‘The Amazing Spider-Man’ Comes to an End

New York Comic Con was a hotbed of Marvel news this year with details concerning the upcoming Marvel NOW! re-launch as well as the company’s new slate of movies taking center stage. Of course, it wouldn’t be Marvel if they didn’t have details about their flagship character, the amazing Spider-Man, to throw around. However, Spider-Man won’t be so amazing anymore, and neither will he be Peter Parker.

The Amazing Spider-Man #700 will be the last in the long-lived series. Moving forward, everyone’s favorite web-head will be featured in the new ongoing series The Superior Spider-Man, with a new man behind the mask.

At the Comic Con panel detailing the future of the character, Marvel director of communications talked about the new series.

“It’s an all-new Spider-Man – it ain’t Peter Parker,” Singh said. He also mentioned that the new Dan Slott penned series will be darker than what Spider-Man fans have been used to recently.

Slott, the most recent, regular writer for The Amazing Spider-Man will continue to write the series, will Ryan Stegman will be doing the art for the first three issues. After that, Humberto Ramos and Giuseppe Camuncoli will be taking over as the regular, rotating artists.

So how come no more Peter Parker? We don’t actually know, yet. The events of The Amazing Spider-Man #700 as well as Avenging Spider-Man #15.1 will lead into whatever is going on in The Superior Spider-Man.

One detail that the author did let slip is that Mary Jane Watson and Spider-Man will finally be getting back together in the new series, which was emphasized with a shot of the cover of Superior Spider-Man #2, showing a half-masked Spidey with M.J. Remember though, that’s Spider-Man and Mary Jane, not Peter Parker and Mary Jane. Let’s all just take a moment to wrap our heads around that one.

Slott followed up his comments about the new book with a tease as to poor Peter Parker’s situation in the Marvel universe going forward.

“We’re not saying Peter is dead or retired,” added Slott. “Maybe he’s still in the book!”

Does that mean we might see Parker take on the role of a Spider-Man mentor, a la Bruce Wayne in Batman Beyond? Or is Slott’s comment just a red herring?
While the wonderful world of comic books continues to be a convoluted mess, it’s nice to see something actually change in the Marvel universe for once. However, it’s worth noting that Spider-Man in particular has gone through some pretty big changes in the past (e.g. Aunt May dying and marrying Mary Jane) only to have it all blown into oblivion like just about everything else in the industry.

The future of the Marvel universe sure sounds exciting now, but we should all sit back and wait to see if it actually stays that way in the coming months.