Even Spider-Fan Writers Aren’t Into Modern Spider-Man

Spider-Man is Marvel’s flagship character. That’s why they fought so hard to get him in the Cinematic Universe, even if he’s only Peter in physical design, with maybe a few good quips. That’s on Sony but that’s another discussion. Created by Stan Lee and designed by Steve Ditko, Peter Parker’s first appearance was in the last issue of horror anthology Amazing Fantasy, all the way back in the 1960s. Lee had tried to get his bosses to let him do the character but they weren’t into him…until Spider-Man got such a strong response that they suddenly loved the idea and Amazing Spider-Man #1 soon hit shelves.

However, there are a lot of problems with modern Spider-Man. There are some things you can trace back to the 1990s but it’s in the 2010s and 2020s that the characters has really started suffering. Recently, Avi Green of Four Color Media Monitor, a comic critique and commentary site that sometimes has articles on Bleeding Fool, located a commentary on the Spider-Man fansite Spider-Fan. At least it was a fansite. While still up as of this writing I can’t find a review after 2015 of the main books and the contributors (that’s plural) only seem to post something once a month to the blog. In June, contributor Adam Winchell posted a commentary entitled “Spider-Man Ends: Or Why It’s Time For Marvel To Hang Up The Webs”, which you can read here for full context as I go over the commentary. With a title I don’t think I have to tell you what it’s about, or how hard it was for someone who writes for a Spider-Man fansite literally called Spider-FAN to make such a statement. So what does he say and how much sense does he make?

The Spider-Man IP is one of the most recognized and profitable the world over. He and his web-slinging offshoots headline in blockbuster movies, best-selling video game adaptations, and the character is still the reigning champion in superhero merchandise sales.

On top of all that, his comic is currently the top-seller at Marvel as well. But if you ask me, it’s time Marvel retired the main ongoing Spider-Man comics for good. Why?

Put simply, the series is intellectually and creatively bankrupt, seemingly beyond repair.

This is the crux of our conversation. The idea that the character is “beyond repair”. I’ve been hearing this a lot lately with DC and Marvel’s characters. It’s hard to think that someone with the cultural significance of Superman or Spider-Man could be thought of that way, due to being put in the hands of activists, storytellers who don’t understand the characters if not outright hostile to what they’ve become in the culture, and looking to use branding to push their characters over decades-long icons that are examples of what people think of when they think of the word “superhero”. And yet this isn’t even close to the first commentary written or spoken that I’ve heard make this comment.

It’s an ongoing publication that not only seems to despise its readers, but also condescends to them. Take the most recent run (the 6th relaunch at #1 of the main title that began in 2022, written by Zeb Wells). A magical mystical entity as a big villain, magic-created children for Mary Jane and the man she was randomly trapped in another dimension with (because these types of storylines just scream ‘Spider-Man’), a cringeworthy and regressive take on Felicia Hardy as the rebound sex doll again now that Peter and MJ are no longer a couple; a run that hinged its central mystery of Peter being seen in ads in a smoking crater with the tagline “What did Peter do?” (turns out, he didn’t do much of anything to cause the crater). Oh, and they randomly decided to kill off Kamala Khan in the pages of Amazing this week because, reasons?

Not that it lasted long, mere months of OUR time and probably days in-universe. Kamala died only so she could be reborn as a mutant to stay in line with the MCU and what they want to do now that Disney has full rights to the X-Men. Disney didn’t have the rights because they were in the hands of 20th Century Fox due to pre-Disney Marvel selling them the rights to make up for their dwindling cash flow. So Disney had the comics try to deemphasize the X-Men and the mutant corner of the Marvel Universe, putting the Inhumans in their place. As mentioned before, that didn’t go well and then Disney bought 20th Century Fox to boost their Disney + library, gaining the rights to the mutants as a bonus. The Inhumans failed to catch fire in the MCU while Ms. Marvel has her own show and a place in the upcoming The Marvels movie so they want to forget the Inhumans and push her into being a mutant.

Spider-Man has had plenty of runs in his long history that either didn’t deliver or were handled badly. Longtime readers are well used to it. But Amazing Spider-Man, the longest-running title featuring the character who just celebrated his 60th year of publication, is now an enervating and joyless reading experience. The title is clearly being controlled by a clutch of creators who want to pander to their own cynical and limited ideas of who the character is and should be (incidentally, including members of the same group of writers and editors who basically hijacked the title back in 2008 after the despised story reset of One More Day and Peter’s pact with Mephisto, and really began the regression of the character).

