Marvel still doesn’t know what to do with Spider-Man

In the character’s 60-plus years of existence, there hasn’t been a better time to be into Spider-Man than right now. There’s an abundance of excellent Spidey-stories that take all kinds of shapes: a wonderful PlayStation game with a sequel on the way, a fantastic animated film (also with a sequel on the way), a popular live-action trilogy of films, and a deep bench of previous movies, animated series, and video games to enjoy. These stories are great and show why Spidey has existed for over half a century. However, there are some bad stories which make one wonder where the great stories came from.

One story is called Dark Web. This year, it just ended. Let’s see what happens.

Ben Reilly is the clone Peter Parker’s Amazing Spider-Man. He has lost all of his memories and now simply MustTo become a supervillain. In an attempt to make Peter forget his past, Madelyne Pyor (the Goblin Queen of Limbo) gives him new powers.

This is, as best as I can describe, what I’ve been watching one of the most beloved fictional characters on Earth do in the pages of The Amazing Spider-ManThe Marvel’s flagship comic book,. This is the main source for the many animated movies, games, and cartoons you all love. Believe it or not, it’s meant to be beginner-friendly! This is the main story. Amazing Spider-ManIt is a sort of soft reboot of the status quo. We learn in the first issue that Peter Parker is doing something that has upset just about everybody. Things are so dire these days that he’s hanging out with Norman Osborn, who has turned a new leaf on his villainous past as the Green Goblin after another villain known as the Sin-Eater literally blasted his sins away with a magic shotgun. It’s not clear what that means, but for the most part, Norman wants to be a good guy now, and he’s haunted by his illustrious career as a bad one.

Image by Treyarch/Activision via Levan/YouTube

Meanwhile, Norman’s sins have manifested as an entity known as Queen Goblin, the monstrous alter ego of cloned psychiatrist Dr. Ashley Kafka (a lot going on there), and Mary Jane dislikes Peter so much that she’s gone off and gotten engaged to a guy with two kids — not that she and Peter were going steady to begin with. Und It’s not just once does anyone make use of the excellent pun “dark web.”

To put it in perspective, this is not a very low Spider-Man comic. In fact, these are the best they’ve been in a while. Zeb Wells is a writer who creates funny and light scripts. Despite their emphasis on Peter the down-and out, they never make you feel unhappy. Wells’ partner on art has mostly been returning champ John Romita Jr., a longtime Spidey artist with a distinctive, boxy style and a blue-collar aesthetic that’s well suited to grounded Spider-Man comics. That’s always been the appeal of Spider-Man, right? Spider-Man is the everyday hero, who can smile and bear everything even when it doesn’t work out. One who can create evil clones, travels to hell, and takes on the role of an able-bodied sociopath.

This is what makes reading so funny The Amazing Spider-ManIt will be 2023. While there are other comic book companion series and spinoffs from the main book, some of which have been very good (Joe Kelly and Chris Bachalo’s Non-Stop Spider-ManMarvel is an excellent example of this. Marvel doesn’t know who its Spidey main character is. It’s comics as a tautological exercise: The Amazing Spider-Man It is intended for readers The Amazing Spider-Man. People read. The Amazing Spider-ManIt is because it can be read.

Image by Insomniac Games/Sony Interactive Entertainment

That is the only real sensible explanation for the series’ fixation on its own incredibly messy history with stories that continually revisit the character’s most controversial moments (clones, symbiotes, etc.). For decades now, Marvel has periodically announced that Spider-Man will be going “back to basics” — the 2022 start of Wells’ run, the 2018 beginning of his predecessor Nick Spencer’s tenure, and multiple times throughout Dan Slott’s 10-year reign as Spidey scribe — only to inevitably end up here. The reason is arguably because The Amazing Spider-Man, despite being the main series about a relatable hero, hasn’t been interested in relating to anyone in a long time.

This is the topic of recent comics. Chip Zdarsky’s Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-ManThe throwback story was heavily inspired by the original Stan Lee/Steve Ditko webhead stories and ended with a sharp conclusion on why Spider-Man mattered. The 2019 comic Spider-Man in the NeighborhoodJuann Cabal, Tom Taylor and Juann Taylor focused their attention on Peter Parker. They created a neighborhood for Peter Parker to bounce off of and assist. These comics can be handed to those who are cold or curious about Spider-Man’s adventures.

It’s hard to imagine the exact same thing being said about every given subject. Amazing Spider-ManIn recent times, arc has been a popular topic. The series is inexplicable, and it is only a two-monthly chore of brand maintenance. It has a slow heartbeat that’s kept constantly from beating. It has its fans — there is a real appeal in keeping track of these decades-running twists and turns and seeing the subtle ways they are repackaged and commented on by different generations of creators — but it’s hard to imagine it winning any new ones. This is the new work of another media. There are brilliant animated films with different Spider-Man avatars, as well as lovingly rendered videogames which allow you to live the adventures of this iconic wall-crawler. It’s a shame, then, how likely these eager new fans are to turn to the comics being published now, only to find a series completely hostile to them.