It’s been the best part of a week now since the news broke that Spider-Man would be getting his own Marvel NOW! book in the form of THE SUPERIOR SPIDER-MAN and the internet is buzzing with theories regarding the book.
Current Amazing Spider-Man writer Dan Slott will continue to write the story although promising a darker version of the hero and the past few days he’s been doing teasing anxious fans about the book featuring someone other than Peter Parker behind the mask. Various bloggers, myself included have been discussing possibilities (Click here for a recent guest post I did on the subject)
Peter Parker
Prior to the book being announced I was follower of the idea that Peter Parker would end up with Doc Ock’s mechanical arms being fused to his body in AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #700 this December, ultimately making it impossible for Peter Parker’s identity to remain a secret but also creating a “Superior Spider-Man.” The original idea and all of the reason to believe it can be found here, however since art from new lead artist Ryan Stegman hit the web, that theory lost momentum.
Miles Morales
From that idea, I moved on to believe that the face behind the mask would belong to a version of Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man, Miles Morales based in the Marvel’s primary story-telling universe Earth-616. For those not so in the know, Miles took on the role of New Spider-Man after Ultimate Peter Parker was killed by the Sinister Six (March 2011, Ultimate Spider-Man #156 – #160.) This August, to celebrate Spider-Man’s 50th, Brian Michael Bendis wrote a fantastic short series in which Peter Parker is accidentally transported to the Ultimate Universe and ends up fighting alongside Miles Morales. To sum up, the series ended with (SPOILER!) Peter gets back to Earth-616 and heads straight to Google to find out if Miles exists in his world, annoyingly ending with a panel of Peter saying “Oh My God.”
Obviously this opened up the flood gates to more rumours and as a huge Miles fan, I was onboard with this until yesterday when the cover for THE SUPERIOR SPIDER-MAN issue 2 was released showing someone who isn’t quite the black teenager we’ve know and love.
…and that brings me to my current theory…
Clone Saga
I know what you’re thinking. “Really, another Clone saga?” but when you think about it, it makes a lot of sense.
So far we know very little about the character other than the fact that he’ll soon be dating Mary-Jane and while this is yet to become official, it’s reported that the new Spidey will come with retractable claws. So from that, I’ve pieced together that the new Spider-Man is… (drum roll, please) …PETER PARKER, sort of.
Let me explain, we all know that while Peter and Mary-Jane are just friends at the moment, there is definitely still something there but there’s so much history and Peter Parker has been such a Nerf-Herder in the past. So if a new, mistake-free version of the character came to exist, surely MJ would jump at the opportunity. Surely?
That very loosely answers part of it but what about those claws? Thats the best part, I was reading MINIMUM CARNAGE #1 (The Venom/Carnage/Scarlet Spider crossover book) and during a battle between Venom and Scarlet Spider, Kane pulled some claws of his own out of his forearms and as he is a Peter Parker clone himself, it seemed only logical.
If you’ve been keeping up to date with THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN, you should know that Miles Warren, The Jackal himself showed up in #693 with an army of Alpha clones in tow, obviously, Spider-Man saved the day but The Jackal vanished after his plan was thwarted. This is fair enough but the build up that they gave to Jackal returning deserved more than a couple of pages so to have him sitting back reminiscing the times he spent attempting to make a clone of Gwen Stacy to lead his perfect life and all the problems Spider-Man caused him it’s only logical he would want to take one last stab at taking down the wall crawler.
Now this probably made a whole lot more sense in my head and I full expect to change my mind again by the time January comes around. Dan Slott is a damn good writer and could come up with something infinitely better than I ever could so if you do happen to like this idea, take it with a pinch of salt. There are obviously other things to take into consideration but that’s a story for another day.
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