Okay, remember this odd solicit that came out earlier this week:
100TH ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL #1 SPIDER-MAN
MARVEL COMICS
(W) Sean Ryan (A/CA) In-Hyuk Lee
CLASSIFIED
You probably asked yourself, “Wait a minute? Spider-Man isn’t 100 years old. He just celebrated his 50th two years ago. What is this a 100th Anniversary of?”
Well, as revealed at Marvel’s “Next Big Thing” panel at this year’s C2E2, this is part of a five-part series of one-shots in celebration of Marvel’s 75th Anniversary. The premise, as pitched by former editor Steve Wacker, was to imagine what might happen to various characters if they had stories being published in the year 2061–or 100 years after the publication of 1961’s Fantastic Four #1, which is considered the beginning of the modern-day Marvel Universe. In the case of Spider-Man, he will be “doing battle with the Kingpin without his Techno-Symbiote suit.”
Along with Spider-Man, there will also be one-shots for Guardians of the Galaxy, The Fantastic Four, X-Men, and The Avengers.
UPDATE: Hero Complex goes into more detail about these series of one-shots, as well as what the Spider-Man 100th Anniversary story involves:
…The one-shot issues will arrive weekly in July, hypothesizing what shape the characters’ adventures will take in the year 2061.
“We thought that it would be a really fun idea to … almost treat these like time capsules from the future,” said Marvel editor Nick Lowe in an interview with Hero Complex. “We were talking about how we’d just been through a bunch of 50th anniversaries — we had the 50th anniversary of the Fantastic Four a few years ago, we had the 50th anniversary of the Avengers and the X-Men last year — we thought that would be a really idea to go after, a 100th anniversary thing.”…
…“One of the hallmarks of Marvel comics is the living history,” Lowe said. “We don’t reboot here really. The Spider-Man that you’re reading in today’s comics is the same Spider-Man that Stan Lee and Steve Ditko created in ‘Amazing Fantasy’ No. 15. Same goes for Fantastic Four. People may die and come back to life, it’s the same ongoing history.”
Peter Parker finds himself in extremely difficult circumstances (naturally) in the “Spider-Man” 100th anniversary issue, written by Sean Ryan with In-Hyuk Lee handling the art and cover. After trying and failing to destroy the Techno-Symbiote suit, Peter and the suit’s former owner, Eddie Brock, were kidnapped by the Kingpin, who then killed Eddie, leaving Peter to battle the villain and the technologically enhanced alien on his own.
Sources: Comic Book Resources, Newsarama, and Bleeding Cool.
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@ #7 herbiepopecker — 😀 Good one!
My wife and I ought to celebrate our 100th anniversary this year.
@#2 dornwolf — Actually, it’s closer to DC’s “Five Years Later” they’re doing this September. These one-shots are taking place within the same 616 Marvel Universe using the same characters. However, due to Marvel’s sliding timescale, the setting of these stories are taking place in 2061, even though, in Marvel time, perhaps only 5 to 10 years have passed since the present day. At least, that’s what it seems like they’re doing here.
“Techno-Symbiote suit.” – That sounds incredibly stupid. This is going to be Spider-Man Unlimited all over again. Probably just gonna skip this one.
The only thing that would make this interesting is if, somehow, by 2061 they manage to actually work it so these stories coincide with the then-current canon.
My first though was exactly as you predicted.
The cover does look interesting, and the idea sounds cool for a one off. I’d have to see some preview pages before I committed to it.
No different than when DC did the One Million storyline.
So to celebrate Marvel’s 75th anniversary, they are publishing stories set almost 50 years in the future, which are completely out of continuity and have no impact on current stories? Yeah, I’m gonna go run out and get that.