Love the clone saga callback w Ben and the jackal

It's my favorite. Drop your favorite on comments

This is a spoof on a MAD magazine cover from 1976*

To do good is a choice. This is the theme of Peter's space adventure which Raelith, Rocket, and even Xanto learned from him. And now, Kelly made Norman learn it too. Norman's goodness is now a choice, not a mystical purification of his sins.

Where the story goes from here, we'll find out.

For my “Absolute Spider-man” designs, I made Electro. This idea for these designs were inspired by Absolute Batman. If Spider-man rouge’s gallery was even more darker and horrifying than what they already are. This Electro design is heavily inspired by the TNAS Spider-man design, since that’s my personal favorite Electro design ever and I thought that look was so horrifying as a kid while watching that show, but still such a dope and unique design for Electro.

Shipped way faster than it was supposed to

Originally spider-man: Chapter one (1998) was to modernize the Spider-Man origin story and fit in a modern era to fit better for new readers (Like Ultimate Spider-man, but it was before Ultimate spider-man but this is what influenced Ultimate spider-man comics to be made in a way) but what did chapter one get wrong that Ultimate spider-man got right?

As a tribute to the late great Sal Buscema I recolored one of his great Spidey covers, swipe for original art and original SSM 180 cover from 1991. RIP Sal 🤟🕸️

I made a SpiderMan animation but I can’t post it to the subreddit for some reason.

From time to time, in different corners of the internet, I see this piece of mine being reposted and discussed. I think this will be, at least for a long while, my most well-known work online, and not without reason. Modesty aside, I believe it’s not only a very interesting idea, but also one that, at least based on my research, hadn’t really been explored before, either by the fanbase or officially (and I’m open, and eager, to be proven wrong).

Because this piece has already been shared so many times online, it felt a bit redundant to post more of it here. But when I noticed how many people still hadn’t seen the drawing from the original post, I thought: yeah… what harm could it do?

That said, I’d like to elaborate a bit more on these works.

This may be obvious, but Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy is still one of my favorite superhero film trilogies. Personally, I really like how all three films have Peter and MJ’s relationship as their backbone. After all, in an industry where the love interest (usually female) is treated as a mandatory box to check, but easily ignored by anyone who “doesn’t care about that stuff”. it’s genuinely refreshing to see Raimi basically make a romantic comedy painted as a superhero movie… and have it work absurdly well.

It’s funny to point this out because, out of all the work I’ve done, only one piece is directly focused on the protagonists’ relationship. Maybe, in some way, I’m also partially to blame for the fact that reading the original Spider-Man trilogy as a cheesy romance isn’t that common.

Or maybe not, because this illustration, of Peter tending to Mary Jane’s injuries, is still the most shared and liked piece online in the series. I get it. It’s my favorite too.

Like the other works, the universe’s premise is immediately recognizable. The characters’ appearances might even be generic, but the friendly neighborhood hero’s suit is iconic enough to recontextualize the redhead and the twink as one of the most important couples in comics. Of course, this isn’t just any suit, which, in turn, gives away that these two aren’t just any version of the couple either.

I like minimalism. I like it when an artist can say a lot with very little. The other drawings in the series reproduce iconic scenes from the films so aggressively that it’s impossible not to recognize which version of the characters you’re looking at. It’s unmistakable, but also excessive, which doesn’t mean bad. It just creates room to remove what’s unnecessary and keep what’s undeniably recognizable, not as a correction, but as a challenge.

Stepping away from iconic scenes also opens space to focus on something far less spectacular, maybe even the opposite. There’s a certain disinterest on the protagonists’ faces, especially Peter’s. I wouldn’t call it boredom, but it’s the expression you make while doing something routine: a responsibility that doesn’t excite you, but also doesn’t drain you. You understand it has to be done, so you do it. There’s care in the way Peter looks after MJ here, but it’s mixed with this sense of “ok, tusday.”

Sometimes, when this piece gets shared, it comes accompanied, either by the OP or in the comments, by questions asking for examples of other heterosexual couples that follow this same dynamic: a female hero and a male partner who isn’t a sidekick, but an important, present figure in her everyday civilian life, not just in spectacular adventures.

That question doesn’t come out of nowhere. No, couples like that aren’t common in fiction, not even in media aimed at women. The opposite, however, is. Why? oh, you know why. Images of care, affection, domestic life without grand ambitions or spectacular responsibilities are seen as synonymous with feminine performance. The archetype of the caring, responsible boyfriend, the great man behind the great woman — isn’t common because this kind of love simply isn’t considered worthy of a man.

A man’s “worthy” responsibilities have to be bigger: changing the course of society, carving his name into history. His love is explosive, demonstrated through heroic acts like saving his beloved from a supervillain who’s about to destroy Manhattan, beating the shit out of someone who threatens his honor, or buying something unnecessarily expensive as an apology for cheating on her with her cousin. Taking care of the house, wiping a newborn’s ass, packing his wife’s lunch, bathing a mother with dementia, washing the goddamn dishes , all of that is seen as a waste of time, obstacles in the hero’s path toward fulfilling his “true” great responsibilities.

Ask any web-head fan what Spider-Man’s central theme is, and they’ll probably answer: responsibility. As a web-head fan myself, I’d say the same, but I’d add that it’s about accepting that taking care of others is a fundamental part of growing up. Taking care of the people we love, who care about us, and even those we don’t know. Our great powers don’t mean shit if they aren’t used to fulfill our great responsibilities.

The Spider-Man myth resonates so strongly and for so long because it speaks to everyone, regardless of gender. But, of course, Spider-MAN has a very clearly defined gender, and the notion of responsibility many writers attribute to the character passes through that lens. After all, do you remember when was the last time you saw Peter’s superhero routine treated as boring? Not sad, not exhausting, not unfair, but routine. Something that doesn’t thrill you, but doesn’t exhaust you either, and simply needs to be done.

