Join Bobby on her casual journey through the Earth-616 Spider-Man comics, starting all the way back in 1962.
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Thanks Ken Penders
Hi! Welcome to Thanks Steve Ditko, a sister project to my Archie Sonic blog Thanks Ken Penders. I'll be posting casually about the Earth-616 Spider-Man comics as I read them. You can read more about the blog here, or read my archive from the start.
So, obviously, this blog is still on the back burner for now. As I've said, this is a place for me to post about Spider-Man when I feel like posting about Spider-Man, not a formal project with any sort of schedule. But I figured I'd mention that I'm not following a new run of Spider-Man. People always say that you shouldn't worry too hard about knowing the entire continuity when it comes to superhero comics, and instead just jump on board for any run that seems interesting to you. So I'm finally taking that advice!
I am, of course, talking about the new run of Ultimate Spider-Man from writer Jonathan Hickman. I know people have spoken highly of Hickman's other work, and there was a lot of hype for this new take on Peter Parker (especially given how much people are hating the current 616 run), and this seemed interesting to me. A version of Peter who's married with children, who only becomes Spider-Man as a grown-ass man? Yeah, sure, I'm down.
Only the first issue is out currently, but I'm liking this more mature, world-weary take on the cast pretty well so far - particularly Uncle Ben, who's alive in this and gets so much focus in this first issue that I almost thought Hickman was going to do something truly insane and make Ben an elderly Spider-Man lmao. And it's a good thing I like the characterization, because Peter doesn't actually become Spider-Man until the very end of the issue. But I'm definitely down to see where Mid-Life Crisis Spider-Man goes, even if the rebooted Ultimate Universe continuity stuff that leads to Peter becoming Spider-Man mostly goes over my head.
I won't be talking about that series too much on here, but maybe every now and then I'll have thoughts on an arc or a particular moment or something. We'll see.
Sony's PlayStation 5 Presents Insomniac's Marvel's Spider-Man 2 (the third game in the series)
I beat the main story and have enjoyed my time with the game overall! I want to talk about spoilers and things that I liked and disliked in the story, so here's a post with some scattered thoughts.
(Hello! I haven't forgotten that this blog exists! Like I said, no update schedule, I will read more of the Lee/Ditko comics whenever I make time for it. I've actually been sitting on a mostly-complete version of this post since I beat the game in October, thinking that I'd finish the rest of the side quests so I could throw in thoughts on those. But... eh, I'll do that whenever the inevitable DLC rolls around. I just wanna get these thoughts posted.)
Spider-Cop No More
First off: they downplayed the cop shit!!! This was the first thing that really struck me about the game, and I'm stunned that they actually listened to criticism on this. I thought we'd just be stuck with it forever.
It'll never be completely gone, of course. Spider-Man is always going to leave criminals webbed up for the police to take to prison, hoping that they'll do their time and come out the other side as Productive Members of Society. That's just a thing I begrudgingly accept as part of the genre that will probably never go away. But Spider-Man is no longer repairing police surveillance networks. You're no longer beating the shit out of random drug dealers. Gangs of escaped convicts still wearing their orange jumpsuits are no longer terrorizing the streets of New York.
Instead, Peter and Miles are played more as firefighters. Sometimes very literally! They work with firefighters, they rescue people from collapsing buildings, they rush injured people to the hospital. In general there's a huge increase in the number of random onlookers present during the big action setpieces, and the Spider-Men frequently have to save them from harm. One of the major side quest lines is even literally about a cult of arsonists, and you'll routinely find burning fuel tanker trucks you have to extinguish with your webs. It's great! Love this for them.
I also generally liked the side missions in this. There's a lot of good stuff with the Spider-Men being neighborhood heroes willing to help out anyone in need, no matter the problem. Some of them can get corny, sure, but that street level stuff has always been the real heart of Spider-Man to me.
Gameplay
The gameplay's as fun as ever. That probably goes without saying. I will not be spending a thousand words explaining that swinging is fun.
In particular, I really liked the changes to the Focus mechanic. I never loved the way Miles' game made you choose between healing and doing your special attacks, but here your four specials have their own cooldowns, and the Focus meter is spent on either healing or finishers. It still offers that risk/reward element, but those vicious cycles where you can't do any real damage because you keep needing to heal aren't nearly as bad as they were before.
