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In our previous part, we brushed over the rise of Spider-man to his status as a pop culture figure, how it was his everyman status that allowed people to identify with him. Also, a look at the tragedies that shaped his life, and the long path to embracing Mary Jane as his confidante. In this part, building on the events of the Silver and Bronze Age, Spider-man enters the Dark Age of comics, and faces an enemy that strives to completely destroy him, and has the power to do so. That enemy, was Marvel itself.
There are many arguments about when eras start and finish, but I tend to accept the idea that the Silver Age ended with the death of Gwen Stacey, the point when things became less safe and we entered into the Bronze age of more fully embracing the implications of reality in these fictional worlds. I also feel that the Bronze Age in turn ended with Crisis On Infinite Earths, DC's attempt to fuse and simplify their complicated history for the future. This was quickly followed by Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns, which shook Batman out of the camp mentality and made him a serious character again, and Secret Wars, which brought the Marvel heroes and villains together for the first time in a massive crossover. These three events define the Dark Age of comics. Massive events became regular occurances. Heroes became anti-heroes. Villains became more sympathetic. The period was one of grittiness, and with the emergence of the speculator, a period that would be known for gimmicks and style-over-substance. That's not to say everything about the Dark Age was negative. For some, such as the Hulk, the Dark Age struck with Incredible Hulk 324, when he was turned Grey and stopped being stupid. This is probably what breathed new life into the character, and Peter David's run on it throughout this era has been considered by critics and fans to probably be a defining part of it.
For Spider-man, the Dark Age is best symbolized by the emergence of his black costume. First, it was the first time we saw a brand new suit for the web-spinner, and second, because, well, black works. It would be a regular part of the series for four years, until Peter finally burned it in Amazing Spider-man 300 because of Venom. Venom, of course, is one of the poster childs for a Dark Age character: a villain who became an anti-hero, dressed in black, a casual killer, and composed in part of Spidey's original black costume acquired in Secret Wars. Because Venom was moved from villain to anti-hero, a new villain was needed, so Carnage came about. Maximum Carnage is one of the best concentrated examples of what was bad in the Dark Age: the body count is through the roof, and it was a three month cross-title series. To me, I'm of the opinion that the Dark Age ended in Spider-man with Amazing Spider-man Vol. 2 #30 - the point when J. Michael Straczynski took over for Howard Mackie. There feels like a clear demarkation between the two eras at that point for the character.
During the Dark Age we had Kraven's Last Hunt, which was the first event to crossover multiple Spider-man books. It was a very macabre but critically-acclaimed piece, culminating in the villain, Kraven, committing suicide, his greatest hunt now complete. This led into a completely unrelated crossover where Peter was put into an asylum for six issues, and soon into the reveal of Venom. I'll discuss Venom at another time, but suffice to say that as popular as he was at the time, he could have been better.
Still, while this was the Dark Age, Spider-man's life on the whole continued as normal, even though just before Kraven's Last Hunt he was finally married to long-time romantic interest Mary Jane Watson, a move made by Spidey's creator himself, Stan Lee. With the occassional Venom appearance, for the most part Spidey's stories stayed the course, fighting members of his classic rogue gallery and the occassional team-up with Captain America or the Punisher, or the odd new super-villain with a different gimmic. Spidey "went cosmic" when he got the Captain Universe power during Acts Of Vengeance, but even with the odd events in his life, it went on as usual. The only darkness of this time came from two places. One was in Harry Osborn, who was going further and further down the path of the Green Goblin, a path which culminated in Spectacular Spider-man 200 with his death, written by the same man who gave us Kraven's Last Hunt. The other was in Todd McFarlane's vanity title, Spider-man, which he wrote and drew. He tried to give it more of a horror theme, but while the artwork was good the writing was godawful (as I've said, it's only too appropriate that the first story arc was "Torment," I just didn't think it was meant to describe the act of reading it). McFarlane stayed only a year and a half, and the horror aspect was largely dropped and the book continued with more traditional stories.
