The Most Controversial Moments In Spider-Man's History!

[Mister Mets]

OMG I can't believe they are selectively deleting all of my posts that suggest any kind of alleged sexism but not the millions of f-words and racist comments on here. And its this one moderator who has it for me. Anyway as I said before I don't care if Gwen had kids out of wedlock. It was that she did it with Norman! Oh man I am so mad they deleted my original comment because I really cannot duplicate the point I made. Anyway she represents this idealistic, romantic era of Spiderman from issues 33-123 which were in my opinion his golden age. I only found out about Gwen way into my teens in the late 90's and before that it was all MJ. And I still like her more but it is undeniably true that Gwen was Peter's love of his life if she hadn't died. That was THE girl. And she died suddenly which is a great story because here I am thinking it doesn't get better than Mary Jane and maybe it does. And not only that but Gwen contrasted to MJ when MJ had a much cooler personality than she has been portrayed the last 35 years or so. So when Gwen died a lot was lost and I loved that she remained this saintly idealistic person that set the bar high for MJ and for them to tarnish her with Norman and never fix it was the worst for me. And it was like exhuming the body to dump on it more.

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[Xal]

I agree with this. I liked the story arc because I felt - rather than destroying the reputation of the 'holy virgin Gwen' - it humanized her.

Gwen making that mistake with Norman (of all people) is just like real life. Norman is the ultimate obsessive, ego driven manipulative psychopath, and -- contrary to what a lot of people like to believe (kids?) -- sweet innocent feminine girls are very *often* the perfect prey for exactly these kinds of guys.

However, there seems to be this consensus among people that Gwen was best left with Virgin Mary status:

The pure, unsullied, clean and untouchable Perfect Girl from Heaven.

I can see that point of view, and its understandably a controversial arc, but I thought JMS did a great job with it.

Right, because a woman in comics is more "human" because he got pregnant before marriage. xDDD

The perfect Girl thing is totally false. Anyone who read the original comics until her dead could say that.

Exactly. This should have been a point where Pete realized that he was making the same mistake that many people make when someone is gone and idealizing them. Placing them on a non-existent pedestal. It would have been a signal for Pete to stop obsessing over the past and concentrate on the present. Concentrate on Mary Jane. The person who is there for him now. He needed to finally get over Gwen. Unfortunately status quo.

[Spidey_Legend]

Exactly. This should have been a point where Pete realized that he was making the same mistake that many people make when someone is gone and idealizing them. Placing them on a non-existent pedestal. It would have been a signal for Pete to stop obsessing over the past and concentrate on the present. Concentrate on Mary Jane. The person who is there for him now. He needed to finally get over Gwen. Unfortunately status quo.

Sorry, but Peter will never get over Gwen. No real people, specially someone like Peter who lost very important people could do that.

[Xal]

Sorry, but Peter will never get over Gwen. No real people, specially someone like Peter who lost very important people could do that.

That's a very bleak attitude.

[ogrekiller]

Sins past of course, simply because it was so absurd.
Gwen getting pregnant by Harry was believable at least. But Norman? It's like a plotline out of some badly written porno.

[Chris S.]

OMD takes the cake for me. It disillusioned me to Marvel comics in general and changed me as a reader. I went from being a reader of characters to a reader of creators. It was probably a good thing for me as I've found a whole world that I now love, but I'll never look at Marvel or modern Spider-Man the same. That is a tough pill to swallow.

I've never understood the hatred for Sins Past. I'd love to do a poll of people who hated Sins Past that were actually alive buying Spidey comics prior to 121. I can't imagine there are many of them, but yet people still hold Gwen on this pedestal. I've done a lot of reading of ASM prior to 121 since the story and sort of understand it. Gwen still feels like a shallow, one dimensional character to me though. What JMS did with her was the most dimensional she had ever been.

I disliked Deodato's art more than the story.

[DamnYellow]

That's a very bleak attitude.

No it's not, it's realistic. Unless you're cold and heartless, you never really 'get over' losing someone you love. You may move on in life and not dwell on it too much, but there'll always be some effect on you that you will never be able to shake. And it's normal to miss them too.

In the case of Peter, Gwen died before his very eyes and she died because he failed to save her. This will also put a certain amount of guilt and sadness in his heart about her, especially when you consider that he promised to keep her safe to her father (another person he failed to save).

How does one 'get over' that? He can't and he won't, but he comes out stronger because of what he suffered and what he knows he lost.



As far as the argument of making Gwen more human goes...I'll say that's a garbage argument. This is Gwen cheating on Peter with one of her friends' dad and having two babies in secret. Are you kidding me? This isn't making her more human, this is assassinating her character.

If you read Avenging Spiderman 11, you could say that the stories Aunt May tells Peter do a good job to further humanize Uncle Ben. She talks about some faults here and there, how he cared more about sports than other things that he pretended to and so forth. That's a good way to put into perspective the faults of a person who is idealized too much after their death.

