The best and worst years to be a Spider-Man fan

[THE DANGER965]

With over 50 years since Spider-man's creation, Spidey has endured great success in any type of media. To the movies, cartoons and comics, Spider-man, as well all know, is an awesome character.

Some years have been better then others and some years have been worse.

In your view, What was the best and worst year ever to be a Spider-man fan?!

I feel that 2004 was certainly the best year. Spider-man 2 came out, Bendis was rocking it on Ultimate Spider-man. JMS was writing ASM as well and we also had Paul Jenkins on Spectacular Spidr-man ( I think! ).

The worst?! 2007. Not only did Spider man massively disappoint us with Spider-man 3, but he also made a deal with the devil in One more day ( I think it came out during 2007 ) . Man that year sucked.

[JaegerRai]

The 90's Clone Saga was a very low point. That was just the storyline that would not die! JMS's run for the most part was great. Shame he did the Norman slept with Gwen and got her pregnant storyline though.

Personally my favourite period was the Michelinie/MacFarlane/Larsen years buts that's more because that's when I started reading Amazing. Issues #298 to about #350ish were fun to read.

[RobertMacQuarrie1]

One of the best years? 2002. The year that helped to make being a comic fan cool.

One of the worst? 2007. Hit hard with the lackluster Spider-Man 3 at the beginning of the year, and a certain story at the end made that a very bad year to be a fan.

[Rob London]

Hard to pick a best year - I'm generally easy to please, so there are a half-dozen years that I could call the best. That makes the dark spots stand out all the more...

...and the darkest spot of all was 1999. A solid year of Mackie-written reboot books, Spider-Man: Chapter One, and John Byrne's Spider-Woman - all nigh-unreadable. The Spider-Man movie was still ensnared in legal entanglements. Spider-Man Unlimited oozed out over the airwaves. Webspinners: Tales of Spider-Man was the lone bright spot; were it not for that, I might have given up on Spider-Man forever.

[Mister Mets]

It would be difficult for any recent year to count as one of the worst to be a Spider-Man fan, just due to how much of the old material is readily available.

It's a rare fan that has tracked down every Spider-Man story worth reading.

Some of the contenders for best year include 1982-1983 (Stern's Amazing Spider-Man, Mantlo's second Spectacular Spider-Man run, JMD's start on MTU), and 2001-2002 (JMS on Amazing Spider-Man, Jenkins on Peter Parker Spider-Man, early years of Ultimate Spider-Man, Tangled Web.)

Contenders for worst year would be 1977 (the bland middle of Len Wein's run), 1995 (peak of the clone saga) 1999 (The Gathering of the Five, and the Mackie/ Byrne relaunch), 2000 (the peak of the Mackie/ Byrne relaunch.)

[Avengers1986]

For the best years, I'd have to go with 1981-1988, we had Roger Stern's stories, Hobgoblin, Gang war, ASM 267, Kraven's Last Hunt, Death of Jean Dewolff, Peter David writing Spider Man, and yes, the WEDDING.

For worst year, I'd have to go with 1998-1999 we had horrible stories by Defalco in Amazing Spider man, then we had the Gathering of the Five/Final Chapter story lines, then the Mackie reboot where he wrote both titles. They were so bad.

I could actually tolerate the clone saga over these and Mackie actually had some good stories in Peter Parker: Spider Man before the reboot, and we still had great stories in Spectacular until mid 1998 when they closed that series.

[arosenbarger]

It would be difficult for any recent year to count as one of the worst to be a Spider-Man fans, just due to how much of the old material is readily available.

It's a rare fan that has tracked down every Spider-Man story worth reading.

Some of the contenders for best year include 1982-1983 (Stern's Amazing Spider-Man, Mantlo's second Spectacular Spider-Man run, JMD's start on MTU), and 2001-2002 (JMS on Amazing Spider-Man, Jenkins on Peter Parker Spider-Man, early years of Ultimate Spider-Man, Tangled Web.)

