With Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse being a theatrical success and Spider-Man 2 set to hit the PlayStation 5 in October, everyone’s got Spiders on the brain. Ahead of the film’s release, Marvel made an effort to push specific Spider-Man variants such as Pavitr Prabhakar (Spider-Man India) and Hobie Brown (Spider-Punk). But there’s one Spider who doesn’t appear in that movie, but is surprisingly coming back to comics after a few years of being retired.
Following a small tease in June, Marvel Comics confirmed at San Diego Comic-Con that a new run of Superior Spider-Man was in the works. The character’s original co-creator Dan Slott is set to return to write the book, with Ultimate Spider-Man artist Mark Bagley on hand for art, continuing the two’s partnership following their current Spider-Man run. This new run will be preceded by a one-shot in October that sees the arrival of a villain from Spidey’s Superior days. When this presently unnamed villain shows up looking to make trouble for both Peter Parker and Otto Octavius, it leads to Superior’s return.
If you don’t remember, Superior was one of the more controversial parts to Slott’s long tenure as a Spider-Man writer. In early 2013, Slott had Doctor Octopus swap bodies with Peter Parker to avoid dying from cancer. While Ock was successful in the swap, he became inspired by Peter’s dying wish and endeavored to become a better, more superior version of the wallcrawler. With Ryan Stegman, Humberto Ramos, and Giuseppe Camuncoli on hand as artists, Superior lasted through fall 2014 (a few months after Amazing Spider-Man 2 came to theaters) and saw Otto Spidey make some moves that caused him to lose his Avengers membership and put New York in danger, prompting Peter’s return. A second run from Christos Gage and Mike Hawthorne released in 2018, this time with Otto in a brand new clone body instead of jacking Peter’s, and that wrapped in 2019 so Otto could be a villain again.
The re-emergence of Superior Spidey follows in the recent arrival of Spider-Boy (a kid named Bailey Briggs), who’s also set to have his own solo comic. Whether this is all paving the way for their eventual turns in an upcoming movie (or video game) or some big Spider-comics event in 2024, it’s likely that things won’t end here.
Superior Spider-Man Returns #1 releases on October 11, followed by Superior Spider-Man #1 on November 15.
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