Reboot One Spider-Man Character

[Revolutionary_Jack]

My choices:

-- I would reboot Jackal and the Clone cycle completely, or rather rework it to be closer to Gerry Conway's retcon in Spectacular Annual #8 "Return to Sender". Warren didn't clone people, he created a process that turned normal real people into lookalikes of his chosen targets. I'd also reveal that the guy who funded Warren and paid him his research was...Chameleon. Think about it guy who disguises himself to resemble other people, would be game to fund research and ideas into someone working on a process to basically convert regular people into lookalikes. The Clone story and Warren is basically a way to elevate Chameleon into a major villain. And I think regular people having their lives hijacked and overwritten to resemble physically and with the memories of people they don't know and are total strangers with has a kind of horror and poignancy and it keeps stuff to the real place that Spider-Man's stories are best at, rather than some arcane conspiracy petri-dish thing.

-- Gwen Stacy after the death of George Stacy, and after her failed support of Miles Warren and so on, dedicates to using her social, political, fiscal and academic abilities to gain revenge on Spider-Man and becomes a villain. Not a Goblin or any such thing, but basically a villain like Wraith...she basically becomes Elektra to Spider-Man. She's got the Daddy complex, misplaced vengeance, and so on. She doesn't get fridged. Heck it's still worth it to bring her back from the dead as the Red Hood of Spider-Man's mythos...why do men get to come back as badass anti-heroes and not women?

-- Spider-Man's supporting cast is lacking in LGBT representation, at least until Max Modell. But still Peter's peers in college and in the media world should have some LGBT types. Of the lot, I'd say Harry Osborn is most open to take in that direction, i.e. a deeply closeted self-denying guy on the spectrum who is strongly homosocial.

He dies the same way he normally does but the burglar was actually an assassin and the debut of Spider-Man coincides with the biggest gang war in history as the Crime Master, Osborn, Kingpin, Tombstone, and Hammerhead compete for power, the Bugle becomes a last stand for distorted truth in the face of a media corrupted by lies, the conflict and appearance of Spider-Man starts a local genetic arms race that leads to creation of all of the villains, and Peter has to face the dark side of his father figure's legacy, the most powerful criminals ever to hit New York, and a grand conspiracy that reaches to the highest levels of government, all while trying to live something resembling a life once Ben's secrets becomes public.

the original post was a joke but now I've got this whole pitch for it, cool

Something like that was done in Peter S. Bagge's The Megalomaniacal Spider-Man, albeit mostly off-screen.

[Celgress]

-- Gwen Stacy after the death of George Stacy, and after her failed support of Miles Warren and so on, dedicates to using her social, political, fiscal and academic abilities to gain revenge on Spider-Man and becomes a villain. Not a Goblin or any such thing, but basically a villain like Wraith...she basically becomes Elektra to Spider-Man. She's got the Daddy complex, misplaced vengeance, and so on. She doesn't get fridged. Heck it's still worth it to bring her back from the dead as the Red Hood of Spider-Man's mythos...why do men get to come back as badass anti-heroes and not women?...

I like it I really do. This idea is dynamic and can go in many different directions long-term. Plus I'm a sucker for unknowing superhero/supervillain romances (Batman Returns with Batman and Catwoman is a classic movie example of this trope).

[Huntsman Spider]

I like most of those ideas myself, but as someone who doesn't completely hate the Clone Saga even despite its dastardly roots (to separate Peter and Mary Jane and delegitimize their marriage), my own idea would be that Miles Warren is connected to the Life Foundation, specifically through the Arachnis Project, which switches from the project founder's original intent to cure human ailments through the careful application of spider biology to trying to create super-soldiers incorporating spider biology. Warren uses his position and research at Empire State University as a pretext to collect students' DNA and determine whose genetics are most compatible with the Arachnis Project, with one of those students obviously being Peter Parker, and upon realizing that Peter's DNA is super-compatible with the Arachnis Project, Warren starts using that DNA as the primary component in his experiments. He ends up creating mutant spider-human hybrids based on splicing Peter's DNA with that of the other students whose samples he's collected, but he is dismayed to find that Peter's DNA is most compatible with Gwen Stacy's on account of his perverse obsession with her.