Contenders for worst year would be 1977 (the bland middle of Len Wein's run), 1995 (peak of the clone saga) 1999 (The Gathering of the Five, and the Mackie/ Byrne relaunch), 2000 (the peak of the Mackie/ Byrne relaunch.)

I agree with this statement.

But I also add that any year that has the Spider-moble gets extra points because its awesome. Beyond awesome. Sliced bread, invention of fire awesome. Anyone else obviously hates Spider-Man is an idiot (can you hear the sarcasm in my statement? ....though I do love the silliness of the SM)

While agreeing with Mr. Mets I also add on a qualifier - best year for Spider-Man all around?

Best year for Spider-Man in comics, tv, movies? There are aspects all around.

Comics Best
1962 - First Spider-Man. Duh.
1966 (doing this from memory, dont hate me) Ditko leaves and while bad it also brought us Romita, who is AWESOME
198(something) Stern. This man is awesome.
2000 had the much needed shot in the arm with Ult. Spider-Man
2001 had JMS writing a new/different angle from Spider-Man
Whenever Slott came around. As much as I HATE OMD - Slott has made Spider-Man fun, silly in places, and had a good balance.

Movies
2004 - Spider-Man 2. Its the only good Spider-Man movie. Period.

Tv
1967 Spider-Man animated cartoon.

WORST
Comics 2007 - OMD. FIRETRUCK ONE. MORE. DAY.

MOVIES
Spider-Man 1 or 3. Spider-Man 1 - it was heavy handed with post 9/11 American jingoism that I really, really disliked (but had good aspects). Spider-Man was just a mess with may two good scenes.

Those are my opinions.

They will probably change in twenty minutes but for right now I will defend them to the death of my logic!

[Aruran.]

I would put 2012 as the failed to live-up to the hype year.
It wasn't a bad year cause we got a lot of good stories, but since it was his 50th there was a lot of hype on stories that ended being ok.
Ends of The Earth comes to mind, there was a lot of hype and Marvel saying it would be better than Spider-Island, but it wasn't.
Then theres the The Amazing Spider-Man move that came out, which was better than Spider-Man 3, but it wasn't that hard to be better than Spider-Man 3.
The Ultimate Spider-Man cartoon series was released that year, which a lot of older fans disliked for its childish humor.
And we all know how hyped the anniversary story with Alpha turned out.....

So I think 2012 will stand out as a disappointing year, but not a bad year.
It was just really hyped to be Amazing, when it wasn't.

[Vortex85]

My favorite era for Spidey was probably 1991-1993 JM DeMatteis Spectacular Spider-man run. Mark Bagley on Amazing was great too.

I also liked the JMS era 2001-2004. Things got a little dry though with the Other and Civil War.

My worst era was OMD/BND era. Late 2007-2008.

[Metamorphosis]

I would put 2012 as the failed to live-up to the hype year.
It wasn't a bad year cause we got a lot of good stories, but since it was his 50th there was a lot of hype on stories that ended being ok.
Ends of The Earth comes to mind, there was a lot of hype and Marvel saying it would be better than Spider-Island, but it wasn't.
Then theres the The Amazing Spider-Man move that came out, which was better than Spider-Man 3, but it wasn't that hard to be better than Spider-Man 3.
The Ultimate Spider-Man cartoon series was released that year, which a lot of older fans disliked for its childish humor.
And we all know how hyped the anniversary story with Alpha turned out.....

So I think 2012 will stand out as a disappointing year, but not a bad year.
It was just really hyped to be Amazing, when it wasn't.

Came to post pretty much this--the 50th anniversary was a flop, with Alpha and ASM #700 standing out as major low points for me.

The last few years haven't been much better, with a lackluster sequel in the theaters and Superior. Also seems like Spidey's star has been eclipsed by the likes of the Avengers in the comics world. So the last few years haven't been great IMO.