Personally I didn't turn off the swing assist or turn on fall damage, because the streamlined swinging never bothered me in these games, but I'm glad the options are there for people who want them.
Kraven
I liked Kraven in this! I liked the way they leaned into his Hunters being this weird death cult, and him wanting to go down in a blaze of glory against a worthy foe, to the point that he's actually disappointed anytime a foe can't kill him. It riffs on things people liked in Kraven's Last Hunt without being the exact same story. I like that Kraven's gang is renting out this manor or whatever and just being a complete terror to the wait staff. I liked the way Kraven hunting Peter's rogues' gallery clashed with Peter's belief in giving his villains second chances. I liked that they were willing to have Kraven kill off a couple of the minor villains from the first game to sell how dangerous he is. (I know some people hated this, but like, come on. We already fought the Sinister Six. They don't need to do that again.) I like the way Kraven pushed Peter to the absolute brink, turning him more and more aggressive with the Black Suit. Good stuff all around, even if the Hunter enemy types did wear out their welcome a little bit by the end.
The Black Suit arc
I think I liked the way Insomniac handled Peter's Black Suit arc overall, but there's a tradeoff here.
They REALLY lean into the body horror tentacle stuff, with Black Suit Peter basically just being a skinny Venom by the end. The sequence where you play as Mary Jane while the symbiote puppets an unconscious Peter's body around and goes on a rampage against the Hunters was REALLY great at selling how scary Peter is becoming, and it made me completely change my tune on the inclusion of the MJ stealth missions in the sequel. Having to beat an out-of-control Peter as Miles immediately after Peter beats Kraven was also really good. This is all cool!
BUT, the thing is... with the symbiote powers being so freaky from the start, it really pushes my suspension of disbelief when Peter and co. take so long to become wary of it. I guess when you've been bitten by a radioactive spider and given superpowers, and when you live in the same universe as the Avengers and the X-Men, your perception of what's "normal" is going to be pretty warped. But they buy the whole "organic exosuit created to treat Harry's illness" story WAY too easily lmao. How do the self-aware slime tentacles help with his illness, exactly?
And I'm not sure how I feel about giving Peter Anti-Venom powers in the last act. It feels like it's primarily a concession so that they can give players that branch of their skill tree back, but honestly, the designer in me thinks it would be really cool (if risky) to just permanently lock players out of Peter's most powerful skills past a certain point. Yeah, it'd definitely piss people off, but it drives home the idea that Peter's given up greater power because it's the right thing to do. It'd put you in his shoes! Instead he just gets the symbiote powers back, but it's fine because the Venom voice in his head is gone and also the slime tendrils that explode out of his body are white now, which means they're good.
I have to say it. I'm sorry. The glistening white goo... they turned Peter into the Amazing Cum-Man. I changed back to the Classic Suit after rolling the credits and forgot I still had the Anti-Venom skills equipped, so I just saw regular old Spider-Man exploding his white goo everywhere. Terrible.
Assuming Peter is just stepping into more of a supporting role to Miles and not fully retiring after the events of this game, I really hope the Anti-Venom stuff is gone. I get that he needed it to counter Venom, but that's not what I want for Peter Parker.
Miles
Miles is good in this, and I really like his arc where he struggles with whether or not he should avenge his dad by killing Martin Li. I like how all that plays out. Unfortunately, they don't quite stick the landing when it comes to making him and Peter feel like equals in terms of narrative focus. His arc is definitely the B-plot to Peter's for the middle chunk of the story, which I guess was kind of inevitable since they decided to do the Black Suit arc. But Miles does at least get a lot of moments to shine, and by the end he's very much taking the lead as the main Spider-Man.
Becoming the main Spider-Man also gets Miles a new, wholly original suit that ended up being super controversial, and honestly... I kinda like it? Or at least I like what it's going for, even if the actual design could still use some work. It's something totally unique for Miles, and I like spandex/streetwear combo suits like what the Spider-Verse movies have popularized. But showing his hair is really pushing the limits of his secret identity. He hangs around Brooklyn Visions WAY too much for his classmates to not recognize his voice and haircut. And I understand why people would be wary about it becoming his "canon" look moving forward. But I think it's got potential.
