In a way, it’s a good time to be an old curmudgeon, especially if you love comic books. With mainstream publishers constantly tripping over themselves in the race to prove who is the most woke, it’s a target rich environment. Every day there are fresh opportunities to point and laugh at some new absurdity.

For example, Marvel recently announced the return of one of its growing list of spider-people; the Sun-Spider. The Sun-Spider is a disabled female(?) who needs crutches that double as web-shooters (you have GOT to be kidding me).

When not swinging through the city, she relies on a wheelchair to help her get around. Let’s count up the woke points for this character. Female? It’s hard to know for certain these days, but we’ll risk it, check. Disabled? Check. Sexually ambiguous? Rumor has it that she’s a lesbian, so check. Ethnicity? White. Wait, white? Hmmm…something amiss there. Maybe they didn’t want to check all of the boxes at the same time yet, so we’ll give them a pass.

In the creative black hole that is Marvel Comic Books these days, this is what passes for innovation. Take an established character, change them up to mark the appropriate woke check boxes so you can satisfy a violent, angry, vocal minority, then foist the results onto an ungrateful public. Spider-Man was one of my favorite titles back in the 80s. Peter Parker defied many of the mainstream tropes. He started out as quite the nerd. He wasn’t wealthy, handsome, or popular. Orphaned at a young age, raised by an elderly aunt an uncle, then haunted by guilt when deliberate, selfish inaction on his part contributes indirectly to his uncle’s death, Peter Parker is a bit of an everyman. He does not move among the powerful elite, as so many of the other heroes do, and lasting happiness always seems to be just beyond his reach. All of this combines to make him more approachable and relatable than other heroes.

But things started to go sideways in the mid-to-late 80s. Seeking to milk him for all he was worth, the number of Spiderman titles exploded. At one time, I think there may have been as many as six different Spiderman titles in publication simultaneously, and you had to buy all of them to keep track of major plot lines. Then they introduced the “Maximum Cloneage” storyline which gave us two Peter Parkers in the same universe. Now I like Peter Parker, but two is one too many. Little did I know then that two is much better than the endless stream of Spider-things that keep popping up constantly now.

At least the first couple of extra Spider-Men were still Peter Parker. The clone, of course, then came Spider-Man Noir, which I confess was pretty cool, and was still Peter Parker. But then Marvel decided that Spider-Man was too big for just Peter Parker, and Spider-Something became the perfect tool to allow Marvel to appease the woke mob. Need a female Spider-thing? We got Spider-Gwen. How about a black Spider-Man? There’s Miles Morales (who’s also black Thor, black Wolverince…you get the picture). Asian female? Silk-Spider. Disabled white female? The Sun-Spider, whose real name, by the way, is, and I’m not making this up, Charlotte Webber (does she have a pet pig named Wilbur?). And on and on and on.

So it’s more of the same old thing. I feel a bit like a broken record, playing the same refrain over and over again. Is it a blast to complain about the lunacy of the comic book industry? Absolutely. I confess, however, that I’d rather be celebrating rich new characters with compelling stories, but then that would rob me of at least some of the motivation to create my own.

So go on, Marvel and DC, keep digging yourselves deeper in your holes. There’s a new generation of comic books coming, with titles like the Rippaverse leading the way. Judge won’t be far behind.

PS: Peter Porker, the Spectacular Spider-Ham gets a pass because he was actually original and funny.