Marvel Knights: Spider-Man/Sensational Spider-Man Primer

Marvel Knights was a watershed moment in Marvel Comics history. At the time, as impossible as it is to believe, Marvel Comics was undergoing Chapter 11 protection after the comic book bubble burst. To stay afloat Marvel did a number of different things, like selling off the movie rights to some of their most popular franchises (which would lead all sorts of rights issues when Marvel became part of Disney and started cranking out blockbuster superhero movies, but I digress) Another thing they did was farm out some of their properties to other studios. The Marvel Knights imprint was contracted out to Joe Quesada and Jimmy Paliotti’s Event Comics. Now, people give Quesada a lot of shit for some of his editorial decisions he made as editor-in-chief at Marvel (we’ll get into that in a second) but if it wasn’t for Joe and Jimmy, Marvel Comics would have tanked big time. This is because Marvel Knights gave some of Marvel’s lower-tiered characters like the Daredevil, the Punisher, Black Panther, and the Inhumans a much-needed breath of fresh air because they gave these properties to creative teams that were mostly known for their work in indie comics at the time.

If it wasn’t for Marvel Knights, you wouldn’t have Brain Michael Bendis’ landmark career at Marvel. You wouldn’t have Garth Ennis doing the Punisher. There would be no Ultimate Marvel Universe. There would be no Marvel Cinematic Universe. This imprint was a huge game-changer for Marvel and it was an instant success. It was so successful, that the powers at being at Marvel made Joe Quesada the editor-in-chief at Marvel. Joe manned the ship and helped the company through troubled waters and made it a successful business again before Marvel was bought up by Disney. People should be kissing the ground Quesada walks on. Without him there would be no Marvel Comics anymore. So have some god damn respect.

Anyway, Marvel Knights was the imprint where experimentation happened. Where new twists on old characters were taken and unconventional stories were told.

Personally, I think Marvel Knights — as an imprint — eventually lost track of what it was supposed to be about and began including titles or characters that didn’t really fit the aesthetic. The imprint started as reviving street-level characters who had either fallen out of popularity or were never there to begin with. I think it started losing its allure once you saw the inclusion of the Fantastic Four and characters from the X-Men franchise. Which brings up to Marvel Knights: Spider-Man. You’d think that Spider-Man, a street-level hero, would be a perfect fit for the Marvel Knights imprint, and I’d say that the title was good, not great. It also didn’t prove to be as experimental as some of the other books in the run. Even with Mark Millar, who has had some interesting takes on the Marvel Universe (just take a look at the Ultimates), his take on Spider-Man didn’t really go in that direction most great Marvel Knights titles went, but I’m getting ahead of myself here.

The first run of the book was written by Mark Millar with art by Terry and Rachel Dodson, with some assists from Frank Cho. The first twelve issues featured a sweeping storyline by Millar that involved a massive conspiracy by Norman Osborn — the Green Goblin — to kidnap Aunt May in order to force Spider-Man to bust him out of jail. In the middle of all of this, and probably this title’s most noteworthy addition to the Spider-Man mythos, was the transfer of the Venom symbiote from Eddie Brock to Mac Gargan, the Scorpion. This became the status quo until Marvel walked it back about a decade later (as they always tend to do) The only other thing you can really add to Millar’s run is that he came up with the revolutionary idea of multiplying the Sinister Six by 2. That’s right, a Sinister Twelve. A lot of Spider-Man’s foes were given revamped looks that don’t last beyond Millar and the Dodson’s work on Spider-Man.

This was followed up by a six-part arc titled “Wild Blue Yonder”, written by Reginald Hudlin and artist Billy Tan. This story arc introduces a character named Ethan Edwards. A pastiche of Superman, Edwards is a Skrull who was raised by some Christian mid-westerners. As an adult, he begins working at the Daily Bugle and taking while also going out as a super-hero. When Edwards learns that he is a Skrull, he has a crisis of faith. On top of this, you’ve got the Absorbing Man on the loose, and Spider-Man is having some issues with his teammates in the New Avengers, particularly Wolverine.