It was at this point that darkness really began to descend on Spider-man, and oddly enough it began with his own anniversary. In addition to the holographic covers that drove the price of issues through the roof, they brought back Peter's dead parents. This really just kind of went in circles for a while, and then right after Harry's death we had the aforementioned Maximum Carnage. From there, the issue of Peter's parents finally came to an end, with the revelation that they were robots created by Harry to ruin Peter's life. With all the crap being piled onto him, Peter finally has a breakdown, and Mary Jane leaves him for a while so he can straighten himself out.
Behind the scenes, the creative teams trying to keep four monthly titles coming out were wondering what to do. Spidey was now this dark character, rather than being the fun hero he used to be. It was, naturally, the fault of management and creators trying to drive sales rather than remain true to the character. Four different books, some going bi-weekly during the summer, gave him massive overexposure, and the constant dark themes had been chosen to drive sales. In other words, what happened may not have been what they wanted, but it is the direct result of their choices. Nevertheless, they had to straighten things out. There were numerous ways to do so, but the path they chose, well, left a lot to be desired.
Anyone with familiarity with the long history of Spider-man in comic books will likely have a strong opinion on the Clone Saga. For me, it was the point when I finally jumped ship; even before the first issue hit, I'd read enough to guess what was going to happen, and what almost did happen. For me, I sat out the rest of the Dark Age without Spider-man, but I have since filled in my collection, and thanks to the wonderful Life of Reiley, can fill you in on what came next.
So, the creators had to solve the problem of the mess they'd painted themselves into, and the one who proposed the way out was Terry Kavanagh. Kavanagh was the weakest link by far, and when he suggested his idea it was met with suitable groans: what if Spider-man is, and has been, a clone? The real Spider-man was the one defeated waaay back in Amazing Spider-man 150 and left for dead, and the clone has been taking his place. It's an awful idea, but when you're in dire straights, an awful idea can sound good after a while - all they had to do was bring back this other Spider-man, shove the one we know aside, and everything is fresh and light again. They even get rid of the marriage to Mary Jane, something that bothered many of the writers.
Well, what was supposed to be a short, six-month transition turned into years of the story that would not end. Fans were naturally outraged that the character they'd been following as Spider-man all these years was being called a fake by Marvel. As time passed, the creators eventually gave in and reversed it, but how to do so without feeling like a massive cop-out was the hard part. Also, as the story went on and on, the question of how to justify it all came up. In the end, the decree came down from the top: the only one with the means and motivation to so completely destroy Peter Parker was the original Green Goblin, Norman Osborn. It's hard to appreciate today just how radical a decision that was; Norman's death was simply the perfect ending for the character, bringing him back would completely cheapen that story. Nevertheless, it was hard to argue with that, and so it was done. Sadly, Revelations, which could have been the epic end to the tale, really puttered to an end, but it was at least finally done, climaxing in the seventy-fifth issue of what started as McFarlane's vanity book, now redubbed to make the point clear - Peter Parker: Spider-man.
Incidentally, it's because of the Clone Saga that we wind up with Ben Reiley being the one involved in the much-awaited DC versus Marvel storyline rather than the Spider-man we all knew and loved. Also worth mentioning, there were a number of ways out floated around, and one of them involved the villain behind it all being Mephisto. This was shot down because, as former Editor-in-Chief Tom DeFalco observed, Mephisto (in the Marvel Universe, he is the basis for the Christian devil) isn't a Spider-man villain.
John Byrne, John Byrne, John Byrne.
It's an interesting problem, dealing with Chapter One. It's good in theory, and it's not actually bad in execution, but it just didn't work. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Not long after the start of the Dark Age, John Byrne re-told the story of Superman's origin in a series called The Man Of Steel. That story served as the basis for Superman's character for twenty years until the recent Infinite Crisis (a sequel of sorts to the original Crisis) revamped the DC universe again. While this worked well with many DC fans, it wouldn't translate so well when brought to Marvel. The retelling of the origin of the Hulk involving Skrulls didn't go beyond the annual it was printed in.
