This week marks a major turning point in the Spider-verse with the release of Amazing Spider-Man #74, but it’s just the tip of the iceberg for fans of the webslinger this fall.
Marvel is everywhere these days—love it or hate it—and as the company’s most prominent, unofficial poster boy, so is Spidey. With the turning of the guard in his flagship comic series, we thought it a fitting time to take a deep breath and examine all the great things that lie in store for the webslinger over the next few months.
1) Amazing Spider-Man #74
Featuring a staggering twelve variant covers, this week’s issue brings an end to the Sinister War event, and brings closure on several other long-running plot threads. The mysterious villain Kindred has been tormenting Peter, Mary Jane, and the Osborn family, but now the ultimate truths are revealed in Nick Spencer’s final issue as writer. What is Kindred’s true identity? Will our heroes come out of this alive? And why exactly is Mephisto so interested in Spider-Man, anyway?
This issue is seriously massive, featuring not only an epic main story but intriguing epilogues that reflect on the character’s history—and tease what’s to come.
2) Spider-Man Beyond
Next week, Marvel Comics is amping Amazing Spider-Man up to thrice-monthly publication as a new storyline begins. Beyond will see the return of Peter Parker’s clone, Ben Reilly, as he takes up the mantle of Spider-Man. Solicitations for upcoming issues have teased that Peter will be critically sidelined and left to fight for his life somehow, while Ben takes over his responsibilites. A superstar team of creative talent, dubbed the Beyond Board, has been cooking up this storyline since last December—Kelly Thompson, Saladin Ahmed, Cody Ziglar, Patrick Gleason, and Zeb Wells.
On a personal note, I first started reading Spidey comics in the early nineties, in the years when Ben was fighting crime alongside Peter as the Scarlet Spider and even took up the full mantle for a time, so I’m incredibly curious to see how this new storyline will play out.
3) Venom: Let There Be Carnage
It’s not a proper Spider-Man movie, as Sony’s Marvel properties still exist in a vacuum from the larger MCU, but without him there would be no Venom or Carnage. Tom Hardy returns as Eddie Brock and Venom, and in this sequel he’ll have to contend against a truly unprecedented threat—the serial killer Cletus Cassidy (Woody Harrelson) and his own deranged symbiote, Carnage.
With any luck, we’ll get to see Hardy beside Tom Holland on an MCU big screen sometime soon, but for now Venom: Let There Be Carnage should offer a fun ride for fans of the webslinger.
(Click here to read CGMagazine’s review of Venom: Let There Be Carnage.)
4) Marvel’s Avengers DLC
Square Enix and Crystal Dynamics are bringing Marvel’s Avengers to Xbox Game Pass, but PlayStation fans have something a little more exciting to look forward to—the Sony-exclusive Spider-Man DLC, announced last year.
Last month, senior game designer Scott Walters confirmed his team has “always scheduled and looked to bring Spider-Man out in 2021 for PlayStation owners,” and added “That is still on track.” Further, this week Senior Producer Dan Matlack answered fan questions on the game’s official Discord, and added that Spidey’s addition would be a full event “with cut scenes and a story for sure.“
Time’s running out for Crystal Dynamics to meet this deadline, but then again, the Game Awards would make a great high-profile stage for a last-minute announcement this December. Especially since there’s another major event for the webhead that month…
5) No Way Home
Of course, the biggest thing on this list is Spider-Man: No Way Home. The teaser trailer shattered YouTube records when it showed how Peter would attempt to deal with being outed as Spider-Man at the end of Far From Home.
At some point we know he’ll at least run into Alfred Molina’s Doctor Octopus from Sam Raimi’s trilogy, as well as Jamie Foxx as Electro from The Amazing Spider-Man 2. Many believe that Tobey Macguire and Andrew Garfield will reprise their roles from the previous films, and half of their own rogue’s galleries are suspected to be involved too. The rumour mill has been churning at full-speed for over a year now, but even if Tom Holland’s third feature doesn’t break into full Into the Spider-Verse insanity, it’s still poised to be the most ambitious spider-flick yet.
There’s even more Spider-Man goodness in the works, like celebrations for Miles Morales’ 10th anniversary, the pending release of Into the Spider-Verse 2—currently scheduled for October 2022—and the upcoming sequel to 2018’s game from Insomniac, which has been likened to The Empire Strikes Back. Maybe fans will be finished digesting all of this fall’s bombshells by the time those follow-ups arrive.
