The 12 Dumbest Spider-Man Stories Ever (Besides the Clone Saga)
Posted at 5:01 AM Nov 05, 2008
By Alicia Ashby
Fair warning: if your idea of a bad Spider-man story is when he fights a silly villain like the Hypno-Hustler, then the shit on this list is going to set your eyebrows on fire. This is a hardcore, no-holds-barred look at the absolute worst of the worst of Spider-man, and as you’ll see, the ‘80s and ‘90s and beyond let Spider-man comics get pretty motherfucking terrible. For all that Spider-man is one of the world’s most popular superheroes thanks to his combination of cool powers and everyday problems, a really bad Spider-man story is about as bad as superhero comics can get (well, until Chuck Austen is writing them). Be forewarned and forearmed with knowledge to avoid accidentally trying to read shit that will never, ever entertain you in a non-ironic way.
12) Spider-man Kills Mary Jane with his Radioactive Semen, Spider-man: Reign
Spider-man: Reign is a four-issue mini-series by writer/artist Kaare Andrews that is forthrightly an attempt to wedge Spider-man into the equivalent of a Dark Knight Returns dystopian story. How forthright? Why, there is a character named “Miller Jansen” featured in the book. It seems that at no point did anyone involved sit down and think about whether or not grim n’ gritty Spider-man was at all a good idea, or what the point of such an endeavor would be. Somebody at Marvel just wanted old, dark future Spidey.
Where DKR is a trailblazing classic, Reign is a derivative little ball of failure. The plot is at heart a generic “Spider-man’s villains team up to kill him” story drenched in ridiculously maudlin post-9/11 fear-mongering. Set 35 years in the future, Reign has a hilariously ancient J. Jonah Jameson push an over-sixty Peter Parker into becoming Spider-man again. It’s all part of a bizarre, nonsensical scheme to defeat a fascist government that’s taken over New York. Along the way there’s nonsense involving robot zombie Dr. Octopus, a laser killer death web projected around New York, and an impossibly stupid Dubya stand-in who works for Venom-as-Dick-Cheney.
What makes Reign memorably stupid instead of just forgettable is the truly, fantastically ridiculous backstory the whole thing hinges on. Throughout the book, our aging Peter Parker keeps having deranged visions of his long-dead wife Mary Jane. Later we find out that it’s not enough for him to be wracked by guilt because he was out fighting crime when she died of cancer; no, he also had to cause her cancer. Specifically, Spider-man gave Mary Jane cancer by tragically shooting her up repeatedly with his horrible radioactive Spider-Semen. His horrible radioactive Spider-Semen.
That’s not tragic. That shit is fucking hilarious. In fact, Reign could have worked really well as a Spider-man DKR parody, sort of in the Marvel Zombies vein. I mean, there’s a scene where Spider-man punches his way out of a coffin while singing the lyrics to his own '60s cartoon theme. A bit where J. Jonah Jameson is the pastor of a weird religion that believes in masks and bells. Peter even confesses his angst to Mary Jane’s corpse while a Doctor Octopus that consists of a rotting corpse attached to still-sentient robot arms looks on! That is totally the stuff of wicked black comedy. Unfortunately, Reign was content to be a shitty, dead-serious action showpiece with the concluding issues given over to stupid brawls, and the whole plot is resolved by Spider-man getting hold of a detonator that lets him blow up a building that is conveniently full of all the bad guys. This symbolizes, uh… freedom? Something? Fuck.
11) Peter Parker’s Parents Are Actually Evil Robots Programmed to Kill Spider-man, Amazing Spider-man #386-88
For most of the comics on this list I can articulate exactly what makes it so motherfucking stupid, why I hate it. With the "Lifetheft" storyarc, trying to think about the story too long results in a deep stabbing pain that shoots through either temple. I hate "Lifetheft" on a raw gut level, when it gets right down to it. The plot revolves around a very long series of utterly stupid and extremely coincidental events taking place, all as a build-up to a cataclysmic retcon that leaves the book worse off than it was before. The events of this story are used to send Spider-man into a spiral of self-pitying angst so intense and long-running that getting rid of it ended up as one of the motivations behind starting the godforsaken Clone Saga, which we’ll discuss in more detail in a later list.
