The Amazing Spider-Man # 2, 1963
written by Stan Lee, art by Steve Ditko
People around me know that I have been a fan of Marvel Comics for a long time. Sure, I haven't bought a single comic in the last fifteen years because the new comics simply do not really reach out to me like the old ones did but I have been ordering a lot of books of reprinted comics of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. Marvel is printing these on much better paper and with much better printing than before, in the original issues. Yes, I do like the old issues, the whole feel and smell of that old paper, but it is also a big bother that these issues are so fragile because of their age. That is why I prefer reading these newer collected books with reprints.
And when you have been reading titles like The Amazing Spider-Man for as many years as I have, ( I read them from the 1970s until the mid-1990s when I quit because, well, I will explain in a minute or two) you see a lot of writers and artists taking their shot at the magazine. Me, I had originally fallen in love with the Stan Lee stories of the early years, with Steve Ditko and then John Romita at the artistic helm. When Stan was writing these issues, they were joyful, full of optimistic witticisms, hope and humor. And the art was always tremendously complimentary to that.
The Amazing Spider-Man #70, Stan Lee & John Romita
In the late 1960s however, Stan had so much work on all his comics that he had to pass a few to colleague writers. And so Roy Thomas wrote a few Amazing Spider-Man stories before Gerry Conway started his substantial run into the 1970s. His stories also became more serious, darker and more dramatic, such as with the DEATH of GWEN STACY, Peter Parkers girlfriend in The Amazing Spider-Man 121. ( I have this issue myself and although it is sad to read it, it is a magnificent piece of Artwork.) The death of his girlfriend of course affected Peter Parker deeply and in subsequent issues, it turned out his life was no picknick. Readership also responded enormously to the dramatic tone of these newer stories, following this pivotal moment in the History of Spider-Man.
Amazing Spider-Man #121 The Night Gwen Stacy Died
Story Gerry Conway, Art by Gil Kane, John Romita & Tony Mortellaro
By giving full coverage of Peter Parker's grief and his thoughts of "If only I had...", the whole feel of the comic started to change into a much more dramatic title. The stories also continued to reflect this when famous DC artist ROSS ANDRU came in to take the title to new artistic heights. Andru gave the webspinner a very unique, realistic 1970s look, while at the same time he also drew Peter Parker as a young Elvis (just as John Romita had done before him). And while at the same time deglamorizing Mary Jane Watson, Andru gave her just enough reality to have something beautiful grow between her and Peter Parker in following issues.
Art by Ross Andru
But even though Stan wasn't writing them anymore, he was still the boss. And apparently, Stan Lee was mad as hell about the death of Gwen Stacy. You see, Gerry Conway and John Romita had long debated about where to go with Peter Parker and Gwen Stacy in their relationship. Gwen was such a nice young lady that she was also a little bland. There was not that much you would really want to do with her in terms of storytelling. Unless of course you killed her off. It is unclear if this was cleared with Stan Lee or not, sources are simply not clear. Stan was often not in the office because of his other publishing duties, duties he has always said he did not enjoy. But after Amazing Spider-Man 121 hit the stands, Stan Lee was not pleased. He ordered Gerry Conway and John Romita to come up with a way to bring her back. Of course, there is a slight issue with that. How do you bring someone back from the dead? (And what would it mean to Peter and MJ later on?) The answer to that was suggested by new scientific theories about cloning. By taking tissues of a living person, you would theoretically be capable of growing a new copy of the original person: a clone. (Ira Levin also used it in his book THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL, which was filmed by Franklin Schaffner in 1978. It postulated what would happen if Hitler would come back in the present day of the 1970s. Look it up, it is quite good.) But with this idea, Conway crafted a plot in which it had turned out that Professor Miles Warren had originally taken samples of his students. Including Gwen Stacy and Peter Parker. Conway turned Miles Warren into a villain named the Jackal. (You see, Miles Warren had always been deeply in love with Gwen Stacy and her sudden death (there you go again) drove him crazy. He became the Jackal and devised a plan to bring back Gwen Stacy and to punish the guilty person, Peter Parker a.k.a. Spider-Man. Yes, Warren had found out Peter Parker and Spider-Man were one and the same.) The return of Gwen Stacy set up a series of events that concluded in a big confrontation between Peter Parker, the original Spider-Man and his Clone, created by the Jackal. The final confrontation was in The Amazing Spider-Man 149, in which the real Spider-Man beats the Clone Spider-Man because the clone is not as experienced a fighter. And Peter Parker managed to make Miles Warren realize his own madness and Warren stopped the conflict while giving his life to save others.