Hudlin is an accomplished screenwriter and has written some great comics (he had a great run on Black Panther from 2005 to 2008) There is just too much going on in this story. I can applaud his use of Absorbing Man, giving him an Achilles heel via drug addiction and an impetus to use his powers in new and inventive ways. He also took an interesting stab at relations between Spider-Man and his then-brand-new colleagues in the New Avengers that wasn’t otherwise being covered over in Amazing Spider-Man or New Avengers. I feel like these were all more interesting plot points and the addition of the Ethan Edwards sub-plot is adding a needlessly extra element to the story.

I’m also at a loss to figure out what Reginald was trying to do with the Ethan Edwards character. Was he trying to compare the differences between Spider-Man and Superman? Was this a commentary on morality, particularly Christian morality in an urban setting like New York, but also aliens? My guess is that it’s a story about how Superman wouldn’t really fit in very well in the Marvel Universe? Which, I got to say, six issues to tell a story about how Superman wouldn’t really fit in the Marvel Universe a little long on such a weak premise (Kurt Busiek managed to do it much more masterfully in JLA/Avengers with the real Superman, it makes Hudlin’s attempt kind of plodding by comparison)

I guess for me, having a writer to go out of their way to create a Superman stand-in for a story set in the Marvel Universe always seems like a huge exercise to just create yet another Superman clone. Which seems to be what writers at Marvel love to do. At this point there wasn’t a dearth of Superman pastiches out there, you’ve got Hyperion (both in good and bad varieties), Gladiator of the Imperial Guard, the Sentry, hell Aquarian was basically special-ed Superman before he was turned into a space hippie. I get the allure of doing this: You can do Superman in a way that DC Comics would never let you take the character, but by this point, it was just overdone.

Issues #19 to 22 were all part of The Other: Evolve or Die story arc that happened across every Spider-Man title at the time. Reginald Hudlin wrote two of the chapters in Marvel Knights: Spider-Man with the writing duties being shared with J. Michael Strazynski (who was writing Amazing Spider-Man at the time) and Peter David (who came on as writer of a new title Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man) The series was supposed to be the “next evolution” of Spider-Man, giving him even more powers that were supposed to reshape the character for years to come. Then Brand New Day happened and well, all that shit was tossed out like yesterday’s trash. But I digress. I suppose the only thing I can add is that parts of this arc featured art from Pat Lee shortly after his own comic company — Dreamwave Comics — went tits up, and this work was done before it became wildly known that Pat had screwed out writers and artists out of pay for work they dead for Dreamwave. Needless to say, Lee hasn’t done much work in comics anymore since. Which is just as well since outside of drawing Transformers, he wasn’t that great an artist (and even then, some would argue he’s not very good at that either)

Following The Other, the title was rebranded. It was no longer part of the Marvel Knights imprint and the series was renamed Sensational Spider-Man but continued the numbering from Marvel Knights: Spider-Man.

Issues #23-27 was written by Roberto Aguirre-Sascasa with art by Angel Medina with covers and fill-in issues by Clayton Crain. The first arc “Feral” saw the return of the Lizard, the Rock of Life, and a romance forming between the Black Cat and Puma. Not exactly world-shaking stuff, but it’s decent enough. I was previously critical of Angel Medina’s work on Incredible Hulk in the 90s, but what a difference a decade makes. His artwork here is much better now that he isn’t trying to do the whole 90s thing with huge rippling muscles and pouches and big guns. The issues drawn by Clayton Crain are a treat as his artwork is fucking gorgeous. as usual.

Aguirre-Sacasa continues writing the title for the rest of its run with different artists each story arc. This was around the time that Marvel was doing the first Civil War story arc. While Amazing Spider-Man focused on how Spider-Man revealing affected his personal life and the implications of the Super-Human Registration Act, Sensational Spider-Man focused on others’ reactions to Peter Parker’s big reveal. Issue #28 is a near-perfect example. In a story titled “My Science Teacher is Spider-Man!!” the story focuses on two different perspectives. One by a former student at Midtown High where Peter taught science, and that of Doctor Octopus, who realizes how Peter Parker played him for a fool waaaay back in Amazing Spider-Man #12.

