Web of Spider-Man 118

When you think of Spider-Man’s cast of characters, there are the totally obvious A-listers that come to mind—like Spider-Man himself, the Green Goblin, Venom, Mary Jane, the Black Cat and Aunt May. Each of those characters was big enough to have their own comic at one point. And yeah, before you call bullshit on Aunt May having her own comic, why don’t you check out MTU 147, a fucking gem where Aunt May gains cosmic powers and teams up with the kid from the Fantastic Four to feed Hostess fruit pies to Galactus. It’s still a mystery how to reconcile that story with the one where Spider-Man made a web dummy that scared Aunt May so badly that she almost died. Web dummy? Scary. Galactus? Meh. Maybe her crippling dementia somehow improved her constitution by eliminating her ability to experience fear.

Side note: Mary Jane didn’t have her own comic book in the Spider-Man volume 1 era, but there certainly were whole issues dedicated to her, as well as at least half a graphic novel. She turned into the Red Sonja one time too. 

There are also D-listers, like the kid who made himself a fully working Doctor Octopus costume, Man Mountain Marko, and of course, Lonesome Pinky, Peter Parker’s former next door neighbour who was a 4’ tall caterwauling Jewish cowboy. Yep, that was a thing.

Sandwiched between these two extremes are the B-listers and C-listers. There are a ton of these, and I group them together because a lot of times a B-lister will become a C-lister or a C-lister will become a B-lister. Just depends who the writers want to focus on in a particular year.

Not to mention, sometimes a fucking Z-lister will become an all star S-Class lister, like when Spider-Man’s clone (who only really appeared in one book back in 1975, though his corpse made a couple extra appearances) comes back 20 years later, becomes the “Scarlet Spider”, jams himself into all 5 ongoing Spider-titles and even has the audacity to REPLACE Spider-Man for several MONTHS and having the titles temporarily renamed to the Amazing Scarlet Spider, the Spectacular Scarlet Spider, Web of Scarlet Spider, (no adjective) Scarlet Spider, and of course, Scarlet Spider mother effin’ Unlimited. Yes, I have them all. And I know everything.

After 30+ years of publication across numerous titles, Spider-Man builds up an incredible cast of B/C-listers. That wouldn’t be a problem if it wasn’t for the invention of the new 90’s house party-type filler issue, which feeds off the ever expanding Spider-cast like a Lovecraaftian parasite. And now that I think about it, a house party is exactly what those issues were. 

Everyone just happened to be there (mostly because there was nowhere else to be), people argue over old squabbles, there’s a big fight and everybody trashes the place by the end of the night. Yep, that’s a perfect synopsis of Maximum Carnage alright (which takes the metaphor even further given that it sucked but everyone bought in out of pure FOMO).

But Maximum Carnage and Project: Sandstorm aren’t the only house party-type filler issues. Nope, not by a long shot. See, with a house party “story”, you don’t really need to turn your brain on in order to fill 32 pages (minus ads). If you smush enough characters together, they’ll all have at least one thing to say to each other, and then that will take care of having to come up with something meaningful. 

Let’s look at Web of Spider-Man 113. Web 113 came in a polybag with an “animation cell style drawing” that was not an animation cell, nor did it features drawings from the show it was purporting to promote. Nice!

And you know what else is nice? A science gala. A science gala is the perfect setting for Spider-Man characters to all get together for a house party. Some are there for the science! Some are there for the gala! And some are there because they just don’t want to miss out on whatever’s happening, no matter how dumb it is. 

Reporters? Check. Rival photographers? Check. Wealthy villains with slicked back hair? Check. Sexy cat burglar in a black dress? Check. A scientist warning everyone that the technology isn’t ready? Check. A fucking werewolf astronaut? Check yo’ self. Gambit from the X-Men? Ch-ch-ch-check.

That’s right, Web 118’s science gala has it all. There’s Spider-Man (obviously), J. Jonah Jameson (an A-lister, to be clear), the Black Cat, Gambit, Lance Brannon (Peter’s photography rival at the Daily Bugle), Lance’s girlfriend Amy (who tried to date Peter Parker to make Lance jealous), Betty Brant (former A-lister in the Ditko era who was a secretary at the Bugle and Peter’s first love interest, but who married Ned Leeds, who turned out to be the Hobgoblin, and then died, and then turned out not to be the Hobgoblin after all... anyway, Betty is a reporter now), Marla Madison (JJJ’s wife who bonded with him while creating Spider Slayers), John Jameson (JJJ’s son, who was an astronaut featured in Amazing Spider-Man 1!... who then became a werewolf and who now works as a security guard at Arkham, I mean Ravencroft Asylum), and Dr. Kafka (the sexy head therapist at Ravencroft). They also introduce some new characters, like Archer Bryce (the clearly evil industrialist with a ponytail) and Victor, his clearly evil butler, Cole Cooper the “new guy” photographer, and Mr. Wilson, the guy who is trying desperately to cheat on his wife with every woman at the science gala. 

The gang’s all here.