Spectacular Spider-Man in the 2000s
After a six-year hiatus, Marvel Comics revived the Spectacular Spider-Man for a second volume. Like many titles during this period, the title featured long specific story arcs that had an end point. It was part of Marvel’s efforts to make their titles more appealing to new readers as these story arcs were typically self-contained, meaning you didn’t need to know decades worth of continuity just to follow along. Although with a character like Spider-Man, that’s often easier said than done. For the majority of its 27 issues run the second volume of Spectacular Spider-Man was mostly written by Paul Jenkins after a well regarded run on Peter Parker: Spider-Man. There were multiple artists on the book as well, but typically Jenkins would work with Humberto Ramos and Mark Buckingham. Rather than a running commentary like my other primers, let’s take at some of the more interesting story arcs of this run….
The Hunter
Issues #1-5 by Jenkins, and Ramos
The first five-issue arc was an attempt at doing something different with Eddie Brock, aka Venom. In past decades, Venom was defined as one of Spider-Man’s greatest foes. However, after the character was overexposed in the late 90s, writers were having a hard time finding something useful to do with him. Prior to this, both John Byrne and Howard Mackie tried to work with the character. In Jenkin’s take on the character, he reveals that Eddie Brock has been diagnosed with cancer and his alien symbiote is attempting to re-establish its bond with Spider-Man.
It’s the first time that Eddie Brock had ever been given anything more than superficial weaknesses. By this point, Brock was a one-trick pony after years of writers trying to out edge-lord the character during the period when anti-heroes were selling comics. This story sets the stage for later Venom stories, particularly in Marvel Knights: Spider-Man which saw the symbiote be passed down to Mac Gargan, aka the Scorpion. I feel like this breathed new life into both Eddie Brock and the Venom symbiote. The got more mileage out of Venom as a franchise by giving the symbiote to a new character. It also allowed writers to do some impressive stuff about Eddie Brock, bereft of the symbiote, struggling with cancer.
The only disappointment I can really make is how Marvel (as usual) walked it all back. Brock is now Venom again. Even in the most recent run of Venom (volume 4) they walked back the whole cancer diagnosis by saying that the symbiote orchestrated it all in order to make Eddie more dependent upon the symbiote. It strikes me as a really half-assed plan when you consider the 20 years of Venom stories that lead up to that, but I digress.
The Countdown
Issues #6-10 by Jenkins and Ramos
The Countdown is a five-part arc that featured Doctor Octopus. There is nothing much I can really say about this other than it seems like the story was editorially mandated due to the fact that Amazing Spider-Man 2 was released around that time, a film that featured Doctor Octopus as the main foe. What’s more interesting about this arc is that it tries to establish a supporting cast that was otherwise absent from the flagship title Amazing Spider-Man.
At the time, Amazing was being written by J. Michael Straczynski, who primarily focused on deconstructing the origins of Spider-Man’s powers and patching up Peter’s marriage with Mary Jane. Jenkins used his page space to work on characters that were otherwise being ignored after being an integral part of Spider-Man’s supporting cast before JMS took over at Amazing. Particularly, Randy Robertson, Glory Grant, Peter’s neighbor Caryn Earle, and of course Flash Thompson, who was last seen in a coma after a drunk driving accident.
Royal Flush/Changes
Issues #15-20 by Jenkins & Michael Ryan (issues #15-16) and Ramos (issues #17-20)
This series of issues were all tied into the Avengers: Disassembled event, which saw Brian Michael Bendis tear down the Avengers so they could be rebuilt from the ground up in the upcoming New Avengers. This story is not so much a tie-in to the main story arc so much as it is a story about Spider-Man existing in a world without the Avengers… Which honestly, isn’t all that much different than a world with the Avengers to be honest. This story could have been told without the Avengers: Disassembled banner and you wouldn’t know the difference.
The story was also an excuse to come up with a reason for Peter Parker, who always had mechanical web-shooters, suddenly make organic webbing. This was to make the Spider-Man in the comics more like the Spider-Man in the movie for some reason. The execution is not that great. It involved a new villain called the Queen who wants to make Spider-Man her mate. Ultimately, Peter gets turned into a giant spider that then dies and gives birth to himself, now with more spider-like powers. This was setting the stage for more changes to Spider-Man’s abilities during the Other: Evolve or Die story arc.
Which would have been fine had all of these cosmetic changes weren’t all walked back when Marvel hit the reset button with Brand New Day. It took Dan Slott to make sense of it all.
Of all the stories during Jenkin’s Spider-Man work, I feel like this was one of the weaker stories.
Sins Remembered: Sarah’s Story
Issues #23-26, by Sara Barnes and Scott Eaton
One of the few arcs not written by Jenkins, and you can tell. Barnes was a writer that was brought over to Marvel by JMS who would write supplement material for the story arcs he was doing at Marvel. Sarah’s Story was done while JMS was doing Amazing Spider-Man. Later, Barnes would go on and pen the Doctor Spectrum limited series when JMS was doing Supreme Power a reboot of Marvel’s Squadron Supreme.
Sarah’s Story is a fallow up to Sins Past a story arc that Stracysnsky wrote in Amazing Spider-Man that revealed that Gwen Stacy had an affair with Norman Osborn before her death leading to the birth of twins, Gabriel and Sarah Stacy, who were rapidly aging due to the Goblin Formula they inherited from their father’s DNA. It was an interesting take on the Gwen Stacy character that came as a huge shock to fans.
What Sara Barnes did with the story afterward? Well, I wish I could say it was good, but it’s not. The arc features Peter being called to Paris with Sarah Stacy, who needs help getting a cure for her condition. The story is needlessly complicated by Sarah trying to force a romance on Peter, who at this time was still married to Mary Jane.
What makes that really fucking weird, isn’t just the fact that Sarah is the bastard child of his dead ex-girlfriend and his greatest enemy, it’s the fact that Sarah is biologically 8 years old despite the fact that she has the body of a woman in her 20s. It’s kind a stretch and a really weird place to take the story since JMS had been working so hard to repair Peter and Mary Jane’s marriage for this tale. Most of the story is Mary Jane questioning if Peter is going to remain faithful. Both Peter and Mary Jane are mischaracterized here and it’s just a really awful, uncomfortable affair (and I almost mean that literally)
Honestly, Barnes’ work on Strange and Doctor Spectrum were far more interesting reads than this.
In the End…..
Ultimately, the second volume of Spectacular Spider-Man wasn’t long for the world and its run ended after 27 issues. The final issue saw Paul Jenkins working with Mark Buckingham again (after the pair worked closely together on Peter Parker: Spider-Man) In a story appropriately titled “Curtain Call” it wrapped up Jenkins run on Spider-Man with something he is very good at: one-off story that are very close and personal. So of course, this is a story about Peter’s relationship with Uncle Ben.
Spectacular Spider-Man would next see a brief revival in 2017 when the title was resurrected and ran for 20 odd issues. It even took on the legacy numbering of the original volume of the title, but we’ll get into that series some other time.
