The 7 Most Controversial Spider-Man Stories of All Time

Spider-Man is Marvel’s most popular hero by a wide margin. Sure, Wolverine and Hulk are as well-known by casual fans, Iron Man has the MCU rub, and Captain America and Thor are both rather popular, but it’s the Wall-Crawler that gets the most sales and has had the biggest impact on the publisher. Over the years, he’s starred in unforgettable stories, earning his place atop the House of Ideas’ superhero heap. However, unforgettable isn’t always a good thing. Sometimes, a story is hard to forget because of the massive problems with it. Unfortunately for Spider-Man fans, there are a good number of these types of unforgettable stories.

These tales have become bones of contention with fans from across the fandom. While these controversies won’t get anyone cancelled, they’re still enough to drive readers crazy and have hurt the standing of the Wall-Crawler’s book in the comic industry overall. Spider-Man fans are some of the unhappiest on the entire Internet, with some infamous stories causing a lot of controversy. Here are the seven most controversial Spider-Man stories of all time, books that fans will never forget for the worst reasons.

7) “Revelations”

So, obviously, the Clone Saga in total will be on this list, but first we’re going to take a look at the end of the story to find a controversy that has come back around within the Spider-Man fandom. “Revelations” brought back the Green Goblin, running through all four major Spider-Man books of the day, revealing that he was the one behind the Clone Saga. This story brought Aunt May back to life – it had been an actress who had died – and it also dealt with Mary Jane’s pregnancy by having her “miscarry”. However, it also introduced the idea that the baby had survived and was taken by Norman Osborn. And then nothing happened with it. Fans have been wondering if any thing was ever going to come of this and it still hasn’t to this day. Marvel has forgotten, but the fans are Pepperidge Farms.

6) “One Moment in Time”

Mary Jane Watson stands tall among Spider-Man’s various love interests, but Marvel was never all that much of a fan. This led to “One More Day”, a story we’ll get to later, which was honestly hated from the moment it ended. Joe Quesada, then Marvel editor in chief and the story’s mastermind, would return to tell a tale that was meant to make sense of the changes made by “One More Day” with the story “One Moment in Time”. Running through Amazing Spider-Man #638-641, by Quesada and Paolo Rivera, it tried to make sense of Mary Jane and Peter’s marriage never happening and it honestly made the whole worse. Personally, I like to picture Quesada mystified that everyone didn’t love his ideas for the Wall-Crawler, because you can tell he thought he was doing something with this one that would make the reaction to “One More Day” change.

5) “Sinister War”

Nick Spencer’s run on Amazing Spider-Man is an interesting beast. Fans loved it at first and it seemed like it was meant to undo “One More Day”, but then “Sinister War” happened. This story was the culmination of Spencer’s plots and ran through Sinister War #1-4 and Amazing Spider-Man (Vol. 5) #70-74, by Spencer, Mark Bagely, Diogenes Neves, Ze Carlos, Carlos Gomez, Marcelo Ferreira, Federico Vincentini, Federico Sabbatini, Ivan Fiorelli, and Humberto Ramos. This is the story that revealed that Harry Osborn was behind stories like “Sins Past”, using an AI set to keep his hatred of Spider-Man going after his death. Basically, everyone thought this story was going to undo “OMD” and instead it undid “Sins Past”. Fans were hugely disappointed in the whole thing.

4) Amazing Spider-Man (Vol. 6) #21-25

Honestly, I could put the entire Zeb Wells right here and no one would complain. Wells ruined Amazing Spider-Man, even though it stayed atop the sale charts. However, we’re going to focus on just one story and that’s the one that ran through Amazing Spider-Man (Vol. 6) #21-25, by Wells and John Romita Jr. It revealed the mystery box from the beginning of the book of what happened to make the heroes all hate Spider-Man and fans were highly underwhelmed (basically Spider-Man stole tech from people to get back to the dimension that Mary Jane was trapped in) and then, basically out of nowhere, it killed Ms. Marvel so she could be resurrected as a mutant in the X-Men books for MCU synergy. Wells’ run will always be hated, but this story especially caused an uproar, fridging a female superhero for no good reason.

3) “Sins Past”

J. Michael Straczynski’s run on Amazing Spider-Man in the early ’00s brought fans back in, but it also has two of the maligned story in the character’s history. “Sins Past” ran through issues #509-514, by Straczynski and Mike Deodato, revealing that Gwen Stacy had sex with Norman Osborn years ago and had two children that grew up faster because of the Goblin formula. They thought they were Peter’s kids and came after him for revenge. While it’s been retconned by “Sinister War”, this story caused an uproar (personally, I hate Gwen Stacy and I love Gwen slander, so this story never bothered me). On top of that, it’s just kind of blah in general.

2) The Clone Saga

The Clone Saga was the biggest crack to form in the Spider-Man in years when it ended in the ’90s. The idea behind the story is classic superhero comic – the Spider-clone returned and shenanigans ensued. At first, it sold pretty well and fans were interested, but then it went on, introducing more mysteries. And then it said the clone was the real one. Then it went on longer. The story lasted over two years; the creators who started the story were gone by the time it ended. They never had a plan to end it, just keeping it going because controversy sells. It went way longer than it should have, and that’s the entire problem with it.

1) “One More Day”

“One More Day” is widely considered the worst Spider-Man story. Amazing Spider-Man #544-545, Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man #24, and Sensational Spider-Man #45, by J. Michael Stracynski and Joe Quesada, were sold as the next big moment in the Spider-Man comics and it lived up to that in the worst way. This is the story where Mary Jane and Peter traded their marriage to Mephisto to save Aunt May’s life. If you have a problem with Spider-Man in 2026, you can almost certainly connect it to this book. The art was amazing, but the writing was terrible, with Straczynski’s ideas changed so much he almost had his name taken off the book. This one is legendarily hated and will almost certainly always be.

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