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The 1990s were a wild time for comic books, something that leading comic book writer James Tynion IV can attest to. Not because he was working back then — he’s far too young — but because an iconic 1990s take on a famous Marvel comic book almost drove him away from comics for good.

“When I was really little until I was five years old, I lived in New York City in Manhattan, and my dad took me to the local comic shop,” Tynion explained during Tiny Onion’s ECCC 2025’s Fireside Chat panel. “He had grown up on Thor and Nick Fury, Agent of Shield, those were his big formative books. But for me, one of my early formative memories is going into the shop and seeing this big cardboard cutout, and it would've had to be the [Todd] McFarlane Spider-Man, because it scared the crap out of me.”

To be fair to the tiny Tynion (a tiny Tiny Onion?), Todd McFarlane’s Spider-Man could be considered appropriately creepy — he was almost always posed in inhuman manners, had a hidden face, and the amount of detail in the webbing was miles away from the cozier, simpler Spidey of the past. All of which made McFarlane’s Spidey a hot commodity in the late 1980s and ‘90s, but likely did seem a little scary to younger fans.

Tynion continued, “I thought Spider-Man was a scary character. I had nightmares about Spider-Man coming down the alleyway, or appearing behind the window in my bedroom. That was a lingering thought.”

Thankfully, it was another set of 1990s Marvel icons that brought him back from his fear. “It was the X-Men animated series that really got me loving superheroes, and it was through that that I would just, every year or so, I would go into the comic shop once and I would just pick up a bunch of random stuff. When I was about 10 is when the Age of Apocalypse event happened, and I managed to get a set of the Alpha and Omega issues and all of the four issues of Amazing X-Men and Astonishing X-Men, and I read those like they were arcane texts that I could divine the truth, and the way the universe worked.”

As Spider-Man scares them off, the X-Men bring them back — and somehow, the X-Men are the ones who find themselves “hated or feared” by the general populace of the Marvel Universe. Go figure…!

Keep up to date on Popverse's Marvel coverage, with these highlights:

• The MCU needs Anya Taylor-Joy's Magik in it (and not just for the X-Men connection)
• How Disney+'s What If...? is the moonshot for the next 50 years of Marvel Studios & the MCU
• Marvel Studios has accidentally created a new Phase that predates Phases 1 - 6: the MCU Phase Zero
• Overgrown children of the atom: Marvel's X-Men can't evolve past their '90s commercial peak
• The biggest outstanding questions of the Marvel Studios' movies & TV shows
• Donald Trump is the landlord for Marvel's House of Ideas
• Marvel Studios swapping out Doctor Doom for Kang offers the chance to jettison the Multiverse Saga
• What Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige is saying (and not saying) about the MCU X-Men franchise says a lot about the future of the Mutant Saga
• If Marvel is going to bring Loki back for Secret Wars, it's time to give him an upgrade
• In 2021, Sony's boss said people won't miss Spider-Man in its Spider-adjacent movie. Turns out, they do.