And that brings us back to Spider-man. In order to renew interest in Spider-man, the decision was made to cancel all four titles (finally) and restart the two highest selling ones with new number ones. Leading up to this was a twelve-issue series by Byrne called Chapter One that retold the story of Spider-man's origins. While most of the changes to Spidey's history weren't bad, the most eggregious was the origin itself, wherein Peter survives a radiation explosion and is bit by a spider in the process (the same explosion causes Doctor Octopus to become a villain). Fans didn't support this move, or the decision to replace the existing history of Spider-man with Chapter One. At the same time, Howard Mackie and Byrne were handling the new series under orders from then Editor-in-Chief Bob Harras. Harras made some pretty unpopular choices, including reversing the death of Aunt May (a death that many felt was a very moving departure reversed for no good reason) and ordering the death of Mary Jane. The sales during this time period had dropped to such a dangerously low level some wondered if it was even possible for Marvel's flagship character to remain viable.
It was at this time that Ultimate Spider-man was created. Like Chapter One, it was an attempt to restart the series fresh, with a more modern take. Unlike Chapter One, it was set in a different universe, so that it could exist without threatening the continuity of the original character. Because of this, and because of great artwork by Mark Bagley and new-to-Marvel writer Brian Michael Bendis, it became a smash hit. In fact, it began outselling Amazing Spider-man itself, which led to some rumors that the Ultimate universe would wind up replacing the "real" Marvel Universe. Long-time fans dislike for the series at the time was primarily due to this fact, that it seemed the new book was getting better treatment than the classic book (which was still being written by a writer who clearly was all out of steam after many years on the book).
I've read some of Ultimate Spider-man, and personally I don't read it, for reasons I'll get to later.
Amazing Spider-man 29 began the story which, to me, closed out the Dark Age for Spider-man by tying up the final loose end and bringing Mary Jane back. Byrne and Mackie, who disagreed with flat-out killing her, had made her die off panel to ensure the move could be reversed, which it was. After the ordeal (she had been held captive for all that time) she left for a time to sort things out. It was then that Straczynski was brought on board Amazing Spider-man while Paul Jenkins, who had spent most of the year on Peter Parker: Spider-man, handled that book (that book was more of a supplement rather than a driving force for the character, but was well done in my opinion). Straczynski's new direction for the character had some positives responses and some negatives. The "spider totem" plots that appeared throughout his run were generally treated with disdain, as Spider-man hasn't historically been a magic-based character.
Still, there's no denying that Straczynski helped move the character of Peter Parker along. During the waning days of the Byrne-Mackey era, Peter was reduced to living on the street and having his web shooters stolen. Now, while his life wasn't perfect, he was getting his act together. He took a job teaching high school science, which is really a perfect job for him - it lets him use his vast intellect on the topic, while at the same time staying at the street level he works at as a character. Another move was for Aunt May to finally figure out that Peter was Spider-man. Through this, Straczynski made this mother figure into a much more solid character and one actually worth having, rather than the one who just two years before was stuck in the "oo, oo, my heart!" mode that made her nothing more than one more thing for Peter to deal with. The storyline with Mary Jane also proved interesting (though it admittedly wasn't treated so at the time). Marriage isn't always easy, and their trial separation made things anxious, but eventually they came together again, and she went on from being a model to an actress. In other words, the three core members of the book had evolved as characters, something they hadn't really done in a long, long time.
Paul Jenkins stories weren't always on the mark, but some of his tales were fantastic. His premiere, PP:SM #20, really helped draw Peter back from darkness, where he begins facing down a burglar with a gun, practically hoping that the man will shoot him down, to laughing uncontrollably at the end while talking to his uncle at his grave. Another was the story of a young black boy who has Spider-man as an imaginary friend, and who at the end takes his mask off to reveal a strong, confident black man underneath. The message is that, when we see Spider-man, we not only see a man with our problems, but also a man we ourself would like to be (even when Peter himself can't measure up to that). Jenkins eventually puttered out on the books, however, and his later issues were quite horrendous, but for the most part many fans still give him a pass because, during a time when we had nothing positive in the books, he gave us something worth reading.
Next time: Spider-man begins evolving again, only to take a giant step backwards
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