Amazing Spider-Man 149
The conclusion also meant the Gwen Stacy clone would leave New York and try to get herself a life elsewhere. There was now only one major question: how did Spider-Man know for sure he was the real one and not the clone? This was resolved in issue 150, where Peter Parker, while fighting villains, was thinking about his feelings for Mary Jane Watson. And he realizes the clone would not have these feelings for Mary Jane, ergo the conclusion had to be that he was the real Peter Parker. He disposed of the clone body in a later issue and life went on. And so did Gerry Conway as he left and other writers came to the fore. Not all of them improvements, I must say. After a number of years Ross Andru moved on to other titles and artists like Keith Pollard and John Romita Jr ( yes, the son of John Romita) came into play. With some exceptions, this did not lead to new heights in the title of The Amazing Spider-Man. Yes, the Roger Stern issues were very good indeed but overall, the quality of the stories was sagging until it hit rock bottom in the mid-1990s when someone in the Marvel Bullpen thought they could muster up more interest with the idea: "What if Peter Parker had been wrong? What if Peter Parker had been the Clone all the time and the person that had been the original had been disposed of? What if the Peter Parker we had followed for 20 years had been the Clone after all? " This train of thought started off a really bad mess of stories that went from ugly to downright despicable. And the conclusion it reached, I could no longer stomach: Peter Parker, the one we had followed all these years, found out he was the clone. The Peter Parker we had followed stopped being Spider-Man. A new identity came into play: Ben Reilly and the Scarlet Spider. All in all, I was thoroughly disgusted with MAXIMUM CLONAGE and decided to stop collecting MARVEL COMICS altogether. ( The Fantastic Four series had been going downhill as since since the departure of John Byrne.) So I quit the comics.
The beginning of the End for Me: Maximum Clonage !
Around 2005, I decided to take another look at what was happening in the comics and found them, with exception of some of the artwork, to be equally unmemorable. Maybe I was comparing too much with the great artists being Steve Ditko and John Romita (and John Buscema on other titles) but I found that I simply did not care for them anymore and I was even horrified to read storylines that in the old days would have been unthinkable. ( Such as the original Gwen Stacy sleeping with Norman Osborn and having two children to follow in the footsteps of the Green Goblin: ugh! J. Michael Straczynksi wrote this crap and I knew from his BABYLON 5 days, he is a good writer. But this was horrible crap. And nothing I saw would lead me to going back to my collecting days. (One exception was the 9-11 issue of The Amazing Spider-Man, which was an awesome homage to the real heroes of that dreadful catastrophe. I will talk about that some other time.)
Sins Past, starring the children of Norman Osborn and Gwen Stacy
written by Michael J. Straczynski and art by Deodato and Pimentel
These issues were in the time that Sam Raimi had started making the first Spider-Man films, with Toby McGuire, who was very good as Peter Parker. The first film was a big hit and the second film starred Doctor Octopus and was even better. But the third film was CRAP. Raimi had wanted to go on making Spider-Man films but he was not given enough time and so he passed the baton to another guy who did not really do so well, even though his casting was very good. Andrew Garfield was an inspired choice for Peter Parker. And Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy was fantastic too, but the death of Gwen Stacy was no good at all in this film. All in all, these films were not good and Sony decided not to continue with them. Kevin Feige, in the meantime, had been able to set up his own Cinematic Marvel Universe with IRON MAN, THE INCREDIBLE HULK and THOR and was moving on with CAPTAIN AMERICA and THE AVENGERS. Sony and Marvel were smart enough to get together and make SPIDER-MAN come alive in a new incarnation in the Cinematic Marvel Universe.
