NOTE: Spoiler Warning for Spider-Man: No Way Home, now in theaters, with the added twist that the warning here is inherently a spoiler itself, right? But then if you don't include it, it's just there without a warning and then you're damned if you do, damned if you don't, really.
Today, we look at the five major instances of Aunt May dying in the comics (including a few alternate realities) and, due to the headline saying so, I guess we're going to also pick which one was her saddest death.
In Drawing Crazy Patterns, I spotlight at least five scenes/moments from within comic book stories that fit under a specific theme (basically, stuff that happens frequently in comics). Note that these lists are inherently not exhaustive. They are a list of five examples (occasionally I'll be nice and toss in a sixth). So no instance is "missing" if it is not listed. It's just not one of the five examples that I chose.
Obviously, with the tragic death of Aunt May in Spider-Man: No Way Home, I thought it would be interesting to look at the major examples of May dying in the comics over the years.
MYSTERIO FAKES AUNT MAY'S DEATH
At the end of Amazing Spider-Man #195, Peter Parker receives a telegram letting him know that his Aunt May has died. He rushes to her nursing home in Amazing Spider-Man #196 (by Marv Wolfman, Al Milgrom, Jim Mooney and Frank Giacoia) to discover that she has, indeed, apparently died...
Peter honestly handles it about as well as you possibly could under the circumstances...
Although when he is out in the street by himself, he lets himself wallow a bit and, to be frank, I don't think there's really anything all that unreasonable about him doing so. It IS a really messed up situation, Peter, and you've lost so many people in your life that it is totally cool to wallow in it a bit...
However, when Peter stops by Aunt May's house and discovers it a wreck, it suddenly dawns on him that something is not right about the good doctor (go back and see how he casually mentions the house to Peter. He is actually secretly Mysterio and he found out that Aunt May's house supposedly has buried treasure in it and thus he fakes her death to get access to the house and it has been trashed because he has been looking for the treasure. It's not the best plot in the world).
Before Peter realizes that Aunt May is not actually dead, he has an awesome heart-to-heart with Robbie Robertson who reveals that he lost a son before his son Randy was born. It's a really touching bit.
THE BURGLAR KILLS A DIFFERENT PARENTAL FIGURE
Ron Frenz is one of the world's great Silver Age mimics. He absolutely NAILS both the Steve Ditko style AND the Jack Kirby style and in What If...? #46 (by Peter B. Gillis, Frenz and Bud De La Rosa), Frenz shows what would happen if Aunt May woke up when the burglar broke into their house instead of Ben...
It's a really well handled sequence, especially due to the Ditko-esque style that Frenz used for it...
Very sad stuff and when Peter later learns that Uncle Ben blames himself for sleeping for it and that he and Ben are both blaming themselves? Great stuff (Peter and Ben become a crimefighting duo, with Ben as his sort of "Guy in the chair").
AUNT MAY DIES FOR REAL*
J.M. DeMatteis, Mark Bagley and Larry Mahlstedt did an amazing job with Aunt May's passing in Amazing Spider-Man #400, which was a legit death unlike the Amazing Spider-Man #196 one.
This was right smack in the middle of the Clone Saga, and Aunt May was one of the actual driving forces of the Clone Sage, as it was when she became ill that Ben Reilly finally came out of hiding to visit her in the hospital, where he was met by Peter Parker and Peter realized that the clone of his that he though had died years earlier had, well, you know, NOT died. She was in a coma for the start of the Clone Saga and then, suddenly, in this issue, she came out of it!
We then get a few pages of Aunt May's return to her home, where she gets to dispense a lot of awesome little wisdom (and Ben Reilly, who by this point has become the Scarlet Spider, gets to freak out over how he is unable to actually spend any time with her because of the whole clone thing). She has a great scene with Mary Jane, too, where she lets Mary Jane know how much she loves her, too.
Peter spends some quality time with May, at which point she reveals that she actually has known his secret identity for some time now...
She tragically has a relapse and they take her back home, where she slowly passes away in her own bed, surrounded by Peter, Mary Jane and Mary Jane's Aunt Anna, May's close friend.
Ben is tortured by having to watch the whole thing from outside of a window, unable to be with the woman who effectively raised him, as well (since he shares Peter's memories). For a character who had ALMOST died seemingly 359 times in the previous 30 years of Spider-Man's comic book history, this was a BIG deal.
DeMatteis absolutely nails the death scene, with the beautiful Peter Pan quote as May dies in Peter's arms...
and then she is gone...
Heartbreaking stuff. So well handled.
*Of course she wasn't really dead. She was brought back in one of the more absurd retcons ever (and all said and done, I actually agree with bringing her back, but wow, that retcon was just...something)
THE BURGLAR KILLS THE "WRONG" PARKER AGAIN
2004 saw Ed Brubaker, Andrea Di Vito and Laura Villari do a re-do of What If...? #46, only through the unusual method of having it all be a comic book store clerk telling a customer how things would have went down had Aunt May did instead of Ben...
This time, Peter ran off to take on the burglar and Uncle Ben learned that he was Spider-Man...
The burglar accidentally dies in this story, though, and Ben takes the fall for Peter, making things all the more tragic...
Don't worry, though, things basically end up the same as What If...? #46, with Ben being the "guy in the chair" to Spider-Man.
THE LIFE STORY OF SPIDER-MAN INVOLVES AUNT MAY'S PASSING
Finally, my pick for the "worst" Aunt May death is actually handled off-panel. In the brilliant Spider-Man: Life Story miniseries (where Spider-Man ages naturally from 1962 on), Chip Zdarsky, Mark Bagley, John Dell and Frank D'Armata show Aunt May dealing with dementia and the burden of taking care of her and two newborn twins is places solely on Mary Jane and she is sick of it. She insists that Peter put Aunt May in a nursing home and he refuses to do it, so she ultimately takes the kids and moves to Oregon and Peter has to stay home along with his dying aunt, who dies between the end of #3 an the beginning of #4...
That's rough stuff.
If you have suggestions for a future Drawing Crazy Patterns, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!