Everybody hates Spider-Man (or so it seems)

I know what you’re asking yourselves right about now. Who could hate Spidey? Isn’t he the lovable Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man? Even J.J.J. likes Spidey these days. OK, yeah, Spidey still does have a rogue’s gallery of villains who, in all probability, still aren’t so fond of him, but among the general populace, who could hate our wall-crawling hero?

Well, just the other day I came home from the comic shop, and I brought with me, a handful, a handful-and-a-half of short-run Spider-Man titles, including Spider-Man & Wolverine #1, Predator Versus Spider-Man #1 & 2, and Godzilla vs Spider-Man #1, in this batch I also brought home Captain America # 14 & 15,and I must say, that these books paint a very interesting picture of who the House of Ideas believe my old pal Spidey to be.

So, let’s just sort this out, shall we? While teaming Spidey and Wolverine has become a pretty standard pairing by now, getting teamed up with a guy with adamantium claws and a penchant for high-octane fights could be considered dangerous, even for someone with a early-warning danger sense. And then, as if that pairing wasn’t off-putting enough, Spidey then has to face off against both a Predator—an interstellar neigh unstoppable killing machine, and Godzilla—the monstrous, radioactive, fire-breathing, king of the Kajus.

Now while I’m totally “Team Spidey” I’m not entirely sure that these parings are exactly within his weight class, if you know what I mean.

And then, as if this wasn’t enough Spidey is then teamed up with Captain America (Steve Rogers) and Thor to learn what happened to the city of Broxton, Ohio, after the appearance of Asgard landed on Earth and the city disappeared (courtesy of the god of hammers no less)

Now, while all of this seems to be way over the top of team-ups for the Web-Head, let us look at the individual stories.

First up, Logan is contacted by an old SHIELD agent about a missing directory a master database of all the world’s double agents and recruited him to recover it. So, he then conscripts Peter Parker to help him locate it, resulting in them running afoul of Omega Red and Kraven the Hunter who also want the directory. During the fight they discover that Mysterio is involved and somehow seem to wind up in some sort of mind swap twist of their past that somehow seems to involve Peter’s former spy parents.

In the Predator issues, it is a wicked hot several day in in NYC where An ancient Predator who has been stalking the planet for some 100 years but only of supremely hot days becomes active once again and is now trolling through the subways of the Big Apple during a city-wide blackout that has Mary Jane trapped underground in the subway system being chased by the Predator while Spider-Man is racing to catch up and rescue her.

Next we have Spidey facing off against Godzilla in a throwback, continuity retcon implant occurring just after Spidey returns from the (first) Secret Wars and wearing the black Symbiote Spidey suit. We do have to say that we really did enjoy this story most of all, due mostly to the off-handed flippant way writer Joe Kelly penned the story, full of throwback anarchism and references to random Spidey events that took place during that time frame. Nice going, Joe!

Finally, we are treated to Peter wanting to call up Steve Rogers just to chat, and Steve having a heart-to-heart with a woman who is a neighbor about how tough it is for a superhero like him to have “just friends” with others due to the uniqueness of their situation. (Is the other person a normal, or also a hero, and if a hero does that other person know that Steve is a hero.) Then having Steve call Pete, only to be be himself to be called upon by Thor and to ask if Pete wants to join in as Spider-Man. Which Pete totally does, resulting in a couple of very cute moments between Spidey and Cap.

All-in-all we really did enjoy all of the books (mostly because they involved Spidey, and partially because each was well-written and thus, we are interested in seeing how each turn out. (Here it should be noted that the Godzilla storyline appears to be written across several titles as the giant Kaju is appearing in several other Marvel titles which we believe are all somehow tied together forming a much larger story.

We understand that adding Spider-Man (Wolverine, Predator, or Gojira (ゴジラ) to a storyline can add readers(cash) to a title, so yeah, while these types of stories can often simply pretzel-logic the storylines or characterizations of various the various characters involved, but we can (and often have) simply dismiss all of our objections because the story is so good. Your milage may differ.

What if?

Marvel has, over the years, produced a couple or three series revolving around the concept of “What if...?” That is to say, they take a specific story line, and then pick a critical point in said story, and extrapolate a new ending based upon changing a single element (i.e.; Captain America survived WWII, the irradiated spider bit someone other than Peter Parker, the Fantastic Four had different powers, etc.). These stories range from excellent to, well highly implausibly and sometimes (believe it or not) simply incredibly poorly conceived and badly written.

Initially these stories generally dealt with seminal events in Marvel's rich history, as the series progressed, it would be safe to say that the stories became less-and-less "critical" events and more-and-more circled around recent marketing events (“What if...last year's company-wide crossover ended differently?”) making the series less-and-less readable, eventually leading to its cancellation.

Over the past couple of years, Marvel has revived the title, but as a series of disconnected one-shots, again revolving around recent storylines. Hence the topic of this Blog. I picked up a couple of the most recent “What If...” comics, only to learn that I probably would have been better off if I hadn’t. Dark Reign and Grim Hunt were the ones I acquired, and while Dark Reign wasn’t so bad, the Grim Hunt issue was terrible. In the first instance the story dealt with the repercussions of Clint Barton (Hawkeye/Ronin/Giant Man) actually having carried out his threat to kill Norman Osborn during the height of Dark Reign, and the second dealt with Spidey snapping during Grim Hunt and killing Kraven.

As stated the premise of the series is to explore alternative story line possibilities based on the altering of a single element they work best when they show the ripple effect of that change (think The Butterfly Effect), however very often to make a story work, more than one unrelated event has been changed (in the Grim Hunt variation for some reason Luke Cage has offices on the Raft). Still that's not the only problem with the story. Yes Spidey was run through a gauntlet by the Kravenoffs during Grim Hunt, but I’m still not sold that he would have either actually killed Kraven or done all of the other things he did in this version.

Change an event, sure. So twist and corrupt a character so that they act totally our of character to make the new story line work? I think not. No, This Spidey story simply doesn’t work for me. Sorry guys, better luck next time out.