But instead with Gwen, Marvel chose to completely destroy her character for us, make her act completely different to how we've come to know and expect her to, and they did it without ever even adding anything to the story.

You could literally retcon that whole story and nothing too significant would change in the status quo. It's garbage that should have never happened and Marvel should feel ashamed of it.

[E. Wilson]

As far as the argument of making Gwen more human goes...I'll say that's a garbage argument. This is Gwen cheating on Peter with one of her friends' dad and having two babies in secret. Are you kidding me? This isn't making her more human, this is assassinating her character.

Thought-experiment: If the Harry Osborn were the father, would the story have been more palatable?

[DamnYellow]

I think if the story was written in a way where they could feasibly imply that Gwen had feelings and a moment of weakness with Harry, I think that would definitely be more palatable than Gwen having a random one-night-stand with Norman Osborn out of nowhere. Where does that come out from?

I also hated the whole accelerated aging thing they did so that the kids could be adults and still meet a young Peter. It's as if someone just came up with:

-Gwen sleeps with Normal Osborn
-Gwen has babies
-Babies fight spider-man

wrote it down on a white-board and came up with as many ridiculous explanations as possible to make a story fit with these facts in order to be edgy and shocking. Awful.

[Kevin Nichols]

Ι do not consider the former as a controversial moment

Not so much anymore, but at the time it was. Not only that, it is a milestone in the history of comics. It was the first time since the inception of the Comics Code that a mainstream publisher released a book without the CCA seal of approval.

[Chris S.]

Not so much anymore, but at the time it was. Not only that, it is a milestone in the history of comics. It was the first time since the inception of the Comics Code that a mainstream publisher released a book without the CCA seal of approval.

I actually wrote a paper about this moment in college. I went to University of Wyoming and they have a pop culture museum. Somehow they got Stan Lee to donate a bunch of his paperwork. It is incredible the crap he saved. I literally had to spend hours rummaging through random letters people had written him. He also saved EVERY draft of public releases he ever made.

The Harry drug issue was a massive deal at the time. Stan Lee received so much mail about it that it would make complaints about OMD look obscure. The letters were from just about every parents organization you could imagine plus. He also saved newspaper articles and the amount of stuff published in papers was crazy too.

Needless to say, the issue got a lot of attention outside of the comics community.

[Kevin Nichols]

1. Spider-Man and Power-Pack from the early 80s, everything else falls way short, Sins Past is like a 0.8 in the Spider-Man and Power-Pack scale, OMD, a 0.6, Harry on drugs was highly controversial during its day, but a 0.2 on the SM&PP scale by today's standards...

Yeah, but that's kind of like 'Trouble'. It was odd, but it's not part of the Spidey canon. That Spidey/Power Pack issue was just a PSA.

[Kevin Nichols]

I actually wrote a paper about this moment in college. I went to University of Wyoming and they have a pop culture museum. Somehow they got Stan Lee to donate a bunch of his paperwork. It is incredible the crap he saved. I literally had to spend hours rummaging through random letters people had written him. He also saved EVERY draft of public releases he ever made.

The Harry drug issue was a massive deal at the time. Stan Lee received so much mail about it that it would make complaints about OMD look obscure. The letters were from just about every parents organization you could imagine plus. He also saved newspaper articles and the amount of stuff published in papers was crazy too.

Needless to say, the issue got a lot of attention outside of the comics community.

That is VERY cool! I would love to see that!

[Kevinroc]

I actually wrote a paper about this moment in college. I went to University of Wyoming and they have a pop culture museum. Somehow they got Stan Lee to donate a bunch of his paperwork. It is incredible the crap he saved. I literally had to spend hours rummaging through random letters people had written him. He also saved EVERY draft of public releases he ever made.

The Harry drug issue was a massive deal at the time. Stan Lee received so much mail about it that it would make complaints about OMD look obscure. The letters were from just about every parents organization you could imagine plus. He also saved newspaper articles and the amount of stuff published in papers was crazy too.

Needless to say, the issue got a lot of attention outside of the comics community.

I'm not surprised. Anything that brought up a real fight with the CCA (comics code authority) was bond to be controversial. Correct me if I'm wrong but that was really the first "real" stand a major publisher took against the CCA, right?

(And it's also an easy to understand story with a real world issue. Something like OMD is too fantastical to really break the comic niche.)

[Chris S.]

I'm not surprised. Anything that brought up a real fight with the CCA (comics code authority) was bond to be controversial. Correct me if I'm wrong but that was really the first "real" stand a major publisher took against the CCA, right?

(And it's also an easy to understand story with a real world issue. Something like OMD is too fantastical to really break the comic niche.)

Since its inception, I believe it was the first time. The interesting thing was, if memory serves me correctly, Marvel had been a pretty big part of the creation of the CCA. To see them strike against a program they had been involved in was a huge shot. It was also interesting reading the stuff about them attempting to get it approved.

I believe one of the better articles about the issue was actually published in The New York Times. They made a big deal about it. It was also interesting the attention it got on college campuses. Stan saved a bunch of articles from University papers.