Spider-Man May Be One of Marvel’s WORST Crimefighters
Spider-Man catches crooks every night – but how many of them actually STAY in jail? Peter Parker's job is even harder than you might think.
Spider-Man has been fighting crime since 1963. In that time, Peter Parker has gotten very good at saving people, battling supervillains, and even protecting the universe from reality-ending threats. However, some believe the web-slinger isn’t a particularly effective crimefighter when it comes to convicting thieves and street thugs.
According to some police officers in the Marvel Universe, while Spider-Man stops criminals from robbing stores and mugging people every night, many of those thugs wind up back on the street in an alarmingly short time. While it might seem strange that Marvel’s most beloved superhero could be bad at his job, let’s take a look at the situation from the point of view of law enforcement.
In Peter Parker: Spider-Man #26, several cops, district attorneys, and police chiefs give their impression of the wall-crawler. According to one police detective, Spider-Man is ultimately ineffective at stopping crime. To make his point, he relates a story of how Spider-Man beat up members of a local gang to protect the owner of a deli. Although Spidey left the crooks webbed up for the police and five witnesses testified to what had happened, the criminals ended up going free.
Why? It turns out, when the detectives questioned the crooks, their leader claimed Spider-Man attacked them for no reason. Worse, the thugs manage to intimidate the deli’s owner not to press charges – and even get him to claim that Spider-Man was the one who tried to rob the store, giving Peter even worse PR. Although the detectives knew what happened, the criminals ended up suing the city for a violation of their civil rights and managed to get off on technicalities thanks to their lawyers.
To be fair, this particular incident showcased issues with the justice and legal systems as much as Spider-Man’s own shortcomings. Nevertheless, even Spidey has seen how his efforts have failed to keep prisoners behind bars. In one prose short story, Spider-Man ends up having to capture the same two street-level crooks multiple times because they keep getting released on technicalities. At one point, the thugs laugh at Spider-Man by saying the police couldn’t find any evidence to link them to a crime, so a frustrated Peter just gathers the evidence from their latest crime, labels it “EVIDENCE,” and leaves it all for the police to find.
In another story from Web of Spider-Man Annual #6 entitled “Eleven Angry Men… And One Angry Woman,” Mary Jane Watson gets assigned to jury duty on a case involving a jewelry store thief that Spider-Man captured. Unable to explain to the judge about her relationship with Spider-Man, Mary Jane winds up serving on the jury, who all seem to buy the crook’s made-up story about Spidey being the actual thief. Playing Henry Fonda’s role in this version of Twelve Angry Men, MJ refuses to change her “guilty” vote and even makes an impassioned speech on behalf of Spider-Man, but fails to sway the rest of the jury, resulting in a hung jury.
As the crook gloats that the next jury will undoubtedly acquit him, however, Spider-Man swings by his window, scaring him enough to accept a deal requiring him to serve two years. While this does take him off the streets for a while, Spidey’s inability to testify at the trial prevented the criminal from serving a longer sentence.
That being said, while Spider-Man may be regarded by the police as New York’s worst crimefighter, that doesn’t necessarily mean Peter Parker is bad at his job. In Spider-Man’s Tangled Web #21, a story called “The System” reveals that criminals have been lying about Spider-Man so long, law enforcement now claims “The Spider-Man Defense” is almost as popular as the insanity defense. The cops note that several of the criminals Spider-Man left for the police walked, and fear that the latest two thugs he left for the police – two crooks who beat an old man into a coma – will also go free after they claim that Spider-Man let the real crooks go free and webbed them up by mistake.
Just as it looks like two thugs will walk, however, the police receive the morning edition of The Daily Bugle… with a front-page photo taken by Peter Parker showing the two crooks attacking Spider-Man with the bat used to beat the old man. Spider-Man may not be able to guarantee that all the criminals he catches will be locked up – but Peter Parker will do everything he can to supply the police with what they need.