Spider-Man’s Tangled Web #1

[cyberghostface]

I've posted from Spider-Man's Tangled Web before but this time I've decided to share the entire series, issue by issue. For those not aware Tangled Web was an anthology title with premise that it would showcase those affected one way or another by Spider-Man. Like most anthology series, it's a mixed bag. Fortunately, when it's good, it's good. A number of the stories I would say are among the best written for the character.

First up is a story written by everyone's favorite Garth Ennis. This one's a bit surprising given Ennis's attitude towards costumed superheroes; it's a story that depicts Spider-Man as a hero who gets right back up whenever he's knocked down.

The story opens with a surly guy at a diner watching Spider-Man battle the Rhino outside his window.





We go to Peter at the Bugle where Jonah's turning down his photo of Spider-Man and the Rhino.





She attempts to mace him when she sees Carl but it doesn't do anything.

Comments

[lordultimus]

Spider-Man typically gets a pass from Ennis because he's a flawed working class guy as opposed to a strong jawed tool of the "elite".

[blueprintstyles]

100%

[onsokumaru]

But Superman also gets a pass from Ennis.

[shakalooloo]

Clark Kent was born on a farm. Not much more working-class than that.

[janegray]

I know I tend to get lost in the details, but honestly, I could never like this story because I always felt too sorry for the woman. That was too nasty a way to go, and in the end there wasn't even a body left for her family. I kept thinking that her cat was waiting for her to get home :(

[lbd_nytetrayn]

Yeah. 😿

[silverhammerman]

There's something to be said for the pure catharsis of a story about your childhood bully being a literally monstrous and inhuman loser who dies at the end, but I've always felt weird about this one.

One of the best character beats of early Spider-Man is that Peter's original bully/rival Flash Thompson grows up to be an alright dude, even if he can never quite admit to himself that he was in the wrong with Peter, and they end up hashing things out. It's typical of my problems with Garth Ennis' writing, but I just prefer the approach of everyone having some sort of interiority and capacity for growth to Ennis' patented turbo-sociopaths.

[lego_joker]

One thing that surprised me when I read classic Spider-Man was how... equal Peter and Flash were in even the earliest stories. Most of the fighting is verbal, and even when it does (threaten to) get physical Flash challenges him to a formal schoolyard fight, instead of just picking him up and throwing him in a locker. Bit closer to Archie vs. Reggie Mantle, all told.

(More importantly, Peter himself never seems to mind their rivalry all that much. Hell, in some issues he almost seems to look forward to back-sassing Flash.)

[silverhammerman]

Yeah, he really does give as good as he gets, and Flash's later defense that Peter came off as a stuck up twerp isn't unfair. There's a level of nuance to those interactions and, really, the early Spider-Man era as a whole, that I think gets glossed over in the pursuit of Peter Parker as a put upon nerd stereotype.

[starwolf_oakley]

IIRC, an early issue of Ennis' "Hitman" had something like this. "People who tell you bullies will back down if you stand up to them are lying. Some bullies are itching for a fair fight."

[beeyo]

There's something hysterical about a native New Yorker saying "Inflict yourself on someone else, you sow" to me.

[bravest_spinja]

I think there's two reasons Ennis is down with Spidey, well three reasons.

1) It seems a major problem with the archetype is that has dominated the medium, and I suppose now most pop culture. I notice that Superman is actually more popular with people who aren't into superheroes than are, because he's sort of "grandfathered in". I think it's fair to say that Spidey would have always been an icon, even if the rest of Marvel's line went belly up, or the genre went through the crunch it did in the 50's. By contrast, Green Lantern, the Avengers, the X-Men sort of represent a glut.

2) Even when he's the butt of jokes, like in The Punisher, it's frankly not much more of a humiliation than he's suffered in his own book, the movies, or especially the Newspaper strip. The early Lee/Ditko tales were often about how absurd the concept of a costumed hero was, and often suggested Peter was not in a good place, psychologically, to be doing this. A proto-deconstruction if you will.

It should also be said that Ennis is an edgelord, but he's still a professional, and when he actually has to write the character as the protagonist, he's going to try and do something with it.