Midnight Spider-Man has done some interesting things with Peter Parker’s origin story, with some familiar moments playing out in very different ways. There are some interesting similarities. Peter Parker is still brilliant, but instead of being a high school bookworm, he blogs about his scientific knowledge, which earned him the attention of Oscorp. This didn’t make his Uncle Ben very happy, as he believes that companies like Oscorp step on the little people and do immoral things that hurt society more than they help society. He isn’t wrong, but since it appears that this Uncle Ben is raising Peter by himself, he does the best he can.
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In this version of Spider-Man’s origin, Uncle Ben doesn’t tell Peter that “with great power comes great responsibility.” Instead, Midnight Spider-Man has a very different lesson taught to Peter by his own father, Richard Parker, when Peter was a child. After Peter found his cat dead, torn apart by a neighborhood dog, his dad told him, “Power makes monsters, every time.”
Spider-Man’s New Moral Lesson Makes Him a Monster
In Midnight Spider-Man, this version of Peter Parker won’t become the morally upright hero that the Earth-616 version became. This is because this Peter Parker made questionable choices from the start. Peter’s cat died when he was a child because he accidentally locked the pet door before they left for a vacation, leaving the cat outside. When they got back, the cat had been killed by a dog. Peter blamed himself, but his dad told him that a bigger, more powerful animal got to it. Power makes monsters, meaning the dog that killed Peter’s cat was the monster. As a teenager, Peter told his Uncle Ben that “the strong guy can be the good guy, too.” That is when Uncle Ben gave his lesson this time: “You don’t take on a fight ’cause you know it’ll be easy. You take it on ’cause it’s the right thing.”
That sets up the story. As a blogger, he gained the attention of Oscorp, which sent Felicia Hardy, the VP of Oscorp, to recruit Peter for the company. They got to Oscorp, where Peter met Henry Pym, who also worked for Norman Osborn, and then he finally agreed to sign on for the company. His reasoning was, “Power with responsibility, I’m gonna make things better.” What he didn’t see was a spider climb into his backpack. That spider ruined everything that Peter Parker said he wanted to do.
Midnight Spider-Man Turns Peter Parker Into a Literal Monster
Midnight Spider-Man is a body horror story. This title joins the Midnight Universe comic book line, where all three stories are different. Midnight X-Men is a vampire tale, with mutant vampires battling human vampires, and the Catholic Church sending William Stryker and his Purifiers to deal with the problem. Midnight Fantastic Four is a Lovecraftian horror, with cosmic dread and its own style of visceral body horror. For Midnight Spider-Man, it is all about the body horror as former test subjects of the experiments fall apart in the most gruesome ways possible.
That also plays out at Peter Parker’s home, as his Uncle Ben appears to die, as is typical in Spider-Man stories, but this time it is because the spider bit him and he couldn’t survive the bite. However, Peter did survive and became the spider-creature at the end. This ties into the lesson that Richard Parker tried to teach his son: power creates monsters. Peter believed that if he worked for Oscorp, he could use this power to make changes, but the power he sought not only killed his Uncle Ben, but it turned Peter into a monster.
The original Uncle Ben lesson was all about using power responsibly, which is what Peter wanted to do here. This world’s version of Uncle Ben told Peter to pick fights because it was the right thing to do, and when Peter joined the enemy rather than fighting against it, it changed him into something different and terrifying. Marvel described its Midnight Universe as a reimagining of its iconic heroes in dark tales without boundaries. Taking one of the company’s most beloved and morally upright heroes and twisting Uncle Ben’s lesson to make him a monster is the most shocking change of any of the titles.
Midnight X-Men is nothing new, as the X-Men have been involved in horror stories before, and even Storm has become a vampire in other multiverse storylines. Midnight Fantastic Four going with the idea of Lovecraftian horror is also nothing new, because the First Family of Marvel’s stories have always had a Lovecraftian influence. However, making Spider-Man into a monster has helped turn Midnight Spider-Man into something different and terrifying, and it all comes from twisting Uncle Ben’s words.
What are your thoughts on Midnight Spider-Man and the new body horror retelling of his origin story? Let us know in the comments below.
Forget Midnight Spider-Man, This is Spider-Man’s Most Disturbing Horror Tale
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