I haven’t ever written about Spider-Man. I’m an avid comic
reader. I’ve written quite a bit about comics, but I’ve hardly ever put pen to
paper to discuss one of the five most iconic superheroes of all time at any
length. That ends now, and for a timely reason: Spider-Man is experiencing a
Spider-Renaissance. When Dan Slott took over full-time responsibility on the
book several years ago, many avid Spider-fans breathed a sigh of relief as the
great national nightmare that involved bi-weekly books by rotating teams, and
the attendant lack of focus and discontinuity that brought to a rich universe
of characters, was over. Slott immediately began to rebuild the Spider-verse
into something that now resembles its glory days: a supporting cast, a
developing rogue’s gallery, a core theme, and returning big bads of old. The
book improved out of the gates. Today, with Superior Spider-Man at an end,
Peter Parker back in the red and blue, and hundreds (at least) of alternate
universe Spidey’s roaming the main Marvel U., the health of the book has not
been better since the early Straczynski era. Moreover, there’s a new Spider in
town – Miles Morales – who has delivered month to month since his arrival on
the scene some three years ago. Big things are likely in store for this
alternate universe character. This post will cover the end of Superior
Spider-Man, the newly re-minted Amazing title, Ultimate Spider-Man, and the
Edge of the Spider-Verse event.
Superior Spider-Man was a highly panned event that paid off.
Bottom line: the exec’s at Marvel took a risk and it worked. The pitch from Slott
had to have been apocalyptic. “The state of Spider-Man is disastrous,” he’d
say. “We should start all over.” The core concept of Superior Spider-Man is
that Otto Octavius, the villainous Dr. Octopus, engineers a way to cheat death
that involves him pushing Peter Parker out of his own body and replacing his
consciousness, in effect becoming Spider-Man. Now, it sounds terrible. BUT, it
also sounds like a Spider-Man story. Stan Lee could have written that. It’s
very in tone with classic Spider-Man writing and themes. Part of the “ugh-factor”
with this idea is just how true it is to the ideas behind both characters. What
wouldn’t have happened in the classic books was the follow-on: Doc Ock stayed
Spider-Man for nearly four years. It’s an impressive amount of wherewithal
because the pressure to bring Parker back from the beginning must have been so
high. Tenaciously, week by week, Marvel and Slott built the new Spider-Man book
into something people loved. It topped Marvel’s sales charts most of that time,
displacing such hot books as All-New X-Men, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Avengers,
an impressive feat. Doc Ock as Spider-Man was tough, goofy, and fresh. His
encounters with the entire cast of the book gave us a new look at what made
Peter Peter and I think everyone appreciated that insight. There was also some
Goblin, some Venom, some Black Cat, and a lot of excitement along the way.
Spider-Man left school teaching and graduated to serious scientific pursuits, a
logical evolution of a 50 year-old character that’s been demonstrated to be a
scientific genius and highly in need of funds.
The end of Superior Spider-Man, imo, was a great reward for
the series. It was about the core of the character, about who Peter is, and why
there can be only one, true Spider-Man. It gave Slott some real material to
build on while refreshing a new audience on what makes Spider-Man great. All
the while, the book was action-driven, telling a huge Goblin story (Hob, Green,
new ugly, all of the kinds of Goblins) to satisfying effect. I’ve seen online
commentators complain about inconsistencies in the story-telling, about details
about the Parker/Octavius consciousness switch, about blah-blah-blah; you name
it, someone has complained about it online. My feeling is that the idea was
never to be too concrete about the nature of the swap in the first place to
avoid any need to delve too much into the details, and for good reason. The
idea itself was never meant to be a good one. Switching the two characters wasn’t
some techno-utopian ideal about the triumph of human ingenuity over life
itself. This isn’t transhumanism. The idea was a hokey mad scientist scheme. It
was 50’s pulp. And for that, it was perfect. I wouldn’t have ranked Superior
Spider-Man as one of the greatest Spider-Man stories ever told, and I never
considered it to be the top book in the industry at the time, but it was a
great renovation of a premium property that had fallen on disrepair. And, if
you used to like Spider-Man and wanted to get back to it and hoped it would be
both fresh and familiar, that’s an excellent jumping on point. The conclusion
of Goblin King and the end of Superior Spider-Man were satisfying odes to a
time now passed and a perfect bridge forward, modernizing and refreshing the
world of Peter Parker.
