Retcon This – Spider-Man: The Other
In the ever-evolving landscape of comics, there are simply some things that should not have happened. In Retcon This, we examine some of the more questionable aspects of our beloved characters’ sordid histories.
Retcon This – Spider-Man: The Other
or…
Retcon This – Morlun Eats Spider-Man’s Eyeball and ‘The Other’ Gross Stuff
Meet Peter Parker, your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man. In a freak accident, he was bitten by a radioactive spider which gave him his powers of super-strength, “spider-sense”, ability to cling to walls, yadda yadda yadda. You know the drill… Or do you?
I bet you didn’t know that the spider that bit young Mr. Parker was actually “drawn” to him because Peter has a connection to a totemic spider-spirit. I didn’t either until J. Michael Straczynski took over writing duties on Amazing Spider-Man and told us so.
Morlun... He'd do quite well on Fear Factor.
Now, allow me to introduce you to Morlun, the vampire-like man that literally and spiritually feeds on animal totems, such as Peter Parker. He’s traveled to New York for a feast and is the main protagonist of the controversial 12-part ‘The Other’ story arc.
Why it was controversial (or just plain dumb):
-Peter is diagnosed as dying from a radiation disease that NO ONE in the Marvel Universe can save him from.
Not Reed Richards, not Bruce Banner, not Doctor Strange. No amount of science or magic can possibly prevent his death. Riiiiight. It would be one thing if they side-stepped the issue of seeking help from his super-pals and Peter stuck with the regular doctors, but c’mon… To purposely draw attention to these guys who have done such great and impossible things but then have them say they can’t solve this one disease… It was a bit hard to swallow.
I get that it’s supposed to be some drastic disease and it’s supposed to be all doom ‘n’ gloom and these guys were brought in to show just how helpless and hopeless the situation was, but it just seems off.
If only Mephisto had stepped in…
-Spider-Man kills.
Remember the debate that raged years ago during the Maximum Carnage storyline as to whether Spider-Man should’ve killed Carnage? Well, Marvel made up for lost time and had Spidey kill twice in this story.
First, he kills the new-villain-on-the-scene, Tracer. Tracer, at is turned out, was really just a robot, but Peter only discovered that after strangling him to “death”. He was fully aware he was killing some dude who was trying to harm his good ol’ Aunt May. Blame it on his primal spider nature.
-Spider-Man kills again. Eats victim.
The next kill takes place as Morlun is about to attack Mary Jane, Peter’s savage animalistic nature appears physically and emotionally and he kills Morlun by eating his “life essence” (starting with the head, of course), then Peter collapses and apparently dies as well. This leads us to…
- Snack time!
-The Death/Rebirth/Shedding Skin/Cocoon of Spider-Man
After a brutal beat down from Morlun, which included Morlun plucking out one of Peter’s eyes and EATING IT, Peter seemingly dies.
Spider-Man’s body is taken away from the hospital by Iron Man in an attempt to keep his death hush-hush. In the middle of the night, MJ is alerted to a noise coming from the room where Peter’s body is being kept and finds a broken window where something had escaped from the room and sees there is nothing left behind but the skin of Peter. Eww.
Cut to the Brooklyn Bridge, where underneath it, we see a cocoon nestled as snug as a bug in, well… a cocoon. Days later, Peter emerges, having embraced the human AND spider sides of him.
Closing Thoughts:
The story has to be up there with the Clone Saga for the some of the most mind-numbingly ignorant stuff Spider-Man has ever been involved in. Killing, “dying”, eating people, becoming some type of man-spider (but not THE Man-Spider)… Bad, bad, bad.
I will say this, I think there’s a perfectly GOOD story to be found in Peter Parker killing someone, but this wasn’t the right place to do it. As for the rest, there’s no excuse.
HEY KIDS! Are ya all pumped up to read Spider-Man: The Other
Filed Under: Retcon This!
Oh we just finished this one in the uk reprints it really is bad….I mean really bad
And you didn’t even mention the part where Peter & Tony LOOK DIRECTLY AT THE READER!!!
I’m fine with breaking the fourth wall in Deadpool or Ambush Bug comics, but Spider-Man? No thank you.
