What was the worst year of the Spider-Man Comics?

[Dr. Banner]

JMS+Deodato Jr= steaming pile....

Yeah, it was pretty bad, but not as bad as Mackie's run on ASM.

[Mister Mets]

* Edit- Merged new posts with an older thread.

[PeterAvenger]

I want to say 2007 just for OMD alone, but honestly, I just can't ignore 2013. What followed after the worst superhero death in comic book history was the worst excuse for a substitute comic series I've ever seen. Not only does Otto not have any moral similarities with Peter, throughout the entire series, all of Otto's dialogue seems to undermine Peter at every turn. From Peter's hero methods to his relationships to Peter as an overall person. It's like the entire series was made just to insult him as much as possible. The fact that Otto's posing as Peter makes it even worse, like he's literally trying to tarnish EVERYTHING about Peter Parker.

Now I've heard that Otto's the main villain of the story and nothing he says should be taken seriously, but the series is so focused on Otto and his smug, down-putting personality, I honestly don't see how that's possible. From a viewer's standpoint, it just feels so damn harsh and mean-spirited. And Spider-Man's "triumphant" return? Otto "coming to his senses" and rushing to give Peter his body back (when really, he's just running from his own problems) further makes me think that the series really DID try to insult Peter. His comeback doesn't even make sense; he was buried under Otto's mind after dying in Otto's body? That's so nonsensical, I don't even think Peter's actually back. I think Marvel just created a mental Peter clone as one final insult to the original character. Or maybe second-to-last, they'll probably just kill him again in Secret Wars too.

So yea, 2013 for me, just for the fact that the entire year was focused SOLELY on discrediting Spider-Man.

[SuperiorIronman]

I actually enjoyed a good bit of the clone saga but I will agree it was far too long.

In terms of what I disliked? 2007 for making me hate Peter Parker. One More Day is an awful story to this day and if I ever got the chance to work for Marvel, I would kill off One More Day Peter Parker over and over and over again. It's a story I get it. But it is one that is insulting and disgusting and one that I have no problem with making fun of or despising.

Other than that I'm going to go with the relaunch. I don't hate it but I don't think it was really all that Amazing either. Peter barely reacts to being dead, black cat as a villain just keeps getting sillier and sillier, Silk' s rather meh introduction and that original sin could've been used for any of the OTHER huge questions this franchise asks, Amazing was all but pointless for spiderverse other than the intro and ending.

Yeah I'm not a fan. But I feel this is a rough patch and the book will move past it. At least this time my other spider series won't be cancelled because they had been overshadowed by the main book.

[ViewtifulJC]

OMD sucked and the 2014 has been weak, but c'moooooon show a little grasp of history here. This is Spider-Man we're talking about. Did you forget the entirety of the 90s? Mister Mets is right on in the opening post. That period between the overlong mostly awful Clone Saga and JMS/JRJR's revamp was a huge creative valley for the character. It amazed that Howard Mackie, the hack who did those terrible X-Men stories filled with flat characterizations and generic bombast, and who fumbled the death of the Scarlet Witch back in AoA, would be given the keys to the Spider-Man franchise. Say what you will about Dan Slott's last year on the book(I certainly have), but the man has written some damn fine Spider-Man stories with some great artists: I'm With Stupid, Papparazzi, Mysteriso, The Return of the Spider-Slayer, Spider-Island, the Wraith/Anti-Venom two-parter, Flying Blind, etc. Howard Mackie had wonderful artwork of Romita/Hanna for damn near his entire tenure and not one issue, not A SINGLE ISSUE, worth a damn. Not even the ones that should be good, like Peter and Norman in the elevator.

So I gotta go with 1998, the nadir of Spider-Man comics.

[oldschool]

OMD sucked and the 2014 has been weak, but c'moooooon show a little grasp of history here. This is Spider-Man we're talking about. Did you forget the entirety of the 90s? Mister Mets is right on in the opening post. That period between the overlong mostly awful Clone Saga and JMS/JRJR's revamp was a huge creative valley for the character. It amazed that Howard Mackie, the hack who did those terrible X-Men stories filled with flat characterizations and generic bombast, and who fumbled the death of the Scarlet Witch back in AoA, would be given the keys to the Spider-Man franchise. Say what you will about Dan Slott's last year on the book(I certainly have), but the man has written some damn fine Spider-Man stories with some great artists: I'm With Stupid, Papparazzi, Mysteriso, The Return of the Spider-Slayer, Spider-Island, the Wraith/Anti-Venom two-parter, Flying Blind, etc. Howard Mackie had wonderful artwork of Romita/Hanna for damn near his entire tenure and not one issue, not A SINGLE ISSUE, worth a damn. Not even the ones that should be good, like Peter and Norman in the elevator.

