5 Things I learned from reading “The Amazing Spider Man” Issue #1

This one hit me the instant I looked at the first page.  No other thoughts, nothing. I was dumbstruck.  I know he is supposed to be spider man and all, but this guy looks like he bench press 200lb, and then do my taxes afterward.  No wonder he is considered a social pariah.  I would assume the reason why everyone treats him so badly at school is not because he is a nerd, but because they think he is a Narc.  It’s like… every other time you talk to the guy he tries to slip into the conversation how swell the movie “Reefer Madness” is, or how he is so excited about waiting for marriage to have intercourse. Sweater-vests, giant glasses, lab coats?  Hell, he isn’t even trying to hide the fact that he is either a Narc or a sexual predator, in this panel here, he actually calls the other students “kids”.  I am thinking if the whole Spider Man thing hadn’t happened, Peter would have met his end in his late 30’s, after having a tearful ulterior-motived “lunch” where he expressed his love to a girl he had a crush on in high school, only to find out she had been happily married for the last 15 years.  2 weeks later, an unsuspecting mailman found him dead hanging from the rafters in his basement with a plastic bag over his head, and his pants on the floor, David Carradine style. You can thank your lucky stars that radioactive spider poisoned you, and granted you a personality Peter.

Apparently, when fashioning his costume, Peter didn’t get the message that spiders don’t generally cover themselves with their own webbing.  Seriously, bad move Spidey.  You cannot imagine how many flies and pigeons get stuck in there after a day swinging around the town peeping on people.  Maybe this is a side effect from the spider-ification?  When Peter uses his spider powers he emits some sort of secretions of web from his underarms?  Gross, useless, unnecessary and weird looking.  He originally put those extra webbings on because people were confused on who he was supposed to be.  I am sorry, I didn’t understand the whole web thing Peter, only your entire costume is covered with a web pattern, and your name is “Spider-man”. God the people in his city are stupid.

I mean, talk about a complete and utter douchenozzle.  Spider Man goes out of his way to save Jameson’s son’s life when the NASA flight he is piloting goes awry, and he still finds a way to blame Spiderman for something.  After the rescue operation that he and a military official give the thumbs up to, Jameson cries foul.  He complains about how Spiderman stole the spotlight away from his precious, incompetent son!  And how Spiderman broke into an Air force base and commandeered a jet for the rescue.  Talk about a grade A dick.  Just wait, it gets worse, apparently in the Spiderman universe, if you bitch loud enough at a press conference, you can control the FBI to send a warrant out for someone’s arrest.  No need for probable cause or evidence, you just need to say some stuff in front of a camera, and the FBI leaps into action to heed your call.

Not only has Petey P imagined doing this, he ends up spying on people through their windows all of the time.  It happens twice in this issue, not counting the time Peter fantasizes about doing it, but I am worried about this becoming a habit.  With great peeping powers come great responsibility Peter.  What would Aunt May think of you spying on your neighbors? Oh wait, that is right, you know what Aunt May thinks because you spend all of your time spying on her anyway. I am sure when she arrives, Spidey is going to spend a lot of time hanging out over Mary Jane’s windows.  Maybe this is the explanation for those under-arm web secretions?  If he doesn’t watch out, he might end up blind.

Well, apparently Stan Lee thinks that his readers suffer from some brain chemical deficiency, because at the end of the issue, there is an explanation of how Spiderman can use his web in amusing and marginally useful ways. I would like to let you know that this issue in no way had any recap on the origin story of Spiderman, (From the Amazing Fantasy series). Rather than providing a nice little recap of the origin story, they manage to put together a little infographic about all of the “cool” ways Spiderman could use his web abilities.  How about you start off by telling me how he even shoots out web from his hands?  I can’t remember if in this series he has actual webs come out of his arms or not. (I suppose those disgusting secretions are a clue)  I get all of the different Spider-mans origins confused.  I blame Tobey Maguire, somehow this is all his fault.  This chart thing is freaking hilarious, it goes from plausible to downright ludicrous in no time flat. We start out with some basics, A shield or a parachute, and even a net!  I would think that the net is really just a run of the mill spider web, but whatever.  Then, just in case you were thinking that Spiderman was actually useful, we got this… Skis, that is right, spider-web crafted Skis… you buy that?  Huh? Audience, you buy that?  Stan Lee thought you would.