Richard and Mary Parker were first mentioned in Spider-man Annual #5, a Stan Lee joint that established that Peter Parker’s parents were actually super-cool secret agents, ha ha, isn’t it funny that Peter appears to be a loser dork but is actually a super-cool action guy, too! Peter’s parents didn’t join the cast of Amazing Spider-man until #365, as part of a thirtieth anniversary sales-spiking stunt. It’s pretty obvious, reading the books at the time, that his parents were sincerely intended as a new recurring addition to the cast. Exactly why Marvel thought it’d be neat to see Peter interacting with his old depressed ex-secret agent parents who were traumatized by years in brutal Russian prisons is a bit harder to fathom, but their roles in the few years of stories they appeared in usually hinged on them being, you know, human.
As with a lot of other ideas that didn’t work out so well, it was eventually decided that Richard and Mary had to go, and as quickly as possible. Editors worked them into an insane clusterfuck of otherwise okay-ish stories involving the Vulture, the Chameleon, and the Harry Osborn iteration of the Green Goblin. The short version is that, basically, the Chameleon got a hot but unexplained tip from Harry Osborn that making evil android duplicates of Peter Parker’s parents would be a great way to discover who Spider-man was. This clever plan apparently was supposed to work via the evil androids hanging around Aunt May’s house until Peter up and spontaneously decides to reveal his secret identity to them after knowing them for maaaaybe a few months of his life, tops. Good thing Peter spontaneously became stupid enough to do that when it was time to write Richard and Mary out, huh?!
That’s the signal for everything to get all crazy-go-nuts. His parents report back to the Chameleon, Spider-man tracks them down for a big showdown, his fake dad becomes a lame-looking porcupine death cyborg and starts pounding on him, his fake mom starts burbling with all sorts of womanly emotions and refuses to be evil. Somehow the Chameleon never finds out Spider-man’s secret identity, both of the evil parent cyborgs are killed in various ways, and in the process the story creates that lame-ass young dude version of the Vulture who ran around the Spider-books for way too fucking long. The whole thing was such a mess of hopeless contrivances that it’s not even defensible if you subscribe to the idea that it’s okay for superhero comics to be dumb as shit. The only upshot was making Harry Osborn seem mildly threatening, in the sense he's willing to go waaaaaaay out of his way to fuck Spider-man's shit up.
10) Curt Conners Is an Asshole, Spectacular Spider-man #11-13
Paul Jenkins would be my candidate for the worst single Spider-man writer ever. This story should give you a good idea of why, although it’s not even the worst thing, or worst Spider-man story, he ever told. “The Lizard’s Tale” is Paul Jenkins’ stab at a Lizard story, but of course, with a post-modern twist. So, don’t expect any of the traditional pathos of Curt Connors’s struggle to control his evil alter ego here. Instead, Jenkins took the bold step of writing a story about how Dr. Connors was always, deep down, a hateful asshole.
The basic idea of “The Lizard’s Tale” is that Curt Connors could always control what the Lizard was doing, and just subconsciously chose not to so he could passive-aggressively lash out at those around him. Note that this revelation isn’t just boring by itself, but if taken at face value, would make all previous Lizard stories more boring except in the cases where it made them make no fucking sense at all. Jenkins also treats the Lizard a bit too much like the Hulk, with mild emotions like “angst with son” and “some jackass got a grant I wanted” being all it took to trigger Lizard transformations. Granted, Connors’s problem here probably isn’t helped much by Spider-man’s attempts to aid him by, say, locking him in a tiny cell in the fucking sewers.
Where the story gets really priceless is the ending. Once Connors realizes Spider-man knows what’s really up with him and the Lizard, he deals with it by making a lame attempt at a bank robbery so he’ll get locked up in jail. However, he gets put in a regular jail since he wasn’t committing a super-crime, and there’s no regular jail in the world that could hold the Lizard after a transformation. You could argue that Connors was going to try not to transform, but an environment like prison where everyone is trying to shank everyone else isn’t really conducive to that. Spider-man doesn’t even inform the jailers that they’ve got the Lizard on the hands—he just leaves Connors to his fate, which will probably involve eating a lot of other convicts once they get on his nerves.