So I gotta go with 1998, the nadir of Spider-Man comics.

Yeah, I'd have to go along with all of this. Additionally, the silver and bronze have to go to years from the 1990's but, after that, I have to say that---although it doesn't get brought up much----1981 was a pretty lousy year. Caught in between Marv Wolfman's solid run that culminated in the great ASM #200 and Stern's debut with ASM#224 were some stories that ranged from awful to boring to just okay penned by Denny O'Neil. 1981 stared out "just ok" with the debut of Hydroman and a Frightful Four arc that---while a bit long---had it's moments. But it quickly devolved with bland stories featuring Moon Knight, Ramrod and Speed Demon (what a rogues gallery!) while subplots meandered and Peter's life just sort of drifted along with little to no drama ever since Aunt May was "resurrected" in ASM #200. Now, to be fair, I cannot suggest 1981 was truly among the very worst years outside of ASM since Roger Stern was in the midst of a very impressive warm-up gig on PP:SSM ( a run that a surprising number of Uncle Rog loyalists seem either unaware of or just never got around to reading); in fact, this period was one of the few times where a satellite title was putting out better material than the flagship.

So, like I said, 1981 was certainly not worse than many of the years the '90's offered us but the increase in quality from any of 1981's tales and when Uncle Rog hit the scene with January 1982's ASM #224 is staggering to say the least!

[SuperiorIronman]

OMD sucked and the 2014 has been weak, but c'moooooon show a little grasp of history here. This is Spider-Man we're talking about. Did you forget the entirety of the 90s? Mister Mets is right on in the opening post. That period between the overlong mostly awful Clone Saga and JMS/JRJR's revamp was a huge creative valley for the character. It amazed that Howard Mackie, the hack who did those terrible X-Men stories filled with flat characterizations and generic bombast, and who fumbled the death of the Scarlet Witch back in AoA, would be given the keys to the Spider-Man franchise. Say what you will about Dan Slott's last year on the book(I certainly have), but the man has written some damn fine Spider-Man stories with some great artists: I'm With Stupid, Papparazzi, Mysteriso, The Return of the Spider-Slayer, Spider-Island, the Wraith/Anti-Venom two-parter, Flying Blind, etc. Howard Mackie had wonderful artwork of Romita/Hanna for damn near his entire tenure and not one issue, not A SINGLE ISSUE, worth a damn. Not even the ones that should be good, like Peter and Norman in the elevator.

So I gotta go with 1998, the nadir of Spider-Man comics.

It was early morning for me when I saw this post so I couldn't think that far back lol. BTW I do enjoy Dan's work I never said I don't like him as a writer I just don't like the re-launch.
Early 90's I want to say around 92 or 93 with façade and "The spider" bits frankly its rather dark and directionless to me at least.

Otherwise despite a rather extensive collection I find most of it past the mid 80's to be off and on for me. It will either suck or run out of steam. I'm going to go with 93 or 94. I know I should be going back further but I'm just more familiar with mid 80's to now and I cant think of any early stories that I truly disliked.

[Rob London]

Gotta be 1999. 1998 had some decent books pre-Gathering of Five, and 2000 had a glimmer of hope in the form of Jenkins and Buckingham on Peter Parker: Spider-Man. But 1999 was a bleak death-march of a year for Spider-Man.

[LASERlips]

I want to say 2007 just for OMD alone, but honestly, I just can't ignore 2013. What followed after the worst superhero death in comic book history was the worst excuse for a substitute comic series I've ever seen. Not only does Otto not have any moral similarities with Peter, throughout the entire series, all of Otto's dialogue seems to undermine Peter at every turn. From Peter's hero methods to his relationships to Peter as an overall person. It's like the entire series was made just to insult him as much as possible. The fact that Otto's posing as Peter makes it even worse, like he's literally trying to tarnish EVERYTHING about Peter Parker.

Now I've heard that Otto's the main villain of the story and nothing he says should be taken seriously, but the series is so focused on Otto and his smug, down-putting personality, I honestly don't see how that's possible. From a viewer's standpoint, it just feels so damn harsh and mean-spirited. And Spider-Man's "triumphant" return? Otto "coming to his senses" and rushing to give Peter his body back (when really, he's just running from his own problems) further makes me think that the series really DID try to insult Peter. His comeback doesn't even make sense; he was buried under Otto's mind after dying in Otto's body? That's so nonsensical, I don't even think Peter's actually back. I think Marvel just created a mental Peter clone as one final insult to the original character. Or maybe second-to-last, they'll probably just kill him again in Secret Wars too.

