WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Amazing Spider-Man #72 and W.E.B. of Spider-Man #4, available now from Marvel Comics.
Science and technology have always played integral roles in Spider-Man’s career as Marvel’s flagship superhero from the very beginning. While the exact origins of his superhuman abilities have been muddied by the introduction of supernatural elements like the Web of Life and Destiny, it was ultimately science that made Spider-Man a hero; his skill with engineering and chemistry that led to the creation of his iconic and life-saving web-shooters, and his deep understanding of physics was what helped him learn how to keep his potentially-deadly super-strength under control.
Unfortunately, many of Spider-Man’s enemies share his skill with technology and science, and many of them have used that knowledge to strike back at the web-slinger in ways that are often as ironic as they are devastating. In a bizarre twist of fate, two of Spider-Man’s oldest enemies have recently used technology to not only cheat their deaths but cause Spider-Man pain in ways that an everyday thug could never dream of inflicting.
Throughout Nick Spencer’s run on Amazing Spider-Man, Kindred has been orchestrating a cruel and elaborate series of events designed to destroy Peter Parker. In Amazing Spider-Man #72 by Nick Spencer, Frederico Vincentini, Ze Carlos, Marcelo Ferreira, Carlos Gomez and Alex Sinclair, Norman learns that Kindred has been aided on his quest for revenge by an unlikely ally: an A.I. doppelganger of himself and Harry that was created years earlier. Although Spider-Man succeeded in stopping the A.I. from turning Harry’s son Normie into a new Green Goblin, this issue reveals that it survived its apparent destruction and has been helping Kindred manipulate Spider-Man, Mary Jane and Norman into believing that Norman had an affair with Peter’s first girlfriend, Gwen Stacy.
Meanwhile, the W.E.B. of Spider-Man mini-series has a lighter and more child-friendly tone than The Amazing Spider-Man, the reveal of the story’s main villain is similar to that of A.I. Harry and carries the same horrifying implications. Acting as a tie-in for the newly opened Avengers Campus attraction in Disneyland, California, W.E.B. of Spider-Man follows a younger incarnation of Peter Parker as he joins a team of teenage inventors known as the Worldwide Engineering Brigade at the behest of Tony Stark. Peter’s teammates include the likes of the ingenious Inhuman Lunella Layfayette, AKA Moon Girl, the Wakandan prodigy Onome, and Iron Man 3‘s Harley Keener. Almost immediately, the young geniuses’ lab is attacked by the Green Goblin, who uses advanced holograms of various supervillains to distract the kids while he steals important data from W.E.B.’s servers.
When the team, now joined by Squirrel Girl and Amadeus Cho, finally corner an uncharacteristically-level-headed Goblin across the Atlantic in W.E.B. of Spider-Man #4 by Kevin Shinick, Alberto Alburquerque, Rachelle Rosenberg and VC’s Travis Lanham, the man behind the mask is revealed to be Mendel Stromm, Norman’s former business partner and the co-founder of OsCorp. Mandel’s attempt to get revenge on Norman after he framed Stromm for embezzlement ended with his apparent death, but it was later revealed that Stromm survived by copying his consciousness into a robotic body. Dubbing himself “Cy-Gob”, Mendell has become an A.I. capable of taking control over technology, an ability that Cy-Gob uses to turn the Louvre Museum’s iconic glass roof into a deadly laser. Mendel attempts to vaporize W.E.B so he can add their digitized minds to his own, but the team manages to defeat him by deflecting the laser beam back at him.
These villains’ transformation into A.I. reflects the important dual-role technology plays in Spider-Man’s life. While he’s used it to save many lives during his long career as a superhero, it’s also given his enemies countless ways to threaten him and the people he cares about — even if those enemies have been dead for years. With Spider-Man acting as Iron-Man’s unofficial successor in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, technology will likely continue to define Peter Parker’s life, for better and for worse.
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