Seen In: Spider-Man: Reign #3 There have been numerous attempts to gritty up everybody's Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man over the years, all of them apparently lying in forgetting about what kind of character Spidey is supposed to be. In this story, called Spider-Man: The Dark Knight ReturnsI mean Spider-Man: Reign, Spidey has been gone for thirty years and Peter Parker is living life as a florist in a New York that's pretty much controlled by the mayor and his draconian police force, called the Reign. Encouraged by J. Jonah Jameson to put on the webs again, Peter is nonetheless tortured by visions of Mary Jane. He sees her all over and talks to her. And then, in the third issue, we find out what happened to MJ. The radioactive spider that gave Peter his powers? Well it turns out that this spider not only irradiated Peter's blood, but his other bodily fluids as well. This means the very act of loving Peter infected MJ and she contracted cancer as a result of this exposure. So Peter inadvertently killed MJ with his radioactive semen. Let's do that again so those words can linger: Radioactive. Semen. Worse than someone thinking this was a clever idea, this is freaking Spider-Man we're talking about here. He's one of Marvel's most established and well-known characters, beloved the world over. Do you know how many levels of approval this idea must have gone through before it made it to print? This is the kind of thing you might expect to occur as an exchange between characters in a Kevin Smith movie or something you'd read in bad fanfiction. It's not something you'd ever in a million years expect to read (or even WANT to read) in an actual, honest-to-god Spider-Man comic.
Percival Constantine is the author of several novels and short stories, including the Vanguard superhero series, and regularly writes and comments on movies, comics, and other pop culture. More information can be found at his website, PercivalConstantine.com