So yea, 2013 for me, just for the fact that the entire year was focused SOLELY on discrediting Spider-Man.

I agree that the death of Peter was just awfully written. It was horrible. The mechanics of the body switch, and then the way that some part of Peter somehow survived so that they could switch back later, none of it made any sense and it kind of pissed me off reading those parts. But I did like the series as a whole, and found it kind of fresh and exciting. We were free of the moping, suffering, woe-is me Peter Parker, at least for a while. In a way, the Peter Parker that I had loved to read was already dead. Even when Slott's Parker made jokes none if it felt genuine because he was whining so much the rest of the time. Anyway, I disagree that it was all an insult to Peter, simply because as Otto trash talked Peter's life and methods, he planted the seeds of his own failure. Otto was delusional, but the reader was supposed to see that he was not right all the time, and everything would ultimately come and bite him in the behind. Which it did.

I would have to say 2007 and OMD for worst year, although I'm young (I was a kid in the 90s, could not understand clone saga being sucky and I liked Ben). Just so much character assassination in that story, from Peter putting on the black suit (that I thought he burned) and being all macho to Peter making deals with the Marvel devil--and all that just to save Aunt May! People die! She'd already died once before and you were fine, Peter, fine! You didn't devil your marriage away that time!

Of course, the real-world reason behind it is marketing. Short term: black suit looks cool. Long term: Marvel wanted to end the marriage and get that 'young' swingin' single Spidey back, for some stupid reason, and for some even stupider reason they couldn't bring themselves to just shoot MJ instead--or just have them divorce. Like normal people.

Isn't Spider-Man supposed to be the 'normal guy' superhero?

[Tuck]

OMD sucked and the 2014 has been weak, but c'moooooon show a little grasp of history here. This is Spider-Man we're talking about. Did you forget the entirety of the 90s? Mister Mets is right on in the opening post. That period between the overlong mostly awful Clone Saga and JMS/JRJR's revamp was a huge creative valley for the character.

I agree with you.

But I can see the point of view that OMD is so bad on its own that it completely blew the curve for 2007, dragging the average down so far by itself that the year is a contender.

[comicscollector]

1995 would be my choice.
Even for a fan of Spider-Man the confusing and convoluted storyline of Clone Saga during 1995 made me stop reading the Spider-Man stories for quite some time.

[Aioros22]

Chapter One (boring) One More Day and Sins Past (lousy writting across the board with no intents to explain a single thing).

None of these events carry the quality revealing chapters of the CS, so I`ll take that with pizza anytime.

[Vortex85]

2008 for me. Sorry BND team I just couldn't stomach it after OMD. Peter should have felt the loss we did in his soul, unfortunately it was anything but that.

I love the post-clone saga 97/98 era. The 99 relaunch was pretty terrible though, esp. W/ the death of MJ though that plot led to an excellent reconciliation arc for Pete/MJ by JMS so I can forgive it.

I also have a soft spot for 95 cause I liked Web Of Death, 400, and Mark of Kaine, though Maximum Clonage was bad.

[Von]

I'll go with 1995: A couple of years ago while ill at home -- I read the entire run of Amazing all the way through from the original Amazing Tales, up to the modern era to catch up.

As I recall, it was during that Maximum Carnage clone saga that it really became a chore to plow though lol. Simply terrible in every respect, it was convoluted, confusing, violent for the sake of violence, totally inappropriate for a younger audience as a result - and just a complete mess of nonsensical crap thrown in together in a blender, just for the sake of cramming as many familiar characters into a story as they could possible cram in there.

Then yes - the revelation that Peter was not really Peter: ugh. I had fond memories of the original clone saga when I was a kid. They wrapped that up when Peter dumped that body into the factory smokestack. Now they were trying to say .. what? Did they ever figure all that out? Did it ever make any sense at all? Just .. no, completely sloppy storytelling all around.

Also - wasn't that around the same time as the Mary Jane pregnancy that they built up and built up and built up and then .... *poof*, the baby disappeared lol? Wth was that?

Once I got to the JMS storylines things started to turn around in my opinion. But yeah the mid to late 90's were a pretty rough read (and the art was overall substandard in that era, just to add insult to injury). /rant-mode-off

[Mike]

The end of 2004. Sins Past. Not much more needs to be said.