When it comes to new, interesting and novel takes on Spider-Man and his supporting cast though, you can't do better than Tangled Web. An anthology series that was published between 2001 and 2003, each issue saw a new creative team taking on a new, strange and wonderful story in the Spidey universe. Marvel attracted the cream of the current comics industry to give their own spin on the characters, which lead to some genuinely effective and affecting stories told by superstars the likes of Garth Ennis, Peter Milligan and Darwyn Cooke. Milligan and artist Duncan Fegredo created one of the earliest stand-outs in the series, Flowers For Rhino, which saw the dim-witted supervillain falling for a mob boss's daughter and changing his ways, going under an experimental treatment which boosts his intellect, referencing the sci-fi classic Flowers For Algernon. Flowers For Rhino was a funny, sad and compassionate treatment of one of Spidey's most put-upon enemies, and some of the other stories followed a similar tack: Zeb Wells and Fegredo's I Was A Teenage Frogman explores the unique form of teenage shame connected with being the son of a crappy supervillain everybody makes fun of. There was plenty of serious fare, too, with Brian Azzarello and Scott Levy crafting a vicious, unflinching and ultimately celebratory story of the wrestling career of one Crusher Hogan, before some young upstart in a spider costume climbed into the ring and undermined him something fierce. If you only read one story from Tangled Web, for whatever reason, then you should probably make it Severance Package. Greg Rucka and Eduardo Risso's story was nominated for an Eisner Award for Best Single Issue of a Comic Book in 2002, but since then, it barely gets mentioned. It's a sad, serious story that looks at an ignored corner of the Spidey story: what happens to all those henchman who fail to take the hero down? Surely a criminal boss like Kingpin is pretty harsh in his discipline? Brother, you don't know the half of it. And neither does Spider-Man. If only he'd read this criminally underrated comic...
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