9) Spidey Meets the Amazing Redneck/Trucker Superhero Razorback, Spectacular Spider-man #12-15
This is the only pre-'80s Spider-man story to make the cut for this list’s lofty standards of terribleness, but it’s bad in a very '70s way. Within the span of four issues writer Bill Mantlo manages to present us with a superhero who speaks in CB lingo, a cult of evil pseudo-Moonies, and Spider-man battling a cosmic menace alongside… uh, Flash Thompson?
Seriously, the story begins with Peter Parker playing tennis with Flash Thompson, who is moping because his Vietnamese girlfriend… uh, Sha-Shan is actually married to another dude. After the match Peter and Flash accidentally wander into the meeting of some sort of cult presided over by “Brother Power and Sister Sun,” who babble on about love and light and loves lighting lovingly and it’s all very sickening in a specifically ‘70s way. Flash recognizes the woman’s voice and goes nuts, believing Sister Sun to be his beloved Sha-Shan. After this it’s not long before Spider-man is trying to save Flash from a mob, and Brother Power and Sister Sun are shooting laser beams out of their chests at him. Concussive laser beams. And they can only shoot them when they hold hands.
The second issue of the storyline catapults it into all-time memorable insanity by abruptly introducing the senses-shattering debut of Razorback. Razorback is a new, mod hero for the ‘70s that hails from “Texarkana”, uses CB lingo in casual conversation, speaks in a thick Southern drawl, and wears a pig-shaped cowl complete with tusks and an electrified mane. He tussles with Spider-man for quite literally no other reason than to introduce himself (he heard that was proper superhero etiquette, and no, I’m not joking), then reveals that he, too, is seeking the Light Cult so he can try to rescue his disappeared sister “Bobby Sue” from it. Razorback is a gadget hero, so of course he can cruise around in a remote-control semi that he calls the “Big Pig” without any irony at all.
Razorback, and Spidey head to a big cult rally in a huge stadium to try and rescue Flash Thompson. The crazy button gets pushed and the insanity goes onto overdrive. The cult turns out to be a front for the Hate-Monger! The heroes get captured and chained to a wall! In defiance of all known established physics of how webshooters work, Spider-man helps everyone escape their bonds by managing a trick ricochet shot that hits a button on Razorback’s belt buckle, which sends the Big Pig crashing through a wall to save everyone! Hate-Monger tries to collapse the stadium and starts using his powers to send all the cultists into a frenzy of hatred! Spider-man has to hold everything up by himself, because nothing inspires in a Spider-man story like him lifting a really heavy thing!
Eventually Spider-man and the others face the Hate-Monger after Sha-Shan turns on her husband (who has the highly Vietnamese name Achmed Korba, by the way) and they start shooting light-beams at each other. The Hate-Monger unmasks and reveals himself as the Man-Beast, a guy so strong that he could go toe-to-toe with the Hulk and most recently fought Adam Warlock. Warlock devolved him into a wolf, but the Man-Beast eventually hated so hard that he reverted back to his usual form. During a frankly mind-blowing battle with Spider-man, the Hate-Monger hates so hard at Spider-man that it creates a giant ZAM sound-effect and shoots a death-laser at him. Spidey of course presses on through the wall of SHEER HATE to eventually save the day by hitting the Man-Beast really, really hard. Yeah, I’m sure nobody thought of that one before.
This story has so many little demented touches, from Razorback… just existing, really, to the total lack of anything Vietnamese about the Vietnamese characters, to the positively offhanded way crazy ‘70s cosmic mystic shit is thrown around. Sha-Shan it seems married Korba as part of her destiny as a priestess of the Temple of Light (destroyed by the last bombing raid of the Vietnam War!!!) and so was destined to, like, turn on him when she could no longer shackle his evil… and then there’s Razorback’s bizarre sister Bobby Sue, who does nothing in the story, and Flash Thompson hanging around the whole time just sorta punching guys… this is a bad and stupid comic, but a bad and stupid comic from an earlier era when even a total misfire could entertain a little just by virtue of sheer fucking insanity.
Comments
And THAT is why I stopped reading comics in the late 80's.
Posted 11/05/2008 at 06:22:37 AMMaximum Carnage- Wasteful comic but a superfun video game! I still can't get that themesong out of my head.
