Spider-Man likes to blame the bad things that happen to him on what he calls "the old Parker
luck," but, honestly, it might just be karma. After all, Peter Parker has done all kinds
of awful things over the years — and these are some of the very worst.
Over time, the pre-spider-bite version Peter Parker has become known as a bit of a loveable
loser, but if you actually go back and reread Amazing Fantasy #15, he's actually just a
run-of-the-mill jerk. Yes, old Puny Parker gets more than his fair share of abuse from
Flash Thompson and Midtown High's ruling elite, but his sinister response to their taunts
is more reminiscent of a budding future criminal than a soon-to-be superhero.
Peter's revenge fantasies don't end when he acquires superpowers, either, so maybe it's
not surprising that he turns to the world of professional wrestling pretty much immediately
— since that's where he can earn money by beating people up. Really, the only people
Peter originally seems to like are Aunt May and Uncle Ben, and even they've got to buy
him a brand new microscope to get any kind of affection out of him.
And then, of course, Peter refuses to stop that thief in the television station… and,
well, you probably know what happens next.
"Peter…"
"I'm here, Uncle Ben."
With Uncle Ben dead at the robber's hands, Peter grows up fast, and while he probably
needed a tragedy of that magnitude to bring him to his senses, it doesn't change the fact
that he was kinda horrible during his pre-powered days. At the very least, however, Peter himself
seems to be aware of that — which is why he'll be guilty about Ben's demise until the
end of his days.
It's hard to think of two Marvel characters who are more popular than Wolverine and Spider-Man.
Naturally, you'd assume that their '80s team-up, Spider-Man Versus Wolverine, would be nothing
more than pure, joyous fanservice — rather than a grim action story that ends with Spider-Man
accidentally beating a woman to death.
Well, you'd have assumed wrong. After Spider-Man fails to stop the assassination of some former
KGB operatives, Peter Parker decides to give up the web-slinging life for good, and heads
to Germany to chase a story with fellow Daily Bugle reporter Ned Leeds. Meanwhile, Wolverine
hears about the dead KGB spies and immediately identifies the killer as Charlie, one of his
old mercenary buddies. Tracking her to Germany, Wolverine runs into Peter Parker, and pretty
much immediately identifies him as Spider-Man. Logan then tells Parker to go home — which
would've worked if Ned Leeds hadn't just been killed in their hotel room.
Wolverine and Spider-Man track down Charlie separately, and then join forces to find her
again after she escapes a KGB-sanctioned hit. Eventually, Wolverine meets up with Charlie
in a cemetery, where she asks Wolverine to kill her before the KGB can. Spider-Man misreads
the situation and attacks Wolverine, accidentally punching Charlie in the brawl that follows.
Unfortunately, Spider-Man has super-strength, and while Wolverine could've survived the
blow, Charlie most definitely doesn't.
In Amazing Spider-Man volume 2 #51, a green-skinned menace named Digger begins stalking a bunch
of New York's old mob hideouts — and killing the gangsters he finds inside. That puts a
local don, Mr. Forelli, into a panic. Thankfully, he has a solution: hire Spider-Man to work
as his bodyguard.
Spider-Man turns Forelli down, of course, citing moral reasons — until Forelli offers
to pay Spider-Man $10,000 a day plus expenses, at which point Peter Parker immediately folds,
placing him firmly in the employ of the mob.
Technically, Forelli doesn't ask Spider-Man to do anything against the law, but defending
Forelli so he can carry on running his illegal smuggling enterprise is suspect enough, as
Mary Jane rightly observes. Still, Parker quickly settles into the jet-setting life
of a professional criminal. Along the way, he discovers that Digger is actually a composite
of 13 gangsters Forelli killed back in the '50s, whose bodies were buried in a chemical
dump before a gamma bomb fused them together and brought them all back to life.
"Where do all these guys come from?"
Spider-Man promises to stop Digger, but, like a true mobster, raises his rate to $12,000
a day. Before long, Digger reveals himself, but the gamma radiation that melded all the
corpses together begins to wear out, until he quite literally falls to pieces in a battle
with Spider-Man. After the job is finished, Spider-Man hands over a tape full of evidence
to the NYPD, Forelli is arrested… and Parker, in one admittedly decent act of redemption,
uses the money to open a library. Funny how things work out, isn't it?
Most Spider-Man fans would like to forget the Sins Past storyline, in which Peter Parker
learns that, before her death, his girlfriend, Gwen Stacy, gave birth to the twin children
of his number one nemesis, Norman Osborn. Many Spider-Man fans actually have forgotten
the follow-up plotline, Sins Remembered, which sees Spidey traveling to France and teaming
up with Gwen's daughter, Sarah — who, as it turns out, totally has the hots for him.
This is creepy for a whole bunch of reasons. To start with, Sarah looks almost exactly
like Gwen, and Parker's resulting confusion implies that he was more attracted to Gwen's
looks than her personality. Secondly, Sarah is actually younger than ten years old — she
just ages faster than normal, thanks to the Green Goblin serum coursing through her blood
— so she's not an adult, even if she looks like one. Finally, Sarah and her brother Gabriel
grew up believing that Peter Parker was their father, thanks to Norman, who wanted to turn
the twins against Spider-Man. But that doesn't stop this from happening.
Unfortunately, no one's really in the right here. Sarah spends most of their adventure
flirting with Parker, and he doesn't exactly tell her to back off, either. Still, at the
very least, you could put Sarah's weirdness down to trauma and lack of experience — what's
his excuse?
