Comic Book / The Spectacular Spider-Man

This looks like a job for... Spider-Man!

The Spectacular Spider-Man is a superhero comic series by Marvel Comics, the first volume of which—originally titled Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man—was a Long Runner published between 1976 and 1998, with an equally long list of writers including Gerry Conway, Jim Shooter, Bill Mantlo, Roger Stern, Peter David, Kurt Busiek, J. M. DeMatteis, and Tom DeFalco. Taking place alongside the events of The Amazing Spider-Man (Vol. 1), the book has Spider-Man face off against a variety of old and new opponents; take on the Maggia crime syndicate; help new superheroes such as the White Tiger, Razorback, and Cloak and Dagger find their footing; break up with the Black Cat after she makes a deal with the Kingpin for superpowers; and ultimately deal with The Death of Jean DeWolff.

Following its rebranding, the series co-existed and overlapped with other Spider-Man series—The Amazing Spider-Man (Vol. 1), The Sensational Spider-Man, Spider-Man (1990), Peter Parker: Spider-Man, and Web of Spider-Man (Vol. 1)—into the 1990s, crossing over with events such as Maximum Carnage and The Clone Saga. It threw a few wrenches into the wall-crawler's status quo—Ben Reilly taking over as the protagonist for a time, and famously including the Identity Crisis story arc where Spider-Man is framed for murder, forcing Peter to come up with the alternate superhero identities of Prodigy, Hornet, Ricochet, and Dusk to clear his friendly neighborhood name.

A second volume—written by Paul Jenkins and Sara Barnes, with art by Humberto Ramos, Talent Caldwell, and Scot Eaton—was published from 2003 to 2005. Like the first volume, it made significant but ultimately temporary changes to Spider-Man's status quo—and those of some of his supporting cast, namely giving Peter organic web-shooters and revealing Eddie Brock had terminal cancer.

In 2017, the original title was renewed (with a few minor adjustments) for a series that lasted from 2017 to 2019, reverting to legacy numbering (factoring in the original Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man and both volumes of The Spectacular Spider-Man) after the first six issues. Written by Chip Zdarsky with art by Adam Kubert, the first arc has Peter reconnect with his long-lost sister Teresa, thwart both the Kingpin and a corrupt government organization, and stop an alien invasion. After a jaunt into an alternate timeline proves disasterous, Peter must face off against one of his deadliest enemies, Morlun, as a new war against the Inheritors breaks out.

---

Runs and storylines with their own pages:

• The Death of Jean DeWolff (Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man #107-#110)
• Kraven's Last Hunt (The Spectacular Spider-Man (Vol. 1) #131-#132)
• Identity Crisis (The Spectacular Spider-Man (Vol. 1) #257-#258)

---

The Spectacular Spider-Man provides examples of the following tropes:

Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man & The Spectacular Spider-Man (Vol. 1)