Sadly, Marvel will never stop giving me reasons to use this image. He’s a Charlie Brown/Archie Andrews hybrid to them.

If they could, they would put Peter back in high school, which is why most of the shows, games, and movies do just that. Peter gained his powers and started his mission as Spider-Man while he was in high school, but it was in college where the character advanced, met most of his friends, and even a good portion of his most popular enemies. And yet they still think Peter should be a loser due to the so-called “Parker luck” rather than his duties as Spider-Man interfering with his personal life because the responsibility he feels he has after losing Uncle Ben to a criminal he could have just tripped a few days before without powers.

There’s also a weird notion that a married, happy Spider-Man is antithetical to the character. They hate Mary Jane Watson for marrying him, yet strangely they’re some of the same writers obsessed with Gwen Stacy, who was Peter’s fiance but died because MJ was playing better with the audience. This culminated in One More Day, where they had to wipe the marriage from continuity because nobody could heal a bullet wound, even with magic. Then again, given Aunt May’s health issues I’m surprised she lasted long enough for Mephisto to pop up. Being in the hospital is one of Aunt May’s three storylines in regular comics, along with “I don’t have enough money to keep the house” and “I’m going to get remarried” when she isn’t being the doting aunt to Peter. This is because they were worried divorce would age Peter too much while killing MJ off would go over poorly. MJ has a lot of fans so they tried to comprise not getting rid of her entirely while ending the marriage.

They failed, by the way. Miserably.

Now Peter has had a succession of love interests like he did before Gwen and Mary Jane started fighting over him. None of them have really stuck because none of them were intended to. Peter isn’t going to be allowed to be happy so every girlfriend leaves him as soon as a new writer comes up with a way to get rid of them. Meanwhile you have a writer that comes along trying to hint at bringing the Spider-Marriage back and undoing the Mephisto deal but you have to wonder if that’s the lone writer who wants it back or it’s just to tease the fans who left after One More Day with the idea that they’ll restore it. Instead we have Peter sleeping on Mockingbird’s couch wearing her “ask me about my feminist agenda” shirt and being pathetic because that’s what they think Peter is like when he isn’t Spider-Man: pathetic.

Writer Chip Zdarsky stated in an interview recently that he didn’t want to take on the main series as a writer because when the “fan’s expectations” aren’t met, there is a backlash. But that could just as easily be read as Zdarsky not wanting the title because Marvel would limit him as a writer and require him to do things that fans wouldn’t like.

It was the editor in chief that killed the Spider-Marriage, but it’s not like writers weren’t trying to get rid of MJ since the 1990s. That’s where the Clone Saga originally wanted to go until some Marvel higher up forced the storyline to continue for the dollar signs…and just ticked off their readers instead. Some were obsessed with Gwen, as you could see in other universe titles that tried to push Gwen into the forefront, “Ghost Spider” being the latest example. She even gets called “Spider-Gwen” more than her superhero identity because that’s what they’re more interested in, Gwen Frickin’ Stacy.

The problems with the title go well beyond the fact that Marvel stubbornly decide to keep Peter and Mary Jane apart over increasingly convoluted and boring reasons. Peter himself is largely a weak and cowed excuse for a hero. He needs his former archnemesis Norman Osborn to build super-suits for him to take on the likes of the Vulture (the Vulture!).

This article is from June, but how has that been working out since? Has Norman betrayed him yet?

Peter under the pen of Zeb Wells is a hotheaded idiot who won’t take two minutes to explain to the Fantastic Four or Captain America why Mary Jane is trapped in another dimension and why he needs their help, Wells would rather just have him punch them and steal their tech. Peter is less of an inspirational hero as Spider-Man, and more of a neophyte D-bag, who probably wouldn’t have survived his first few years of crimefighting if this was always how he was portrayed.

Right, the girl who hated Peter and loved Spider-Man over Mary Jane, who accepted Spider-Man because she loved Peter. Remember when Roger Stern tried to ruin Felicia because he hated her?

Granted, Marvel heroes beating each other up is a monthly occurrence at this point.

These poor portrayals, along with Marvel’s insistence that the character remain in this stagnate form, against the wishes of anyone who may desire to write him or his cast otherwise, shows that the company have lost sight of who the character is supposed to be, and that he will likely remain in a closed loop of bad characterizations, increasingly puerile stories that please no one except apparently Marvel themselves.

