{"id":166698,"date":"2025-06-08T04:19:09","date_gmt":"2025-06-08T04:19:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/166698\/"},"modified":"2025-06-08T04:19:09","modified_gmt":"2025-06-08T04:19:09","slug":"we-finally-have-the-best-spider-man-run-in-years-and-its-about-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/166698\/","title":{"rendered":"We Finally Have the Best Spider-Man Run in Years And It’s About Time"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s been pretty rough to be a Spider-Man fan for the past couple of years. Some slightly more cynical fans would argue it\u2019s been rough being a Spider-Man fan since \u201cOne More Day\u201d completely stripped away Peter\u2019s history with MJ<\/a> in one of the most out of character moves in all of comics history. Although it definitely hasn\u2019t been as doom and gloom as some people would lead you to believe, it\u2019s undeniable that the quality of The Amazing Spider-Man comic has certainly been a bit below average in recent years. Plagued by clear editorial control and a status quo that enrages fans more than any villain ever could, the main Spider-Man comic has been in a rough spot. Until Joe Kelly started his run on volume seven of The Amazing Spider-Man, and gave us the start of the best run on the comic we\u2019ve had in years.<\/p>\n

Why Spider-Man Was in a Bad Spot<\/p>\n

Marvel Editorial has always had a vested interest in how Spider-Man is managed. This is natural, of course, given that Spider-Man is their most popular and profitable character by leaps and bounds. However, in order to keep their cash-spider as appealing to as many people as possible, Marvel demands a very strict status quo be kept about the character. To summarize it Peter must constantly be down on his luck, either unemployed or feeling guilty about his job, either chasing a relationship or in one that will inevitably come apart in a couple of issues, and he must always be on the back foot against his villains. This is Marvel\u2019s attempt to keep Spider-Man relatable to a young, unmarried audience, by having him in a constant state of growing and learning. However, while this idea sounds nice, it pushes far too hard and is way too repetitive.<\/p>\n

A large part of what made Peter Parker a relatable character at his debut is that he dealt with real problems that the majority of his readers could relate to alongside all of the supervillain shenanigans. He had money issues and troubles with his personal relationships, which are things everyone can see themselves in. However, as a natural part of facing those problems, Peter grew past them. He matured as anyone would, but Marvel didn\u2019t want him to drift away from that relatability, so they reset his progress back to a baseline over and over again. A constant status quo is expected of comic books, but the reason fans hate Spider-Man\u2019s is because his baseline is just him suffering for things either outside his control or because he somehow forgets the lesson he just learned. And it just feels mean. Peter is constantly getting beaten down again and again, and because the status quo wants to continuously reset there\u2019s no end in sight, because the second Peter does something to alleviate it he\u2019s pushed back into the mud again. And because comic books are eternal stories, they tend to want to ramp things up instead of lowering the stakes, so every time Peter\u2019s character is reset he suffers even worse than before.<\/p>\n

[RELATED: This Is the Weirdest Spider-Man Story Ever (But It Changed Everything)<\/a>]<\/p>\n

The reason fans hate Paul so much<\/a> is that he is the living embodiment of Marvel arbitrarily keeping Peter from being happy. Zeb Well\u2019s run on Spider-Man especially felt less like a story and more often like 101 ways to torture your main character for no reason. And yet that\u2019s exactly what Joe Kelly\u2019s first arc on Spider-Man wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

A Return to Classic Spider-Man Storytelling<\/p>\n

This Spider-Man story is fun, first and foremost. Instead of beating Peter down like he owes Marvel his lunch money, this run doesn\u2019t go out of its way to make Peter\u2019s life worse. Instead, it focuses on Peter building back up his life. Putting the pieces of his shattered life back together at the start of a new run is tradition for Spidey at this point, but this time it feels different. Peter doesn\u2019t feel like he\u2019s being punished for being himself. Yes, being Spider-Man is a burden and this first arc shows that, but it shouldn\u2019t be the full curse Marvel often presents it as. Peter does struggle to juggle his heroic and personal lives, but it doesn\u2019t feel like he\u2019s being put into impossible situations where he loses everything. He acts like a mature and well-meaning adult, not a petulant manchild who doesn\u2019t know how to handle interpersonal relationships. And people help Peter without it being made out like they\u2019re doing him an unimaginable favor he doesn\u2019t deserve.<\/p>\n

Beyond that, the story and art have been awesome. Spider-Man deals with an intriguing mystery that is tied to one of his classic villains, the Hobgoblin, who has also been given an incredible redesign. Spider-Man faces the villains and confronts his own guilt over his past actions, but it never feels like the story is punching down on Peter. He overcomes his guilt<\/a> and has legitimately very heartwarming moments with Aunt May, who actually feels very present in this story. Ever since Peter and MJ traded their marriage for Aunt May\u2019s life, Peter\u2019s maternal figure has felt like an outsider in his life. With her once again having her memories of Spider-Man\u2019s secret identity revoked, it really felt like the writers didn\u2019t know what to do with her. She seems unable to learn his secret as per the status quo, so she kind of just languishes in this area of not being able to do anything. Joe Kelly\u2019s run actually brings her back into Peter\u2019s life more prominently. The gap between boy and aunt is being bridged, and the rest of Peter\u2019s side cast feels just as alive. Norman Osborn is still a good person after his sins were ripped away from him, but he is once again acting cold and calculating even while he is a much better person. Spider-Man\u2019s cast of side characters has always been one of his strongest points, and they are on full blast in this run so far.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Of course, the absolute best part of this run hasn\u2019t just been the incredible art and fun yet emotionally mature storytelling, but the fact that it doesn\u2019t feel like it\u2019s trying to change everything. Nick Spencer\u2019s run made promises of restoring Spider-Man to how he should be and constantly chased that impossible dream, while Zeb Well\u2019s run was all about the constant up and down of Peter\u2019s life as the stakes were raised ever higher and higher every arc. Joe Kelly\u2019s first arc on Amazing Spider-Man didn\u2019t try to do anything other than tell a good, simple Spider-Man story. It had good writing and good emotional beats, but it didn\u2019t try to redefine the character or do anything out of left field. All it did was be good, and that\u2019s what\u2019s been missing from Spider-Man comics for so many years. We don\u2019t need some major reinvention that shakes Spider-Man to his core, we just need Spider-Man. Peter being allowed to just be the hero that Spider-Man is sounds so simple, but it\u2019s so incredibly powerful, and exactly what he does in this run. I am really excited to see more, because Spider-Man being Spider-Man is all we really need. Between this run and Ultimate Spider-Man, it\u2019s a good time to be a Spider-Man fan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s been pretty rough to be a Spider-Man fan for the past couple of years. Some slightly more…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":166699,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3935],"tags":[69766,77,69767,6766,3943,4580,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-166698","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-amazing-spider-man","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-joe-kelly","11":"tag-marvel-comics","12":"tag-movies","13":"tag-regular-feature","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114645825192700053","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166698"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166698\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/166699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}