On the subject of Miles, though, I will say that while I liked Miles' side missions, it feels like he's often saddled with the game's broad, kinda touristy, kinda token attempts at Showcasing The Diversity Of New York, in a way that Peter isn't.
I like that Miles has a deaf graffiti artist girlfriend that he and Ganke sign with, and I like that there's a series of side missions that explore some local jazz history, and I like that there's a mission where Miles helps a gay classmate ask his crush to prom. I like all these things! I like Spider-Man being involved with his community, and that said community includes such a wide variety of people! I like that this game slows down to savor these types of moments instead of just being all action all the time! But when I step back, I notice some patterns.
Hailey doesn't have a big role in the main plot, especially when compared to MJ, but Miles gets a side mission where you briefly play as her with muffled audio to teach you what being deaf is like. There are no major queer characters in the story - unless you count Felicia showing up for exactly one mission to mention she has an unseen, unnamed girlfriend in Paris now - but you get a side mission where Miles helps out a gay couple at his school, who then never come up again. To put it very uncharitably, they can feel like Very Special Episode missions. It's like the devs going: we're going to give Miles a Gay Mission, and an Impaired Hearing Mission, and a Cultural History Mission, so that we can say we touched on these things, but we're gonna make them all optional and keep them far away from the full-blown Superhero Stuff like fighting costumed villains. Those flavors cannot mix. Meanwhile, Peter gets to have a whole elaborate subplot about teaming up with Wraith to track down fucking Cletus Kasady. There's an imbalance here, and I think it's part of the reason why Peter still feels like the "main" Spider-Man for so much of the story.
I think this was all written with admirable intentions, but as others have pointed out, you can kinda tell that this game was mainly written by some white guys based in California. These attempts at depicting various marginalized groups can feel kind of detached in the same way that Insomniac's map of New York doesn't quite line up with the real thing. But I dunno. I'm not really the one to dig deep into some of this stuff as a white woman from Florida. I would be curious to read others' takes on this.
Maybe I'm just being overly cynical about the writers' well-meaning but corny and kinda out of touch liberal politics because of the podcasts.
The podcasters
I wish Jameson was in this more! They psyched us out by giving him a full character model for, like, two scenes. I like him being MJ's boss, but I wish we saw inside the Daily Bugle offices to get more Jameson.
At least his podcasts are better than the ones in the Miles game, though. Him completely trusting in Roxxon was just too much for me. Here he condemns Oscorp for the symbiote shit, and he also gets some moments where he takes the ongoing crises seriously and isn't just ranting about the Spider-Men. He isn't just a conspiracy theorist crackpot here. Shit like his "fuck Spider-Man, we have a justice system for a reason" speech makes him feel more like a human being with a point of view, rather than just a caricature. Definitely an improvement.
Unfortunately, I still find The Danikast grating. I'm sorry, Ashly Burch. It's not your fault. The quirky heckin' wholesome millennial podcaster lady who catches you up on current events and then reminds you to drink 64 ounces of water a day in the same breath is just too much for me. At least she doesn't have any lines as bad as her throwing in a "damn" and then going (direct quote here) "That's right - no censoring! That's how REAL I'm being right now!" like in Miles' game. Instead they give her this, like, almost psychic insight into the main plot to try and make her the angel on Peter's shoulder. The second Peter gets the symbiote she's like "Wow, y'all. Have you seen Spider-Man's new black suit? Something's different about him. He's been giving me such bad vibes lately. #NotMySpiderMan" Also she's supposed to be this, like, underdog independent podcaster who started her show on a whim and has become the voice of the people... but she's got billboards plastered all over the fucking city. Which makes her feel like an industry plant lmao
Again, there's a detachment with the writing. This is, like, some middle aged white liberal game dev guys' idea of what a modern leftist teenager would think is a Cool Activism Podcast. Unfortunately, because Insomniac thinks Danika's a hero, Mary Jane's triumphant ending is that she quits her job at the Bugle to become a podcaster, too, delivering a thinly veiled monologue about the pandemic to kick off her new podcast literally titled "The New Normal." She's going to save the world with podcasting, because that's the highest form of activism, I guess.
