Since “Brand New Day” almost ten years ago, The Amazing Spider-Man has remained the only ongoing comic book series featuring the solo adventures of Peter Parker as the wisecracking web-slinger. That all changes this June with the premiere of Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man by writer Chip Zdarsky and artist Adam Kubert.
As reported in Entertainment Weekly, while Amazing will still be written by Dan Slott and continue focusing on Peter as CEO of Parker Industries, Spectacular will center more around Spidey’s New York City stomping grounds. This also will include more involvement with Peter’s long-time supporting cast, although Zdarsky promises some new faces. One those new characters includes a possible new love interest named Rebecca London, an aspiring stand-up comedian.
As elaborated by Zdarsky in his interview with EW:
With [Spectacular], we’re using the same Spider-Man in-continuity but shifting the spotlight back to his NYC environment and supporting cast. But even though we’re pushing to make it a more personal book, we’re still going to have big adventures with ramifications that’ll be felt in his other books. If I had, like, a true mission statement for the title though, it would be: “Have fun, have heart, have stakes.” My personal mission statement going into the book is “With great power comes something something I don’t know I’ve never had power before.”
Zdarsky also places much emphasis on Peter being a character who, despite whatever changes he undergoes, keeps getting in his own way:
Spider-Man is kind of like when you’re a kid and you go to camp or a new school, and you think, “I can be a new person here,” but you invariably end up with the same problems because you’re still, you know, the same person. Peter can be having a crummy time of things, put on his Spider-Man outfit and feel like he can do anything. But inevitably his “Parker luck” spoils things, even as Spider-Man. And part of the fun of the character is seeing how he gets out of the holes he digs for himself.
In addition, Spider-Man: Homecoming premiers this July, which makes this new comic ideally placed for capitalizing off the new film. After all, Zdarsky’s quip during the interview about “senior citizen characters” could be hinting towards The Vulture and the Tinkerer as the first villains of the new series.
Long time fans may also recognize the title itself. The first iteration of Spectacular started life as an oversized black-and-white magazine in the late 1960s, but only two issues were ever published. Then in 1976, Marvel published Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man concurrently alongside Amazing and Marvel Team-Up. It continued as The Spectacular Spider-Man for the twenty-two years, ending with issue #263, although it experienced a brief revival between 2003 and 2005. It was also the same title for the critically acclaimed, but short-lived, animated series by Greg Wiesman and Victor Cook.
Readers will get their first taste of the new series with the Free Comic Book Day Edition of Secret Empire, Marvel’s upcoming summer event crossover. The first issue of Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man will then debut in June, 2017.
