Spider-Man is a Western comic franchise created by Marvel with a few other things attached to it. The franchise has been in a near-constant decline starting in the mid-2000s and continuing until today, with no hope in sight.
The focus is on a super-hero named Spider-Man and his pretty awful life…despite his awful life, he does his best to use his powers to help others.

The Raimi Spider-Man films are among my favorites, though I haven’t quite warmed up to the comics.

This film is very good.
Like, very very good.

When compared to the comics, I think this film comes out on top. It adapts the emotional beats and stitches them in a way that is simply better.
The main example I can think of is Uncle Ben’s death. In the film, Peter is standing directly in the path of the thief: he’s actually blocking his path. Because he’s mad, he steps aside to let the thief get away. In the comic, Peter isn’t standing in the thief’s path…he’s just standing next to the path as the thief runs past. Then the copy chasing the thief complains that Peter didn’t try to stop him. In the film, Peter is directly responsible for the thief getting away…in the comic, Peter is responsible through inaction.
I think you can see how the film’s version is superior.

Yeah, this one is actually pretty good.
The most egregious issue present in this film has to do with MJ, who is…bad. It’s otherwise mostly a mix of good and bad.

After having re-watched this film, I honestly don’t think it’s that bad. I have trouble figuring out what specific storytelling issues are present. Maybe it’s the lack of focus, though I felt the integration of the three villains actually worked and it seemed like some care was put into making it all cohesive.

The main issue is the ‘cringe sequence’ where Peter becomes evil due to Venom’s presence. I think that the problem here is mostly with the framing, rather than anything else. If you take it at face value, it feels like the film is making you think that he’s ‘cool’. When if you actually watch and pay attention, you quickly learn that the film doesn’t think he’s cool: it thinks he’s being cringe. Peter thinks he’s being cool, but everyone around him is clearly embarrassed for him. Though I can’t tell if this is just a case of the film framing it incorrectly or most people being stupid.

What’s kinda weird is that you can interpret a lot of what happens in this film as a direct result of the previous film. What do I mean?

Well, to start off with: in the previous film, MJ was doing really well for herself. Like, she was modelling and she was showing up in a lot of plays. However, in this film, she ends up in one Broadway musical, gets kicked out and then fails to find anything else except a job as a singing waitress at a jazz club. That’s kinda incongruous, unless you consider the fact that she was set to marry an astronaut and then ran out on their wedding day. That could have seriously damaged her reputation and gotten her isolated from her social circle. So that might also explain why, in this film, she seems to only have two friends: Peter and Harry.

Next, Spider-Man: in the previous film, Peter just kinda assumed that everyone hated him and this made him feel pretty awful about himself. However, by the end of the film, he learned that, actually, a lot of people really really love Spider-Man. Like, way more than he could imagine. Consequently, he’s been noticing that a lot more and, assuming the situation has escalated as much as it seems to in this film, he’s developed an ego…to the point where he fails to see that MJ is in a tough spot. His actions in this film are a direct result of him being down on his luck previously.

It’s…beautiful, in a way.

I re-watched this one not long after the third film and, well, I can understand why some people thought this film was better than the Raimi trilogy.
The main issue with this film is that it doesn’t realize that Peter needs to keep his powers secret. After gaining his powers, he frequently ends up accidentally using them without realizing it. This starts with the subway, where he shows off his insane reflexes…his sticky nature and strength. This is just the first instance, though it happens again in his home: he destroyed the bathroom, yet nobody comments on it.
Later he messed up the basketball court to humiliate Flash and, well, I think that was reasonably well-put-together…at least while he’s telling Flash to take the basketball (and he just makes it stick to him). After that point, it falls into ‘bad’ or ‘iffy at best’ since he’s demonstrating physical abilities that he’s obviously never had before that point…and nobody questions it.
This was also a thing in the Raimi films, but seriously reduced…since, y’know, it only happens in one scene and everyone is clearly weirded out.
Later, he chucks a football at…the thing, causing it to bend. Nobody questions this.
There’s also a moment after he starts hunting down criminals where the first guy says “I know what you look like” but it literally never leads anywhere. That was just to get Peter to start wearing a mask.

One other thing might be when he stole the thing for the internship, though I don’t think it can be definitively said whether he felt bad or not about taking the card.

Something potentially quite interesting about this film is that it shows a bit of an in-between stage between the older tight/good writing and the more modern sloppy/bad writing, since this film has a mix of good and bad elements, whereas the Raimi films are mostly good.