Venom
So! Venom! Venom was... okay.
Surprising no one, Harry Osborn is Venom. Harry's okay both as himself and as Venom, but I'm not sure his arc is a smooth one. He starts out as Peter's comically perfect best friend who returns to reminisce about the good ol' days and hand him his dream job on a silver platter, and then later he becomes a little ball of rage over the fact that Peter gets his symbiote and can't/won't give it back. I'm not sure that pivot is handled the most convincingly. You kind of have to write it off as the symbiote messing with their heads, I guess.
When he actually becomes Venom, I'm... mixed on the execution. On the one hand, the cool factor is absolutely there. He's a very cool big monster, and Tony Todd is great in the role. But he also wants to take over the world and make everyone a symbiote, and aside from any lingering resentment towards Peter, that's really all there is to him. It makes for a good video game to have a bunch of symbiote enemies and creepy symbiote nests and symbiote tentacles climbing up the sides of buildings in the last act... but is that really what I want out of Venom? Probably not. But he sure does look cool as a big monster guy to fight, and I was happy he was briefly playable.
Suits
Part of me feels like there's something lacking about the suit selection here, but almost every suit I liked in the previous games is back, and also I'm the type of person to give Peter the Classic Suit the second I unlock it and use that for most of the game. So does it really matter for me?
Peter's selection feels dominated by the various live action movie suits, but I get that those are going to be some of the suits people want to wear the most. I wish he had the Peter B. Parker skin to go with Miles' Spider-Verse alts, though. No idea why it's missing. Really I think I mainly just want more of the Spider-Verse designs.
Also I've complained about how most of the original suits designed for these games make Peter and Miles look like they were bitten by radioactive Alienware products, but I can just, you know. Wear other suits.
Misc thoughts
Everyone's already made this joke, but it's extremely funny that the Avengers didn't help with the symbiote invasion. Took one look at that and decided it wasn't their problem
On the subject of other superheroes, I do wish these games would acknowledge the Fantastic Four more. Peter's close relationship with that team feels woefully underutilized in his various adaptations
I like the trope of a boss fight that's a heightened version of a personal conflict between two people who are close, where throughout the fight the boss is airing out their grievances while the hero tries to get through to them emotionally. That especially works for Spider-Man! But WOW has Insomniac played that card a lot of times by the end of Spider-Man 2 lol
They're teasing the addition of Silk, I guess? I'm gonna be honest, I don't know shit about Silk, but I guess it was inevitable that they'd give us some form of Spider-Woman at some point. Gotta work all those costumes in somehow, and they're not brave enough to let one of the boys cosplay as Spider-Gwen.
They WERE, however, brave enough to let Harry say he loves Peter. I liked that little moment. They presumably meant it platonically, but clearly ol' Yaoi Lowenthal knows what's up
Post-leak addendum
So, obviously, by the time I got around to finishing this post the big Insomniac leak happened. I wish the game industry wasn't so secretive that it took a massive, dangerous data breach just to get our hands on some very basic info that would be public knowledge if Insomniac was a film studio, but here we are.
We now know that Insomniac spent somewhere around $315 million making Spider-Man 2 - triple what the first Spider-Man game cost to make. A quote about this from a leaked presentation has been stuck in my head ever since I first saw it on Twitter. “Is 3x the investment in [Spider-Man 2] evident to anyone who plays the game?”
To be honest, I'm not sure it is.
I liked Spider-Man 2, but I'd probably say that overall I liked it about as much as the first game. It's certainly a somewhat bigger game, with marginally more realistic looking graphics thanks to the power of the PS5. But I think I could do without ray tracing and more realistic hair rendering and whatnot if it meant that these games didn't take like five years and hundreds of millions of dollars to make. I could not give less of a shit if the swinging animations were recycled between games. I'd be fine with them being shorter, too.