Best years: one long run from '82 (Hobgoblin, Owl / Octopus War, Jean DeWolff, Kraven's Last Hunt, Venom, Roger Stern, Peter David, Todd McFarlane, Erik Larsen and Mark Bagley) to about 1991. Big rebound with JMS and Jenkins in early 00's, along with Tangled Web and Mark Millar's Marvel Knights--so let's say 2001-2004 as well.

[RD!]

It would be difficult for any recent year to count as one of the worst to be a Spider-Man fans, just due to how much of the old material is readily available.

I think the point of the thread is to judge each year based on what new material it produced, not based on what work from previous years was available.

There are some good years before I was born, arguably the best years, but I'm going to judge on the years I was an active fan for.

Best: 2014 - Best movie, OGN, return of Peter, Superior finale, Stern omnibus, epic collection trades, Spectacular on blu ray

2004 - JMS, Ultimate Spidey, Marvel Knights, Spider-Man 2,

2001- Ultimate Spidey, Jenkins, JMS

Worst: 2010 - Almost dropped the book this year. Just felt bland and boring to me, BND didn't deliver what I expected. My two most hated stories came out this year.

1999 - Another bland year, poor attempt at a reboot which wasn't needed and an anti-climatic resolution to the baby May stuff

2007 - OMD, ASM's delayed schedule, Ultimate Spider-Man hit a low point and SM3 was less than impressive. I still enjoyed this year a lot though. The satellite titles were brilliant.

[Ultimate Spider-Fan]

Contenders for worst year would be 1977 (the bland middle of Len Wein's run), 1995 (peak of the clone saga) 1999 (The Gathering of the Five, and the Mackie/ Byrne relaunch), 2000 (the peak of the Mackie/ Byrne relaunch.)

2000 will always be a good Spider-Man year for me because that's the year Ultimate Spider-Man debuted. I remember seeing an ad for it in a gaming magazine, finding a comic shop in the yellow pages (an hour away!), then going there on the weekend to see if they had a copy. The owner had one copy left he was saving just in case and I snatched it up. That was the first comic I had bought in almost a decade, and I'm still here 14 years later! I will always be grateful to Bill Jemas, Joe Quesda, Brian Michael Bendis, and Mark Bagley for getting me back into a hobby that has brought me countless hours of enjoyment.

[Ultimate Spider-Fan]

Best years: one long run from '82 (Hobgoblin, Owl / Octopus War, Jean DeWolff, Kraven's Last Hunt, Venom, Roger Stern, Peter David, Todd McFarlane, Erik Larsen and Mark Bagley) to about 1991. Big rebound with JMS and Jenkins in early 00's, along with Tangled Web and Mark Millar's Marvel Knights--so let's say 2001-2004 as well.

With all the hype JMS gets (and I did like most of his run), I think people forget how good Jenkin's run on Peter Parker and Spectacular was. He and Mark Buckingham, along with Humberto Ramos, created some of my favorite Spider-Man stories ever.
I also think Millar's MK Spider-Man series gets overlook too often. It's still one of my favorites, and I wish Millar had come back to the character later like he did with Wolverine.

[THE DANGER965]

I suppose 2012 was pretty disappointing. It was Spidey's 50 year...and it didn't live up to the hype.

2013 was great. 2014 has been pretty good so far. Hopefully spider verse lives up to the hype and the fact that we have Peter David writing Spider-man 2099 is fantastic.

Ever since 2012 Spider-man has had a pretty hard time on screen since. UltImate Spider-man is mediocre and Sony are pretty much crapping over the character.

[Spiderx3000]

I suppose 2012 was pretty disappointing. It was Spidey's 50 year...and it didn't live up to the hype.

2013 was great. 2014 has been pretty good so far. Hopefully spider verse lives up to the hype and the fact that we have Peter David writing Spider-man 2099 is fantastic.

Ever since 2012 Spider-man has had a pretty hard time on screen since. UltImate Spider-man is mediocre and Sony are pretty much crapping over the character.

I agree with you about 2012. The 50th anniversary issue was very meh.