• Abusive Parents: The Spectacular Spider-Man #-1 reveals that the reason why Flash Thompson was a Jerk Jock and a Barbaric Bully in high school was because of the physical and emotional abuse he suffered at the hands of his father, Harrison Thompson.
• Accomplice by Inaction: In The Spectacular Spider-Man, this was part of a very large plotline involving Tombstone and Daily Bugle editor Joe Robertson. Tombstone had bullied Joe when they were kids, and eventually, Joe witnessed Tombstone - now a hitman working for the Kingpin kill a man, and after the thug threatened him, he kept quiet for decades. In the present time, Joe finally came forward when the Kingpin used the assassin in a failed attempt at Spidey, but Joe was arrested and convicted of withholding evidence. (In truth, both the DA and judge were bought by the Kingpin; this led to another storyline where Tombstone attempted to gain revenge on him in prison, which eventually ended in Joe gaining a Presidential pardon; still, the issue with Tombstone lasted much longer...)
• Alas, Poor Villain: Harry Osborn, the second Green Goblin in the later-retconned but still well-remembered story "Best of Enemies" in The Spectacular Spider-Man #200.
• Anti-Villain: Ramon Vasquez, ironically the Professor of ethics at Empire State University, impersonated the White Tiger and stole the Abraham Erskine manuscripts to sell on the black market... to fund the night school classes that ESU was planning on shutting down as a cost-cutting measure.
• Art-Style Dissonance: The Spectacular Spider-Man #86 was published during Assistant Editor's Month, so the gimmick of that issue was that Bob DeNatale threw out Al Milgrom's artwork in favor of that of Fred Hembeck, whose style is far from realistic. The issue's storyline was that the Fly realised he was losing his humanity and sought revenge upon J. Jonah Jameson and Spider-Man, and the humor is limited to Spidey's usual wisecracks (apart from the humor stemming from Hembeck's art, like the Fly having Xs for eyes when Spider-Man punches him). After the Fly is defeated, Danny Fingeroth (the actual editor of the comic) returns and puts an end to the cartoonish artwork. You can see images from this issue here.
• Aside Comment: The cover of The Spectacular Spider-Man #246 has 4 bizarre-looking villains called the Legion of Losers. It also has Spider-Man turning to look at the reader and saying "You've gotta be kidding!". See it here◊.
• Battle in the Center of the Mind: Ben Reilly, taken over by the Carnage symbiote as Spider-Carnage, fights it within his mindscape for control of his body.
• The Bad Guy Wins: Issues #249-250 have Norman Osborn's return - not the Green Goblin, Osborn: he comes back, buys the failing Daily Bugle and terrorizes Peter psychologically. Fed up with his provocation, Peter, as Spider-Man, goes to Osborn's tower to confront him, but snaps and slaps Osborn's face. The villain, obviously, has the entire thing recorded, as another leverage against Peter.
• Bed Trick: The reveal that the Kraven running around since The Clone Saga isn't Sergei Kravinov, but his son, Alyosha, happens after the latter sleeps with his father's mistress, Calypso — who didn't know until after they did it.
• Big "NO!": Believing Black Cat to have been killed by Doc Ock and the Owl's henchmen, Spider-Man screams a drawn-out "NO!" before going ballistic on them.
• Continuity Overlap: The comic frequently crossed over with the concurrently published The Amazing Spider-Man (Vol. 1), The Sensational Spider-Man, Spider-Man (Vol. 1), and Peter Parker: Spider-Man.
• Covers Always Lie:
  • The cover of #190 had the Rhino squeezing the life out of Spider-Man on the cover with a blurb indicating that Peter was gonna receive a Fate Worse than Death. In the issue, Spider-Man is infuriated due to the machinations of Harry Osborn, the second Green Goblin, and ends up giving Rhino a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown that leaves the villain crying for mercy.
  • The cover of #199 shows the Green Goblin gloating over the bodies of Spider-Man and the X-Men. While the X-Men did appear in that issue (it was the final chapter of a three-part story about something different), they never fought the Green Goblin. Instead, Harry Osborn simply returns toward the end of the issue, setting the stage for the next arc.
  • The cover of #256 shows the White Rabbit riding a mechanical rabbit that is firing Gatling guns. In the story, there is a mechanical rabbit with a different design that is only used for transportation.
• A Day in the Limelight: Gerry Conway's late 1980s, early 1990s Spectacular Spider-Man run was built upon the concept of "A Day In the Limelight", as far as his run centering around Joe Robertson, a longtime supporting cast member of Spider-Man. Similarly, the only Spider-Man stories by loathed writer Howard Mackie that are liked by fans are the ones that had Howard focusing on the supporting cast members.
• Dreaming of Things to Come: In issue #100, Peter has a nightmare about the symbiont (which was trapped in the Fantastic Four's lab at the time) coming back to take over his body, when a ringing sound begins to weaken him - it's Peter's phone, jerking him back to reality.
• Enemy Without: Iguana effectively became one for Dr. Curt Connors due to being imbued with the mind of the Lizard, with the enervator connecting them so that the more powerful the Iguana became the weaker the Lizard got. Spider-Man attempted to use this to fully transfer the Lizard into the Iguana to cure Dr. Connors, but this backfired and reverted the Iguana into a normal lizard while merely subduing Dr. Connors' Lizard persona.