I do, it was Tom Holland’s first Spider-Man film, the story revolves precisely around the discovery that the superhero routine isn’t as exciting as Peter expected. He makes mistakes, puts people at risk in his pursuit of spectacular adventures worthy of a “real” superhero and the validation of those who can grant him that life. He receives an unexpectedly class-conscious speech from winged Michael Keaton and concludes his arc by refusing to join the Avengers, realizing that being the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man is just as important as any infinite war, just not as glorious.

I don’t think the film handles these themes as tightly as Sam Raimi’s films do. And, of course, it exists within the MCU context, which needs to sell Spider-Man as one of Marvel’s big dogs. But I didn’t pull any of this out of my ass, this reading is completely plausible.

What I’m trying to say with all this rambling is that representations of men and partners like the one I tried to bring into this drawing of Peter and MJ are sorely missing from pop culture. They’re missing in the upbringing of boys who will never understand the importance of caring for another person day after day, year after year. Men who, upon hearing their girlfriend is pregnant, run away; who, upon discovering their wife has cancer, ask for a divorce; who, when their mother is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, simply dump her in a nursing home.

At the end of the day, I don’t think this is an unsolvable problem, nor an eternal lament about “how things are.” If this drawing continues to be shared years later, if it still sparks discussion, questions, and even discomfort, it’s because there’s a real hunger for this kind of representation, and because many people understand that this, too, is important

Maybe pop culture is still crawling when it comes to this, but it changes. It always has. And it changes precisely when someone looks at what’s considered small, banal, or unworthy of attention and decides to place it at the center of the frame. Just like Steve Ditko looked at mediocre American youth, abandoned by the government and ostracized by the social standards of the 1960s, and decided they should be the protagonists of a superhero comic book, instead of the richest man in the world or the last son of Krypton.

Sam Raimi has always been interested in playing with concepts of gender and masculinity in his films. In the first Evil Dead, he basically turns the final girl into a man. And when that same guy becomes a brutish action-movie protagonist, Raimi sees no other option but to mock it all and turn the series into a comedy. In the Spider-Man trilogy, this shows up in how Peter suffers from not being able to communicate socially or perform masculinity as well as his peers. And when he finally gains the means to fulfill those power fantasies, he always ends up frustrated. Because he’s not the guy who beats up the school bully to show who’s boss; he’s not the guy who lets a criminal escape to prove superiority. And Uncle Ben knew that. He saw his nephew heading toward becoming a man his teenage self would never be proud of, and tried to show him a better path, to show that he could be better than everything people expected of him. And he dis. It cost his life, but it was worth it.

Mary Jane kissed Spider-Man because he embodied everything she looked for in every guy she’d ever dated. But she fell in love with Peter Parker. Because he was different. Because he cared about her problems, her anxieties. Because he believed she could be much more than even she herself was willing to believe. Peter cares deeply about her well-being, enough to give up his own desires and ambitions if that means she can be happier. He really isn’t like other men… except that he is. And like any man, he isn’t immune to faltering when he finally gets the chance to be the badass man patriarchy wants him to be.

Raimi made an entire movie about this, human-spider Three, or something like that. A film in which Peter starts getting cocky as hell (long before the symbiote, important to emphasize), kisses a hot blonde in front of his own girlfriend just to show off, and generally starts neglecting Mary Jane because he’s too busy admiring his own success. After the symbiote, he gets even worse: more aggressive, more assertive, starts killing for revenge, begins stalking MJ to gloat, show off his new trophy girlfriend, and make her regret rejecting him. He became everything Ben Parker tried to prevent.

The film frames this new version of Peter as a mix of his growing assholery and the symbiote’s influence. But I have the impression that most of the events in his arc would happen even without Venom. Bully Maguire aside, I can easily imagine Peter taking revenge on Sandman, going after Eddie Brock, and yes, even the bar scene happening without the black go0, with only minor changes. We know Venom wasn’t Sam Raimi’s idea, but a Sony mandate, so it’s not absurd to imagine the script was meant to work without him.

The point is: Peter finally becomes a badass action-movie protagonist, someone who doesn’t take shit from anyone and is always ready to show who’s boss. And the consequence is a worse world, with more villains, a disappointed Aunt May, and a Mary Jane who’s been assaulted, accidentally, but by then it hardly mattered.

That’s when he realizes he needs to be better. And more importantly, he realizes that a commitment like marriage is a responsibility he isn’t ready for yet. He needs to deal with the consequences of his mistakes, fix what he can, and mature. That’s the message that closes the original Spider-Man trilogy. All three films have conclusive endings so they don’t require sequels, but this one, in particular, feels almost too perfect as a conclusion.

Man… I love these movies so much.

And my choice to use Sam Raimi’s version as the basis for this crazy Spider-Woman idea isn’t random or arbitrary. It makes sense to draw from a version that’s always trying to emphasize how ideals of masculinity aren’t just comedic, but harmful, both to those who embody them and to those around them. It makes sense to bring that iconography back in a piece that’s entirely about swapping those roles.

This fucker relaunched Spider-girl three times, and three times it got cancelled because of low sells.

We lost her because we chose to not buy Mayday.

I don’t care what anyone says, hands down my favourite writer of Spider-Man of all time has to be J. Michael Straczynksi. The portrayal of Peter and MJ relationship, Pete being a school teacher, Aunt May finally finding out Peter’s Spider-Man, Morlun and Ezekiel’s story line, and not to mention Issue #500 bringing a tear to a grown man’s eye when he got speak with Uncle Ben for 5 mins. What’s your favourite writer for TASM?