Peter Parker: Spider-Man in the 2000s
Despite being part of the Spider-Man reboot of the 1999, Peter Parker: Spider-Man was not long for this world in the 2000s. Issues #13 to 19 were all written by Howard Mackie and most of these stories were typically back-ups expanding on what was going on over in Amazing Spider-Man or the second part of a story that was started in Amazing. Most of these issues were drawn by John Romita, Jr., with the exception of issue #13 (drawn by Lee Weeks) and issue #18 (drawn by Graham Nolan) Issue #13 had a lot of potential as it featured a story about Cletus Kasady escaping prison and going on a rampage without his symbiote. This could be an interesting story considering the fact that Cletus was a prolific serial killer even before he became Carnage. However, this story is very underwhelming and Kasady is quickly dealt with. I suppose part of that had to do with the fact that these were still the Comic Book Authority Code days and there were certain limits to what they could have Cletus do, but this was still a wasted opportunity.
The rest of the series of Mackie’s run was primarily focused on Peter dealing with the alleged death of Mary Jane — who seemingly died in a plane crash in Amazing Spider-Man (vol. 2) #13. Other than that, title appeared to be doing house cleaning the remaining plot threads that still remained unexplained from the last decade as well as clean up what was left following John Byrne’s sudden departure from Amazing Spider-Man and Mackie’s migration to that title. For example, issue #15 was a part two of a story started in Amazing Spider-Man where Spider-Man goes to Latveria to look for his wife. While issues 16 and 17 kind-of-sort-of-but-not really wrapped up a plot about Venom trying to kill the members of the Sinister Six. Venom quickly went on to other things and it left another lingering plot thread, that of the Sandman being able to maintain his cohesion after Venom literally ate a chunk of his body. Issue #18 was used to wrap up a plot hole from the SpiderHunt story arc from the previous decade. In that story arc, Norman Osborn had a new Goblin kidnap his grandson to convince the public that he wasn’t the Green Goblin. The lingering question was the identity of this new Goblin. It was implied that this Goblin might have been Harry Osborn, who managed to cheat his apparent death in Spectacular Spider-Man #200. But nope, Mackie wraps it up with a rather unfulfilling reveal that this Goblin was actually a test-tube Goblin cooked up in a lab. Without Norman Osborn around to give it a regular stabilizing formula it dissolves into nothingness after terrorizing Liz Osborn for no real reason. Kind of a cop out, but they had other huge plans for Norman Osborn and I guess having another Goblin floating around would have just needlessly complicated things. For those who were hoping that Harry Osborn was going to return, they’d have to wait 2008’s Amazing Spider-Man #545 to see Harry’s return to the series. Another thing to note is that during this period, Peter ends up moving in and is roommates with Randy Robertson for a bit.
Issue #19 is probably the best story of Mackie’s run on the title, and incidentally the last before he hooped over to Amazing Spider-Man. The story is about Peter discovering that the airline recovered Mary Jane’s luggage and he eventually decides to accept the fact that his wife is dead (even though we learn otherwise later) The story was an emotional and powerful story. Going to pause to critique a critique of this issue. The whiny bitch they had write reviews over at spiderfan.org back in the day really disliked how this story doesn’t show you what is inside Mary Jane’s suitcase saying it ruins the whole story. Why does the content of the suitcase matter? You completely missed the whole fucking point you bitchy entitled fanboy! It’s not what’s inside the suitcase that convinces Peter that Mary Jane is dead, it’s the process of opening the suitcase that convinces him. It’s an action of finality and coming to terms with reality or are you incapable of understanding comprehend such a concept? I know I’m shitting on a review written back in 2004, but fucking hell how can someone be that god damn dense? I digress.
The Annual that year had two stories of little importance. The first story was by Chris Claremont and Bill Roseman and it shoe-horned the character Bounty and a forgettable street gang called the Bacchae who Claremont tried to make a thing during his run on Fantastic Four. The characters were quickly dropped after their introduction and were only dredged up whenever Claremont was given the helm of something. What he was trying to accomplish with these utterly lame characters is known only to him.
