Great Moments In Comic Book History #45: The Red Skull Tempts Spider-Man To Sell Out America

In 1989, the Red Skull offered Spider-Man a million dollars to sell out his country.

It happened in The Amazing Spider-Man #325. The Red Skull was trying to engineer a war between America and the (fictional) country of Symaria by framing each country for murdering the other’s ambassador. The Red Skull felt the war would leave America weakened and distracted and therefore vulnerable to his attempts to conquer and destroy it. He offered Spider-Man a million dollars to turn traitor and help him.

Spider-Man had reason to be tempted. Unlike most of the Marvel heroes, Spider-Man was never rich. He was usually on the verge of getting kicked out of his home for not being able to pay the rent. J. Jonah Jameson didn’t pay a lot for his pictures. His marriage to Mary Jane was usually strained, due to his finances and also lazy writing on the part of Spider-Man’s creative team. As well, in this issue, the U.S. government refused to issue Spider-Man a security clearance because he wouldn’t reveal his secret identity. Realistically, most people would probably ask for a lot more than a million before risking execution as a traitor but, to comic book readers in 2000, a million still seemed like a big deal.

Did Spider-Man sell out his country?

What do you think?

The Amazing Spider-Man #325 is controversial because, amongst other things, it neve made sense that the Red Skull would think he could bribe Spider-Man in the first place. For today, though, the important thing is that Spider-Man, one of Marvel’s most easily disillusioned heroes, confirmed what we already suspected.

He’s a patriot.

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