Marvel Brings A Raimi Spider-Man Movie Meme Into Comics
Warning: contains spoilers for Amazing Spider-Man #88!
Marvel's Spider-Man has never been more popular. The wallcrawler's most recent cinematic adventure, Spider-Man: No Way Home, has made over $1.741 billion US at the worldwide box office (during a deadly pandemic, no less) and shows no signs of slowing down. With the success of the film, its no wonder that Marvel has canonized one of Sam Raimi's most famous memes into a story in Amazing Spider-Man #88 - and it serves the story as well as honors the films that came before the MCU.
Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy, beginning in 2002, was widely considered to be the birth of the modern-day superhero blockbuster (alongside 21st Century Fox's X-Men in 2000). The films were known for their wildly shifting tone, intense camera angles (Raimi rose to fame as a horror director before helming Spider-Man), and copious amount of jokes, many of which eventually became oft-repeated memes circulating around the internet. Spider-Man paraphrases a famous meme from Peter Parker's tenure as the character in the first film - but it's not Peter Parker who says the line in the comics.
In Amazing Spider-Man #88, Spider-Man's perfect clone Ben Reilly has just realized that the company he works for, the Beyond Corporation, has a very sinister motive: they use superheroes and villains alike to help sell products - by kidnapping the competition, instigating fights, and even harming civilians and toppling buildings. As Ben Reilly reunites with his girlfriend Janine, the new villain Queen Goblin (equipped and manipulated by Beyond to attack Mary Jane and retrieve valuable information) attacks the trio. Janine asks if Ben will continue to fight the Goblin, to which Spider-Man flippantly responds "Eh, the way I see it, that's not our problem." Reilly then swings away.
The moment is eerily similar to a moment in 2002's Spider-Man in which a burglar rushes past an unmasked Peter Parker, having just robbed the owner of a fighting ring. When questioned as to why Spider-Man didn't stop the thief, he responds "I missed the part where that's my problem" (itself a callback to the owner short-changing Parker). Peter Parker eschewing responsibility is quite shocking to both film viewers and comic book readers.
This quote and many others like it are frequently shared as memes between the Marvel faithful. The memorability of the script is part of the appeal of Sam Raimi's trilogy. Although it's doubtful Sam Raimi's Spider-Man universe will exist concurrently with the MCU, the comic nevertheless pay tribute to the first big-screen Spider-Man.