Crappy stories where Spidey just wasn't Spidey?

[AnthonyO'Brien]

Found a 1984 secret wars kids picture book at a thrift store : Spiderman saves the circus. It was illustrated by Marie Severin and had Spidey Investigating some odd happenings. The culprit turned out to be an unhappy clown worried about losing his job. He is arrested and sent off with out much sympathy from Peter. Basically Spidey's spirit just wasn't there.
What are some other stories that were like that?
Otto and Ben Reilly were interesting takes but Reign was an awful dark Knight ripoff. Spidey super stories has a goofy charm but the non speaking electric company version comes off like the Pulp fiction gimp to me.
How would you rate the tv and movie versions? Was Garfield a better Peter but a lesser Spidey?
Japanese Spidey ticks all the right boxes with his Wall crawling and acrobatics and villians but his motor biking riding alter ego is how hum.
Your thoughts on this?

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Found a 1984 secret wars kids picture book at a thrift store : Spiderman saves the circus. It was illustrated by Marie Severin and had Spidey Investigating some odd happenings. The culprit turned out to be an unhappy clown worried about losing his job. He is arrested and sent off with out much sympathy from Peter. Basically Spidey's spirit just wasn't there.
What are some other stories that were like that?
Otto and Ben Reilly were interesting takes but Reign was an awful dark Knight ripoff. Spidey super stories has a goofy charm but the non speaking electric company version comes off like the Pulp fiction gimp to me.
How would you rate the tv and movie versions? Was Garfield a better Peter but a lesser Spidey?
Japanese Spidey ticks all the right boxes with his Wall crawling and acrobatics and villians but his motor biking riding alter ego is how hum.
Your thoughts on this?

OMD, OMIT, A lot of the Clone Saga, Superior Spider-Man (where the entire cast and every character wasn't themselves).

[Alan2099]

Anybody remember the 90s pre- and early Clone Saga where he kept going, "the man is dead. I am now The Spider!"

What a load of garbage that was.

[ngroove]

That moment in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man III where Pete completely shows out Mary Jane out of spiteful revenge. Symbiote or no symbiote, was always a squick moment since first watch thirteen years ago.

[Huntsman Spider]

Anybody remember the 90s pre- and early Clone Saga where he kept going, "the man is dead. I am now The Spider!"

What a load of garbage that was.

Agreed. Could've been an interesting bit of psychological and personal horror as Peter spiraled into despair and rage after the whole "robot parents were set up by Harry Osborn all along" arc, but considering the point of that was to ultimately delegitimize the Peter Parker of the last 20 years in favor of a "clean slate" version named Ben Reilly, it just left a bad taste. Maybe under better writers that weren't just aping the worst excesses of overblown 90s-era edginess and darkness . . .

That moment in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man III where Pete completely shows out Mary Jane out of spiteful revenge. Symbiote or no symbiote, was always a squick moment since first watch thirteen years ago.

Yeah, that was just . . . terrible.

[Matt Parker]

OMD, OMIT, A lot of the Clone Saga, Superior Spider-Man (where the entire cast and every character wasn't themselves).

Superior relies on everyone not having a basic understanding of who Peter is and how he acts. Remember during Civil War when Aunt May figured out Chameleon wasn't Peter in like 10 minutes? Dan Slott didn't (Superior had some cool moments so I don't want to rag on the guy but still).

[Batman Begins 2005]

Spider-Man in the opening arc to The Amazing Spider-Man (Vol. 3) thanks to Slott and Silk. Silk sucks.

[PCN24454]

Superior relies on everyone not having a basic understanding of who Peter is and how he acts. Remember during Civil War when Aunt May figured out Chameleon wasn't Peter in like 10 minutes? Dan Slott didn't (Superior had some cool moments so I don't want to rag on the guy but still).

I honestly hated JMS Aunt May. She was so cringey and bland.

[Batman Begins 2005]

I honestly hated JMS Aunt May. She was so cringey and bland.

Have to disagree. I thought JMS wrote a great Aunt May helped also by her finding out Peter's Spider-Man.

[Spidey_62]

For the most part I can enjoy Superior but a big part of it for me comes from having to suspend belief/force myself to not pay attention to the fact that every other character who has known Peter forever acts stupid to the point of ridiculousness throughout most of it to let it keep going on for 30 plus issues. There was also Kraven's Last Hunt where MJ witnessing the brutality firsthand of Kraven as Spidey was all she needed to know that it wasn't Peter. There was also Chameleon as Peter in the late 90s which MJ saw through instantly as well. Superior's got a lot of really good ideas and a lot of really good moments, even specific issues that really stand out, but I am not a fan of how everybody else acts throughout the rest of it to just keep the train going.

I thought when Peter returned after Superior he was written to be pretty insufferably annoying, I hated how much he was just trying to get back to business like nothing happened and just accepting that this is how things are. Oh, guess I've got a doctorate now and I own a company! Cool! I hated the Silk/Spidey pheromone thing, that was weird and creepy. I hated the way Black Cat specifically was shoehorned into a villain role, being one of the worst recipients of acting stupid.

My personal expectation when Superior was ending was that Peter's return was being set up for things to be very difficult for Peter, for him having to rebuild his life from the bottom up again because of so many relationships shattered and trust broken with peers. But really there wasn't much of that, instead we get Peter telling people here and there that he switched bodies with Doc Ock and it's hand-waved away like "oh yeah that makes sense" which feels disingenuous given how none of them thought that lol. Just way too easy given what was set up, just back to status quo no questions asked.

[Batman Begins 2005]

For the most part I can enjoy Superior but a big part of it for me comes from having to suspend belief/force myself to not pay attention to the fact that every other character who has known Peter forever acts stupid to the point of ridiculousness throughout most of it to let it keep going on for 30 plus issues. There was also Kraven's Last Hunt where MJ witnessing the brutality firsthand of Kraven as Spidey was all she needed to know that it wasn't Peter. There was also Chameleon as Peter in the late 90s which MJ saw through instantly as well. Superior's got a lot of really good ideas and a lot of really good moments, even specific issues that really stand out, but I am not a fan of how everybody else acts throughout the rest of it to just keep the train going.

I thought when Peter returned after Superior he was written to be pretty insufferably annoying, I hated how much he was just trying to get back to business like nothing happened and just accepting that this is how things are. Oh, guess I've got a doctorate now and I own a company! Cool! I hated the Silk/Spidey pheromone thing, that was weird and creepy. I hated the way Black Cat specifically was shoehorned into a villain role, being one of the worst recipients of acting stupid.

My personal expectation when Superior was ending was that Peter's return was being set up for things to be very difficult for Peter, for him having to rebuild his life from the bottom up again because of so many relationships shattered and trust broken with peers. But really there wasn't much of that, instead we get Peter telling people here and there that he switched bodies with Doc Ock and it's hand-waved away like "oh yeah that makes sense" which feels disingenuous given how none of them thought that lol. Just way too easy given what was set up, just back to status quo no questions asked.

I hated that opening arc to TASM (Vol. 3). One of the worst Spider-Man stories ever. I stick around hoping that volume would get better and I finally took it off my pull list five issues into the fourth volume. Terrible.

[federicodettofred]

Peter's return after Superior Spider-Man and the whole Silk storyline. Awful, Slott wrote those stories (that should have been very important as Peter came back after over a year of Superior Spider-Man) as he didn't care at all. Peter acts like a complete dumbass and the fact that he has to have sex with Silk because of their Spider genes is absolutely ridiculous. Worst story-arc in the last decade for me.

[Laufeyson]

Anytime JMS writes Spider-Man cast it seems so distant.