Posted 11/05/2008 at 06:25:55 AMWOW! Nice list. I most certainly appreciate all of the work that went into this post. It makes me feel not-so-bad about stopping my comic collecting about 20 yrs ago.
The artwork on that Changes storyline is god-awful. Questionable anatomy and ridiculously out of proportion hands? Yuck.
If you wouldn't have mentioned that that WASN'T Spawn in that Spidey comic, I wouldn't of known the difference. I figured that Marvel was doing some crazy crossover with Image or somethin'.
Once again, great post!
Posted 11/05/2008 at 06:46:38 AMCompletely agree with you on Maximum Carnage. I know it was the dark and edgy '90s, but damn, how many cops and civilians were literally torn apart in this story? Dozens and dozens. And they're considered filler before the next loser hero shows up. Nice of all of the Avengers to wait so long to do anything while a mob of killers is leveling the city. WORTHLESS team.
Bill Mantlo, on the other hand, can do no wrong. He was given the wackiest orders and wrote semi-comprehensible plots out of them. And he wrote some of the best one-shots for every Marvel comic out there. And he gave us Rom, taking a toy and one paragraph of backstory and creating a 75 issue run. Of ROM!!! Much more famous heroes couldn't hold sales and last 75 issues. God bless Mantlo.
Posted 11/05/2008 at 07:20:55 AMGood Stuff!
Posted 11/05/2008 at 08:25:25 AMAs someone first introduced to Maximum Carnage from the SNES game I was seriously disappointed that at no point in the actual comic do Spider-Man and Venom get beat up by evil girl scouts.
Posted 11/05/2008 at 08:26:14 AMBWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
Cloak & Dagger?!? Morbius?!?
Those are F-Listers!!!
Posted 11/05/2008 at 08:28:24 AMWow. And I thought the original Stan lee comics were bad. Well, they were. Just not THIS bad.
Posted 11/05/2008 at 08:46:41 AMmaximum carnage the snes game was real good, but I never read the comics. Now I am very glad. I guess beating up the same lot of bad guys over and over translates much better to a video game.
Posted 11/05/2008 at 09:08:35 AMPretty much agree. Also, nice to see a list of bad Spidey stories that doesn't include the clone sage.
Posted 11/05/2008 at 09:22:32 AMSomething I just noticed with the "Maximum Carnage" entry ... take a closer look at those panels with Venom. How the hell can be talk with that enormous tongue lolling all over the place? For fun, stick your own tongue out and try to deliver those lines. Hilarity will ensue.
Posted 11/05/2008 at 12:11:31 PMCan we stop drinking Wizard's Kool-Aid? The Clone Saga was not bad. It did get a little complicated from time to time thanks to four different Spidey books that had crossovers going on every single month. But it was a fun, unique story that created a very compelling character in Ben Reilly.
More so than that Ezekiel crap, Peter dying, the Slingers costumes and Brand New Day it was the Clone Saga that made Spidey feel fresh for the first time in years.
Ben Reilly, FTW
Posted 11/05/2008 at 12:15:43 PMRadioactive cancerous Semen? Parents who are evil robots? Cloak and Dagger? Fuck, this list is fucking hilarious!
Posted 11/05/2008 at 02:08:18 PMnumber five should definitely be number one.
Posted 11/05/2008 at 02:13:37 PMHere's 2 stories I was disappointed weren't on the list:
Peter Parker: Spider-Man (Vol. 2) #44-47: "A Death in the Family"
This story is so blatantly ripped off from "The Killing Joke" I'm amazed it ever was published without DC suing Marvel.
Amazing Spider-Man #2:"The Uncanny Threat of the Terrible Tinkerer"
Peter Parker goes to a shop to get his camera fixed, and finds out that the camera shop is run by aliens disguised as old people.
Posted 11/05/2008 at 02:53:05 PMnice list, but yo forgot the clone spider-man story line
Posted 11/05/2008 at 03:23:10 PMCannot...unsee...#8...X_X
Amazing effort in putting this together though man :o!
Posted 11/05/2008 at 03:53:33 PMGood list, overall... though I disagree with your assertion that Paul Jenkins is the worst of the Spider-Man writers of the last ten years.