I like these games, but as we look at that leaked project lineup and realize that Insomniac is turning into The Marvel Game Studio, I think about how many smaller, more original games that those resources could go towards if they scaled back the Marvel stuff just a bit. How many Ape Escapes or Patapons or Gravity Rushes could get made for the budget of just one of these massive AAA tentpole games of Sony's, which are apparently barely even breaking even? How many could be made for the budget of the "smaller, cheaper" Miles Morales game, which somehow cost $156 million to make despite using an updated version of the same Manhattan map from the first game? Hell, how many smaller games could have been made with the $39 million that went into remastering the first Spider-Man game for PS5 a mere two years after launch? How many people will lose their jobs if any one of Insomniac's upcoming Marvel games underperforms - which, in this case, could mean selling "only" 5 million copies? And would hardcore PlayStation fans even accept those smaller games at this point, now that they've been trained to only appreciate mega-budget Prestige Games with cutting edge graphics and treat everything else with disdain? How much worse will this get as the graphical arms race continues?
I think I just miss Japan Studio. Fuck Sony. Uhh but anyway the Spider-Man game this post was supposed to be about was good, some writing complaints aside. 8/10
Sorry for the disappearance on here for two weeks. I've been busier lately, and my free time's been eaten up by my three most anticipated games of the fall all coming out in the same week. And I assume most of y'all also follow TKP and are aware of all the Sonic stuff I've had to write about lately. But now I'm playing Insomniac's Marvel's Spider-Man 2 and enjoying that, so that's helping me get back into the Spidey mindset. (I am, of course, only a few issues away from the introduction of one of the game's big bads)
I did in fact have a bit of an existential crisis last night where I was like "Oh god... I have so many mediocre-to-bad Spider-Man comics ahead of me. I have to read One More Day someday. I have to read Sins Past. What the hell am I doing?" But then I remembered that there are also good Spider-Man comics past the Lee/Ditko run as well. I get to read Kraven's Last Hunt someday. Truly Spider-Man is a land of contrasts.
(Amazing Spider-Man #11, Apr. 1964 - Stan Lee, Steve Ditko)
So Otto's grand return is kind of convoluted, and kind of slots him into a role where any returning villain probably would've fit. It's honestly more about the ongoing Peter/Betty Brant romantic storyline, which I haven't commented on at all because it's not very interesting and I know how quickly it becomes irrelevant.
Betty's dark secrets that have previously been hinted at are revealed this issue. Basically, her brother back in Philadelphia owes some major gambling debts to a mob guy named Blackie Gaxton, and to repay his debts he's arranging for Doc Ock to break the mob guy out of jail. Betty is in on this because she dropped out of school and took her job at the Bugle so that she could try and help her brother get out of debt. Otto agrees because he's being paid a lot and that'll help kickstart his new career in crime. It's a lot.
Blackie Gaxton. Terrible name. Great face, though. Please appreciate it now, because he's never appearing in another issue.
(Amazing Spider-Man #11, Apr. 1964 - Stan Lee, Steve Ditko)
Doc Ock returning as a villain for the simple reason that they let him out of jail for good behavior is funny, but the fact that they let him walk out so casually with the arms fully visible really elevates this to something special. They just figure he's gonna go be a normal guy who happens to have four extra robot arms
I will definitely say that I've quickly found that reading Silver Age comics takes a lot longer than reading more modern comics or manga. I can sit down and read a whole manga volume on a whim no problem, but after one or two Spider-Man issues I'm winded.
Big splash pages of action - or, god forbid, two-page spreads - just didn't really exist back then. Once you get past the title page, pretty much every page is gonna be a full 7-9 panels. And Stan JAM-PACKED those panels full of dialogue, thought balloons, and narration spelling out every little thing in great detail. An action shot never speaks for itself. Spider-Man can't just punch a guy, he has to be like "With my spider-like reflexes it's a cinch to dodge out of the way, then give this guy one of my mean right hooks right to the jaw! That's gonna hurt in the morning, since I've got the proportional strength of a spider!" Ditko could do a nine-panel grid page and ol' Stan could squeeze 50-80 words into each and every one of them.
That's just what you did it back then, but it makes each issue feel so much longer, even though they're about the same length as your average modern comic.
(Amazing Spider-Man #10, Mar. 1964 - Stan Lee, Steve Ditko)
Big Man... was actually Little Man!!! Villain of the century
I look forward to when Lee and Romita Sr. revisit this idea in a few years by going "Hey what if we made a crime boss who actually WAS a really big man"