Starting with issue #20, Paul Jenkins took on as the consistant writer for the title until issue #50 (with the exceptions of iissues #42-43, but more on that later) during most of this stretch he worked with artist Mark Buckingham for most of those issues as well (there are exceptions here and there and we’ll get into those as I think to talk about them)
Jenkins was great at writing down to Earth stories that look that took a look at Peter Parker as opposed to Spider-Man. It gave some much needed growth on Peter Parker instead of focusing mostly on Spider-Man. Jenkins really hits it out of the park with his first issue which is about Peter paying a visit to Uncle Ben’s grave. Where most writers would have Peter whine about how Uncle Ben got shot and it was all his fault (etc. etc.) Jenkins takes the opportunity to actually look at the relationship between Uncle Ben and Peter. There’s no reason to keep on slapping the reader in the face with poor dead Uncle Ben unless you can understand the bond between Peter and his Uncle. For years we had to accept this at face value and that has left Uncle Ben this hollow caricature that was only mourned but never really known. Issue #20 and later in #33, Jenkins builds on Uncle Ben giving us stories that understand why Peter loved his uncle so damn much. It’s kind of weird that it took some writer 40 years to look at this aspect of Peter Parker’s life, but that’s how long it took. Issue #21 is another great piece of humanizing Peter Parker where Jenkins has Peter trying to figure out what to do with his life now that he has accepted that he is a widow. He tries stand-up comedy and bombs, which should be expected because none of Spider-Man’s joke would work in a comedy club. If you think I’m wrong, you go and sign up for an open mic night and try only telling jokes from Spider-Man comics. You’ll fucking bomb. Hard.
Jenkins uses issue #22 to kind of resolve the Sandman plot line, but having the villain pretty much lose his will to live and he literally crumbles to dust and gets washed down the drain. It’s kind of a pathetic death for a tragic character, but of course this is the Marvel unvierse and the Sandman didn’t stay “dead” for very long (more on that in a second) The most forgettable stories of Jenkins run were issues #23 and 24 which introduce the character Typeface. The villain had a lame gimmick — Think the Unibomber if he was all about Madlibs — that was also had a Maximum Security tie-in jammed in for good measure. I’m wondering if this was an editorial mandate because it seems like Jenkins just did the bare minimum to make the story tie-in with Maximum Security by adding aliens for no reason. It appears that editorial didn’t give a much of a shit either since the story doesn’t fit in with the rest of the Maximum Security story arc. I suppose it is just as well since Maximum Security was more of an X-Men/Avengers thing anyway.
Another strong issue is #25, which is the second part of the story started in Amazing Spider-Man and the Revenge of the Green Goblin mini-series. Jenkins and Buckingham present one of the best Spider-Man vs. the Green Goblin stories ever written. In this story, the Goblin tries to strip away Peter Parker’s personality and make him into the next Green Goblin, deciding that Parker is the rightful heir of the Goblin Legacy. Peter fights back but loses a bit of his spirit along the way. Not many punches are thrown as this story is more of a psychological battle as Norman tries to strip away Peter’s personality to replace it with one befitting an Osborn. It’s a great story and you really should read it if you ever get the chance. Issue #27 (with art by Joe Bennett) is framed from the perspective of the NYPD and their history of dealing with Spider-Man. It’s an interesting piece that was seldom done. For years the cops have always been trying to arrest Spider-Man for one reason or another and this story gives the police officers that operate in New York City some much-needed characterization and it gives us a peek into how individual officers reacted to key events of Spider-Man history, particularly after the death of one of their own, Captain George Stacy.
The 2001 Annual was written by Fiona Avery and drawn by Juan Roman Cano. It’s a flashback story about Peter going on a trip to Peru during summer vacation. It’s kind of a stretch that Peter — a kid from New York — would want to visit Peru for some fieldwork to get into bio-chem a year early. It’s kind of hard to quantify, particularly when you consider that this story is placed at a time when Aunt May and Peter were just scraping by financially, it seems out of character that Peter would just up and leave for Peru. This is also during a period of time when May was at her most doting toward Peter it seems really out of character for her to let him go on a trip to another country without her. Peter goes to Peru by himself. Anyway, he ends up helping a tribe of Peruvian natives defeats a sorcerer. It’s a really huge stretch of a story that didn’t need to be a flashback either. I’ll cut Avery some slack since this is the only Spider-Man story she wrote independently (although she would work with JMS on issues (vol. 2) #55-56 and 503-505 in Amazing Spider-Man. She does better when dealing with characters that don’t have a ton of backstory to consider such as when she created Arana in Amazing Fantasy (vol. 2) and her take on the title character in Rogue (vol. 2).
Issue #29 wrapped up the whole “Mary Jane is dead” plotline since — over at Amazing Spider-Man — the title was being given to J. Michael Straczynski who had plans for Mary Jane. This story was pretty much done to walk back her “death” in Amazing #13. This story wraps it up with Peter confronting this Stalker that has been trying to steal his life. It’s probably the worst story of Jenkins run, but I’d argue that it’s not his fault as he was basically working with what was (poorly) set up by John Byrne and Howard Mackie and was being swept under the rug as quickly as possible (if you look under this rug you’ll find the remains of quickly abandoned Spider-plots, it’s mostly clones and miscarried babies. It’s interesting to note that the art in this one was by Charlie Adlard, who would later go on and draw nearly every issue of The Walking Dead. It’s interesting to point out because the way Adlard chooses to draw the Stalker. In some panels, he looks kind of a like a prototype for Negan.
