Peter Parker’s Spider-Man has always been a hero for both old and new generations of fans, but for the avid readers of comics, they know that the character has many versions that are also shocking and unsettling. Darkhold: Spider-Man #1 by Alex Paknadel and Dio Neves is one of them.
In the disturbing one-shot issue from Marvel Comics, the famed superhero witnesses a dark alternate reality where the entire world unravels before his eyes. Spider-Man tries to save everything and everyone, webbing up as many as he can to keep things from falling into pieces.
Spider-Man Sacrificed Mr. Fantastic To Save The Falling City
Darkhold: Spider-Man #1 exhibited one of the darkest versions of Peter Parker. His distress and fear caused him to do the most unthinkable of all deeds. In the story, he has hardly eaten or slept due to constantly needing to web the whole city to keep everything in place.
Parker had to re-web every three hours because it would not hold much longer than that. The place has become a spectacle of terror, where people have lived like zombies, constantly losing limbs and parts of their bodies that Parker had to reattach using his web.
In an interesting turn of events, Spider-Man finds Baxter Building where a distorted puddle of oozing organs greets him, and it turns out to be Fantastic Four’s Reed Richards. He tells Parker that he has found a way to solve the mysterious Unraveling, and assures the young hero that he is willing to help.
Richards also explains to Parker that his puddle form is his real identity when his neurons are not imitating the human form. This one-shot issue finally revealed that Mr. Fantastic only resembles the human form simply because being surrounded by other people enables his body to think that he is human as well.
Mr. Fantastic then orders Parker to find others who also have the same ability that they could use to save the world. But, the Darkhold also reflects a twisted version of the future where the city’s downfall is a manifestation of Parker’s greatest fears. For years, he has been drowning in responsibilities, whether in his personal life or his obligation to the neighborhood.
Because he can no longer bear the weight of this burden, Parker takes his revenge on Mr. Fantastic. After the scientist bossed him around earlier, he wanted Richards to feel the strain of responsibility. Insanity drove Parker to use the leader of the Fantastic Four as a physical web to hold everything together for all eternity.
Darkhold: Spider-Man Revealed The Truth About Being A Superhero
While the one-shot issue is not the most terrifying of all Spider-Man versions, this is absolutely the one that boldly tackled the devastating reality of his career. The tragic fate of Peter Parker, as well as Mr. Fantastic, showed the extreme lengths that heroes would go to when faced with their greatest fears.
Spider-Man’s most admirable trait became his downfall, and with his famous mantra, “With great power comes great responsibility,” becoming a curse rather than a guiding light, it is only a matter of time before the Darkhold gets the best of him.