Nonetheless, the blend of Gwen's DNA with Peter's creates near-perfect hybrids that can pass for human, without obvious physical mutations, and Warren starts to see them as his children, even if that doesn't stop him from weaponizing them to send after Peter, believing that they'll easily defeat and kill him so Warren won't have to put up with Peter as a rival for Gwen's affections anymore. Of course, that doesn't work out so much because Peter is Spider-Man, but Warren manages to collect more of his DNA in the process and even starts cloning Peter, believing that he can create a "superior, or perhaps even ultimate evolution of humanity" based on Peter Parker's template, but ironing out (what he perceives to be) the flaws of the original. Naturally, this backfires on Warren, as his first successful prototype goes berserk and nearly kills him in the process of escaping, forcing Warren to save his own life by using Arachnis Project, though since his DNA isn't as compatible . . . he mutates into something similar to The Amazing Spider-Man 2's version of the Green Goblin, who upon looking back on it now resembles 90s Jackal a great deal (pointed ears, wild spiked hair, and greenish skin discoloration). Having a psychotic breakdown after that, Warren declares to the world that he is the herald and father of a superior species to humanity --- "Homo Arachnis" --- and proceeds to raise havoc with a (relatively) small army of spider-powered hybrids that he's created for the Life Foundation, only now he's the new leader of the Life Foundation, and in turn, he and his "Homo Arachnis" the new inheritors of the Earth.

Cue Spider-Man, a spider-powered Gwen Stacy (dubbed the Spider-Bride by a crazed Warren), the original leader of the Arachnis Project, the escaped clone that Warren intended to use as a weapon against Spider-Man, a motley crew of fellow heroes-slash-vigilantes, and a mysterious cloaked woman calling herself "Queen" guiding (or perhaps manipulating) them all in an alliance that ultimately defeats Warren. Of course, Warren gets saved at the last minute or second by someone who sees potential in him, potential for something truly . . .

Sinister.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Warren uses his position and research at Empire State University as a pretext to collect students' DNA and determine whose genetics are most compatible with the Arachnis Project, with one of those students obviously being Peter Parker, and upon realizing that Peter's DNA is super-compatible with the Arachnis Project, Warren starts using that DNA as the primary component in his experiments. He ends up creating mutant spider-human hybrids based on splicing Peter's DNA with that of the other students whose samples he's collected, but he is dismayed to find that Peter's DNA is most compatible with Gwen Stacy's on account of his perverse obsession with her.

That sounds very eugenics-y for me. Peter's DNA being most compatible with Gwen sounds a bit too much like how Claremont and others tried to legitimize Scott and Jean by making their kids a DNA match, especially in Age of Apocalypse. The First Clone Saga that Conway wrote has Miles Warren as a creepy necrophiliac. And that's what Conway hit again in "Return to Sender". Miles Warren is basically Humbert Humbert and a piece of trash. Miles Warren was created as the embodiment of the fans who hated Conway for killing Gwen. That's clear when you read the story and what it was about, and how Jackal and Warren were killed off at the end, and nobody tried once to bring him back until the Second Clone Saga did. The First Clone Saga is about toxic nostalgia, personal fixation, and obsession, not really about creating an army to take over the world. So you need to hit those emotions and make the clones metaphors for Peter and his life. The Ultimate Clone Saga understood that.

And again the big problem with the Second Clone Saga...is in a world with mutants and so on, why go after Spider-Man specifically. Go and splice DNA from the mutants or those who undergo Terrigenesis. And the third problem, it removes Spider-Man an his corner from his street-level side to some kind of insidious and arcane conspiracy place. I mean government wants super-soldiers, so they subcontract it to some creepo professor at ESU who is obviously low on the totem pole if he's teaching college level. The major problems with the Second Clone Saga, aside from his original justification, aside from its blatant retcons that misread the original (and still great) story, is that it's not a Spider-Man story. It's essentially an X-Men or Wolverine or SHIELD story or something.

he mutates into something similar to The Amazing Spider-Man 2's version of the Green Goblin, who upon looking back on it now resembles 90s Jackal a great deal (pointed ears, wild spiked hair, and greenish skin discoloration).

Huh...good catch.

