All Things Spidey #5

I recommend that all Spider-Man fans, Anti-Fans, or anyone interested in Marvel Comics pick up a copy of the February 1998 Wizard comics magazine. It is issue #78 and Spider-Man is on the cover. There is an article in the magazine titled "Sticky Situation: Wizard analyzes the Spider-Man titles current problems - and how we'd fix them" by the Wizard Staff. The conclusion after reading this fine article is that Spider-Man is in some very serious trouble as a viable character in the comics industry.

Many times I feel that I am on some ridiculous crusade trying to improve the quality of Spider-Man with this column. However, after reading this article, I realized that the staff of Wizard was saying everything that I have been saying in the last few months about the terrible state of affairs in the Spider comics. It feels good to have one's opinions spelled out by a nationally syndicated comic magazine. However, it feels pretty bad to realize that they know what the Spider books need better than the editors, writers and artists at Marvel do. The local comic book shop knows that Spidey is in some serious trouble; fellow graduate students and friends know that Spidey is in some serious trouble. So why has Marvel chosen to really work at starting anew with the Fantastic Four, Captain America, Iron Man and the Avengers, while letting Old Webhead become a second tier character? In the priceless phrase of a fellow graduate student, "Marvel has taken their flagship character and systematically flushed him down the toilet!"

As I see it, there are two problems that need to be dealt with in order to return to the glory days of our wall-crawling hero. First, somehow this entire clone story fiasco has to be explained away. How, I don't know, but Marvel doesn't pay me to figure this type of stuff out. Second, Spider-Man can no longer be married. Let us begin with the second problem. Peter is just not an interesting super hero if he is a married man. It simply violates the core being of Spider-Man for him to be in an institution that is the bedrock of society. Spidey has never been conventional; he is out on the edge, and he definitely does not fit within the confining scenario of super-hero as responsible married man. A married man cannot be the long-suffering loner that Peter has been established as. I recognized this back at the time of the wedding in 1987. It took Marvel much longer to realize that they were fundamentally changing the core being of their flagship character with this move.

Unfortunately, their solution was worse than the problem. Supposedly Marvel recognized that the married life had changed Peter too much, and this was the point behind replacing Peter with his long lost clone Ben Reilly. Ben was going to be younger, freer and more hip. The clone story (which is still going on, because Norman Osborn, who we learned was still alive and behind all the trouble in the last Ben Reilly story, is still running around trying to destroy Peter's life) was an unfortunate attempt to bring a new Spider-Man out of the past. In the process, Marvel rewrote about 24 years of Spider history, a move that still angers long time fans. By changing Spider history, Marvel not only wrote some terrible stories, but also altered the meaning and significance of numerous classic Spider-Man stories. Amazing Spider-Man #121-122, still considered by most the greatest Spider-Man story ever, has been changed because we now learn, 24 years later, the original Green Goblin, Norman Osborn, did not die in issue #122. This ruins all the other goblin stories that followed which depended on the bedrock principle that Norman Osborn was dead. It's almost similar to how "A Christmas Carol" begins with the phrase "Marley was dead to begin with." Well, the goblin stories that followed issue #122 with Harry Osborn, Bart Hamilton, the Hobgoblins and Phil Urich all depend on the fact that `Osborn was dead to begin with.' With Osborn still alive there was no reason or logic for other goblins. Also, the original clone story, another one of my long cherished favorites, has been rendered completely worthless by the numerous revelations that have changed the entire story and meaning of that tale which ended in Amazing #150.

Two of the most disheartening comics that I have ever read were "The Osborn Journal" and "101 Ways to End the Clone Saga." Now, I commend Marvel for trying to make sense of the entire clone story, a story that went on longer than any other in Spider-Man's history. However, in one small comic story, "The Osborn Journal" rewrote a huge portion of the history of comic's greatest character. This should not have happened, because a storyline should not be so bad that it takes a whole other comic to explain it. One comic should also not be able to change what it took nearly º of a century to establish with a fictional character, a character that had always had a good solid history. "101 Ways to End the Clone Saga," even though it was meant as a joke (it was a fictional interpretation of what the Marvel crew went through to resolve the clone saga) was like a punch in the gut to long time Spidey fans. It demonstrated what little foresight, planning and respect for the character went into creating and resolving the clone story.

In conclusion, I think that the case has been well made by the long time fans of Spider-Man as well as by the staff of Wizard comics magazine that Spidey is in a period of crisis. In my opinion, this crisis can only be fundamentally overcome if Marvel decides to correct two basic mistakes that it has pursued in the Spider books in the 1990s. First, the entire clone saga has to be explained away. Second, Peter should be a loner; he should not be a settled married man. Otherwise, any half-baked solution to Spider-Man's decline will just be fiddling while the web burns.