"Torment" is a comic book story arc written and illustrated by Todd McFarlane that encompasses the first five issues of the new ongoing Spider-Man series.

It is later revealed that Calypso is hypnotizing the Lizard to do her bidding, and also manipulates Spider-Man's mind, making him think that Kraven the Hunter is alive again after committing suicide.

[5] Part of the thinking was to make more trade paperback-friendly stories: "The ongoing Spider-Man books were like never-ending soap operas.

So the idea was to create a new series where we would do six-part self-contained stories that could then easily be collected as trade paperbacks"[clarification needed][6] They were also inspired by Epic to try better paper quality.

[1] However, according to Dave Wallace at Comics Bulletin, "commercial success didn't equate to critical acclaim for McFarlane's new venture, and many found the artist's attempts at writing to be clumsy, unsophisticated and pretentious" and that "[t]here was a frequent sense - as with many writer-artists - that McFarlane's scripts were being written in such a way as to give himself something 'cool' to draw, rather than to provide a particularly compelling or satisfying story.

"[7] The writing was also picked up by Alex Rodrik at Comics Bulletin, who highlighted the lack of consistency in the narration (switching from first person to third-person), concluding that "Torment is nothing more than a showcase of Spider-Man's fluid movement, and while the art is wonderful, pages (at times) are congested and indulgent.

Augie De Blieck Jr. confessed that "[w]hen they first came out, I was a mind-numbed McFarlane fan" but reading the trade paperback he found that "the money shots of Spidey over the city and fighting for his life still look as energetic and lively as ever, the rest of the pages feel claustrophobic" and that Parker's lettering was "awful.