by Ed Contradictory

If you ask me who my favorite comic book character is and I answer without thinking, I'd probably say Batman. If I thought about it for a second, I'd go for the "cool" answer and say Hellboy. But if I was being honest, I'd tell you the truth. Which is that it's Spider-Man.

But see, I have a problem right now.

For Spider-Man now has bone claws.

And I hate bone claws.

Therefore, I must now hate Spider-Man.

How did this horrible turn of events come to be? How can it be rectified? Why do I feel this UNCONTROLLABLE RAGE AND HATRED towards a desperate, crap-filled comicbook storyline? Why are they fucking with Spider-Man?

I really suppose we should have seen this change coming. I mean, way back in Peter Parker: Spider-Man #3, then author Howard Mackie very subtly foreshadowed the coming bone claws. And this was back in 1999.

And then later that same year in Peter Parker: Spider-Man #12, Marvel again planted the seeds that would grow into the epic storyline, "The Other."

Now this polemic is something that I'm almost embarrased to even be writing, so geeky do the words feel as I type them. But such is my hatred of bone claws that I feel compelled to explain it. So, first, a big "fuck you" to the people fucking up Spider-Man and thus forcing me to write this in the first place.

The Ruin of Wolverine (or Why I Hate Bone Claws).
First, let's establish why bone claws are lame. And they ARE lame.

I think it's important to undersand that the bone claws are a retcon. Younger comic readers grew up with bone claws, so they might not know that back in the day there was no doubt that Wolverine's claws were mechanical. The claws are inconsistently drawn two different ways, as thin spike-like pokers and as flat blade-like knives. Neither of which would have had room for bones to exist underneath. Certainly not the thin blades, and if there were these lumpy bones underneath, why the hell were the pokers drawn smooth? Seriously, someone tell me. That never fucking made sense to me.

So, before the bone claws, what was Wolverine?

He was a mutant with a healing factor.

That was it. A scrappy feral little mutant with a healing factor.

The claws were something done to him as part of a government experiment. The experiments, the false memories, all of it, both ruined his life and made him who he was. So he needed the claws, depended on them, but they weren't a natural part of him. That created a really intersting dynamic in the character. His greatest weapon was a horrific violation done to him.

Bone claws changed that dynamic (and also created an mutant anomaly that wouldn't be recitifed until Grant Morrison came up with the idea of secondary mutation years later). No longer were the claws something outside of himself. No longer was he partially dependent on what others did to him in order to be effective. He'd always have the claws. Just stupid, lumpy, retarded bone claws instead of sleek eviscerating blades.

And bone claws make no biological sense to me. I can forgive a lot in the name of comic book science. Lasers out of your eyes? Sure. Star for a head? Okay. A biological mechanism that shoots bone claws out of the top of someone's hand? No thank you.

The weird thing is that Marrow's bone growth makes "comic book science sense" to me. Accelerated bone growth. It comes through her skin. Fine. But Wolverine's bone claws don't work like that. They're not accelerated bone growth. New ones aren't grown each time his claws come out. If they did they couldn't always be covered in adamantium. So we're dealing with a mechanism. A mechanism, built out of bone, that has moving parts that extend and retract "claws" but claws that bear no relation to anything in all of recorded biology. Why the fuck would claws spontaneously grow out of the back of his hands? Now maybe I'm about to lose you here, but that does not make "comic book science sense" to me.

Why Does Spider-Man Now Have Bone Claws?
Honestly, I don't know. I guess it has something to do with comic creators not feeling comfortable just writing entertaining, funny Spider-Man stories. Personally, I can't imagine why that's too hard. Maybe they feel that the funny's been done and they need something new. But we know where that "new" line of thought leads to with Spider-Man. It leads to alien costumes. It leads to clones. It leads to fast-aging goblin children. It leads to very un-Spider-Man-like behavior.

I believe that the first thing that led us down this path was when Spidey lost his sense of humor. And that, believe it or not, happened a long time ago.

Spider-Man tells jokes while fighting bad guys. Why does he tell jokes? He's insecure. Why is he insecure? He feels guilt. Why does he feel guilt? He let a criminal escape, and later, that same criminal killed his uncle. The audience knows this. I think, however, that it is important for Spider-Man to not fully know these important inner workings of his psyche.