Sure, the stories you listed were bad but they also weren't typical of Jenkins work. Indeed, both these stories were ordered by The Powers That Be. They wanted Lizard made into a more obvious villain (something to do with what they heard would happen in Spider-Man 2) and the Changes thing was contrived to give Peter organic webshooters... just like the movie.
Seriously, I think Jenkins did phenomenally well given that he had to hold up an entire book on his own dealing with two different editors-in-chief that kept throwing him curve-balls and having to adjust to whatever the heck was going on in Howard Mackie's Amazing Spider-Man.
And on that note... how could you do this list and NOT include Mackie's swan-song - Amazing Spider-Man #29? The story where we find out that Mary Jane's death was faked by an unnamed telepathic/precog mutant who somehow got locked on Peter's mind, came to the conclusion Peter was wasting his powers and his life saving people when he could have having hot sex with MJ night and day and began to try and psychically absorb Peter so he could become Peter while trying to torture MJ into loving him... only to mentally blow his own head off after he realized that - by killing someone (i.e. Peter) - he'd never truly be like Peter.
Posted 11/05/2008 at 07:14:21 PMI would put Changes at the first spot, as Maximum Carnage at least had some kind of fun factor to it. I will throw out that I think Mackie was a worse Spider-writer than Jenkins, although Jenkins was working hard to reach his level.
Whatever way you say it, Spider-Man has honestly sucked pretty much since the year or so of post-Clone Saga stories that ended with the Slingers costume.
And Brand New Day sadly just makes a bigger mess of it all. Meh, I'll just go back to reading Invincible.
Posted 11/05/2008 at 11:18:33 PMRikky> Not forgotten; read the title of the article.
Regarding the last pic: The Power Rangers called, they want their Power Blaster back.
My memories of Maximum Carnage stem from the game as well. Probably for the best.
I didn't mind The Other so much; I actually liked Spider-man's new abilities. They weren't overwhelming, save for the claws, but I could see them make for good, convenient storytelling devices. Practically his own equivalent to Batman having a bunch of useful gadgets, even if he doesn't use them all the time.
Pity they were seemingly retconned.
But One More Day/Brand New Day is the worst for me. It has all but killed Spider-man for me. For a superhero, making a deal with the devil like that, one that is clearly stated by Mephisto to essentially spit in the very face of God, is absolutely the most unheroic, deplorable thing I've seen in the whole series.
People say Iron Man's a dick in the comics, but I'll support him anyway, if for no other reason than he's on the opposite side of Spider-man. I just can't believe Spider-man is capable of doing right after this, and the stuff he's doing in Brand New Day does little to restore my faith.
As far as I'm concerned? Spider-man didn't just sell his marriage, he sold his very soul. And until he manages to get that back and atone, I really don't give a damn about him.
On a related note: What would Aunt May say if she knew?
--LBD "Nytetrayn"
Posted 11/05/2008 at 11:39:48 PMGreat list. Maximum Carnage was actually the last Spider-man comic I read before I gave up on them for about ten years. One thing does seem consistent in this list that I've always said. They need to let Aunt May finally die. Yes, she took care of Peter for the first twenty years of his life. But he's been taking care of her for the next forty years. Fans should start a campaign over losing this character who's, at this point, is just a prop thats just something else for Spider-man to save. We got rid of Robin in the Nineties, (at least one of them), I think in the new millineum we can off her for good.
Posted 11/06/2008 at 12:11:21 AMwhy didnt anybody mention the issue where he fights dracula? or the one where he teams up with howard the duck to fight some guy named status quo?
Posted 11/06/2008 at 12:22:46 AMInteresting to look back at Maximum Carnage and see just how horrible it is. I was 6 or 7 when I read it and I remember loving it pretty much entirely due to the very reason you make fun of it. While I look back now and realize how ridiculous the story is, when I was a kid all I remember from it was page after page of crazy looking new villains popping up out of nowhere and thinking how cool that was. Then again my 7 year old self was probably alot closer to the target audience for the comic than any of us are.
Posted 11/06/2008 at 12:36:54 AMNice job with the list. I hate to be the prude here or the language police but holy smokes- too many Fbombs. When you're criticizng writing, it makes it more important to "acceptable." That being said I really agree with you and your choices.