Of course, Otto really did a number on Spidey’s personal
life. The effect on his relationships with friends, family, and even villains
is awkward with a dicky super-villain running his life for four years. The
newly minted Amazing Spider-Man jumps right into these ideas, exploring the
ramifications of a chance encounter between Doc Ock as webslinger and Black
Cat, who is now mad angry with our friendly neighborhood wallcrawler. Otto
spurned and embarrassed the Cat while wearing the webs and now Parker will have
to pay the costs. On top of that, Aunt May, Mary Jane, Peter’s new girlfriend,
and Peter’s new assistant at his tech company are all affected strongly by
Parker’s return to his own body. Many have been off-put by the haughty behavior
of Octavius and are just pissy with Spider-Man; others were drawn to that
arrogance and find a disheveled and indecisive Peter to be an inferior
spider-replacement. At any rate, the book is back to a focus on characters and
relationships, one of the things that made the original Spider-Man so attractive
and relatable conceptually. Spidey even has a chance encounter with the hottest
new character in Marvel, Ms. Marvel, that tonally captures everything that’s
great about both of these heroes. Ms. Marvel is a modernized, gender swapped,
non-white, Spider-Man character – a teen with a lot of personal drama socially
and with her family who is thrown into a battle with weird and highly specific
villains; her run-in with Spider-Man is thus highly appropriate as a comparison
and contrast. From the gun, the new ASM has been an excellent book. Humberto
Ramos always does an excellent job and Slott is writing at the top of his game
and with a relatively clean slate having used Superior Spider-Man as a palate
cleanser. I look forward to ASM every month, a top 20 book I’d say.
One thing that didn’t really hit with me was Learning to
Crawl, a five-issue spin-off mini-series that retells the Spider’s early days
and introduces a new Spider-Man inspired sonic supervillain. I didn’t hate this
book; I just didn’t see the need for it. With ASM cranking on all cylinders,
having another Spider-Man book telling a slowly evolving story of a new villain
was just pointless, going nowhere. I wouldn’t recommend folks spend their
precious ducats on this book.
Meanwhile, in Bendis land, Ultimate Spider-Man is taking
off. Peter Parker died in the Ultimate Universe saving the world from Magneto.
It had to happen. Bendis has written as much or more Spider-Man than anyone but
Stan Lee. His time with Peter Parker had come to an end. It was time to either
leave the book – conceptually impossible – or for the book to change radically.
Of course, I don’t think anyone would have predicted what came next, or at
least predicted it would have worked. Enter Miles Morales: unassuming bi-racial
teen, living with parents struggling to make ends meet in the city. He gets
bitten by a Spider stolen from Oscorp and off we go. I love this book. I love Brian
Michael Bendis. I think it’s one of the best produced mainstream comic books
ever written. It’s remarkable today that someone can take that same basic
source material, remix it slightly, and create something both new and classic
at once. To do it twice with a second derivative character is, frankly, unheard
of. It would be like if Electric Superman came along and we liked him. Or if
Azrael wasn’t the worst thing ever. The closest analog I can come up with is
the teen Blue Beetle, but honestly, I hate that character and liked Ted Kord.
It doesn’t work for me. Miles is great. He’s Ganke is freaking hilarious. His
parents are interesting, developing characters. Miles relationship to the
Parker family and friends is also super interesting and compelling. I just
think this is a great book, roughly of equal (maybe slightly greater) value
than ASM.
Change is a-coming, naturally. The Ultimate Marvel Universe
is coming to an end, or is at least strongly rumored to be doing so. I’d guess
this is mostly a business decision as roughly three people worldwide are still
reading the Ultimates (a once great Ultimate version of the Avengers) and even
fewer are reading Ultimate X-Men (a book I loved that never seemed to catch on).
