Warning: Spoilers for Amazing Spider-Man (2022) #31 ahead!The majority of Spider-Man's foes are infamous for drawing upon animals for inspiration (Rhino, Vulture, Scorpion, etc.), but the debut of Spider-Boy's new nemesis comes with a shocking retcon: it turns out that this new villain, Madame Monstrosity, claims to have been behind Spider-Man's zoo of a rogues' gallery all along.
Madame Monstrosity makes her first appearance in Amazing Spider-Man (2022) #31 in Dan Slott, Paco Medina, and Erick Arciniega's story "The Mother of Invention." Here she is revealed to be an elderly woman whose home is staffed by hybrid "humanimals" of her own creation.
When she sees a newspaper article detailing Spider-Boy's exploits, she accuses her daughter (supervillain Shannon Stillwell) of stealing her work. Madame Monstrosity then goes on to list the terrible fates that befell those who stole from her...revealing that she is responsible for creating the Lizard, Morbius, Rhino, Scorpion, and the Human Fly.
Stillwell Science Makes Monsters
The Stillwell family name carries significant weight in Spider-Man's history: Farley Stillwell and his brother Harlan were the scientists who respectively transformed Mac Gargan and Richard Deacon into Scorpion and the Human Fly, while Shannon Stillwell is a foe of Miles Morales. Tying the research of the Stillwell family back to a single matriarchal figure retcons a significant number of Spider-Man villains as directly or indirectly being her creations. However, this history either contradicts or runs counter to the theory of Spider-Man and his foes representing totemic animal figures (as espoused by Ezekiel Sims in J. Michael Straczynski, John Romita Jr., Scott Hana, and Dan Kemp's Amazing Spider-Man (1999) #32).
This Retcon Reaches Spider-Man's Oldest Foes
Most fascinatingly, Madame Monstrosity hints that if it weren't for her meddling, many of the experiments that birthed creations like Morbius and the Lizard would have worked: "A mislabeled chemical here, a decimal point out of place there...and suddenly, foolproof plans have produced full-on monsters." This is another major retcon, vindicating figures like Curt Connors and Michael Morbius who have traditionally been painted as victims of their own hubris. Instead, they are legitimate geniuses whose revolutionary breakthroughs were sabotaged because they happened to use Stillwell technology - knowingly or not.
Madame Monstrosity's existence marks a retcon of Spider-Man history that spans more than 50 years of continuity, going all the way back to the creation of the Lizard in 1963. Not only that, but it takes a significant amount of weight away from the importance of Spider-Man as a totemic figure; instead of his foes unconsciously channeling animals in order to challenge him, many are now merely the retribution of a woman obsessed with making monsters. This introduction of Madame Monstrosity is a major shakeup to the status quo, the likes of which Spider-Man and his animal adversaries haven't seen for quite some time.
Amazing Spider-Man (2022) #31 is now available from Marvel Comics.
