We Now Know What Spider-Man Did, And Yup, It’s Dumb

Last February Marvel Comics promised they would reveal something Spider-Man did in his recent past that would be SO earth-shatering, they dubbed it “the most shocking issue of Amazing Spider-Man in 50 years.”

Marvel rebooted Amazing Spider-Man for the billionth time with a new #1 in 2021 and a new writer, Zeb Wells. The situation he cooked up is that everyone hates Spider-Man. I mean more than usual. MJ won’t hug him. Ms. Marvel won’t fangirl over him. Not even Aunt May is talking to him. He has no allies, with the weird exceptions of Black Cat and NORMAN OSBORN (yes, that Norman Osborn). Why are his friends now his enemies, and his enemies his friends? Because of some unspecified thing he did in the recent past, that Marvel wouldn’t reveal UNTIL NOW.

So are you ready? Here’s what happened: MJ got sucked into an apocalyptic dimension. Spider-Man couldn’t get to her before the portal closed. He decided to open another portal to get her back, but to do that he had to steal a fusion reactor from the Fantastic Four. Captain America tried to stop him, so Spidey beat him up. Then he allied himself with Norman Osborn, the only one who had the smarts to work the reactor AND was willing to help him (Reed Richards was unlikely to volunteer). Hardly the most shocking thing in 50 years, but it gets worse.

Spidey did all this in the span of one day. But when he pulled MJ out of the dimension, he discovered time moved faster in there, so she had already given up hope of being rescued, started a relationship with someone else, and had two kids. Come on, really?

Stan Lee was often asked which superhero would win in a fight. He said he always gave the same answer, no matter which heroes were hypothetically duking it out: “The guy that wins the fight…is the guy the writer wants to win.” This speaks volumes about comics and their consistency. Whatever happens next is whatever the one in control wants to happen, and the control keeps being passed around. It doesn’t matter that it’s way out of character for MJ to give up on being rescued by Spider-Man; if the current writer wants to make her, she will. I’d like to add to this my own personal belief that once you get past a certain point, a story will just keep getting worse the longer you tell it.

We can assume Zeb Wells is very very anti-MJ (or at least pro-Black Cat) or he wouldn’t be taking a flamethrower to one of comics’ most beloved relationships like this. (There was also a panel a couple issues before this where Spider-Man unbelievably said he thought of MJ as “more like a sister.”) I think Zeb is hoping he can scorch the earth so badly that no one after him can repair it. But this is a comic book and nothing is preventing the writer after him from revealing that MJ’s new family are actually brain-eating monsters. Which would also be stupid, but we’re knee-deep in it already.

If you want something better, you’ll just have to wait for Zeb to go away. In the meantime, don’t buy this dumb comic.