One of the key jobs of any writer of a Spider-Man comic is to mercilessly screw with Peter Parker. Take his money, make his beloved aunt sick, have the Daily Bugle hound him… Peter is the Charlie Brown of the 616, and let’s face it, fans like it that way.
Apparently, come January, Peter is due for another round of abuse, this time at the hands of Dan Slott. It’s going to be coming in the oddly named book The Superior Spider-Man.
Is it me, or does that sound like some sort of racist parody of Spider-Man made by skinheads? It’s really kind of an unfortunate title.
Slott, however, has said some interesting things about it.
As he told USA Today:
“I’ve always been the omniscient hand that’s been protecting Peter Parker and Spider-Man, and not letting anything too bad happen to him,” he adds. “And now I’ve become this cruel god. There’s something exciting about that, about going, ‘Mwah-ha-ha-ha-ha, here is what’s going to happen to you, Spider-Man!’ And it’s drastic and it’s big and it’s exciting and it’s never been done before.”
This apparently ties into issue #700, which you might remember will also be the issue Marvel puts a bullet in Amazing Spider-Man.
Slott is also hinting that it may not be Peter Parker under the mask, which I’ve got to say has uncomfortable echoes of a certain Saga that must not be named, even if the speculation that it’s Spider-Man 2099 under the mask make the ’90s kid in me really, really happy. One way or the other, he’s got a new suit and a new power set, although somehow I suspect these aren’t going to stick to the Wall-Crawler in the long run.
I’ll give the book a shot. That’s fair. Marvel deserves a chance to win me over and Uncanny Avengers, the first Marvel NOW! book, is actually not bad if a bit unintentionally campy. Still, I have to admit: I’m feeling comics-fan deja vu. And not in a good way.