Wait. What Just Happened?! (Amazing Spider-Man 74 Spoilers)

WARNING: THIS FEATURES SPOILERS FOR THE LAST TISSUE OF NICK SPENCER’S RUN ON AMAZING SPIDER-MAN, ISSUE 74. PLEASE DO NOT READ THIS UNTIL YOU’VE READ THAT ISSUE. UNLESS YOU DON’T MIND SPOILERS.

Hey, is anyone here? I just read the latest issue of Amazing Spider-Man because I heard Nick Spencer was going out with a bang. And… uh…

You’re a little confused?

Big fucking time.

That’s ok, even long time Spidey fans have been left befuddled and happy beyond belief in equal amounts. Luckily, we can explain what the hell Nick Spencer just did in The Amazing Spider-Man. It all began with the introduction of the new villain Kindred.

Yeah, the Centipede guys! What was even their deal?

So, that is a story and a half. To make a very long and incredibly stupid story short, they’re the remnants from a 2004 storyline called Sins Past, in which head writer John Michael Strazynski wanted to shake up the Spider-Man mythos by adding a real romantic angle to his past with Gwen Stacy. She and Peter had dated on and off multiple times before her death in Amazing Spider-Man 121 at the hands of the Green Goblin (the Norman Osborn incarnation). JMS found a loophole in the comics where Gwen could have gone and gotten an abortion or given birth to twins if she had been pregnant without anyone knowing. However, Editor min Chief of Marvel Comics Joe Quesada had a conniption fit. After all, having children ages a character, especially if they’re fully-grown children, as JMS had planned to have these new kids fight and be brainwashed by Norman Osborn.

So instead, JMS and the other Spider writers made it so Norman Osborn was the father of these poor children. One of whom looked almost exactly like Gwen Stacy, and the other looked a lot like Peter Parker.

You know, to make Spider-Man more identifiable with the kids!

The fuck.

It gets better. Turns out they’re not Norman’s kids, but are instead clones of Gwen and… maybe Peter? They were made by the vengeful digital ghost of Harry Osborn as revenge against his best friend Peter Parker for indirectly killing Norman Osborn.

But Norman’s alive. And so is Harry. I mean was. What the f-

It was the 90s. Harry had taken up the mantle of the Green Goblin to torment Peter despite claiming to be his friend. After all, Peter was present when Norman died in Amazing Spider-Man 122. The end result was him balancing between sanity and madness. Harry almost killed everyone they both loved, but snapped back and saved everyone before dying of a heart attack in the beautiful Spectacular Spider-Man 200.

One of the things Harry did was plot behind the scenes and make a digital copy of himself when he was completely insane, again because it was the 90s and computers were magic. This Digi-Harry worked to make Peter think that his CIA superspy parents killed by the Red Skull weren’t actually dead, and that they had come back to him after all these years. Until they turned into robots!

HE’S NOT YOUR FATHER. THIS HAS BEEN EXPLA- God. This is why I drink.

Oh god.

It was bad. It made Peter turn into a bad Batman knockoff, calling himself The Spider. Then there was a whole thing with clones, which wasted everyone’s time for about three years. I wrote about it, check it out here. To make the longest story short, Marvel was desperate for comic sales and kept the gravy train of clones flowing for as long as possible. So long, in fact, that no one knew how to end it. Finally, someone settled on Norman Osborn coming back from the grave!

What, like a Zombie?

Kinda? Turns out the formula he drank to become super strong and extra crazy also gave him low level regeneration powers. Enough to rebuild a heart that had been ripped in half, though it left a wicked scar. Norman was behind it all, because he wanted revenge on Peter for causing Harry’s death. He would also torment Peter a ton, especially during stories like Sins Past and the sequel Sins Remembered, where he delighted in bragging about how he slept with Gwen Stacy while looking like Tommy Lee Jones.

If I had to have Norman’s O-Face burned into my brain, SO DO YOU.

So, was someone desperate to have TLJ play Osborn? Wasn’t this after the first movie with Willem Dafoe?

Yeah, but you keep artists from swiping stock images. It’s not easy. Just look at Greg Land.

Ok. Now that we’ve caught up on that bullshit, we also have to talk about the time Spider-Man made a deal with the literal devil to save Aunt May’s life at the cost of his marriage and unconceived daughter.

What.

Oh yeah. Fans were enraged.

To make an incredibly stupid story simple, most writers who worked on Spider-Man after about 1990 detested the fact that he had married Mary Jane Watson. To them, their Spider-Man was single, or a high schooler despite having graduated by issue 30 of the original freaking comic in 1968. Rather than embrace growth and change, many writers tried their best to find a way to get rid of Mary Jane. This includes the Clone Saga, where they were willing to make the Peter Parker fans had read about since 1973’s Amazing Spider-Man 149 into an impostor and have him ride off into the sunset with MJ and a new baby. This would leave fans with Ben Reilly, the original Peter Parker who now had different hair, a different outlook on life, a different supporting cast, and even a different costume.