Posted 11/06/2008 at 12:46:59 AMMy hatred of Brand New Day knows no bounds because it was the ultimate writing cop out. They painted themself into a corner and said "but look I have a magic doohikey here!" Imagine seeing Spidey get shot and then saying "but he has a bullet disintegrater in his pocket." I mean from now on - why should I read? If the going gets tough- We've always got the "Devil get out of Jail Free" move.
They could do it every time. There's really nothing to lose now. I quit reading all Spiderman titles right after this.
OMG...thank you, thank you for this writeup. Spider-Man was the whole reason I got into reading comics in the early 90's...but by the time "Maximum Carnage" came out...I was so utterly done with the shitty storylines and contrived characters.
I recall having a shouting match with someone regarding how horrible this story was and how this would drive readers off in droves. I haven't bought a single issue of any series since then...but I do pick up the occasional TPB. Every once in awhile though I'll see the Maximum Carnage TPB and vomit a little in my mouth.
Posted 11/06/2008 at 05:34:36 AMWow. That brought back some memories. Spider-Man for the last 30 odd years has been pretty shitty, hasn't it? I think the only good run was Spectacular Spiderman by JM Dematteis and Sal Buscema. That was a great run with a mature and thoughtful Spiderman.
Not the whining douchebag that sold out his pregnant wife in One More Day.
Eric
Posted 11/06/2008 at 10:39:45 AMOne other thing. BIll Manlo rocks. That whole storyline read like a 1970s diso funk acid trip.
Posted 11/06/2008 at 10:46:46 AM"Spider-man Kills Mary Jane with his Radioactive Semen" you have got to be kidding! That's hilarious.
Posted 11/06/2008 at 10:58:26 AMMarvel released Maximum Carnage in only two editions here in Brazil. After reading your post I noticed the major fight scenes were cut out. And that's why I liked Maximum Carnage the first time I read.
Posted 11/06/2008 at 05:11:59 PMThe clone saga wasn't necessarily a bad storyline, just unnecessary, overlong, and rendered unobtainable (like other Spidey storylines from the past two decades) by the fact that Marvel split it up over several different titles. I quit buying Spider-Man comics during this period, and have never returned.
The Gwen-gets-pregnant-for-Osborn concept had potential, and I had been playing around with a similar idea for a few years leading up to its publication, but Marvel just twisted it in the wrong direction. My story involved Gwen being raped by the Kingpin, and being shipped off to Europe where she was still alive. I still have the partially written script stashed away somewhere in my files...
Of the classic Spider-Man stories, one storyline stands out in my mind as having been ruined by the inclusion of a guest appearance. Amazing Spider-Man Nos. 88 through 92 was a great story (Doc Ock, death of captain Stacy, Gwen's revenge, etc.), but it was severely weakened in Nos. 91 and 92 by the appearance of IceMan--one of the most ridiculous and unbelievable of all the Marvel superheroes from this period.
Posted 11/08/2008 at 10:47:55 AMwhat's really funny to me is that I stopped buying comics shortly after razorback's introduction, but since then I read through some 5 or 6 times a year to see what's been going on, and I've managed to hit every single one of these "marvel mile/millstones."
Posted 01/09/2009 at 06:26:57 AMwhat's really funny to me is that I stopped buying comics shortly after razorback's introduction, but since then I read through some 5 or 6 times a year to see what's been going on, and I've managed to hit every single one of these "marvel mile/millstones."
Posted 01/09/2009 at 06:27:28 AMWow, that was fun. I remember Maximum Carnage and being very confused by all the random villains and heroes. Poor old JMS is a great writer in my opinion, but Sins of the Past deserves it's spot on this list none the less. And One More Day is an awful idea.
Posted 02/03/2009 at 05:43:32 PMMaximum Carnage is crap. Not just crap, but crap as! Yesterday I tried to read all 14 issues - I made it half way through the second part when I remembered that I hate it. Why Demogoblin and Doppelganger? It's not like The Lizard had creative concerns or that Sandman had made other commitments. But I'll defend OMD - not because it's a good idea, but the end justifies the means. If I wanted to read Married Comics, I'd just pay more attention to my own dumb life.
