Updated or not, it's still the same loose continuity. But it also wants us to see Peter as a young fresh face despite having all of that on his back. You try describing a full picture of Spider-Man's comics backstory to someone while also trying to sell him as relatable. It's not even a matter of being married or single. The older Peter in the animated movies is relatable despite his backstory, it's just his backstory is functional, economic and elegant without the nightmarish tangles of one thousand symbiotes, clones, breakups, falls into financial ruin, and goblins. A sense of that exists but we don't have to keep up with all of it, we just need to know he's had a rough superhero life and a difficult romantic relationship, and it still works.
Please remember that, ultimately, fictional works of entertainment are just that.
It's simply the pet issue of a very specific breed of asshole editor/ghost writer who hates that the comic isn't like it was when they were kids and/or equally asshole corporate moron who sees the comic as nothing more than a toy advertisement and has the delusional belief that kids somehow won't buy the comic if the main character isn't "like them". And these types of individuals hate being told they're wrong.
It's not even unique to Spider-Man - House of M was the same kind of thing inflicted on X-Men - but it happens the most and most dramatically with Spidey because he's Marvel's most popular character and series.
Edited by immortaleditor on Jun 19th 2024 at 10:35:06 AM

Who is Knaive
and why does he look like Xavier Renegade Angel?