• Evil Counterpart: The first arc had Spider-Man face off against the spider-themed supervillain called the Tarantula.
• Faked Kidnapping: In the first arc, Dr. Edward Lansky hired Tarantula to kidnap himself in an attempt to convince Mayor Abraham Beame not to go through with Empire State University's budget cuts. When that failed, Lansky suited up as the supervillain Lightmaster in order to assassinate the mayor.
• Fanboy: Ollie Osnick, the future Steel-Spider, debuts in issue #72: a pudgy, acne-riddled Dr. Octopus fanboy, albeit extremely intelligent, because he developed a functional facsimile of Octopus's metal arms. After being rescued by Spider-Man, he begins to fanboy over the wallcrawler.
• Final Solution: Man-Beast — an anthropomorphic wolf created by the High Evolutionary — manipulates the Legion of Light cult in a scheme to commit genocide on humanity, whereupon the New Men would be left to repopulate the Earth.
• A Foggy Day in London Town: Knight and Fogg were two British super-powered contract killers who appeared in The Spectacular Spider-Man #165-167 back in 1990. The latter saw himself as the personification of the London fog and could transform his body into a gaseous form that obscured his opponents' sight; his favorite method of attack was to strangle his targets from afar with his partially solidified hands.
• Frame-Up:
  • Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man #9-#10 has Spider-Man fight the White Tiger after the latter is framed for theft by Professor Ramon Vasquez.
  • In the Identity Crisis story arc, spread across The Sensational Spider-Man, The Amazing Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Peter Parker: Spider-Man, and The Spectacular Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Norman Osborn frames Spider-Man for murder by suffocating an innocent man with web-fluid, forcing Peter to come up with alternate superhero identities to clear his name — the staunchly heroic Prodigy, the tech-savvy Hornet, the antiheroic Ricochet, and the sinister Dusk.
• Friend on the Force: Captain Jean DeWolff proves a staunch ally to Spider-Man despite the other police being wary of him, even granting Black Cat amnesty for the crimes she'd committed in the past and promising to keep her identity as Felicia Hardy a secret as a favour to Spider-Man. As such, her eventual murder at the hands of the Sin-Eater leaves Spider-Man devastated.
• Generic Ethnic Crime Gang: The Maggia, Marvel's Captain Ersatz of The Mafia, is an overarching antagonist of Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man.
• Gone Horribly Wrong: Dr. Curt Connors created an enervator intended to purge the Lizard Formula from his body, freeing him from his reptilian Superpowered Evil Side. When he tested it on an iguana, however, the device mutated it into a reptilian humanoid monster similar to the Lizard and imbued with the Lizard's memories. Worse, exposure to the device later causes Peter to mutate into the Spider-Lizard, flipping the script so that Dr. Connors must stop his rampage from harming civilians.
• Hoist by His Own Petard:
  • Harry Osborn suffers a hoisting of his own — he created a new Goblin Formula that made him stronger. However, it would later kill him.
  • After being transformed into an entity of living light, Dr. Edward Lansky was forced to always surround himself with light to survive. Building an arena full of neon lights, he lured Spider-Man there to get revenge, but accidentally overloaded New York's power grid and caused a blackout. Without light to sustain himself, Lansky's physical form dissipated and he was trapped in the Light Dimension.
  • Carrion created a monster called the Spider-Amoeba intending to use it to kill Spider-Man, but the entity — immune to his Make Them Rot powers — devoured him instead.
• If I Had a Nickel...: Spidey responding to a threat made by the Green Goblin during the "Goblins at the Gate" arc.
  Spider-Man: Goblin, if I had a nickel for every time I heard a threat like that... well, I'd be one very rich friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.
• Legacy Character:
  • Man-Beast takes over the identity of the Hate-Monger from Adolf Hitler, using it to manipulate the Legion of Light cult and force Spider-Man and his new ally Razorback to fight each other.
  • Peter took the identity of Dusk from an alien superhero he'd encountered in the Negative Zone during Identity Crisis; and the four superhero identities he came up with were later passed on to the Slingers.
  • J.M. DeMatteis's post-The Clone Saga introduced the second Kraven the Hunter and the second of the original Kraven's children, Alyosha.
• Let's You and Him Fight:
  • In one arc of Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man, Spider-Man fights the White Tiger after he is framed for theft, only relenting when he realizes Hector Ayala had no reason to steal the Erskine manuscripts.
  • Spider-Man and Medusa of the Inhumans fight over an antidote to a toxic compound, each to save innocent lives, with Black Bolt ultimately negotiating a compromise.
  • Spider-Man mistakes Moon Knight for a supervillain after coming across him beating up a Maggia thug and attacks him, only setting aside their differences when the thug calls for backup in the form of the supervillain Cyclone.
  • After coming across some murdered drug addicts, Spider-Man attacks Cloak and Dagger assuming they must be responsible, though upon clearing up the misunderstanding they team up to take down the real killer.
