7 Worst Things to Happen to the Spider-Man Comics

Spider-Man is the character that showed that the Marvel way of making superheroes — creating characters who were more like the readers — was going to be the wave of the future. Marvel was already popular when Spider-Man debuted, but The Amazing Spider-Man quickly became Marvel’s most popular title. Spider-Man has starred in some of the best Marvel stories of all time, and has given readers a lot of great moments. Spider-Man grew far beyond the comics as well, becoming a multimedia superstar like Batman and Superman before him. Spider-Man stands tall as one of the most popular superheroes of all time, with generations of fans growing up with the character.

However, not everything has always been good for Spider-Man. Every comic character has had ups and downs in their existence — it’s one of the drawbacks of having multiple creators work on a character over decades of time, each of them with a different view of the character, and that’s before we even get into the editors involved. Spider-Man has had some very high highs and so when the character hits a low, it’s even more noticeable. A lot of bad things have happened to the Spider-Man comics, but these seven are the worst.

7) Character Regression

Spider-Man is Marvel’s most relatable character, and a big part of that over the years was how Spider-Man has grown. Peter Parker started out a nerdy teenager, worried about money and his elderly aunt, and grew up before our eyes. He became an adult and we watched him as he went through college, relationship, and jobs, all while dealing with his life as a superhero. This reached its height after his marriage to Mary Jane. Spider-Man had to deal with all-new problems, and it honestly worked out pretty well. However, Marvel editorial had never liked the marriage or even Peter growing beyond being the sad sack loser of his early years. So, Marvel has aggressively regressed the character over the years. A character having problems is relatable, but there’s something about Spider-Man’s life in the last 18 years that has taken it to a comic level (pun intended). Peter would end up gaining wealth, prestige of some kind, or a good job and then had it all taken away from him to start fresh in the next story arc. He constantly is regressed back to the point of a shiftless, poor twenty-something and it’s gotten kind of annoying over the years. The readers have grown up, but Spider-Man isn’t allowed to, by editorial fiat.

6) John Byrne’s Spider-Man Reboot

The ’90s were a hard time for Spider-Man (more on that later), and towards the end of the decade, Marvel wanted to try something new. So, they went to writer/artist John Byrne. Byrne had become known as the reboot guy after his work at DC on Superman (and later Wonder Woman, he soft rebooted in the mid ’90s) and Marvel thought that was the way to go. Byrne was the person that Marvel thought would save Spider-Man, and so they gave him a new Spider-Man origin comic, Spider-Man: Chapter One and allowed him to co-plot and draw The Amazing Spider-Man with writer Howard Mackie. Byrne’s reboot is mostly forgotten, and for good reason — it was terrible. Spider-Man has one of the best origins in comics, and there was no reason to reboot the character or bring anything else into it. Byrne added Doctor Octopus to his origin, and gave readers new first confrontations with multiple Spider-Man villains. Fans rebelled right away, and Byrne’s run would be relegated to the dust bin of history as quickly as possible, closing out the worst decade of Spider-Man comics.

5) Todd McFarlane and Erik Larsen Leaving Marvel

While the ’90s got really bad for Spider-Man, they started out very well for the character. Todd McFarlane, fresh off books like Batman (in the underrated “Year Two” story) and The Incredible Hulk, was made the artist of The Amazing Spider-Man, with writer David Michielinie. Together, the two of them created Venom and McFarlane’s art became a huge draw for the character. A little after McFarlane joined the book, Erik Larsen would come on as a fill-in artist and take over for McFarlane with The Amazing Spider-Man #329. McFarlane was given his own Spider-Man title to write and draw, the adjectiveless Spider-Man, and for a time its first issue was the bestselling comic ever. However, McFarlane believed that he deserved more credit and money for his work, so he and fellow hot artist Rob Liefeld would begin agitating among Marvel’s bestselling artists. When Marvel denied them more money and credit, they left and formed Image. McFarlane and Larsen’s departure from the Spider-Man books would be a blow to the character. Spider-Man still sold well, but never like he did when they were on his books.