I enjoyed Spider-Man in CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR but I was honestly not impressed with Spider-Man's first solo film. Tom Holland was quite good in it but his incarnation seemed not at all to be based on the classics that I was familiar with and I could not see these as my version of the character. Zendaya as Mary Jane ? NO WAY. Tom Holland, okay. But Zendaya as MJ, no way. Good thing that Spider-Man was a secondary character in AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR and AVENGERS: ENDGAME, where Tom Holland was very enjoyable again. But his second solo film also did rather little for me. Although I must admit I loved the return of J.Jonah Jameson, even though I felt it was timed all wrong. But okay, they were obviously making these films for a younger audience than myself now.
Sony also did an animated feature film, in which it was shown that there was not just one Universe but there are many universes. (Later note: this has been confirmed in the first season of LOKI, which ended in a bit of a disappointment.) And in one other universe, Miles Morales is the black Spider-Man. In this animated film, he would meet up with our Peter Parker, Spider-Man of the original Universe and have a good fight with some villains. I actually enjoyed this animated film, even though I have never read any of Miles's stories: this film was good. It won an Oscar and they are going to do a sequel to it.
Tom Holland has also said that he was working on a third Spider-Man film. SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME will go into general release in December. Much to the chagrin of the producers of the Marvel Movies, however, Holland has often given away more than they would have wanted. And this past week he said SPIDER-MAN 3 WAS SO AMBITIOUS, IT WAS BEYOND ANYTHING THAT HAD BEEN TRIED BEFORE. I am really very curious. Will this also mean we will get Miles Morales in the Marvel Movies? Are we really talking multiverse or might it have something to do with something else, like the aforementioned clones? As I am writing this now (and rewriting this article for the third time), the first trailer has hit the internet and we can confirm it is NOT about clones.
At the end of SPIDER-MAN: FAR FROM HOME, J.K. Simmons made his first appearance in the Cinematic Marvel Universe as J. Jonah Jameson but he also created a very big problem for Spider-Man in revealing him to be Peter Parker to the WHOLE WORLD. ( Personally, I feel this also lacks something because in the past incarnations, Peter Parker would be a photographer for Jameson at times and the fact that it was he who worked for Jameson who turned out to be Spider-Man, like that would have been a great storyline by itself, but again, these films are not aimed at me anymore. I am a middle aged man with a soft spot for costumed characters and not part of the young audience these new films are aimed at. )
So this first trailer shows Peter Parker experiencing a lot of trouble because of this terrible revelation made by Jameson and he goes to DR. STRANGE (played again by Benedict Cumberbatch) to ask if he can weave a spell to make the world forget that Peter Parker is Spider-Man. Strange wants to help but uses a dangerous spell that, due to interference from Peter ( who had not stated beforehand he wanted certain people to retain this knowledge ), causes great damage to the multiverse and then all kinds of weird things happen. We hear the voice of Willem Dafoe laughing as the Green Goblin as he did in Sam Raimi's original SPIDER-MAN from 2002. Alfred Molina returns as Doctor Octopus and the fact that he seems to know this Peter Parker seems to be pointing in a certain direction: HAVOC in the MULTIVERSE !! (We do not see Electro but it is also confirmed Jamie Fox is back in that role in this film. The only thing that remains to be seen is: will we also get to see Tom Holland as Peter Parker and Spider-Man meet his predecessors Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield ? Now that would most certainly be a site for sore eyes, to see 3 Spider-Men fighting 3 villains. Wait a minute..... of course this is just a thought but it might be the same thought the people behind this film have had before !!!)
Could this possibly what we will see in SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME?
I must admit that this trailer looks very promising and as SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME will be released in December of this year, I can hardly wait!!
All the artwork copyright Marvel and Disney.
