The Major Problem No One Wants To Admit With Superhero Comics

3. Marvel In The Nineties - Is Spider-Man Even 'Hip' Anymore?

While there will almost certainly be examples from before of either Marvel or DC getting cold feet and wanting to revert a given character back to a perceived norm, the trend becomes impossible to ignore in the nineties.

Many readers consider the decade something of a dark period for the comics industry, and for good reason. While it wasn't without its moments (Knightfall and Jim Lee's X-Men come to mind), the decade also saw the speculator boom and bust bring Marvel to bankruptcy in 1996, which eventually led the company to sell the movie rights to their major properties, namely Spider-Man, the X-Men, and the Fantastic Four.

On the page, Marvel were also experiencing great difficulties with their flagship hero. Spider-Man was in the midst of a Clone Saga, a series that started out with an interesting enough premise but slowly began to drag on across the wall-crawler's various comics. The basic principle of the comic span off from a storyline in the 1970s, where Miles Warren, the Jackal, had cloned Peter Parker. Marvel decided it would be a great idea to bring the clone back, which led to the blond haired, denim-hoodie-wearing Ben Reilly becoming an integral part of Spidey's cast. The arc would fade into a convoluted mess over the course of two years, but it's a fantastic example when it comes to understanding the origins and quandaries of Marvel's quintessentially modern problem.

By this point in time, Peter Parker had been through it all. He'd married Mary Jane, bonded with an alien costume, fought Venom, and there was now the prospect of a child coming too. This new struggle arrived at a time where the character was about to embark on another shift in direction, but it seemed as though it was one Marvel were too afraid to follow through.

Initially, Ben Reilly was brought back as means of replacing Peter Parker as Spider-Man. Peter and MJ would have their child and move away from New York to live their life in peace, after it was revealed that Peter was the real clone all along. Ben, meanwhile, would stay in NYC with a new supporting cast, harkening back to the character's early days as a young bachelor. Mark Bagley designed a new costume (a great look, by the way), and - for a while - it seemed as though Ben really would be the new Spider-Man.

But Marvel were caught between two minds. They wanted to replace Peter out of the fear he wasn't 'relatable' anymore, while at the same time introducing a shake-up that arguably would've been twice as seismic as anything they could've done with the baby. Peter could've happily been Spider-Man, stayed married to MJ and had a child, but editorial were convinced they'd lose touch with readers.

By the time they came to committing to that change however, they chickened out again, bringing Norman Osborn back from the dead after twenty years, faking a miscarriage for MJ and Peter's child, and killing Ben off, thus revealing Peter to have been the real version all along.

Both were fatal mistakes, and it was this exact kind of tinkering that laid the groundwork for further disastrous retcons in the years following.

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