4) Zeb Wells’s The Amazing Spider-Man Run

Spider-Man had a pretty tumultuous time of things with fans after “One More Day”. The “Brand New Day” Spider-Man publishing initiative — Marvel made The Amazing Spider-Man basically a weekly book, with multiple A-list teams working on the book at once to keep up with the schedule — was successful, and eventually Dan Slott would be made writer of the book. Slott’s run was a victim of Marvel’s decisions with the character; while there are a lot of great stories from this run, fans rebelled against Slott, blaming him for every problem with the book. Slott was replaced by Nick Spencer, who seemed to want to undo all of the decisions that made fans angry, including putting Mary Jane and Peter back together. When Spencer left the title, fans were excited for the future, and that extended to the return of Zeb Wells, fresh off the success of Hellions, returning to Spider-Man. However, that excitement would turn to blind rage. Wells kicked off the book with a mystery box story where everyone hated Spider-Man for reasons we didn’t know yet and that Mary Jane was suddenly married to a man named Paul. While the book had excellent artists — John Romita Jr., Ed McGuinness, and Patrick Gleason — the writing wasn’t at all what fans wanted. The mystery box turned out bad, Ms. Marvel was killed, and we got the Spider Who Gobbles (Spider-Man infected with Norman Osborn’s sins). It was the most hated Spider-Man run in years, possibly since Byrne, and The Amazing Spider-Man fell from its space at the top of the sales charts. Wells’s run hurt Spider-Man immensely, and the book still hasn’t recovered.

3) “Sins Past”

J. Michael Straczynski’s run on The Amazing Spider-Man saved the book from the doldrums it was in mired in during the early ’00s. Straczynski’s run gave Peter a new job as a science teacher, fixed his relationship with Mary Jane (they had faked her death and the two of them kind of broke up in ’00), introduced a villain who would become extremely important in Morlun, and changed some of the mythology of Spider-Man (which would play into the Spider-Verse idea of Slott’s run). Fans loved it; it wasn’t perfect, but it was pretty close. Then “Sins Past”, with artist Mike Deodato Jr., happened. This story saw Spider-Man attacked by two mysterious foes, who would be revealed as the children of Gwen Stacy, born while she was away in Europe. At first, it was hinted that they were the son of Peter and Gwen, but the story would go in an insane direction when it revealed that Norman Osborn was the father. Gwen ended up sleeping with him in exchange for him not harming Peter. It was a terrible retcon, a dark spot on what up until then had been a pretty beloved run. It’s since been retconned out of existence, in a manner much too complicated to explain here.

2) The Clone Saga

The Clone Saga is one of the biggest missed opportunities in Spider-Man history, a story that could have gone down as a greatest of all-time tale. Re-introducing the Spider-clone from The Amazing Spider-Man #149 was a cool idea, and the Clone Saga started out very strong. However, there was a problem — Marvel didn’t have a plan for the entire story. So, because sales were good, they stretched it out. Eventually, the creators who had put out the good stories left the Spider-Man books and things took a nosedive. Part of this was revealing that Ben Reilly, the Spider-clone, was actually the real Peter Parker, that whole thing leaving a bad taste in Spider-Man fans’ mouths. The end of it isn’t actually all that bad — the idea of the whole thing being something a returned Norman Osborn’s doing is honestly a pretty cool idea — but by that time, fans were completely over the Clone Saga. The Clone Saga is a cautionary tale — planning is a key to great stories.

1) “One More Day”

“One More Day” is considered the worst Spider-Man story. Marvel editorial had finally decided to end Spider-Man’s marriage, but didn’t want to have him divorce — they thought that would age the character. So, “One More Day” happened. The story spun out of the aftermath of Spider-Man revealing his identity in Civil War; the Kingpin decided to kill him and Aunt May got hit by a sniper instead of Peter. “One More Day” saw Spider-Man trying to find a way to heal her, trying to convince anyone to help him. It all ended with Spider-Man and Mary Jane trading their marriage to Mephisto. The thing that most people who haven’t read the story don’t realize is that even if it didn’t end Spider-Man’s fan favorite marriage, it still would be considered terrible — the art is gorgeous, but the writing is very bad, as then Spider-Man writer Starczynski had to work with the full weight of Marvel editorial over his shoulder, which wanted something very particular from the story; Starczynski almost had his name taken off the book, and there are rumors that most of the ending chapters of the story were written by the editors. So much of the story makes no sense and is full of the kinds of cliches and leaps in logic that make comic books look bad. Every single problem the Spider-Man books have had in the last 18 years is all because of this book.

What do you think are the worst things to happen to Spider-Man? Sound off in the comments below.

7 DC Heroes Spider-Man Can’t Beat