[Huntsman Spider]

That sounds very eugenics-y for me. Peter's DNA being most compatible with Gwen sounds a bit too much like how Claremont and others tried to legitimize Scott and Jean by making their kids a DNA match, especially in Age of Apocalypse. The First Clone Saga that Conway wrote has Miles Warren as a creepy necrophiliac. And that's what Conway hit again in "Return to Sender". Miles Warren is basically Humbert Humbert and a piece of trash. Miles Warren was created as the embodiment of the fans who hated Conway for killing Gwen. That's clear when you read the story and what it was about, and how Jackal and Warren were killed off at the end, and nobody tried once to bring him back until the Second Clone Saga did. The First Clone Saga is about toxic nostalgia, personal fixation, and obsession, not really about creating an army to take over the world. So you need to hit those emotions and make the clones metaphors for Peter and his life. The Ultimate Clone Saga understood that.

And again the big problem with the Second Clone Saga...is in a world with mutants and so on, why go after Spider-Man specifically. Go and splice DNA from the mutants or those who undergo Terrigenesis. And the third problem, it removes Spider-Man an his corner from his street-level side to some kind of insidious and arcane conspiracy place. I mean government wants super-soldiers, so they subcontract it to some creepo professor at ESU who is obviously low on the totem pole if he's teaching college level. The major problems with the Second Clone Saga, aside from his original justification, aside from its blatant retcons that misread the original (and still great) story, is that it's not a Spider-Man story. It's essentially an X-Men or Wolverine or SHIELD story or something.



Huh...good catch.

Fair enough. The justification here is that the Life Foundation is actually a consortium of business elites, albeit with considerable political influence, that believes there's gonna be an apocalypse coming soon, and they just want to make sure they'll be safe and secure and ready to rebuild the world as they see fit while everyone else is being killed off. They hire Miles Warren largely out of seeing him as a useful idiot whose petty ambitions they can exploit and check for their own benefit, and it isn't until Warren (unwittingly) gets his hands on Spider-Man's DNA through the pretext of being Peter Parker's professor that the Life Foundation's scheme starts going off the rails. That said, I can see your point.

[skyvolt2000]

Rocket Racer

We will make him younger and has both parents and 2 older siblings. He still skateboards and sometimes steals. We see him for the first time when Miles Morales runs into him.
He only steals to support his family-his father is disabled from a battle between Hobogoblin and Peter Parker. His mother is the breadwinner as she is a teacher at Moon Girl's school (not her teacher).

Miles one day comes to his dorm room during the holidays getting his spare uniform. He runs into Judge-who he discovers is Rocket Racer. His older brother is the original Rocket Racer now retired and chilling in Wakanda.


Other choice-

Bloodshed (Web of Spider-Man 80)-origin is still the same but his brother is a teacher at Miles's school. Bloodshed is trying to extort money from little brother because he figures that Miles Spider-Man has to be a student at a school where he can vanish and not be noticed.
In my version Miles's school is a private school that does not adhere to truancy rules.

[Michael Watkins]

Jessica Drew the Spider-Woman

for my reboot, i'd borrow heavily from italian horror cinema. Jessica would be the daughter of two british Hydra-Occultists. the mother would be on a strict alchemical diet prior to the birth of her daughter. they would send Jessica to a secluded all-girls boarding school of sorts nestled somewhere on the border of Transia. Elsbeth von Strucker, "Claire Voyant," and a few others would be running the place. inbetween studies, they'd of course be testing the girls for their magic potential/corruptibility. they'd also learn self-defense, the killing arts, and plenty of questionable hydra propaganda. Jessica's roommate is another young woman named Ophelia Sarkissian; a foundling who seems to know all about the shadier side of the school and is good with it. she's more or less the 'Nancy' to Jessica's 'Sarah' (for you 'The Craft' fans). when they get to the sorting hat part of their schooling, Jessica reluctantly embraces the spider totem. Ophelia is left with the snake. fast forward to Jessica becoming an expectedly reluctant agent of Hydra. Ophelia, having a pronounced anti-authoritarian streak, won't settle for being a mere agent of Hydra. she goes off and does her own thing. and Jessica is eventually found by SHIELD. she spends much of her early career operating under the radar as an urban legend of sorts but sometimes in conjunction with Scotland Yard. sometime later she pays the bills as a private investigator and helps an amnesic blonde woman uncover her past as a cosmically powered superheroine. they become fast friends. her venom blast is psychic & mystical in nature. the pain is all in her victim's head but is even more devastating because of it. she can still glide for short distances because of a levitation trick she learned at the dorm. the unease that people feel around her is a byproduct of the dark magic that augmented her.