Or, for that matter, the new powers Peter got as a result that have all disappeared since!
Remember the Spider-stingers!? The organic web shooters!? The ability to sense motion thanks to his back hairs… or… something like that? No? Aren’t you glad I reminded you?
I actually didn’t mind the new powers. Although it seemed that Peter David was the only writer interested in really using them.
JMS kills spider-man, gives him magic organic powers, has gwen and norman hook up, they have magically radically aged twins, and then poof an editorial mandated Faustian Divorce/universal mind wipe. I’m going on record, and I quote, JMS and Joey Q. gave the spiderfans the Dr. Light Latenight Special.
Good one Esbat!
Here’s the thing… JMS only did what he did because he was planning the retcon at the end of it. Editorial tweaked the scope of the retcon, but it was his idea.
ha!
That is awesome I need to use the quote “dr light latenight special” somewhere
That still didn’t make it something that should have been in print retcon or not
I must say, this story sounds odd, but just what was your problem with the clone saga? I, for one, loved it. How can you even group the words “clone saga” and “mind-numbing” together in one sentence?!
So young… So naive. for an EXTREMELY in-depth look at the Clone Saga and it’s near crippling of the ocmic book industry, check this out.
http://lifeofreillyarchives.blogspot.com/
He’s of course talking about the ORIGINAL clone saga, not the badass Ultimate Spider-Man story from a couple years back. Do some homework on this one and prepare your brian for melting.
Ok. My bad. I admit defeat. I never even think about the originals anymore. My mind is wrapped around the Ultimate universe.
I was thoroughly entertained by “The Other” when it came out, and bought all of the tie-ins. However, most of the entertainment value was from the Peter David and Reginald Hudlin pieces, and not JMS…which surprised me, as I liked his other work on Spider-Man by and large.
I still maintain that the last issue was badass, though.
“Enjoy?” “Hudlin?” What?
@Sam-wise: No. Way.
Two things could improve The Other: 1. Hudlin not writing third of it. 2. Cut the length of the story in third.
If only PAD and JMS (see? They’re so awesome they have their own initials!) wrote the story, we didn’t have that dragging crap of a story. Of course, hopefully in that case they would’ve cut all the unnecessary plot points. I’m also aware to the structure of the story (4 3-parts acts), but I’m still sure it would have worked way better if was shorter.
other problems I had with The Other:
- Doing the same thing Paul Jenkins did a year and a half earlier in Spectacular Spider-Man: “Killing” Peter and upon revival giving him new abilities. For some reason, all other Spidey books ignored it until The Other came and did exactly the same.
- Practically zero ramifications. Sure, JMS had a little joke related to this story in his first ASM issue afterwards, but only PAD had that Other lady appear in his book (it was pretty terrible, I must say) and a What If…? story (even worse than the original story). And that’s it. The organic web-shooters were prominent until OMD, but the rest of Peter’s new abilities? Nada.
@Tomer: No, I totally agree with you that the lack of ramifications sucked balls. I was really looking forward to the new spider-senses, and a face off with that crazy spirit made of spiders. The stingers were weird, but I could live with them for the rest of it. But then OMD just retconned it all and we’ll never see it again. (I will not get started on the things that OMD retconned that don’t make sense to retcon, but whatever.)
Hudlin, I thought, did a pretty good job. His spider-banter is at least well done, even approaching a JMS level. I’ll concede that “there’s no cure and there never will be a cure” is a weak plot device, but the manner in which he handled Peter’s “last days” was realistic and empathetic to me. i’m not talking about whether it was a good plot, I’m just saying it seemed real and I felt for the guy.
I guess what I’m getting at is that a lot of “The Other” made me sympathetic toward Peter, since his terminal illness was handled with just the right amount of drama. Overuse of the “Peter’s life is total shit” device has been really common in a lot of Spider-titles I’ve read over the years, and when a balance is struck, it makes me pleased.
This ends my overly-defensive essay.
it is too scary
I don’t like the part when the morlun guy takes Spider-man’s eye! *crys*
>:(!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
That eye thing is REALLY disturbing for a Spider-Man comic x_o…*shudders*.