Peter is way more snarky in here than he is anywhere else, he really doesn’t fit the nerd archetype like at all.
Also, it’s utterly bizarre how (at least in the first season) he seems way more interested in Felicia Hardy – the prickly rich girl who doesn’t seem that interested in him – compared to MJ, who is clearly into him and very warm by comparison. Though what’s equally strange is that Peter is somehow choosing to pursue them both at the same time.

I ended up finishing the first season (which I thought was okay at best) and then dropped it during the second season, because I was bored. Though I can’t tell you why.

I should note here that the rest of this article was written aaaaaages ago, so the rest really needs to be adjusted at some point. However, I decided to re-write this section specifically because it was written when I started reading the comics. I’ve since gotten much much further. I actually took a break from reading the comics since I got annoyed, though more on that later.
So, for reference, as of writing (2025-12-30), I’ve read up to Issue 182 of The Amazing Spider-Man and Issue 13 of The Spectacular Spider-Man. And yeah, I didn’t skim those basically at all.

The first issue that I read - Amazing Fantasy #15 - was pretty damn good, I can’t lie. It’s basically the perfect origin story…just that adaptations tend to do a better job of adapting the origin, so not quite perfect.
Uncle Ben dies off-panel for example. What? The “Great Power, Great Responsibility” line is in the narration and not in the dialog. That’s kinda weird. I also think that Peter just letting the criminal get away is depicted really stupidly here.
I think the Raimi films depict it better.

Now to move onto the rest…I should note that Spider-Man is currently ‘on-hold’. The reason being that I got bored and annoyed.

Let me elaborate: by that point, I had already seen some pretty serious issues with the storytelling that I just couldn’t get over. The most egregious one was the constant return of classic villains. Doc Ock is probably the most annoying…I honestly don’t care what anyone tells me (not even the comic) because he died in that nuclear explosion, okay? No matter how they try to explain it, I think that he’s already beyond the point of no return.
The other issue is that the combat just isn’t very good and it gets repetitive extremely fast. Actually, I’m reminded of Persona 5 here. In both Persona and here I wanted to avoid the fighting as much as possible, so I could get back to the actual fun part: the social interactions.
The other other issue, which I think is much bigger, was that at some point the comic just started assuming you had been reading The Spectacular Spider-Man as well. The moment that really threw me for a loop was when I saw Gloria Grant as J. Jonah Jameson’s secretary…because I hadn’t seen how that happened at all. I then read through The Spectacular Spider-Man, finding out that that was where it was explained. And that wasn’t a fun experience either, since Spectacular has worse writing and (at least at this stage) is even more combat-heavy than Amazing.

I know that some of this can be solved by skimming, but I’m fundamentally allergic to skimming, so I took a break instead. I don’t know when I’ll get back to it.

Is the writing good? Uh…I’d hesitate to say so. I think that there’s a good story buried in there, but there’s so much annoying filler on top of it that I wouldn’t really say it’s worth reading through. It would probably benefit everyone to just re-write the story wholesale, removing all of the bloat.
That is to say…if I wanted to read it again, I probably wouldn’t read it all over again. I’m not even sure how I’d pick out ‘favorites’ because the story that I actually like is often spliced thru multiple chapters.

Ah! I almost forgot that I wanted to explain something else. My plan was to stop reading Amazing sometime before One More Day so I could jump into Spider-Girl instead. That plan is still in place, though it would require reading up to Issue 406 which is…a bit of a distance from #182.

I don’t think the artwork is super great either, though I can’t complain either because it’s the 60s (well, 70s now).

Yes, I read the weird teen romantic drama spin-off. Hear me out: I like MJ, I wanted more MJ sooner without having to read something that was dependent on the main comics. I saw that the artstyle was vaguely anime-like, so I jumped in.

Turns out that uh…yeah, this isn’t very good. It’s extremely angsty to the point of absurdity. And at times it’s just straight-up stupid.

Would I recommend reading it? Not really. There are a few points where it’s a little funny but that’s it.

I think it’s a shame, too, since the base concept isn’t bad: Mary-Jane has developed a crush on Spider-Man, so she starts investigating him while her friends think she’s going crazy.
That itself could lead to a lot of fun situations…but they went for stupid melodrama instead.

I haven’t decided whether each of these should have their own page or not. I’ll figure it out later.

When I picked this article again, I found I had nothing written here. So I’ll just quickly note a few things.

He is very unlike the nerd stereotype after he graduates from Highschool. Even in Highschool it was kinda borderline. He was extremely snarky and frequently back-talked to Flash. So his depiction in The Amazing Spider-Man might be more accurate from that angle.

