J Michael Straczynski's run on The Amazing Spider-Man is now mostly remembered as a hot mess, with the Babylon 5 creator being responsible both for Sins Past (the arc which revealed Gwen Stacy had two kids with Norman Osborn before he killed her) and One More Day (where Peter sold his marriage to Mary Jane to the devil so it never happened). Before he got in the business of editorial-mandated, catastrophic retcons, however, Straczynski introduced some genuinely interesting new concepts to the Spider-Man mythos: namely, the wall crawler being the latest in a long line of mystical heroes who hold the Spider Totem, as they have for centuries. Part and parcel of that Good Idea as the unfortunate Terrible Storyline, The Other. Spidey fights a spider-totem-killer called Morlun, who kills him. Everybody gets sad, Mary Jane and Aunt May mourn...and then a week later, after Peter's body has literally dissolved into nothingness, it turns out he had simply shed his skin and been reborn in a cocoon. Of course.
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/