[Frontier]

I think I'd try and find a way to work Miles into the 616 universe but still keep his appeal as a sole Spider-Man in a world where Peter is dead.

Like, maybe keep him in some kind of pocket universe where he can interact with the other present-day 616 Marvel heroes but in the context as the only Spider-Man.

[the illustrious mr. kenway]

I thought about making Miles a mutant in the 616 but still keeping his connection with Spiderman.

[Yvonmukluk]

Make Jackpot Mary Jane and bisexual.

As a ride-or-die Peter/MJ shipper, I'd actually have no problem with making Mary Jane bisexual, but the problem is that it'd probably be really hard to handle it tastefully and not just as an excuse to have her make out with women. What would be an interesting approach would be to have her in a committed relationship (maybe even married) with Peter and have her run into an ex-girlfriend (maybe from her time in Florida - that time of her life is a blank slate for writers), and then have her dealing with a ex-girlfriend who feels hurt that she was a 'phase' in MJ's life, which could lead to a storyline where MJ comes to terms with her bisexuality and accepts that is who she is - it'd also be an interesting way to address bisexual erasure. Of course, you could argue by saying she's bisexual and keeping her in a relationship with Peter that's also bisexual erasure.

As for giving her powers, that's something I kind vacillate on. I really liked Renew Your Vows (honestly I'd just have her keep the powers from Spider-Island and have her as Spinneret if it came to that), but at the same time Peter & Mary Jane are actually pretty unique in the sense that when it comes to major couples in Marvel, they're one of the only ones where one partner is a civilian with no powers or special abilities.

As to Jackpot...well, I almost feel like both incarnations were unfortunately wasted. We only really got Alana's backstory after she died in a b-book (which spurred Sara to come back as Jackpot...only to lose her husband and retire at the end of her miniseries, proving she'd basically been correct to hang up the costume and Peter shouldn't have guilt-tripped her into doing it again), and she was actually really fascinating and I feel like maybe they should have just depowered her and found other ways to use. I mean, FEAST was still a thing at that point in the books and she had a history in social care, so maybe she could have got a job helping people there. I'd maybe have Peter confide his identity to her, and then he'd have someone to talk about his problems with in that side of his life, so she could be a confidant and friend to him (kind of like MJ was before the wedding). And unlike MJ, since she's canonically a lesbian, they would be able to just be friends, without any of the baggage or expectation that Peter & MJ had to deal with of people expecting or trying to get them back together (although in that case, I do feel that it worked out in the end).

That actually comes to my main thing...I'd have at least some of the supporting cast still know Peter's ID after the mindwipe. While I get why they put that particular genie back in the bottle (although I do feel they could have done more with that concept), I feel like Peter hiding it from some of his family and friends who'd ben OK with it and supported him, even when he was a fugitive - I'm thinking of Flash & Betty in PAD's run, here, as well as obviously Aunt May. Making even his close friends and family forget didn't really seem to add anything to the stories and only seemed to be done because that's how they did it in 'the good old days'.

And speaking of wasted characters...I feel like poor Mattie Franklin could have been used well if she'd not gotten killed off in Grim Hunt (I mean, she literally only died for cheap pathos and to resurrect a character who then died again at the end of the story - talk about a senseless death). She had a backstory as a private investigator, knew Peter's secret ID, and was JJJ's adoptive niece. There's a whole lot that could have been done with that by a writer willing to explore it. Maybe JJJ gets her a job in city hall and she becomes a source of information. Maybe she shows up as a rival or ally to Jessica Jones. Maybe she asks Peter for help on a case. Maybe Mayor JJJ tries to make her the 'officially approved' Spider-Hero, unlike that menace Spider-Man (to her own chagrin, since she's obviously friends with Peter and feels under pressure from the expectations). I feel like I'm one of those people who tends to believe there's no such thing as a bad character, only bad writers. I sort of feel Mattie's a great example.

[Huntsman Spider]

As a ride-or-die Peter/MJ shipper, I'd actually have no problem with making Mary Jane bisexual, but the problem is that it'd probably be really hard to handle it tastefully and not just as an excuse to have her make out with women. What would be an interesting approach would be to have her in a committed relationship (maybe even married) with Peter and have her run into an ex-girlfriend (maybe from her time in Florida - that time of her life is a blank slate for writers), and then have her dealing with a ex-girlfriend who feels hurt that she was a 'phase' in MJ's life, which could lead to a storyline where MJ comes to terms with her bisexuality and accepts that is who she is - it'd also be an interesting way to address bisexual erasure. Of course, you could argue by saying she's bisexual and keeping her in a relationship with Peter that's also bisexual erasure.