  • Lampshaded in The Spectacular Spider-Man #13 where, before teaming up, Razorback attacks Spider-Man because "Isn't that what superheroes do when they first meet?"
• Loves My Alter Ego: When Spider-Man unmasks himself as Peter Parker as a show of trust to Black Cat, she is horrified and turned off, saying she's only in love with Spider-Man and completely uninterested in the mundane civilian behind the mask.
• Make Up or Break Up: In Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man #98, Peter Parker learns that Felicia Hardy's new luck-manipulation superpowers were courtesy of the Kingpin, who gave them to her to sabotage their relationship. Outraged and disgusted that she would sink so low as to deal with one of his enemies, Peter breaks up with her.
• Mind-Control Music: In Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man #24, Spider-Man encounters Antoine Delsoin, who uses a guitar that produces hypnotic sound waves to rob people as the Hypno-Hustler.
• Official Couple: Spider-Man and anti-heroine Black Cat become a couple for a good long while in this title in the early-to-late-1980s.
• Patience Plot: In Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man #4, a character called the Hitman was given a contract to kill Spidey. The Vulture gets involved, and the Hitman tags both Spider-Man and the Vulture with a tracer so he can track them down. Later, looking at a tracking screen in his hideout:
  Hitman: Both Spidey and Vulture's blibs are stationary. Looks like they've both settled in for the night. Only thing to do now is wait. [sits at a table and starts cleaning his guns] Waiting. That's something I could never teach them back in the old days. Either they were naturals who knew it instinctively, or they never learned... and died because of it. So simple. You wait. And then, you strike.
• Post-Rape Taunt: Alyosha mocks Calypso for thinking he was Sergei, revealing he wasn't, after they'd slept together
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge:
  • In Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man #76, Black Cat is beaten to the brink of death by Doctor Octopus and near-fatally shot by the Owl's henchmen who she and Spider-Man were trying to apprehend. Spider-Man goes ballistic and nearly beats Otto to death in retribution, leaving him with arachnophobia for some time afterward.
  • In Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man #107, the Sin-Eater kills Spider-Man's longtime Friend on the Force Jean DeWolff, causing Peter to go on a warpath to avenge her. Upon discovering the Sin-Eater is Jean's partner Stan Carter, Spider-Man is only stopped from killing him by Daredevil's intervention, leaving Peter shaken into the events of The Spectacular Spider-Man (Vol. 1).
• Sanity Slippage: In Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man #21, it's revealed that Mac Gargan's mental stability has hit rock-bottom and that he believes he's mutated into a scorpion monster and trapped in his armor. When he goes after J. Jonah Jameson hellbent on revenge, Spider-Man intervenes and defuses the situation by unmasking Gargan to show him that he's still human.
• Seduction-Proof Marriage: In The Spectacular Spider-Man #166-172, when MJ was starring in the soap opera Secret Hospital, her male co-star attempted to seduce her. At one point, she gave the impression of being interested, but at the end of the story, she spelled out in no uncertain terms that she had no intention of leaving Peter.
• Shout-Out: Issue #25 is titled "Carrion, My Wayward Son", also a Pun on the homophonous Kansas's song "Carry On, My Wayward Son".
• Story Arc:
  • Issues #25 and 28-31 are the first Carrion storyline.
  • Issues #32-34 is the Iguana/Lizard trilogy.
  • Issues #43 and 47-48 is about villainess Belladonna's revenge against Roderick Kingsley and the fashion world.
  • Issue #64 introduces urban vigilantes Cloak and Dagger, who would continue to appear in the title in subsequent arcs, like issues #69-70, 81-82, and 94-96.
  • Issues #72-76 is the Owl vs. Octopus War: Daredevil villain, the Owl, threatens to use a neutron bomb in New York for a ransom, while Dr. Octopus wants to simply detonate it.
  • Issues #92-96 involve new villain Answer, Kingpin, Cloak and Dagger, and the robotic corpse of mafia lord Silvermane.
  • Issues #107-110 is the famous storyline The Death of Jean DeWolff, Spider-Man's Friend on the Force.
  • Issues #178-184 is The Child Within: after some years controlling the Goblin persona, Harry Osborn relapses and assumes the mantle once again to threaten Spider-Man, family and friends. Harry's further descent into madness continues in #189 and finally concludes in #200, with his death by an overdose of a new Goblin formula.
• Technically-Living Zombie: The original Carrion, a clone of Miles Warren infected with a virus weaponizing the cellular degeneration his clones undergo upon death, makes his debut in Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man #25 seeking to avenge his creator's (apparent) death and that of Gwen Stacy. Warren intended to use the clone to wipe out all of humanity, but Carrion emerged from his stasis coffin too soon.
• Transhuman Abomination: Dr. Jonathan Ohn, a scientist working for the Kingpin, turns himself into the Spot—a walking portal network—after suffusing himself with Darkforce energy in Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man #98.
• Villain Respect: Prodigy, one of the alternate hero identities Peter came up with to clear his name, was such a boy scout that even Norman Osborn couldn't help but respect him for his Incorruptible Pure Pureness.