They don’t understand the characters and neither do the extended media. The closest we’ve gotten is the Disney Junior show that gave Miles his own superhero name, made Peter into a scientist who created chemicals and gadgets, and Ghost Spider is there as a detective (though they replaced her dad with her mom)–and yet they’re kids because it’s a preschool show. They went with the alternate universe “Spider-Gwen” idea rather than turn Gwen into another egghead like Peter, which the Matt Webb movies and Greg Wiseman TV shows did because they can’t believe Peter should date anyone who isn’t at least as much a geek as he is. See also the Ultimate Universe version of Mary Jane.

For these reasons, Marvel should probably go ahead and end Peter Parker’s ongoing story. They have two dozen offshoot Spider-characters including Miles Morales to Spider Gwen Stacy to play with, in addition to the numerous symbiotes and their offspring from Venom to Carnage. The outside media adaptations from the movies, games and cartoons, have created their own continuities based on the characters that in some ways have transcended the long-running main title. The Marvel movie company or game developers will never be short on IP or new ideas. Because of Marvel publishing’s shortsightedness and low bar for quality, the title as it is has certainly run its course creatively, and doesn’t appear to have anywhere else to go.

This has been another complaint: too many spider-people. Dan Slott and Humberto Ramos gave us Silk, which Dan had constantly getting it on with Peter because they were bit by the same spider, which was dumb. They brought Miles from the Ultimate universe when they killed it off…but now it’s apparently back because now WHOLE UNIVERSES CAN’T STAY DEAD! And the Ultimate universe’s death was a mercy killing as the Spider-Man comics were the only thing that wasn’t twisted mess of a comic story filled with incest, cannibalism, and morally questionable “heroes” among the “it’s not the main universe so we can kill them” approach. Actually, that last one DID happen to Spider-Man because Brian Michael Bendis wanted to give his adopted kids a hero and couldn’t think of a way to do it without the big name branding, something the more activist writers have now latched on to in order to remake the Marvel and DC Universes in their image.

Then you have the previously mentioned Miles and Gwen, who get called by those names more than they do their hero identities even in costume. They even added a “Spider-Boy” while Nightcrawler wants to rechristen himself as the “Uncanny Spider-Man” despite sticking to walls being the only thing he has in common with Spider-Man. I haven’t even gotten into the Spider-Women and he already mentioned the symbiotes are becoming as bad.

Artistic reenactment of Marvel’s treatment of Peter Parker.

He also mentioned the cosmic events Spider-Man’s been in lately. You could also include the “Spider-Totem” nonsense, being turned into a giant spider that birthed his new body so they could insert the organic webbing from the Rami films for a while, and all the crossover events he’s been part of. I thought Spider-Man was supposed to be the relatable street level hero, who only gets into the Secret Wars stuff because he’s the flagship character? This is where the modern writers’ obsession with being “EPIC!!!!!!” seems to be coming into play.

One could simply write these off as the grumblings of a disgruntled fan, and there is some truth to that. But Marvel have displayed an astonishing amount of antipathy and contempt for its fans. It is also widely speculated that Marvel inflate the sales of Amazing Spider-Man with dozens of variant covers per issue, which retailers must buy increased quantities of the book in order to receive (a recent estimate on one such rare cover was 200:1). It would seem Marvel publishing are more interested in selling variant covers than they are telling good stories.

I think that’s the point of the variant covers, which they force the comic stores to order even when the book itself isn’t selling for them. It’s hard to just stop carrying current comics because it still draws people in more than the back issues, though that’s becoming less and less true. The owner of my local comic store has to keep a second job to keep the store going and he still has a lot of interested parties in the older comics even as some people make the mistake of going all digital and putting their collection at risk of photoshopping or deletion. Variant covers were always a scam outside of special events and reprintings.

Peter Parker as a character has had a good run, in an epic comic book narrative spanning some seven decades. His story as a hero was once about growth and progression, learning from mistakes, leaning on his loved ones, and overcoming seemingly insurmountable threats while being an inspiration to many both inside the world of the book and in real life. But that character seems long gone now, and it doesn’t appear that the very cynical editors or writers currently working at Marvel have either the wherewithal nor the desire to bring him back.

It had to be as tough for him as it was for me to declare the DC Universe dead to me, and he only needed one article to do it. To be fair, one of the other writers to the site, Dave Sippel, tried to defend the current volume. I’ll go over that briefly because this article is running a bit long. I didn’t plan to post all of Winchell’s commentary when I started this, so I hope you gave them some clicks and read the original without my rambling. Also, most of my information on the current arc is third-hand since I’m one of the people who gave up after One More Day. If it wasn’t for Marvel Adventures: Spider-Man and Paul Tobin’s run on the title and Marvel Adventures: Super Heroes I probably wouldn’t have bought a post-OMD Spider-Man story that wasn’t a guest appearance or when I made the mistake of getting Bendis’ Avengers run. (Get Marvel Adventures: The Avengers by Jeff Parker and later Paul Tobin instead.) Here’s the full article, so give it a full read since I am cherry-picking this one, from August of 2023 so only a few months after his colleague’s commentary.