Also, in the Raimi films, it is strongly implied that Robbie (at the Daily Bugle) knows that he’s Spider-Man.

I think he might be my favorite character, since MJ is currently not super deep as of the point I am in the comics. I think he was people’s favorite back in the day too.

I can definitely write more about him, but I’m not really feeling up to it right now. Just that…his motivation in the comics is quite literally that he’s jealous of Spider-Man. He can’t understand why someone would do the things he does without expecting any money for it. That’s notable because JJJ does everything he does for the sake of money (at least so he claims). There might be more to him, but JJJ is generally pretty simple at the point I’m at.

In the Raimi films, JJJ is a bit different. I have a pet theory that he doesn’t hate Spider-Man and, in fact, actually really likes him. So why write negatively about him? Because JJJ doesn’t want Spider-Man to become egotistical. I think there’s enough in the films to suggest this…though there’s also evidence to suggest that this isn’t the case.

In the comics, Betty is Peter’s first girlfriend and kinda a big deal. She’s oddly brave (planning her escape from Doctor Octopus) but also insecure. That insecurity leads her to be kinda jealous: worried that Peter will pick someone else.
Mostly related to Liz Allan, who is very obviously trying to get with Peter.

Much later in the comics (yeah, I gotta re-write all the character stuff on the wiki), Peter and she break up. She ends up with Ned instead (IIRC), then she considers cheating on Ned with Peter. Though what happens next I don’t know, because that’s the last thing I saw before I put reading on pause.
She is canonically not as pretty as MJ. That is all.
Her and Peter’s relationship was kinda odd to read, especially since she was maybe 17-18 when she started dating him…and he was like 15-17. Though putting that aside, they kinda got along but not that much. Peter was way more into Gwen, who came afterwards. Oh yeah, the relationship starts extremely abruptly.

In the Raimi films, she’s kinda flirty and part of the Daily Bugle cast. Mostly unimportant otherwise.

Peter tries to ask her out several times and she finally says yes, but has to cancel the date due to Spider-Man business.
After Peter is unintentionally unmasked (but nobody realizes he’s Spider-Man because he was sick), she did a 180 on him and actually got a super crush on him.

I really liked the dynamic presented in the comics (Liz/Betty/Peter) up to a certain point, so I was disappointed that she just kinda vanished after Peter graduated. Though she did reappear later…and started dating Harry. That one I wasn’t expecting.
Anyway, she was the nice/hot girl…but is also canonically not as hot as MJ. Just putting that out there. Though she is considered prettier than Betty.

When Peter was dating Betty, she didn’t seem to care, and just saw Betty as competition for Peter.

MJ’s entire section is a bit of a mess, so I’m just leaving it the way it is until I bother to look at it later. It’s not the easiest to read thru, but I think it’s understandable enough. It’s also a bit out-of-date, since I think I wrote the previous draft of this article around the time I was up to Issue…30 of The Amazing Spider-Man. Yeah, I got like 162 more issues of content now. Though I’ll need to refresh my memory.

In the films it’s pretty obvious that MJ is dating the people she’s dating for the sake of status, rather than actual love.
She pulls away and slightly recoils when Flash tries to play with her hair…and she’s his girlfriend. When she’s with Harry, he leans in to kiss her and she turns her head.
She also smiles more genuinely at Peter than anyone else.
However, something that’s kinda odd is that she seems to know Peter more than Peter thinks she does. First of all, she smiles at him at the exhibition. Second, when he punches Flash, she’s more concerned about him than she is about her boyfriend. Third, when he’s taking out the trash she actually approaches him and talks to him like they’ve known each-other (as acquaintances/friends) for a while. Fourth, during that conversation she says “we were worried about you”, implying that they’re closer than strangers. Fifth, when Peter mentions the school plays she was in, she doesn’t ask or bring up whether he was even there (meaning she either knows he saw those plays, or assumes he does). Even for the earliest ones. Sixth, after they graduate and meet on the streets, MJ talks to him like he’s a friend, rather than a weird acquaintance (and I’ve experienced talking to classmates in the past and it definitely wasn’t in that manner).
There’s also the fact that, earlier in the film, she asked the bus driver to stop the bus for him.
I find this odd because Peter, via his narration and attitude, gives off the implication that they’re total strangers or know each-other very little, yet their actual interactions suggest something else. She’s pretty open with him too. Maybe I’m just going crazy.