The Spectacular Spider-Man (Vol. 2)

• Absurdly High-Stakes Game: The Spectacular Spider-Man #21 had a somewhat lighter-hearted version of this. The New York superheroes have a yearly poker game with twenty-dollar stakes with the winner donating their winnings to charity. Then along comes the Kingpin with a ridiculous amount of money. There's nothing really at stake more than pride and a good cause, but that doesn't mean it's any less entertaining to watch Spider-Man and Kingpin play out the final round with ludicrous piles of chips each. (Spidey won—his Spider-Sense means that he always knows whether or not someone's bluffing.)
• Accidental Pornomancer: During Changes, a particularly weird story arc, he is pursed by the Queen, a sexy supervillainess with the ability to control those who possess the "Insect Gene"—including Spider-Man. At one point, she captures and kisses Spidey, which somehow impregnates him. (To the story's credit, this is treated as horrific for our hero.) He later dies and is resurrected almost immediately after by giving birth to himself.
• Age-Gap Romance: Sarah Stacy—the (apparent) daughter of Norman Osborn and Gwen Stacy—falls in love with Peter Parker after he saves her; made even more disturbing by her technically only being a child, her having previously believed Peter to be her biological father, and her having tried to kill him to avenge her mother.
• Cain and Abel: "Sins Remembered" ends with Sarah Stacy pulling a Heel–Face Turn and joining Interpol to hunt down her brother Gabriel, who embraced the identity of the Grey Goblin and doubled down on the belief that Peter murdered their mother.
• Canon Discontinuity:
  • The reveal that Eddie Brock had cancer before bonding to the Venom symbiote, as well as an uncle who died of cancer, was disregarded by Venom: Dark Origin and retconned entirely by Donny Cates' Venom run, which revealed that the symbiote had been gaslighting Eddie by implanting memories of him having had a sister and uncle, and that Eddie himself didn't have until after bonding to it, in order to make him afraid to separate from it again.
  • The Venom symbiote is tricked into permanently bonding with Eddie Brock, angrily telling Spider-Man that he's doomed it and its unborn child. Both of these plot points were subsequently ignored, with Venom (Vol. 1) showing the two separating, Eddie later selling the symbiote to the Maggia on the black market, and the next significant symbiote spawning being Carnage's offspring Toxin.
  • Spider-Island brought back Adriana Soria, but ditched the "insect gene" plot point in favor of folding her into the Spider-Totem plot thread introduced by J. Michael Straczynski in his The Amazing Spider-Man (Vol. 2) run.
  • The entire premise of "Sins Remembered" was thrown out the window by Last Remains almost two decades later, with it being revealed that Norman's affair with Gwen was fabricated by Harry Osborn with Mysterio's help, and the Stacy twins were test-tube babies created via cloning by Harry and the Osborn AI as part of a complex posthumous revenge scheme.
• Captive Date: In Issue #16, Spidey wakes up to find himself restrained to the wall in some webs, inside the building that The Queen took over, after she defeated him in the previous issue. Shortly after he wakes up, he is visited by The Queen, who flirts with him, explaining she has chosen him to be her mate and will father her children in the new world. She continues to invade his personal space, eventually rolling up his mask halfway, telling him to relax since this is "nature's way" and after whispering for him to simply enjoy it forces a deep passionate kiss on him, in an attempt to gain control of him and make him love her. She nearly succeeds, and with Spider-Man slowly falling under her control, he starts to kiss her back. But as the two are making out, Spidey regains control of himself and manages to push The Queen off him while spitting out her kiss in disgust. This act of disrespect and rejection of her love angers The Queen, who drops her romantic approach, and grabs Spider-Man, snarling that nobody does that to her, calling him a "little worm", and slaps him across the face twice before declaring he'll love her whether he wants to or not, and then leaving him bleeding and alone in the dark, ending their "date" on a bad note.
• Cradling Your Kill: The Queen does a non-fatal version of this with Spider-Man at the end of Issue #15. After she defeats him she catches him in a hug as he starts to fall unconscious. Holding him close, she attempted to comfort him by gently assuring him not to be ashamed of his defeat because he could never have stood against her, before pulling him into a big wet kiss while he is unable to resist until he fully loses consciousness.
