10 Terrible Mistakes That Almost Ruined Spider-Man For Everyone‏

8. The Case Of The Missing Spider Baby

One of the long-forgotten plot threads from the Clone Saga was Peter Parker and Mary Jane's baby daughter. Ben Reilly's adoption of the Spider-Man role left the couple free to worry about MJ's pregnancy, with the due date steadily approaching along with the end of the storyline, which was more than a little portentous. As these things tend to go, the baby was not to be, because Spider-Man and his loved ones can never be happy. It's, like, an unwritten rule, or something. So, Mary Jane was poisoned by an agent of the Green Goblin, and the baby was stillborn. Or was it...? Because after that tragic scene Norman Osborn's woman on the inside, Alison Mongrain, has apparently stolen the "dead" child for her employer, and gone on the run with it. Also the baby is alive. And then it isn't. It's very confusing, and it's hard to discern whether it'd be worse for MJ and Peter to have a daughter to dote over when he's busy saving the world, or that we got this run around for a good couple of years. Having a daughter wouldn't necessarily have ruined Spider-Man - the alternate-universe Spider-Girl, where young May grows up to have her father's superpowers and takes up his role as wall crawling guardian of New York City, was pretty good while it lasted - but, considering the brain trust behind the Clone Saga was still in charge, you can't help but think they would have made such a hash of things that the kid would either have been a hapless plot device or, worse, the star of Three Spider-Men And A Baby.