Just a little under two decades ago, Marvel Comics revealed the ickiest Spider-Man detail that fans never wanted to know. With Peter Parker appearing in literally thousands of stories since his debut, readers everywhere know quite a bit about the wall-crawler. From his favorite foods to the insane amount of weight he can lift (several tons at least). Marvel has never been shy about revealing personal details when it comes to Spider-Man, and why not? He’s their biggest superhero, and the more fans know about him, the more we really understand who Peter really is.
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That said, there is a limit on the things we need to know about heroes. Sometimes, a story detail slips in a factoid that reveals information that’s a little too personal, a little too gross, or frankly just wrong. In Peter’s case, fans got a shocking detail in the infamous storyline, Spider-Man: Reign. This series was set in a dark future, one where heroes were a thing of the past, only for Spider-Man to come out of retirement. And while that all sounds good, the series ultimately ended up being most well-known for its surprising revelation about Spider-Man’s reproductive system.
Marvel Comics Actually Revealed Peter Parker Has Radioactive Semen (That Gave Mary Jane Cancer)
Oh, how I wish that heading wasn’t a reality, but yes, that’s exactly what happened. On this day nearly two decades ago, Marvel published Spider-Man: Reign #3 by Kaare Andrews and Jose Villarrubia. Peter Parker isn’t well. The tired and broken senior citizen is confronted by Doctor Octopus, now a corpse being puppeteered by his AI-powered tentacles. To get Peter to confront his trauma and get him back in the game as Spider-Man, Ock makes Peter confront the corpse of his greatest love, Mary Jane Watson. Upon seeing her body, Peter is overwhelmed by his final memories of MJ.
Peter recalls Mary Jane in the hospital, dying from cancer. As he pours his heart out to his partner, he hears an ambulance and leaves upon hearing her say ‘go’, only for her to pass on while he leaves to help someone in trouble. As Peter holds MJ’s corpse, he apologizes profusely for their last moment together. He also apologizes for the cancer she succumbed to. According to Peter, the bite that made Peter’s blood radioactive made all his body fluids radioactive. Though he doesn’t say it outright, he heavily implies their physical intimacy ultimately led to MJ’s death.
Spider-Man’s Darkest Moment Was Just Too Gross to Work
Spider-Man: Reign isn’t a bad story. In fact, many see it as Peter’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. Unfortunately, any discussion about this story is mired by the sudden revelation that Spider-Man’s radioactive semen killed Mary Jane (God, that feels weird to type). Here’s the thing: I get what Kaare Andrews was trying to do here. This was a moment meant to highlight the guilt that the aged and broken Peter had been carrying for years. His life as Spider-Man metaphorically cost him the greatest love he’d ever known. It’s a heavy scene, and some elements work here.
But all the emotional weight of Peter’s guilt and torment is undercut by emphasizing that Peter’s reproductive material was responsible for MJ’s untimely death. It abandons the subtlety of the metaphor in favor of a literal way that Peter killed his love, and in the grossest, most perplexing manner possible. Had the story just left it as Peter carrying the guilt of not being with MJ in her last minutes of life, it still could have worked in a way that felt appropriate for Spider-Man. Instead, Reign decided to take fans in a direction that made us all ask, “Why?”.
The one saving grace here is that Spider-Man: Reign is not the future of the Earth-616 Spider-Man, but rather, the future of one of his variants. Still, this kind of twist just feels so out of place that it’s bizarre. It’s the kind of edgy deconstruction you’d see in something like The Boys, not an actual Marvel book. Thankfully, most other worlds and futures learned from the reception to Spider-Man: Reign. But Spider-Man and Mary Jane suffering no ill effects from being intimate doesn’t erase how Peter managed to give her cancer with radioactive semen (again, so weird to type).
How do you feel about Spider-Man actually giving Mary Jane cancer with his radioactive bodily fluids? Let us know in the comments or share your thoughts on the ComicBook Forum!
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Courtesy of Warner Bros. Japan