• Dating Catwoman: Subverted with The Queen. Despite her beautiful appearance and her flirting, Spider-Man is not attracted to her at all and finds her disgusting, but that doesn't stop her from forcing herself on him. However, all of New York thought this trope was being played straight when the News captured the first kiss between them and assumed it was Spider-Man who initiated the kiss with his new adversary.
• Dude, She's Like in a Coma: A gender-reversed example between Spider-Man and The Queen. When she defeats Spidey in their first fight, unleashing a sonic scream he can't defend against, he eventually collapses from the pain, with her catching him as he fell towards her and gently embracing him in a hug. While she is holding Spidey she flirts with him and attempts to comfort him over his loss against her, before pulling him into a deep kiss against his will. He was either unconscious during the kiss or eventually lost consciousness while it was happening, but either way he was too weak to resist her forcing herself on him.
• Entitled to Have You: After being impressed by Spider-Man in their fight, The Queen declares him to be a part of her hive now and her mate. She won't take "no" as an answer from him and declares he'll love her, whether he wants to or not.
• Final Solution: Adriana Soria forces Professor David Jaffe—the scientist in charge of the Operation Crossroads atom bomb tests—to build a bomb that will wipe out all non-insect life on Earth, only sparing those with the insect gene.
• It's Cuban: For fun, mob boss Kingpin invites himself to a superhero poker game bearing a Briefcase Full of Money to sweeten the pot. If the heroes win, they can donate it to a charity. If Kingpin wins, he'll buy a boat to rub their loss in their faces, as well as a Cuban cigar:
  Kingpin: Which I shall obtain illegally.
• Kiss Diss: When the Queen is flirting with Spider-Man after capturing him, she forces a second kiss on him in an attempt to gain control over him and make him fall in love with her. It almost works, with Spidey briefly giving into her seductions, seeing her love as a "honor", and kissing her back. But while the two are making out, Spidey manages to regain control of himself, forcing The Queen off him and spitting out her kiss in disgust. Unfortunately, she reacted violently to this offensive act.
• Leave Him to Me!: When Spider-Man is restrained by being dogpiled by Queen's drones, and he just saw her easily knockout Captain America, he continues to struggle against her despite seeing how powerful she is, demanding she call off her drones and face him herself. Impressed by Spider-Man's strong will and determination, she accepts his challenge and grants his request, ordering her drones to release Spider-Man with a smirk, saying she would take him herself. As soon as he is released, she immediately unleashes a second sonic scream while standing directly next to Spider-Man, with him unable to do anything to defend himself and screaming in pain until he blacks out.
• Love at First Punch: When The Queen first meets Spider-Man, she initially seems unimpressed by him, commenting he is shorter than she was expecting and threatening his entire city for trying to web her. However, once he fights back against her he initially gains the upper hand by tripping her and restraining her legs while she's down. Though she quickly breaks free from this, she seems to now be impressed by this and begins flirting with Spider-Man for the remainder of their fight, and his determination to keep fighting her even when she has him outmatched fully impresses her enough to choose him as her mate.
• Magic Kiss: Adriana Soria's saliva contains mutagenic properties that, when she kisses Spider-Man, forcibly transforms him into his Man-Spider form and then into a giant spider, leading to him being "reborn" with augmented powers and organic web-shooters. Spider-Island later tied this in with JMS' Spider-Totem arc by revealing her mutagenic saliva connects those exposed to it to the Web of Life and Destiny—giving them spider powers while boosting her own connection in the process—and also boosts the connection of existing Spider-Totems.
• Make-Out Kids: A downplayed and accidental example with Spider-Man and The Queen, who are both adults rather than teens. After Queen defeats Spider-Man in their first encounter, she acts affectionate with him and flirts with him, comforting him over his loss against her as she embraces him in a hug before pulling him into a deep kiss against his will. The following issue reveals that, unknown to the two of them, this kiss was captured on Live News, with the entire public knowing about it. This made the two of them look like affectionate lovers to many citizens due to the public make-out session, unaware of the actual context of the kiss.
