…And The Omega: Spider-Man Gets A Sidekick

When Brian Michael Bendis had Spider-Man join The New Avengers a few years ago, I remember hearing grumblings amongst the regulars at my local comic store, where the know me by name and ask to remember that “that’s not a web shooter, and please don’t wave it at the paying customers while shouting ‘thwip!'” that having Spider-Man join a team would take away the whole outcast loner vibe that was part of what made the character unique.

That was 2005. It is now 2012, and after having had Spider-Man join not only The New Avengers, but also the Avengers proper and The Fantastic Four, Marvel has made it clear that they haven’t forgotten Spidey’s long and storied history as a loner, and that they intend to celebrate that history by giving him a teenaged sidekick!

Wait, what?

In this story, we find that Peter Parker’s days as photographer for the Daily Bugle are behind him and he’s now a scientist at a research firm. Andy [Macguire] is part of a student field trip that visits Parker’s lab. He’s in the wrong place (or perhaps the right place) at the wrong time when Parker’s invention malfunctions and zaps him with great power. Parker – haunted by the way he got his own super abilities and how his failure to use them led to the murder of his beloved Uncle Ben so many years ago – feels an even greater responsibility to help young Andy. He feels he must help him discover his powers and teach him how to use them responsibly.

So, the team of Spider-Man and Alpha is born. Spidey has his own “Robin.”

So allow me to be one of the first to say: No no no no no no no no

<deep breath>

Okay, let’s try and look at this at least a little analytically: one level, this move makes a lot of sense. And that level is the one upon which you have been eating a lot of mescaline.

Spider-Man is the guy so tormented with guilt over the death of his Uncle Ben that he has made his personal motto: “Nobody dies.” He understands the burden of having superpowers, and his default setting when he finds someone who has received powers has always been, at least as far back as I can remember in 1977, to bring the poor bastard to Reed Richards to try and cure them.

On the other hand, this story is going to be written by Dan Slott, whose run on The Amazing Spider-Man has run the gamut between “purely awesome” to “merely very entertaining.” So if this story has to happen, it could clearly be in worse hands… although I still don’t understand why anyone felt that this character development was strictly necessary…

“Part of it is that Spider-Man is grown up,” said Axel Alonso, editor-in-chief of Marvel Entertainment. “He’s older, more seasoned, but young at heart. He’s still a young man, but he’s been around. It’s interesting because it flips the paradigm. Teen hero Spider-Man is now responsible for this teen hero sidekick.

So Marvel Editorial has acknowledged that Spider-Man should be allowed to grow and mature as a character! Just the way they did when they had Spider-Man make a deal with the everfucking devil to dissolve his marriage so they could tell stories about Peter Parker as a single dude! And I think it’s awesome how they’ve chosen to honor that torpedoing of 20-plus years of married Spidey stories by winding up giving him a fucking child to take care of!

Ah, well. So yeah, this is a Thing That Is Happening. Here’s me hoping this is a better idea than it sounds. At the very least this will be worth checking out because a Spider-Man running around with a teen sidekick means a J. Jonah Jameson screeching, “Spider-Man: Pederast or Buggerer?”

Spidey and his sidekick debut in The Amazing Spider-Man #693.

(via Fox Nation)