10 Idiotic Mistakes That Almost Ruined Spider-Man
Marvel should've replaced Peter with Ben when they had the chance...
Though his status as one of the best and most popular superheroes is well and truly deserved, retaining such a position hasn't always been a web-swing in New York for Spider-Man.
There are several infamous occasions where the character and his wider mythos alike have been handled incredibly poorly by creators. These mistakes vary from minor out of character actions or dialogue to severe missteps that almost ruined the character of Spider-Man as a whole.
That may be hard to fathom with the regular supply of spot-on takes in film, video games, animation and of course comics that we receive nowadays, but it's true - the nineties did happen, after all.
These mistakes stray so far from the faithful takes of today that Marvel often responded to them with timeline clean-ups of similar ruthlessness to Deadpool's actions at the end of Deadpool 2. Further exemplifying just how damaging these stories were is the fact that most have never really been mentioned in the comics since, only being talked about in lists such as this one.
But can you blame us? Some of these decisions could've spelled nigh-on doom for the wall-crawler. It's a miracle he came out the other side intact.
10. Bringing His Parents Back As LMDs - The Amazing Spider-Man #366
Bringing back any characters from the dead is a cheap trick. It's an especially cheap in comics, a medium which only truly sees characters die if they don't sell enough books.
One thing that tends to be a rule with comic book character resurrections though is that parents stay dead. This is even more the case when the child of said parents was primarily raised by his aunt and uncle.
Obviously the creators of issue 366 of Amazing Spider-Man forgot this rule, as Peter Parker's rarely mentioned parents were brought back as Life Model Decoy's in a mad scheme by the Red Skull.
While, yes, a villain-controlled LMD is not the same as sticking the Parkers in something like DC's Lazarus Pit, these synthetic versions retained the memories and emotions of the originals, making them, for all intents and purposes, Peter's parents.
The thing is, bringing them back in any capacity was completely unnecessary, and could have very easily ruined one of the key elements of the teenage Spidey: his relationship with Aunt May. This particular issue might be one of personal taste, but it's probably safe to assume that most readers would deem this more idiotic than not.