Spider-Man’s Tangled Web #3

[cyberghostface]

The issue opens with Mr. Ambrose, the super, coming in and seeing Spider-Man surrounded by the spiders. Spidey tells him to run but it's too late as the spiders jump down his throat and devour him from the inside.



Carl tells him that his body began to break down as his insides were being consumed by a thousand spiders with his consciousness. He eventually moves onto his own parents, first his mother and then his father. Each time he moves from a body he gets stronger.

Spider-Man tells him that all his time he's been monologuing, the poison has worn off.



The battle goes outside. Carl tells Peter he doesn't know how easy he's had it. "The death-defying exploits. The lethal array of colorful villains. The string of beautiful girlfriends -- all because some nerd gets bitten by a spider? You know what happened to my beautiful girlfriend? I had to eat her."





The panel with Peter bruised but undefeated is in my opinion one of the quintessential depictions of Spider-Man. It still amazes me that it comes from Ennis of all people.



Carl, in his rage, doesn't realize he's about to hit a high-voltage box. Spider-Man tries to warn him but Carl ends up electrocuting himself.

Comments

[tripodeca113]

Thank you random guy.

[angelophile]

Smoking does, indeed, kill.

[tinygaylaura]

Did what we all wanted to do since the moment this whining douchecanoe first appeared in the first part of this story

"The death-defying exploits. The lethal array of colorful villains. The string of beautiful girlfriends"

Buddy

Maybe if you tried picking up a book, putting down the bucket of chicken wings and joining a gym your life wouldn't have been so worthless that "I think I'll eat a radioactive spider" was the only way you could think of to make it better

Mod Note!

[icon_uk]

We'll have no bodyshaming here on scans_daily.

Someone's weight and shape are not indicative of what their life is worth.

Re: Mod Note!

[tinygaylaura]

I apologise, looking at the comment I can see it did sound very body shame-y

I meant it in the sense that if the reason he's jealous of Peter is that he's fit and agile and able to do death defying stunts and because he's handsome and smart and popular with the ladies and if he was really that miserable with the life he had he could have worked on improving his life by taking care of his body and also trying to improve his mind while he's at it too since even with a thousand bodies he still seems to have a minus one brain.

But instead he was just a bitter miserable asshole who is basically Dennis Reynolds as a supervillain...a creep who is convinced he deserves everything just because he is who he is...while being mad at Peter when it's not Peter's fault that HIS life wound up this way it was his own choices

But I realise that my comment might have come across as a meanspirited "LOL fat people" way or "All people who aren't thin and athletic are worthless" and I'm very sorry if that's the way it did.

[blueprintstyles]

This might be my favourite Ennis story. No weird anti-woke politics, no sex-negative scenes or super cringy subplots with the female characters or making superheroes look like ineffectual idiots.

[tinygaylaura]

And the "Superheroes suck because blah blah blah" character was the villain who was portrayed as a pathetic ass who Peter took down while telling him how much he was a pitiful little creep

And he was killed off in a hilarious way cementing the way he was a loser through and through

This is probably the best story I've ever seen from Ennis. Even the slightly edge lord-y bits worked in a more horror comics way than just in a "Look how dark and edgy and mature I'm being!" way

[lbd_nytetrayn]

Yeah, that's what I dig about it. This feels like something that could work in the intersection of Spider-Man and the Immortal Hulk.

[sabertoothlotus]

I have to ask... how does eating a radioactive spider lead to this? Did the one dead spider somehow become 1000 live ones? Did Carl turn into some kind of weird spider-magnet that just attracted all the spiders near him until there was nothing left?
Or am I supposed to give it the same hand-wave that getting super-powers from a radioactive spider bite gets?

[lordultimus]

In fairness, it has been a while since he ate it. Carl probably waited so long just so it could get to a certain point.

[tinygaylaura]

The moral of the story is don't eat radioactive spiders

[lego_joker]

The cartoon-y art works for some aspects of this, but for others... I dunno, I honestly think I would've liked to see what grossout-master Dillion could've done with this script.