In the recent Spider-Man movie trilogy, the audience is shown that Peter Parker’s ability to shoot webbing is Tobey Maguire-made. However, when Spidey first appeared in the ‘60s (and for more than 40 years after), he didn’t have this ability and had to use a fancy chemical-shooting device to spin his web.
Then in 2004, Marvel Comics Inc. decided it was a better idea not to confuse moviegoers who wanted to pick up a comic after seeing the film and alienated comic fans by changing a 40 year precedent of chemical webs in exchange for the organic variety.
And thanks to the geniuses at Marvel, in order to save his 4,000 year old Aunt may from dying Spider-man makes a deal with the devil to save her by preventing his marriage from MJ from ever taking place. As a result he has the mechnical ones back, but now his whole history is screwed up so that no one really knows what the hell has happened in the past 200 issues since random crap like Harry Osborn is back from the dead.
YAY! (I’m not bitter, i swear….)
So, are you still reading current Spidey issues? It got too confusing for me during the Scarlet Spider clone issues and I never looked back.
I used to. Ironically where you left off is where I started. And unfortunately it got worse from there. I stopped around 2000 or so when they tried to relaunch the numbering of Amazing back to 1, but check in every now and then. There hasn’t been anything to pull me back into constantly reading it.
I do find the Ultimate series somewhat fun, but the 616 universe (for spidey at least) is just horrible and they basically ruined a lot with the reset button they just pressed.
With the Civil War storyline killing Steve Rogers (although, Captain America the costumed hero is coming back now, I think it’s Bucky/Winter Soldier wearing the outfit) and revealing Spider-Man’s secret identity to the world, they really really screwed up the 616 universe. The whole Spider-Man character is based around him trying to hide his identity, he can’t reveal it! Marvel needs to reset like DC did with the Crisis of Infinite Earths in the 80’s.
By the way, do you know why they call it the 616 universe?
I like the Ultimate issues I’ve read. The Fantastic Four ones were specifically superb.
From what i remember, there are many “parallel” universes and the mainstream one in the comics was given the designation #616 in some comic….its been a while so I might be a bit off