To get it out of the way, I don’t like how the relationship between Peter and Felicia was handled. They became a couple again in Amazing Spider-Man (vol. 6) #20 and broke up in #31. Their reasoning was that they were just going through the motions. Peter was a project for Felicia, not a relationship partner. That was a pretty quick relationship, especially since they didn’t appear together very much. She did help Spidey take out the Shocker in #27, not that he needed much help. Peter actually spent more time with Mary Jane in those eleven issues than Felicia.

In the previous paragraph he also complained about the symbiotes so it’s not like he doesn’t disagree with some of Winchell’s statements.

People have complained about the supernatural aspect of the story and the fact that Peter acted so stupidly when trying to get help from his friends. On one hand, I don’t like too much magic in Spider-Man stories myself. Dealing with a creature from outside of our world and reality feels more like a Dr. Strange or Fantastic Four book. Yes, the totem aspect of modern Spider-Man has been accepted by the fan base but let’s not overdo it.

Don’t forget all the writers who think Spider-Man is just a walking quip machine who annoys fellow heroes as much as he does the villains.

I don’t accept it. The Spider-Totem thing was unnecessary. Radioactive spider blood worked fine for years. If they wanted to build on that, do what the 1990s cartoon did and introduce the concept of “neogenics”, which they used to explain Spider-Man’s powers, Vulture’s new youth-draining gloves, the origin of the Lizard, and other aspects that worked fine with this new science. Peter is a science-born a hero. Making a magical connection just feels wrong and an unneeded addition.

Speaking of supervillain families [he mentions Tombstone in the previous paragraph but only the cartoons made him interesting to me], Adrian Toomes’s character as a patriarch has grown. He’s long been shown to care for his extended family (from his disabled brother, to his murdered nephew, and sick grandson), and is now mourning the loss of respect from his granddaughter. Tiana Toomes researched Adrian’s life and learned of his multiple murders, causing her to sever ties. Unable to accept any kind of responsibility, Vulture blamed Spider-Man. I’ve heard several people complain that Vulture’s fight with Spider-Man was out of character and he was presented as more dangerous than he should be.

I’m biased as a Vulture fan (yes, we exist) but I was glad to see him so ruthless and efficient. Too often he’s written as a pushover.

He goes on to list several examples of of Vulture kicking butt, with links to the reviews on their site, yet he doesn’t provide examples of Toomes being “too often a pushover”. Not every Spider-Foe has to be a strong fighter. Toomes’s benefits should be his intelligence. Most of the time he’s an old man, using experience and a knowledge of aerodynamics to benefit his crimes, not counting the time in the 1990s where he could steal lifeforce and de-age.

On another note, something seems to be going on with the Goblin kids. Ned Leeds and Betty have an infant son named Winston that Ned feels the need to protect from someone. (I have mixed feelings about Ned being alive all of a sudden. I’m half expecting him to be a clone.)

I was about to ask about that. I thought the former Hobgoblin was dead. Between clones, general resurrection, and whatever the hell evil Ben Reilly was doing at the time (speaking of dumb stories). The Goblin family is becoming as bad as the Spider-People, diluting the very concept they’re banking on to push their characters.

I appreciate parts of this volume because it feels character driven, with the occasional over the top adventure. I’ve just finished reading part two of “Spider-Man’s First Hunt,” which will understandably be a divisive story. Personally, I finished reading it genuinely curious to see what happened next. It feels like a long time since I’ve been that invested.

That’s fine. If you enjoy it, go right ahead. I’ll never tell you otherwise. I’m not convinced the characters are unsalvageable because I’ve seen bad runs before. Get people who know and care about the characters’ rich history and continuing THEIR story instead of “writing my story” and you could turn the ship around. I just don’t see Marvel putting those writers on, undoing the Mephisto deal, or doing anything other than using branding to push characters instead of making good characters and getting them to the audience. Using established names and ideas for cheap marketing seems to be the direction they want go, and it’s a direction that goes straight down…in the sale charts and the overall quality of the very brand they’re lazily misusing. That’s a good way to kill your character and the brand.