In the second film, she is legitimately just a bad person. As in, she’s adulterous and a bit of a bitch, to put it lightly.
However, I thought of something. In the second film, she’s a pretty successful model/actress: she stars in plays, she models for major brands…so, why is she struggling in the third film, having trouble finding work after losing the Broadway thing?
My theory is based on contextual evidence: in the second film, she’s engaged to and almost marries John Jameson, the astronaut, but then bails on the wedding day to be with Peter. This is possibly the moment it all goes wrong: her reputation likely went poof and her existing social network kicked her out, hence why she doesn’t do as well in the third film.
It’s a theory though…there isn’t much evidence to actually support it.

In the comics, she’s initially a running gag…though, 1d6chan notes that she was apparently originally introduced to contrast Gwen Stacy…I don’t think that’s true?
First of all, Gwen has not been mentioned by Issue 29 at all…but MJ’s been mentioned several times and has even made an appearance…albeit, we don’t see her face…or her hair. But even then we know that she’s incredibly beautiful.
Her personality also seems to be somewhat defined, so I’m not sure what exactly’s up.
Also, it’s either intentional or unintentional genius, but her starting as a running gag who barely appears and then becomes the girl is just…perfect. Like, the setup here is insanely good.

He’s Peter’s…uh…bully? Yeah…kinda weird in the comics.
He also appears in the Raimi films, The Amazing Spider-Man films and the 1994 cartoon.

In the comics, he’s convinced (even after being dumped) that Liz is still his girlfriend…which is really freaking weird. This is probably because she dumped him with the intent of getting with Peter, which he just finds utterly unfathomable.

Later on in the comics, Flash goes to Vietnam and comes back. There is an entire series of sub-plots involving him and what followed him back. He also briefly flirted with Gwen (who gave him a kiss when he went to Vietnam…yeah, no clue what that’s about)…and when he came back, he served as an in-between for her and Peter when their relationship was a bit rocky.
Peter also stays at his apartment briefly though I don’t remember the context.

She first appears in issue 31 and she’s immediately interested in Peter. Amusingly, though, since Peter is occupied with other things, she actually gets brushed off by him, which rubs her the wrong way.
Consequently, she doesn’t really like him at first. Though she still holds out hope that he’s not a bad guy (even though the entire student body doesn’t like him due to his bad first impression).
According to her (in the first issue she appears in), Peter’s the only boy who hasn’t, ahem, “given her a tumble”, which is why she’s so interested in him despite him having brushed her off.

Gwen as a character is uh…I dunno how to describe it. I don’t think there’s a point in hiding the fact she dies, so let’s talk about that for a bit: it’s very shocking to read thru it, even now. The way that whole situation is written is FANTASTIC: you can feel Peter’s grief and rage in how he acts and talks.
Now: her character. She’s a bit boring, I dunno what to say. Though that’s not fair. She’s a nice rich girl and possibly a little liberal in disposition. I say that because she once offers to go watch an art film with Peter. I looked that art film up later and…I can’t believe they even mentioned it in the comic. The tension in their relationship mostly stems from the fact Gwen hates Spider-Man (because she thinks her dad was killed by him, but she had been scared of Spider-Man prior as well). This didn’t just guarantee that Peter could never tell her…because of Peter’s status as a photographer. Gwen didn’t like that he took pictures of Spider-Man and was an apparent friend of his.

I also thought that the way Gwen’s face was drawn made her look prettier than MJ. I found that deeply ironic, seeing as MJ was supposed to be the prettier one…at least that’s what I think?

There is something ironic to note about her portrayal in adaptations. She’s absent in Spider-Man (1994), her role apparently being merged into Felicia Hardy. Though she appears in Spider-Man 3 (for some reason) and The Amazing Spider-Man 1 & 2.
In Spider-Man 3 there’s nothing much to say, at least for now.
In The Amazing Spider-Man, she is much warmer and snarkier than she is in the comics. And this is where the irony lies. MJ in the Raimi films resembles Gwen from the comics…but Gwen from the films resembles MJ from the comics. As a result, people might unfairly dislike MJ more than she deserves and like Gwen more when she’s not Gwen.

Appears in issue 31.

That’s all I wrote, so that’s all I’ll say for now. Just that the integration of him as a continuation of the Green Goblin is kinda…I dunno.

• At this point someone might wonder why I haven’t been filling these out. That’s because it’s very annoying to find all these links, so I wanted to find a way to make it easier for myself. Turns out that there might be a way, but I haven’t figured it out yet. Specifically how to present it, because I can’t actually cleanly merge the links into the existing structure.
• I noticed that I left this unfinished for a while…so I polished it a little to release it.