Spider-Man, Nobody Knows Who You Are

A full-body suit, complete with a voice-muffling mask, is a pretty good disguise, given that it's protected Spider-Man's identity from all but a handful of other people - in fact, it must be a great disguise, given that Spider-Man's constantly meeting people who know Peter Parker, and vice versa.  But sometimes he has to venture into places where neither Spider-Man nor Peter Parker are welcome.  What to do?

His clone, Ben Reilly, had a simple solution - since he never had to go back to looking like Peter Parker, he could opt for a semi-permanent solution and bust out the peroxide:

Okay, I'm a little gay for Ben Reilly now.
(Sensational Spider-Man #0, story and art by Dan Jurgens, inks by Klaus Janson)

Spider-Man: The Anniversary Syndrome

Next week, Spider-Man celebrates his 50th anniversary, and Marvel's commemorating it with the giant-sized Amazing Spider-Man #692, by Dan Slott, Humberto Ramos, and a bevy of other creators.  Obviously, Spider-Man's celebrated a few anniversaries before.  For his 25th, he met Venom for the first time; for his 40th, Amazing Spider-Man returned to its original numbering just in time for #500.  But the biggest deal Marvel's ever made over a Spider-Anniversary was back in 1992, for his 30th.  Of course, in 1992, Marvel would take any possible excuse to add on a shiny cover and some extra features, so it's perhaps no surprise that this was such an event.  There were four-count-'em'-four ongoing Spider-Man books at the time, so each one got a super-sized anniversary issue, complete with backup stories, a pull-out poster, and a holographic cover.  Holograms get a bad rap, but these are actually very nicely done, although as can be seen below, they don't actually scan very well.

All of the covers look like this, with varying background colours, so I'm just gonna scan this one.

The Metamorphosis of Dr. Kafka

With issue 185, J.M. DeMatteis took the reins of Spectacular Spider-Man, kicking his run off with the dark, creepy The Child Within, a story that focused on Harry Osborn becoming the Green Goblin again, and on the escape of the cannibalistic rat-man, Vermin.  In the first few pages, we're introduced to Vermin's therapist, Dr. Ashley Kafka.  As seen here, Dr. Kafka is pretty clearly middle-aged.

" - get six figures worth of plastic surgery before my next appearance!"
(Spectacular Spider-Man #184, written by J.M. DeMatteis, art by Sal Buscema)

She kept turning up beyond that story, and became a full-blown Spider-Man supporting character.  And it is not a good thing to be a Spider-Man supporting character.  All sorts of things can happen to you; you could become a supervillain, or you could marry a supervillain, or your son might become a werewolf, or maybe you'll just get chucked off a bridge and die.  But something even stranger happened to Dr. Kafka.

Bride of Unstable Molecules

So far on Unstable Molecules, we've covered "civilian" clothing only - stuff people wear when they're not off fighting Galactus or whatever.  That's because it's hard to decide what a ridiculous superhero costume is: all superhero costumes are ridiculous.  Outside of a comics convention or Halloween, you're never going to see anyone dressed like Spider-Man wandering the streets - but nobody would ever put Spider-Man's costume on a "worst costumes" list, because it is a great superhero costume.

(And even some costumes that are ridiculous, like Captain Ultra's amazing Technicolor dreamcoat, are supposed to be that way.  So to qualify as an Unstable Molecules candidate, someone has to inadvertently dress funny.)

But anyway.  Sometimes, a character has a costume that's so ridiculous that it stands out, even in the context of superhero comics.  One such character is Medea.

Nice attention to detail with those hanging pockets.
(art by Steven Butler and Randy Emberlin)