As for giving her powers, that's something I kind vacillate on. I really liked Renew Your Vows (honestly I'd just have her keep the powers from Spider-Island and have her as Spinneret if it came to that), but at the same time Peter & Mary Jane are actually pretty unique in the sense that when it comes to major couples in Marvel, they're one of the only ones where one partner is a civilian with no powers or special abilities.

As to Jackpot...well, I almost feel like both incarnations were unfortunately wasted. We only really got Alana's backstory after she died in a b-book (which spurred Sara to come back as Jackpot...only to lose her husband and retire at the end of her miniseries, proving she'd basically been correct to hang up the costume and Peter shouldn't have guilt-tripped her into doing it again), and she was actually really fascinating and I feel like maybe they should have just depowered her and found other ways to use. I mean, FEAST was still a thing at that point in the books and she had a history in social care, so maybe she could have got a job helping people there. I'd maybe have Peter confide his identity to her, and then he'd have someone to talk about his problems with in that side of his life, so she could be a confidant and friend to him (kind of like MJ was before the wedding). And unlike MJ, since she's canonically a lesbian, they would be able to just be friends, without any of the baggage or expectation that Peter & MJ had to deal with of people expecting or trying to get them back together (although in that case, I do feel that it worked out in the end).

That actually comes to my main thing...I'd have at least some of the supporting cast still know Peter's ID after the mindwipe. While I get why they put that particular genie back in the bottle (although I do feel they could have done more with that concept), I feel like Peter hiding it from some of his family and friends who'd ben OK with it and supported him, even when he was a fugitive - I'm thinking of Flash & Betty in PAD's run, here, as well as obviously Aunt May. Making even his close friends and family forget didn't really seem to add anything to the stories and only seemed to be done because that's how they did it in 'the good old days'.

And speaking of wasted characters...I feel like poor Mattie Franklin could have been used well if she'd not gotten killed off in Grim Hunt (I mean, she literally only died for cheap pathos and to resurrect a character who then died again at the end of the story - talk about a senseless death). She had a backstory as a private investigator, knew Peter's secret ID, and was JJJ's adoptive niece. There's a whole lot that could have been done with that by a writer willing to explore it. Maybe JJJ gets her a job in city hall and she becomes a source of information. Maybe she shows up as a rival or ally to Jessica Jones. Maybe she asks Peter for help on a case. Maybe Mayor JJJ tries to make her the 'officially approved' Spider-Hero, unlike that menace Spider-Man (to her own chagrin, since she's obviously friends with Peter and feels under pressure from the expectations). I feel like I'm one of those people who tends to believe there's no such thing as a bad character, only bad writers. I sort of feel Mattie's a great example.

I like your ideas, and speaking of some of the supporting cast still knowing Spider-Man's identity, I was more than happy with Nick Spencer finally having Peter re-reveal himself to Black Cat. She was one of the closest people to him before the memory-wipe/alteration, and that the writers didn't seem to think enough of her to have Peter let her back in on the secret was always a gross oversight to me. That aside, I especially appreciate you giving Mattie Franklin more of a role in the Spider-Man mythos; as a private investigator herself, she could be the one looking into Miles Morales's afterschool activities back in Brian Bendis's run with Miles in the 616 reality, only to mentor him instead once she discovers that he's the new Spider-Man on the block. I could also see her teaming up with Anya Corazon and bonding over being the youngest Spider-Women, with Cindy Moon/Silk joining in for maximum Spider-Hijinks since despite being Peter's age, she has the least experience as a superhero between them and looks closer to their age than Peter's.

[the illustrious mr. kenway]

Make Jackpot Mary Jane and bisexual.

Shhh!!!

You cracked Sony's big reveal.

[krazijoe]

I would make it so Mephisto made Joe Q never get married and see how he likes it!

[Chris0013]

Flash Thompson with his own super hero identity....not one copied from someone else.

[Michael Watkins]

Flash Thompson with his own super hero identity....not one copied from someone else.

i liked his partnership with Venom better than Brock's, personally. it's not like they are using Brock as a villain anymore. and the symbiote is its own character. so Flash wasn't copying anyone. he was simply the new 'roommate.'