While JMS was working on a whole sweeping story arc about how Spider-Man’s powers might be mystical in nature etc. etc., Jenkins was crafting stories that were more down to Earth. I figure a lot of that had to do with the fact that Jenkins couldn’t go that big since all the focus on big stories was being given to JMS over on Amazing. Which is just as well since Jenkins excels at down to Earth stories. One thing he did during the rest of his run was focus on Peter’s personal life. JMS was far too busy making Peter a school teacher and learning about totemistic power that the flagship Spider-book didn’t seem to have much time for Peter Parker’s social life. Although Mary Jane was still alive, she went off to LA to pursue an acting career, leaving Peter to pick up the pieces once again. At least Jenkins has Peter getting his own place. Comparing Peter Parker to Amazing Spider-Man was like they were book happening in two different realities because the subject matter of both books were worlds apart, that’s how different they were from one another.
That’s brings us to issue #42-43 which was written by Zeb Wells and drawn by Jim Mahfood. Titled “Fifteen Minutes of Shame” this two-part story was some kind of commentary on the vapidness of the MTV reality television culture that was quite popular at the time. The subject matter was such low hanging fruit that I wouldn’t say it a very deep observation. In the middle of all of this reality TV slamming the Sandman comes back and acts like a reality TV show star. These stories are so forced they almost read like something Steve Gerber wrote when he was the most out of touch from the social zeitgeist (so the 2000s). Any sort of commentary has become heavily dated that even the most nostalgic person would just shrug and say “yeah that’s the 2000s”. It has since become incredibly cliché of the decade. I suppose it was apropriate that they had Jim Mahfood draw this issue. Mahfood is mostly an indie artist and this was one of his few forays into working for Marvel. For me, personally, I don’t really like Mafood’s superhero work. His indie work is fantastic as the esthetic usually fits the genre he’s drawing even his later work on Everyone Loves Tank Girl worked well. When he does superheroes it always looks… kind of not good? It’s like someone has decided to let me draw Spider-Man.
We’ll talk more about Zeb Wells in a minute, I still have one last Paul Jenkins highlight to mention. Paul does a decent follow up to his last Green Goblin story with the “A Death in the Family” arc which ran from Peter Parker #44 to 47 with artist Humberto Ramos. This story is a follow up to the events of Peter Parker #25. This was back when Ramos used to draw characters with massive heads, hands, and feet. He tamed that a bit in more recent years but in it’s kind of a noticeable thing here. It’s not bad, it’s just different. As far as Goblin conflicts go, it is one with the least amount of consequence. In this story, Norman Osborn manufactures a drunk driving accident that leaves Flash Thompson in a vegetative state. This was largely a plot development that was handled while Paul Jenkins wrote Spider-Man. Once he was done writing the character, Flash suddenly had a miraculous recovery as writers quickly swept his vegetative state under the rug, making this story lose any teeth it may have had.
Jenkin’s final issue, #50, is a much needed follow up to Aunt May learning that Peter is Spider-Man in Amazing Spider-Man (vol. 2) #36 and something that JMS kind of dropped the ball on and that’s looking into how this revelation impacts the relationship between Peter and May. Further it allows for some interesting perspective when they look back on moments that Aunt May had to deal with Spider-Man.
Zeb Wells then took over as writer for the title, and his stories are okay. Nothing too Earth shaking up until the final two issues 56 and 57 which were pencilled by Sam Kieth. Given Keith’s artistic style, Wells made the smart move of going with a more cerebral story (which if you read The Maxx you’d know that Keith excells in the cerebral and surreal) In this story, Spider-Man has to deal with the Sandman whose shatter psyche become separate beings that Spider-Man has to draw together. It’s a satisfying conclusion to a plot threat that started when Venom decided to take a bit out of the crook. I usually dislike it when they do something to back pedal to the status quo, but with the Sandman there wasn’t really anywhere else you could go with the character was at that point in time. Also I think they were doing it since Sandman was going to be the villain in the 3rd Spider-Man film.
Peter Parker: Spider-Man was then retired and replaced with a second volume of Spectacular Spider-Man which was helmed by Paul Jenkins, but we’ll get into more of that when he look back at that series.
