Reading Marvel comics is a strange thing. It’s easy to look back at the way things were in the Marvel Universe and identify exactly where things went off the rails, but at the time, you never really recognize it. When you’re in the middle of a trend, it’s hard to see out of it. In the early ’00s, Marvel went in a very edgy direction. Back then, it was moderately popular, with publications like Wizard Magazine helping, to hype Marvel adding “complexity” to their universe. Marvel added in a whole new cadre of writers, and one of them put out one of the more controversial stories of all time — Trouble, by Mark Millar and Terry Dodson. Even all of these years later, I don’t really understand the point of it.
Now, that doesn’t mean I don’t understand its plot. That’s a different ballpark, because the plot, and the effect that the plot was supposed to have, are quite apparent. However, every choice the comic made is perplexing in a way that only worst comics can be. Trouble was meant to be something special and have some kind of effect on the Spider-Man comics that never panned out because of the reception it received. Trouble is a book that needs to be studied, and to understand it, one must go back to its era.
Marvel in the early ’00s was an exciting place. The publisher had come out of the ’90s, got fresh leadership in the form of new Editor-In-Chief Joe Quesada and Vice-President Bill Jemas, and started putting out fantastic comics. The two of them brought in loads of new talent and did their best to repair the damage to the line that the ’90s had done. They started with the Ultimate Universe and went from there, redefining Marvel’s biggest franchises for the 21st century. There was an energy that was palpable to readers and Marvel did their best to push the envelope in their superhero line. New stars were made, with names like Mark Millar and Brian Michael Bendis taking the top spots in the company. They were allowed to take Marvel comics in all kinds of new direction, and Millar had an idea to bring back the old romance comics, with a Marvel Universe twist.
Trouble was meant to be a raunchy teen sex comedy, set in a 1960s-coded past. Readers were introduced to May, Ben, Richard, and Mary, familiar characters to anyone who has read the Spider-Man comics. That’s right, Trouble was a sex comedy starring Spider-Man’s parents, aunt, and uncle. Aunt May has always been a part of nearly every piece of Spider-Man media, but it’s not like there were a lot of fans out there clamoring to see her past. Romance comics hadn’t been extant since DC brought superheroes back with 1956’s Showcase #4, so fans were genuinely baffled by Trouble. Well, until it came out. Once readers realized that it was about Spider-Man’s parents, things got weird and led to a moment that is such a misinterpretation of Spider-Man that it’s not even funny — it was revealed that Peter was May’s son with Richard Parker, her having cheated on Ben.
It’s almost impossible to understand why Marvel thought that this was a good idea. Now, obviously, they wanted to make the relationship between May and Peter into something else — that May was actually Peter’s mother, and that’s why she loved him so much. But this takes something very special — May and Ben take in a child they loved by choice — and made it a piece of parental responsibility. May gave Peter to Mary in the book because she didn’t feel right about the whole thing; this is yet another terrible read on May’s character and actually makes her look worse as a character.
Spider-Man is meant to have a life of tragedy, but Trouble found ways to take that into a kind of stupid place. It’s an example of wanting to push the envelope without thinking about what bedrock they were going to destroy. Marvel was having a lot of success by going in directions that no one had saw before. Trouble was an example of courting controversy in order to test out a new Spider-Man idea, but it’s a Spider-Man idea that is completely wrong-headed and foolish. It’s fine to change things, but going too far is definitely a thing. Trouble didn’t follow that rule at all.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting to bring back a genre like romance comics; honestly, Marvel has always needed to experiment more with sequential storytelling and put out comics that are more than superhero books. That’s not the problem with Trouble. The problem with Trouble is that it goes in such wild directions that no one who actually loves Spider-Man should have taken four supremely important characters like May, Ben, Richard, and Mary and done what they did. It jumps off the rails and never gets back on.
There’s a lot of great Marvel from the ’00s, a lot of groundbreaking work that did a great job of adding something new to old franchises and making them fresh. However, Trouble is one of the first, well, troubling examples of Marvel’s obsession with Spider-Man’s past. It was Marvel trying to do something dumb with Spider-Man’s past years before One More Day. Trouble was a book that never needed to happen and after it did, it was quickly brushed under the carpet. It was an exercise in futility, and it’s still a perplexing choice over two decades later.
Have you read Trouble? What did you think? Let us know your take in our comment section!
Reading Marvel comics is a strange thing. It’s easy to look back at the way things were in the Marvel Universe and identify exactly where things went off the rails, but at the time, you never really recognize it. When you’re in the middle of a trend, it’s hard to see out of it. In Read More