• Mistaken for Cheating:
  • When Spider-Man first fought the Queen, she easily defeated him before forcibly kissing him while he was unconscious. This public makeout was captured on the News, but all of New York assumed that Spider-Man was the one who kissed Queen. Aunt May accidentally reveals the kiss to Mary Jane before she finds out herself and Mary Jane gives Peter a hard time for a while because of the kiss.
  • Mary Jane walks in on Sarah Stacy kissing Peter—though not quite as dramatized as the one she gives him on the cover of #25—and is very unamused that he would be making out with the daughter of his old flame.
• Mister Seahorse: After Peter is transformed into a giant spider by Adriana Soria, she intends to make him her mate and have him give birth to her offspring. Peter ended up getting pregnant, dying, and finally, giving birth to himself in human form with all of his memories intact and new powers. This story has not been referenced much since.
• Nothing Is the Same Anymore:
  • "The Hunger" arc reveals that Eddie Brock had been dying of terminal cancer before meeting the Venom symbiote, that it's had a resurgence, and that he had an uncle who died of cancer—putting a more sympathetic spin on why he hated Peter: he would have died without the symbiote, which was only using him to try to get back to Spider-Man.
  • The aptly named "Changes" arc has Spider-Man run afoul of the supervillain Adriana Soria, aka the Queen, whose mutant ability lets her control humans with the "insect gene"—including Peter Parker. A kiss from her causes Peter to mutate into a Man-Spider form and then into a giant spider, before seemingly dying and molting in human form but with amplified physical abilities and organic web shooters—changes that lasted until Brand New Day reset the status quo.
  • "Sins Remembered" very controversially revealed that Norman Osborn took advantage of Gwen Stacy's loneliness and despair following the death of her father and her subsequent breakup with Peter Parker, seducing her and fathering twins—a son named Gabriel and a daughter named Sarah; and that Gwen threatening to take the kids and raise them with Peter was one of the reasons Norman decided to murder her.
• Older Than They Look: Adriana Soria looks to be in her twenties or thirties but is a veteran of World War II, having been selected as part of an attempt to create a new Captain America-style super-soldier and been the first woman to see active combat. Exposure to the fallout of the Operation Crossroads Bikini Atoll nuclear tests activated her latent mutant powers but drove her insane.
• Rapid Aging: It's stated that the Goblin serum the Stacy twins inherited from their father caused them to rapidly age to adulthood despite only being a few years old.
• Seduction-Proof Marriage:
  • During the Changes arc in The Spectacular Spider-Man, Spider-Man is kidnapped and is being looked after by a sultry villainess called the Queen, who offers him "anything he wants". He requested a solid cage thingy so she'll leave him alone as he was Happily Married to MJ at the time.
  • Sarah Stacy puts the moves on Peter after he saves her life and she discovers that he didn't murder her mother and he's not her father, and although she succeeds in kissing him once he turns her down due to being together with MJ, despite Sarah being identical her mother.
• Strong Family Resemblance: Sarah Stacy was very much the spitting image of her mother, Gwen Stacy, and this—coupled with the fact that Peter was old enough to be her father (and that she'd previously believed him to be just that) made her brief Rescue Romance with him that much more controversial.
• "Take That!" Kiss: After the Queen defeats Spider-Man with a pointblank sonic scream, she catches him with a hug as as he falls unconscious and holds him close to her. She attempts to "comfort" him, saying not to find shame in his defeat, because he never stood a chance against her, before pulling the unconscious and bleeding hero into a big wet kiss.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: The Venom symbiote is shown emotionally, psychologically, and physically torturing Eddie Brock in order to milk every last drop of adrenaline from his body, intending to leave him for dead to find a healthy host—preferably Spider-Man—after his terminal cancer made a comeback.
• You Don't Look Like You: When Doctor Octopus makes his comeback in the "Countdown" arc, he's sporting longer hair rather than his trademark bowl cut, a black trench coat, and tentacles that have sucker-like protrusions on their undersides.
• Younger Than They Look: Gabriel and Sarah Stacy look to be the same age as Peter Parker—in their early 20s—but are only a few years old, having (purportedly) been born shortly before their mother Gwen was murdered.

Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man (Vol. 1)

• Alien Invasion: The overarching threat is an invading extraterrestrial AI called the Vedomi.
• Big Bad: Wilson Fisk, aka the Kingpin, is revealed to be the one who has been outfitting criminals with high-tech untraceable phones, courtesy of the Tinkerer... who takes over as the villain when the Vedomi show up.
• La Résistance: In Earth-51838, Gwen Parker (née Stacy) helps Captain America, Doctor Strange, and Ironheart fight against Norman and Harry Osborn's totalitarian regime, to the initial disproval of her husband Peter Parker. When Earth-616's Spider-Man returns, Earth-51838's Peter finds the resolve to don the red-and-blues once more and take down the Osborns once and for all.
• Let's You and Him Fight: Spider-Man and Ironheart come to blows in the second issue when they're both working to stop a tech-crime ring.
• My God, What Have I Done?:
  • Peter Parker is horrified that his attempts to make Earth-51838 a better place led to a world where Norman Osborn is the Shadow Dictator of President Harry Osborn's totalitarian regime.
  • Having spent years calling Spider-Man a threat or menace, J. Jonah Jameson is horrified to see what a world without Spider-Man could be like when Earth-51838's Peter Parker has a Despair Event Horizon and quits being a superhero.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: While fighting Morlun (again), Spider-Man delivers a speech in his signature You Fight Like a Cow style, telling the Inheritor that his social darwinism and arrogance has, is, and always will be his undoing.
  Spider-Man: Morlun. Morlun. Morlun. What is this, four times now? Four times I've beaten you? How does this keep happening? It shouldn't be. You're stronger and faster than me by a mile. I know that. But what's more important, is that you know that, too. So because you know that, you never plan anything. You just show up and assume you're going to win because of who you are and, what, some birthright? And then when it doesn't go how you thought it was gonna go, you have a little fit and think the world is conspiring against you or some nonsense. You don't think things through, because you think you don't think you have to. You think you are all that and a bag of chips. But in actuality, Morlun... ya basic.
• Rogue Agent: Teresa Durand—aka Teresa Parker—goes AWOL from S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Grey Blade squad when she learns they're coming up with contingency plans to take down not only super villains but superheroes as well.
• Self-Deprecation: In the second issue, Johnny Storm mocks Peter's status as "the relatable super hero with relatable problems" when he has a long-lost sister and super-spy parents.
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: After ending up in Earth-51838, Earth-616's Peter Parker decides that—since anything he does won't affect his own timeline—he can help this universe's Spider-Man take down his worst enemies ahead of time... which ended up having disastrous consequences.
• Title Confusion: The series is nearly the same as the original series except instead of a comma the series uses a colon.
• Time Travel: Peter Parker, Teresa Parker, and J. Jonah Jameson borrow Iron Man (read: a reformed Doctor Doom)'s Time Platform in an attempt go back to the past to find the Tinkerer's notes on the Vedomi to stop the invasion going on in their present, despite Doom's warnings that the Time Variance Authority had tampered with it. This creates a new timeline called Earth-51838, where Peter quit being Spider-Man and Norman Osborn became the de-facto ruler of the United States. Horrified by this outcome, Earth-616's Peter Parker, Teresa Parker, and J. Jonah Jameson join the Resistance in helping break Doctor Doom out of prison so they can use his Time Platform to return to their own timeline.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: In the Spider-Geddon tie-in, Peter tells Miles Morales he's more than worthy to lead the Spider-Army against the Inheritors, leaving Peter to throw down with Morlun.
• You Keep Using That Word: Spider-Man calls Ironheart a millennial, but (at least at the time of publication due to Marvel's sliding timeline) Peter Parker is the millennial and Riri Williams is a member of Generation Z.

---