This was followed by “The Deadly Foes of Peter Parker” that ran from issues #29-31 which featured a group of villains gathering together to get revenge on Spider-Man now that they know Peter Parker. It’s fine as a story. A high note to this arc is the b-plot where the Chameleon tries to infiltrate Peter Parker’s life and Aunt May knowing her nephew enough to see right through his deception. It really makes you miss the pre-Brand New Day days when Aunt May knew that Peter was Spider-Man because man, that old lady was fucking sharp. I mean, they still write her very sharp now, but nothing like back then. The following issues then focus on how the unmasking affected different people in Peter’s personal life, including Mary Jane, Aunt May, and the Black Cat.

That’s when things shifted over from Civil War to Back in Black, which saw Spider-Man wearing a black and white costume after Aunt May got shot during Civil War and is left clinging to life. This was all a gimmick to cash in on Spider-Man 3, which featured Spider-Man getting a symbiote costume and fighting the Sandman. I’m going to have to say that this arc (from issues #35-37) is the weakest of this run because it’s all about Mister Hyde giving people Spider-Man powers. It’s kind of no stakes story and you get the feeling it was just written as filler as well as to not interfere with what was going on in Amazing Spider-Man.

This is made up in issues #38-39, a two-part arc titled “The Last Temptation of Eddie Brock”. By this time, Eddie Brock is in the final stages of terminal cancer (or so he thinks!! As anyone who has read more recent Venom comics can tell you) and discovers that he is in the same hospital as May Parke and his struggle with the part of him that is still Venom.

From there, issue #40, is an endpoint for anyone who didn’t like where things were going with One More Day/Brand New Day what with them erasing Peter and Mary Jane’s marriage from existence. In this story, Peter literally meets an all-knowing being who tries to get Peter to come to terms with the fact that Aunt May just isn’t going to survive the gunshot and to learn to let her go and move on with his life. There is even a heartwarming moment where Peter is put in touch with May’s spirit who tells him to let her go, telling him that she’s lived a full life and his is still young and fresh. It’s the kind of story that makes One More Day seem stupid in retrospect. Peter is literally told by God that his Aunt is going to die and he should make peace with it and then he goes and makes a deal with Marvel’s answer to the devil not long after.

However, the ultimate story of this title has to be the Sensational Spider-Man Annual. Written by Matt Fraction with art by Salvador Larroca, it is a love letter and final send-off for Peter and Mary Jane’s marriage. The story centers around Mary Jane getting cornered by the authorities who will arrest her if she doesn’t give up her husband. At the same time, Peter is considering turning himself in so that Mary Jane can have a normal life together. Ultimately, the story is about how the couple is devoted to each other and how their love transcends everything and how they will never ever face anything alone.

I’ve written at length about how I think Peter and Mary Jane’s marriage is one of the worst in comics, and I’m not wrong, but a story like this makes you have some kind of hope those two kids will make it out okay. But we all know that was not going to be the case for long and hasn’t been the case for a very long time. The following issue Sensational Spider-Man #41 was part of One More Day, Joe Quesada’s hatchet job on Peter and Mary Jane’s marriage. This, despite my praise above, is one of the few missteps of his career. I’ve talked about it here, so I’m not going to belabor the point. too much here. One More Day was an example of a good idea with terrible execution.

Anyway, after issue #41, Sensational Spider-Man was canceled along with every other title except Amazing Spider-Man which was, for a time, going to be published three times a month. At I write this (June 2020), Sensational Spider-Man has yet to be revived. Given how Marvel eventually revives every Spider-Man title every now and again (even if it’s just for a limited series) I don’t think we’ve seen the last of this title.

This wasn’t the end of Marvel Knights: Spider-Man though, the title was briefly revived for a second volume in 2013/2014 when the title came back as a limited series. Marvel Knights went back to basics, even if for a short time. Marvel recently celebrated the 20th anniversary of the Marvel Knights imprint (fuck, I’m old) but a full on return of a new Marvel Knights: Spider-Man are probably less likely than a return of Sensational Spider-Man.