It’s widely rumored that the upcoming Secret Wars event which pits alternate
universes in the Marvel umbrella against one another will see the final days of
the Ultimate universe but resolve somehow to keep Miles Morales, perhaps
shunting him into the main universe with which we’re familiar. Huge loss, in my
opinion, if they don’t airlift his boy Ganke out, but it’s hard to see how they
could pull that off and not tell a terrible story. At any rate, I suspect that
Miles Morales is in for more world-hopping. He’s already teamed up with Peter
and Superior Spider-Man both a couple of times and I suspect the demand to see
these characters interact is pretty strong. Truthfully, I’d be fine with
eliminating all other powers from the Ultimate Marvel U., leaving just Miles
and Osborn. I think that would be a more satisfying conclusion. But I don’t
think that the line itself can survive and that Marvel would like to pull the
plug on the entire business, which is fair. Hopefully, this wrap up works out
well for one of the coolest characters around. There should be a young
Spider-Man; the character has only ever been written as youthful. Letting Peter
grow old but keeping Miles around for that whipper snapper feel should provide
a healthy balance for both types of Spider fans.
Finally, and without further ado, Edge of the Spider-Verse
brings it all together: Miles, Peter, a time-traveled Superior/Otto Spider-Man,
and a ton of other randos: Peter Porker, the Spectacular Spider-Ham, British Spider-Man,
the newly pressed Spider-Gwen (a Gwen Stacy from an alternate universe that got
bitten instead of Peter, but failed to save him from dying and is plagued by
his loss), a Spider-Monkey, ten Spider-Girls, and a thousand others. The idea
is thus: these vampires that eat Spiders’ essences are jumping through the
various Marvel Universes and consuming all of the Spider-Men there. Ok, that
didn’t sound great, but I promise it’s good. This concept draws off of the best
parts of the Straczynski run: the idea that the spider is an elemental force,
Peter’s totem, and that other forces are primally drawn to do battle with the
spider(s). The point being that Peter is not the first spider, there have been
others, and he is locked in a battle that spans millennia and the universe. It’s
a big idea. J. Michael introduced Morlun as the central expression of this
conflict. He’s sort of like Spider-Man’s Doomsday, except he wants to eat his
soul. Morlun raised the stakes on Spider-villains, who have typically been mad
scientist types of kinda dummy criminals with some powers. Morlun is basically
an alien that wants to kill Spider-Man; that’s his whole thing. Anyway, Peter
gets his shit together and finally kills Morlun, because he has to, but that’s
the end of it, he says. No more killing.
Well, we’ll see about that. Edge of the Spider-Verse brings
Morlun back, reveals he has a whole “family” of similar space vampires who eat
Spiders, and that they can’t die. Sooooo, that’s bad. It’s drawn by Olivier
Copiel, one of the absolute best in the business. He’s a perfect fit for
Spider-Man because his facial expressiveness is so astounding and Peter feels
to me like a sort of Woody Allen meets Jimmy Stewart type of character; you
need to see what he looks like with some detail to explain the words. It’s a
great fit. Slott is writing, of course, and I think the goal is to finish off
the Straczynski era to move forward, once again, in to new territory for Peter
P. I love all of the extra Spider-Men. I didn’t think I would. It sounded dumb
to me, again, like I thought Superior Spider-Man might be. I’ve learned my
lesson. People are losing their shit over Spider-Gwen (Marvel has already given
her a solo title and check eBay on completed auctions for Edge of the
Spider-Verse #2 where she makes her debut; it’s absurd). Peter Porker has been
a favorite of mine since I was a kid. I’d forgotten about Cosmic Spider-Man.
Noir is in there, if that’s your thing. It’s a Spider-Man for all seasons. I
think this is a great book, maybe already better than Superior Spider-Man was, which
is saying something really. Edge of the Spider-Verse really delivers.
So that’s what’s up with Spider-Man. It’s all good news
really. Oh, and if you didn’t see, and I’ll talk about this extensively when I
do my TV and movies blog, but Spider-man may be moving into the Marvel U. and
away from Sony Pictures. Completely rebooted. Shed a tear for Emma Stone (who I
love), but hooray for the movie version of Peter. It’s fitting that in a new
Golden Age for Spider-Man, Disney/Marvel would make a real push to reacquire
that character. They certainly have the capital with Disney’s deep pockets
behind them. I think it would create some great synergy for the books and
movies if the plan works out. See, the Sony email leaks weren’t all bad.
Anywho, Spider-Man good. Read it.
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