Every week, we will be examining comic book stories and ideas that were not only abandoned, but also had the stories/plots specifically "overturned" by a later writer (as if they were a legal precedent). Click here for an archive of all the previous editions of The Abandoned An' Forsaked. Feel free to e-mail me at bcronin@comicbookresources.com if you have any suggestions for future editions of this feature.

Today we look at the way that the early Spider-Man villain, the Tinkerer, turned out to be an alien working with other aliens...or was he? Or were they even aliens to begin with?

The second story in Amazing Spider-Man #2 was an strange little tale. Almost like Steve Ditko and Stan Lee were still in their monster/alien comic days of the late 1950s/early 1960s. Spider-Man picks up a radio for his teacher but the man who has fixed it, the Tinkerer, seems suspicious...

Yep, ALIENS.

So Spider-Man investigates and catches wind of the whole alien plan...

In the end, the aliens got away...

And Spider-Man discovers a mask...the Tinkerer was an alien, too?!!?

Pretty goofy stuff. Not exactly Ditko at his finest.

Anyhow, over one hundred and fifty issues later (Amazing Spider-Man #160), the Tinkerer shows up again (he's using the Spider-Mobile to torment Spider-Man on orders from the Kingpin). Only guess what, Len Wein has decided that he was NOT an alien. It was all a gag...

Years later, in Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man #50-51, Roger Stern completes the puzzle by having the aliens from Amazing Spider-Man #2 show up at a dinner Peter is at with Aunt May, her fiancee at the time and Peter's then girlfriend, Deb Whitman....

Oddly enough, the aliens are after the gold that Mysterio and the Burglar were after in Amazing Spider-Man #200...

This is because they are working WITH Mysterio...

So they help Mysterio with the gold and he helps them with their plans to conquer the world. Fair enough, right?

Well, that's what Spider-Man thought, too, when he was being held captive. That's not the case, though...

Spidey then defeats the bad guys and that's that.

Crazy, man, crazy!

I love how Stern worked in Mysterio into the story. Classic.