The Spider-Powers Dan Slott Isn’t Telling You About

Art by soulmaninc

Dan Slott is many things – funny, clever, handcuffed to Steve Wacker’s basement with only a typewriter and bowl of water beside him. He’s also hiding the awful truth about Spider-Island from you. The Spider-Island event arc, which sees ordinary citizens in Manhattan affected by some kind of virus that gives them powers similar to ol’ Webby, is now officially underway after the release of issues #666 and #667. Several characters have been affected by storyline, including Mary-Jane Watson, Carlie Cooper, Black Panther and Shocker. It all sounds rather fun, delivered with the silly sense of entertainment which has marked Slott’s writing over the years. But spiders are disgusting, you guys. The wave of Spider-powers sweeping the country is no laughing matter. Here are some ‘abilities’ you didn’t realise that people would be receiving…

3: The ability to have no jaw

Spiders do not have anything which resembles a proper jawline. This means that the sudden influx of spider-powers will wipe out jawlines from the East Coast, as New Yorkers will be forced to contend with a whole new way of eating. Instead of biting food (and by the way, there is only one vegetarian species of spider, so most vegans/vegetarians are going to be converting back to primal flesh-eating) spiders pump their acidic stomach fluid onto their victims and wait for them to start dissolving. Once the food has been liquidised, they suck it back up like with a straw. Which is totally gross, and doesn’t it just make you want to stamp on the next spider you meet? Now imagine that process being transferred over to humans. It certainly makes The Human Centipede look tame..


2: The ability to have severe vertigo

Do you know why Spider-Man so often hangs upside-down from his web? It’s not because he thinks it’s cool, and gives him the advantage when kissing redheads in alleyways. It’s because spiders have no sense of balance or gravity. Unlike us, spiders are born without the sensors which tell us which way round we should be standing. If the body can handle the angle it is leaning at, then the body will allow it to happen. This means that spiders can hang on webs at great heights, at strange angles, and at unusual velocities (ever seen a spider-web on your wing-mirror?) Transfer this over to humans, however, and everything goes horribly wrong. We are far less bendy than a spider, and we also tend to use highly-complex devices like “cars” to get from place to place. Without the ability to sense direction or acceleration, the streets of New York are going to become a wrecking-zone. More so than usual, I mean.


1: The ability to kill and eat your boyfriend

First of all, it should be noted that spiders are one of the few creatures on Earth which practise cannibalism. You may think that spiders spend most of their time trapping flies in their web, but they’re just as concerned with killing and eating each other as they are with decreasing the bluebottle population of your garage. Couple this with the fact that spiders are, yes, yet another one of the creatures where the female is massively dominant. I respect the work that the fine wymyn of various North American universities have done in establishing a gender balance, but spiders take this to extremes. After sex, the female spider will generally eat the male spider, because male spiders are apparently delicious. Makes that perhaps post-coital scene in #666 seem a bit more sinister now, eh? Not only that, but the male spider will typically try to HELP the female in her goal, by jumping onto her fangs.

....Spider-Man is in big trouble, you guys.