In every installment of I Love Ya But You’re Strange I spotlight strange but ultimately endearing comic stories. Feel free to e-mail me at brianc@cbr.com if you have a suggestion for a future installment!

Today, we look at the first (and I believe only) time that Spider-Man has actually fought crime while drunk!

Last year, I did a Comic Book Legends Revealed about how Marvel would not allow a comic book writer to write Spider-Man as having a beer. That led to another Comic Book Legends Revealed about how Spider-Man has never actually had a beer in a comic book EVER. You would think that he would have managed to have one here or there over the years, as he is well over the drinking age, but for whatever reason, Marvel has always found a way to keep him from drinking a beer (including having an incident where it sure looked like he was having a beer be revealed in a later issue as him having a root beer instead).

However, a number of readers also wrote in at that time (like, a LOT of you guys wrote in then about this) that while Spider-Man had never had a beer, he HAS been drunk before (I believe Rob London was the first of many readers to write to me about this one).

Note that the featured image is from Amazing Spider-Man #87, which is Spider-Man suffering from the flu and not being drunk. I just used it because it is a better featured image...

(Do note that when Spider-Man gets the flu, he gets WEIRD. We're talking "robbing a jewelry store" weird - check it out in this old Remember to Forget here).

In any event, the story at the heart of the matter today occurred in Web of Spider-Man #38 (by Fabian Nicieza, Alex Saviuk and Keith Williams). This was a weird period in the history of Web of Spider-Man. The previous creative team of David Michelinie, Marc Silvestri and Kyle Baker had dropped the series more or less in the middle of a storyline due to Marvel actually getting threatened with a bomb scare due to the stories that they were writing (I wrote about it in an old Comic Book Legends Revealed here). Michelinie was moved over to the main Amazing Spider-Man series and Web of Spider-Man just went with a variety of writers for most of 1988, with Peter David having the closest that they came to a "regular" gig on the series before Gerry Conway (who had taken over Spectacular Spider-Man earlier in 1988) became the writer on both Web and Spectacular Spider-Man with Web of Spider-Man #47.

Anyhow, in Web of Spider-Man #38, Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson Parker are having their first big party at their apartment, which is the apartment Peter had been living in for a number of years at this point (they soon move into their own new place early in Michelinie and Todd McFarlane's Amazing Spider-Man run).

Throughout the party, Peter is enjoying the fruit punch that his wife made...

Big mistake, Peter!

Page 2: [valnet-url-page page=2 paginated=0 text='Drunken webslinging!']

Peter is called into action when his buddy, Harry Osborn, calls him to let him know that Harry just saw the Hobgoblin in action. However, right off the bat (pun unintended, but Spider-Man DOES make a very late 1980s New York baseball reference here), Spider-Man has some issues, as he actually MISSES with his webs!

He runs into the Hobgoblin and MISSES AGAIN!

Things get worse when the drunken Spider-Man lands on a nearby car and they even get to hear Spidey's drunken belches...

Luckily, Spider-Man ends up messing with Hobgoblin's cybernetic glider control and Hobgoblin is taken off to the races and Spider-Man successfully uses his own drunken misadventures to sell photos to J. Jonah Jameson of drunk Spidey in action...

Peter returns to the party to figure out who spiked the punch and it turns out that it is the husband of his annoying landlady! Peter leans into it...

Very funny stuff from Nicieza, who was early into his excellent comic book writing career at the time.

That's it for this installment! Thanks for the suggestion, lots of readers! If anyone else has a suggestion for a future I Love Ya But You're Strange, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!