When the idea of writing off over 20 years of comics soured most fans, Ben was killed and Peter returned. And the baby died in childbirth, but none of the writers wanted to focus on that. More antics came, including MJ allegedly dying in a plane crash, working in LA, and even pretending she didn’t exist. Then Joe Quesada realized he was Editor in Chief and that he had the perfect excuse. Peter had just revealed his identity to the world in the Civil War event in 2006, so why not have Aunt May be shot by a sniper?

And then have no one able to help this elderly woman, and make it so only the devil could save her.

Because comics are for kids. And you can’t do divorce or separation, because they age a character too much, and then kids can’t identify with Spider-Man.

I hate this. This is so stupid.

Oh, it got better. The restoration of Aunt May also wiped out MJ and Peter’s marriage, made everyone forget about Peter being Spidey, removed his organic webshooters he had just gotten to tie in with the movies, brought Harry Osborn back to life, and did a bunch of other random things no one knows about because Joe Quesada had absolutely no plans beyond “remove marriage.” JMS quit the comic over this story, especially after his idea to just mess with everything and bring back everyone who was dead was shot down by Quesada.

Slowly, the subsequent main writer Dan Slott would bring MJ and Peter closer together, rather than fully embrace the swinging single Peter Parker. No marriage, but we got hints.

Then Nick Spencer took up the reins after Slott left, and it looks like he had an axe to grind. You see, it turns out the One More Day retcon didn’t restore Harry Osborn.

Nick Spencer: No, leave the hair on the skeleton. It’s the only way we’ll know it was Harry.

Norman cloned him. This is why he was magically better! It also has the nice note of not undoing his original death.

Also, Norman never slept with Gwen Stacy! That was a weird plot by Harry’s mad cyber ghost to mess with both Norman and Peter! Instead, they’re clones of Peter and Gwen that the cyber ghost can take over and control. And Cyber Harry made Norman only think he slept with Gwen, with Mysterio’s help!

Ok, so that plot point makes a little more sense. Maybe.

Working with the Chameleon again, Cyber Harry starts going as Kindred while using both bodies as puppets, and uses the Chameleon’s tech to disguise themselves as eldrich horrors. Not all of this was actually Chameleon’s tech, though, as Kindred was actually capable of resurrecting the dead!

More zombies? Or was this all an illusion?

Nope! You see, the whole reason this whole Green Goblin thing started in the first place was that Norman Osborn sold his son’s soul to the devil in order to gain power in the world. Since this would dick with Spidey, sure. This is also why Mephisto gave Kindred demonic powers.

Ok. But… Why. Why all of this bullshit and regression of Spider-Man? What does Mephisto get from it all?

Turns out Peter Parker is fated to defeat Mephisto should Mephisto ever try to take over the world.

Or, if time passes, his daughter will do the same.

Interesting that we’re seeing the “evil” Brotherhood of Mutants from Bendis’ time on the X-Men…

What.

Yes. Mephisto made a deal with Norman Osborn to start a chain of events that would:

-kill or seriously harm multiple romantic interests

-kill multiple unborn children

-create mockeries of life via cloning

-create actual life via cloning

-destroy Peter’s personal relationships

-keep Peter as a barely employed hobo in his daily life

-make Peter Parker miserable

All to make sure that whenever he bothered to take over Earth… if he ever bothered… that he would win.

God, the devil is a petty bitch.

Yeah, and it kinda works. That’s the weird part.

So, what happens next?

Well, Ben Reilly (who came back to life a few years back, don’t ask) is taking up the webs again for a while while Peter is out with an as yet unexplained injury. This is likely only temporary, but this means Nick Spencer has left new writers with the choice to either address the deal with the devil for the first time in over 10 years… or not. And either way, a lot of fans have at least gotten their way.

MJ and Peter are back together.

We know why the devil was so interested in stealing Spider-Man’s marriage.

I’ll be honest, the only way to improve this would have been to also include alternate shots with Annie, Ben, Ritchie, Tanya, Ashley, Benjy, Claire, and May alongside ol’ Mayday here.

And we also have some amazing comics coming down the pipe, with a lot of love for the fan-favorite Ben Reilly.

In the end, though, Nick Spencer’s run is likely going to be seen as half fun fluff, and half cleaning house. Like when you dive into the back of your closet or the depths of your basement and dredge up old shit to see if you want to keep anything, but often just wind up wondering how the hell you liked the stuff in the first place. Spencer was able to look at both One More Day and Sins Past, see them for the ratty old goth wannabe clothes they were, and put them out with the garbage in a new context. Will the next writer keep with it?

Maybe. That’s the beauty and horror of western cape comics.

God, no wonder the industry is dying.

Shush you.