Some decades ago, after Mary Jane knew Peter was Spider-Man but before they married, in Amazing Spider-Man #275, he was recounting a battle to her that he had with the Sin-Eater. He was talking about how he was cracking jokes as he dodged the Sin-Eater's shotgun blasts. The same blasts then injured people in the crowd of onlookers. So Peter now felt guilt over that. The jokes that he made because he was insecure were now an extra source of guilt. Worse still, he had a psychological breakthrough where he knew why he made the jokes. Blame the pop-psychology of the 80s, but Peter was now aware that the snappy-patter came from being insecure.

And really, how can you keep making jokes after a realization like that?

You can't.

Certainly, humor remained a part of the character and as old stories fade into the past, new writers come on and take the character back to his comedic roots. But the "grim & gritty" 80s with "Kraven's Last Hunt" and "Mad Dog Ward" left an impression on the character that I believe contributed to where we are today. Put upon science geek everyman Peter Parker has been replaced with chosen Cosmic Spider-God totem. What the fuck?

And all his incidental villains, the ones he'd fight and crack-wise with during the fight, where'd they all go? It seems they appear more often than not in non-Spidey books. Seriously, when was the last time Spider-Man fought and traded puns with the Rhino (who has appeared in Black Panther) Mysterio (who died in Daredevil)? Electro (who was used to create the crisis that launched New Avengers)?

New writers now seem to want to take Spider-Man and just beat up on him. Beyond the point where he's just put upon. Just a few years back Mackie made Peter homeless. And seriously, Straczynski's and Millar's runs on the character were down right sadistic in parts. We've gone from "I can't pay the rent" Spider-Man to "I'm dying and my aunt was buried alive" Spider-Man. Yeesh.

So he died. And was reborn with new powers. Peter now has bone claws, "stingers" they'll call them, an offensive stabbing weapon. Spider-Man with a stabbing weapon. Does that seriously make sense to anyone? Peter also has organic web shooters from a previous storyline... you know, they should just collect the last two years of Spider-Man stories and put them in a hardcover called Guess How Much Crap We Can Jam Into Peter Parker's Forearms?. The organic shooters I didn't raise a stink about. "Overreacting" is how I characterized those who I thought were spazzing over a change to bring him more in line with the movie version of the character. But they were right. It took from the character. The genius kid who invented web shooters. And here we are today... a Spider-Man with fucking spikes coming out of his arms. And seriously, that bullshit explanation at the end of "The Other" that Peter approached his powers like a child? That's lazy crap writing to justify a change to the character. It's bullshit. The underlying theme of Spider-Man has always been responsibility. To pretend that Peter treated his powers lightly to justify a storyline that changes them is crap. Bullshit crap.

Removing Bone Claws From Continuity (How to Do It).
Before they codified the bone claws into continuity with Origin, I had this idea how they could get rid of them. Stay with me on this. So Wolverine has his healing factor. Organs heal fast, bones heal fast. Over the years bones or, rather, calcium deposits built up around the mechanisms and inside the hollow adamantium claws he had. After he then lost the metal, a rudimentary bone structure remained that mimicked the claws he had but wouldn't last and eventually would go away. Like all bad ideas should.

As for Spider-Man, it could just get ignored or forgotten, I guess. He could un-evolve them. Those all seem lame to me, but if you're going to impossibly evolve a feature that spiders haven't even evolved yet, why not just un-evolve it? It's a stupid solution to a stupid problem.

But they are fucking up Spider-Man. I'm serious. They are taking him to place where soon, there isn't an easy fix. They're not just taking a genie out of a bottle here, they're taking the genie bottle and breaking it on the floor. And they're doing it for the immediacy of the shock in a story.

"Spider-Man died!"
"That's awful!"
"Pat Lee drew it!"
"That's even worse!"

And they don't care who will have to clean up their mess. Someone will, I guess, at some point. But I'm going to loathe Peter Parker stabbing people in the meantime. God, I hope he doesn't inject them with poison, too.

Now, what did we learn today? We learned bone claws are stupid. We learned they messed up something cool about Wolverine. And we learned they're going to mess up Spider-Man. So, in summation: DAMMIT, STOP FUCKING UP MY SPIDER-MAN!

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