In Spider-Man: The Other, Peter Parker gets some bad news: he's going to die, and nobody
can do anything to stop it. Not his physician, Doctor Castillo, who first gives Peter his
terminal diagnosis. Not Doctor Strange, who claims Peter's illness is mystical and not
physical in nature. And certainly not the vampiric spider-hunter Morlun, who returns
from beyond the grave to beat Spider-Man within an inch of his life.
But it's actually Morlun who comes out of the encounter the worse for wear. While Peter
recovers in the hospital, his body undergoes a strange transformation: his eyes transform
into bug-like spheres and his skin hardens, turning into a kind of exoskeleton. In short,
Parker becomes more spider than man, and when Morlun shows up at the hospital to kill Mary
Jane and feast on Parker's remains, Spider-Man's new, bestial instincts kick into full gear.
A stinger emerges from Parker's arm and pins Morlun to the ground, after which this new
and improved Spider-Man proceeds to eat his foe alive.
Morlun crumbles into dust as Parker's body gives out, but it's not really the end for
either of them. Spider-Man ends up stuck in a cocoon and emerges a little while later
with a whole bunch of new powers, while Morlun is resurrected by a group of cultists and
ends up menacing the entire multiverse. You know: comic book stuff.
The catchphrase for Marvel's epic Civil War event was "Whose side are you on?" but unless
you've got a seriously messed up moral compass, it's pretty clear that Tony Stark was the
bad guy. For one, Stark is one of the biggest cheerleaders for the Superhuman Registration
Act, which most people agreed was a pretty flagrant civil rights violation. On top of
that, however, he also creates a psychopathic Thor clone, gets Black Goliath and Captain
America killed, and imprisons his enemies in the Negative Zone.
For some reason, Spider-Man doesn't just go along with all of this, but actually becomes
one of Stark's main supporters, too. Peter Parker even unmasks on live television, exposing
his identity to the world and becoming the poster boy for the Superhuman Registration
Act in the process. Spider-Man's decision kicks the Civil War into overdrive, and the
argument could be made that most of the bloodshed that follows could have been avoided if Peter
had stuck to his guns. Unfortunately, the consequences are dire — not just for the
Marvel universe, but for Parker's friends and family, too.
Liz Allen, one of Peter's oldest friends, abandons him as a result of his dishonesty,
as does J. Jonah Jameson, for obvious reasons. With Spider-Man's identity exposed, Peter's
family also becomes a target for supervillains everywhere, including the Kingpin, who puts
out a hit on the whole Parker clan. Mary Jane avoids the attack, but Aunt May doesn't, and
in order to save her life, Peter is forced to make one of the worst decisions of his
life...
There's nothing more dangerous than being one of Spider-Man's lovers. Gwen Stacy is
tossed off a bridge by the Green Goblin. Betty Brant discovers that her husband is a supervillain,
and goes a little off the rails after he's killed. Mary Jane Watson… well, what hasn't
happened to her?
But while his lady friends suffer and die, Peter will do almost anything for his dear
Aunt May — anything. Sure, that hasn't stopped May from dying once or twice, but if he can,
Peter will do everything in his power to keep her alive — even if that means throwing
his other loved ones under the bus.
In the aftermath of Spider-Man's Civil War unmasking, May gets caught in the crossfire
when the Kingpin targets Peter's family. As she hovers near death, Peter scours the globe
for a way to save her. That's when he's approached by Mephisto, who is, as far as Marvel Comics
is concerned, quite literally the devil. Mephisto offers to save May and erase Spider-Man's
secret identity from the public record — but in return, Peter will have to give up his
marriage to Mary Jane.
After consulting with MJ, Parker accepts, thereby ruining his relationship with his
wife and sacrificing their missing, but perhaps still alive, daughter, who Mephisto uses to
taunt Peter after he makes his decision. Putting aside the obvious fact that Faustian bargains
rarely work out well, the One More Day storyline makes it very clear where Spider-Man's priorities
really lie.
It's obvious that Peter Parker cares about Aunt May more than anyone else, but that's
not enough, either — he also wants her all to himself. At least, that's what it looks
like. Whenever May starts to get close to a man other than Peter, Spider-Man interferes
and ruins everything.
First off, there's May's husband, Ben Parker, who dies after Spider-Man decides he can't
be bothered to stop a petty crook. Next, in Amazing Spider-Man #131, Spider-Man interrupts
May's wedding to Doc Ock and leaves her groom to die in an explosion on a crummy Canadian
island. Her third serious boyfriend, a gambler named Nathan Lubensky, passes away from a
heart attack after Spider-Man ruins his get-rich-quick scheme. Previously, he had saved a casino
owner named Raymond Trask from assassination at the hands of the Vulture, thereby putting
May and Nathan in the villain's crosshairs.
And that's just the beginning. When May has a fling with Edwin Jarvis, the Avengers' butler,
Peter's deal with Mephisto in One More Day wipes their relationship from existence. In
the recent Clone Conspiracy arc, Peter refuses to let the mysterious medical company New
U treat May's third husband, J. Jonah Jameson's father, for a mysterious disease. Eventually,
Peter changes his mind, but by then it's too late, and Jay Jameson is dead.
That's not a great track record, of course — and what's the common thread that connects
the end of each and every relationship? Why, Spider-Man, of course. Still, May manages
to get a modicum of revenge, albeit unintentionally. When Peter and Doctor Octopus switch brains
at the beginning of The Superior Spider-Man, their memories merge, giving Peter a truly
horrifying new perspective on their relationship.
"Nooooooooooo!"
Parker luck, indeed.
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