Posted 02/20/2009 at 03:03:47 AMThe Other good? No f***ing way. Like Maximum Carnage, it was a horribly over-long story that went through four months when it could have been told in one. Not to mention Morlun, who actually was a viable threat in the first arc he was in, was resurrected after his death only to be handled in the worst way and murdered again midway through the story. This should have been top/bottom five.
And Paul Jenkins as the worst Spider-Man writer of the decade? Seriously? Although I do agree he did have some clunkers, particularly at the beginning of his run, he also did some pretty good stuff. The no. 1 worst Spidey writer of the decade is by far Joseph Michael Stracynski. I admit he showed promise during his first year on the book, but after that he soon degraded down to crap like the drawn-out Ezekial subplot, Sins Past, the ridiculous and overrused "Spidey goes dark" arc in Back in Black and OMD (yes, Joe Q may have mandated it, but that's beside the point, JMS still wrote the damn thing)
Posted 03/26/2009 at 10:25:45 PMI thought the Gwen Stacy storyline was quite imaginative. I think that J. Michael Stracynski wasa hell of a write who introduced many unique concepts to a 40 year old Spidey Saga. Not your cup of tea?
Sorry about that. Maybe that is why Baskin-Robbins has 31 flavors. Not all people have the same taste.
Eddie
Posted 05/30/2009 at 11:15:43 AM"Michael T said:
Maximum Carnage is crap. Not just crap, but crap as! Yesterday I tried to read all 14 issues - I made it half way through the second part when I remembered that I hate it. Why Demogoblin and Doppelganger? It's not like The Lizard had creative concerns or that Sandman had made other commitments. But I'll defend OMD - not because it's a good idea, but the end justifies the means. If I wanted to read Married Comics, I'd just pay more attention to my own dumb life."
And if you wanted to read about a single Peter Parker, you could read Ultimate Spider-Man. OMD was retarded AND pointless.
Posted 06/13/2009 at 12:38:18 PMWas interesting and funny to read. Especially interesting how dumb Maximum Carnage is in a way. Because when I was a kid, I found it the coolest Spidey-Story I ever read! ;)
Posted 06/15/2009 at 06:12:53 AMSpider-Man comics are the worst comic book series of all time. I don't care how many good stories Spidey had in the 70s and 80s, I don't care about the Kingpin storylines, the Kraven storylines, the Sin-eater stories. It doesn't matter how brilliant they were because they have been rendered null by the complete idiocy of writing we've seen in the last 2 decades. There really hasn't been one good Spider-Man story in 20 years. Think about that, ever since the Clone Saga it's been downhill. Actually, it's impossible to take Spider-Man seriously after the Clone Saga, why not just kill the guy....that's right, why not Marvel just do the right thing and kill the character forever. He's dead to me anyways.
Spider-Man comics just cannot compare to other Marvel titles like The Hulk, Daredevil, Iron Fist, X-Force, Wolverine, X-Men, Thor, Avengers....it's just so bad it's ridiculous.
Posted 06/16/2009 at 01:53:11 PMThere really hasn't been one good Spider-Man story in 20 years. Think about that, ever since the Clone Saga it's been downhill.
I'm having trouble with the blatant stupidity of what I just read. So someone who probably doesn't even read the books anymore is pretending he can have an opinion on stuff he doesn't read.
So you're saying you've read every Spider-Man story in the past 20 years?
I'm reading one right now. It's the arc that is CURRENTLY in Amazing Spider-Man: American Son. And it's fantastic. In fact, Amazing Spider-Man has been almost non-stop high quality since last July. While the way they went about One More Day (with Mephisto) is questionable, the book ever since has been great.
Not to mention, most of JMS' run was completely great. Most, not all.
Posted 06/21/2009 at 03:14:37 AMI like JMS and Jenkins stories, and strongly disagree with your opinion. I don't have any conservacist sentimets about old times, so I don't see what's wrong with a fact, that Connors was fooling himself all the time with "fighting the Lizard" stuff, especially it is the most interesting thing with Lizard since "Torment", and don't understand, why Gwen is threaten as some lame sant-cow in fandom. I like those stories.
Posted 06/22/2009 at 03:36:30 PM