Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends

Spider-Man is a loner. There's no question about it. He is not a team player. He gets along with people, and he's always an asset to a team, but he functions best when he's alone. However, that is not to say he doesn't need his friends.

Before the unmasking, there were a handful of fellow superheroes who not only knew the man behind the mask, but were actually good friends with Peter. They weren't a team, and they didn't get together that often, but you always knew he could turn to them if he needed help. But since the One More Day retcon, Spidey's lost these friends. He's got nobody now -- which is both awful and ludicrous.

I can certainly understand Marvel's desire to return Spider-Man back to his "lone wolf" status. In the past couple of years, there have been more and more superheroes creeping into the Spider-books. Their presence were required because Spider-Man joined the New Avengers. If you're trying to keep a tight continuity between all the Marvel books, you can't have Spider-Man on a team in one book and not in another. So I understand and support Marvel wanting to return Spider-Man back to his roots of being "just a guy in tights swinging from a synthetic web."

But they haven't done that. He's still part of the New Avengers. It's just that, now, his fellow teammates don't know who they're fighting beside. Which is fine, for the most part. Spider-Man's actions define who he is. The entire Marvel Universe doesn't need to know who Spider-Man is for them to trust him on their team.

But.

Two of Spider-Man's closest super-friends were Daredevil and the Human Torch. When Peter needed help balancing his super-life with his regular life, he went Matt "Daredevil" Murdock. When Spidey needed help with something scientific, he went to Human Torch. Together, they'd figure things out. Granted, those situations can still happen. But now they're going to happen behind this veil of secrecy. "I have this friend" sort of conversations. Which undermines Marvel connectivity.

If you're going to say that everything that's happening in the X-Men books are happening in the Spider-books or the Runaway books, it only seems natural (and right) for their to be a superhero fraternity. You have a couple of teams, namely the X-Men and the Avengers, that assemble some of Marvel's greatest heroes and let them fight side-by-side in a single book. Why do you have that (beyond sales reasons)? Because there are some problems that are bigger than any single superhero.

That's also why we have friends. Because there are personal problems we face that are beyond our range of experience or expertise.

Spider-Man can still be a solo act and have friends. But now he really has nobody to share his fears and frustrations with. Aunt May no longer knows his dual identity (which is its own crying shame). He no longer has Mary Jane (who, I guess, may or may not know his secret). He doesn't have the Human Torch or Daredevil. All those years of heart-to-heart conversations have been thrown out the window and he has become just one man against the world.

Which, in my book, is a giant step backwards.