A while back, Bleeding Cool leaked that following Amazing Spider-Man #800, Nick Spencer would take over from Dan Slott. With Slott having been confirmed back in January to be leaving the title, fans were wondering for a good while whether or not the rumors were true.
Turns out they were.
Per Marvel’s “Fresh Start” Initiative, Nick Spencer will be taking over, writing Amazing Spider-Man Volume 5, relaunching just after being returned to legacy numbering for the Marvel Legacy branding. The news was released in an exclusive article by comicbook.com
For those who have been living under a rock, Nick Spencer is the writer of Morning Glories and The Fix. He also worked with Steve Lieber on the critically-acclaimed Superior Foes of Spider-Man. (In my opinion, the best book to come out of Superior Spider-Man.) To the masses of people unaware of these titles, he’s more infamous for making Captain America an agent of HYDRA and writing the Secret Empire event.
Joining him on art duties is Ryan Ottley, who is most well-known for his work on the Invincible saga with Robert Kirkman. Previews of his pages are below. He’ll be joined by inker Cliff Ratham and colorist Laura Martin.
Regardless, I offer best wishes to Spencer and Ottley; in my opinion, they’re quality content producers when they’re put on books that suit their strengths, and hope to see some great work come out of the title.
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I can’t believe Marvel is putting Nick Spencer on Spider-Man after Secret Empire. This is asinine and extremely poor business. They should know that a lot of people have a bad taste in their mouth when it comes to Mr. Spencer and at least let him try to earn people’s trust back with smaller books or stories before shoving him in their faces again. I don’t say any of this as an attack on Mr. Spencer—this merely proves that Marvel has learned NOTHING. They’re just doing what they want, demanding that people like it, and calling them names if they don’t instead of playing to their audience and earning their trust. I highly recommend that anyone on the fence about this book don’t give it a chance to begin with. Don’t buy the books to see if they’re good. Don’t reward this insane behavior that Marvel keeps getting away with. Wait it out; read reviews; listed to this site’s reviews podcast, and then if and only if the book is actually good, reward marvel with your green. I’m principally opposed to buying anything from them on trust without them having to earn it at this point.
ART:
Being a Spider-Fan for years, I was logically attracted to INVINCIBLE; Ottley will be in charge of the art, which is great. His style is clean, fast-paced and great in storytelling. I wish him all the best success with ASM.
But when I think of how much INVINCIBLE is a phenomenal no-holds-barred when it came down to more “serious” visual scenes such as graphic violence, I wonder once more if this quasi-cartoon-style is once again more oriented towards a younger audience who will have the opportunity to start reading (and hopefully collecting) ASM.
STORY:
I really need to do my homework on Nick Spencer; still I wish him luck, because it´s something new – a fresh start (pun intended).
Fingers crossed.
Just to address some people who are complaining about the renumbering; I heard they’re doing dual numbering (overall series numberings and run numberings, kind of like Avengers: No Surrender is doing). They’re just billing it as a #1 because it brings in more readers (allegedly).
https://www.cbr.com/marvel-fresh-start-renumbering-tom-brevoort/ Here’s the link talking about dual numbering.
Normally I’d scream continuity, but if he chooses to ignore the last 10 years, I’ll forgive him. I plan to. But if he doesn’t even attempt to fix what Quesada, Slott and Marvel broke, then I already don’t care.
Even without Spencer being factored into the equation (he’s never written ASM before to my knowledge, I dunno maybe he’ll have a knack for it) everything about this rubs me the wrong way. The new number one issue, the ‘NEW villains NEW love interests NEW everything’ bit when we’ve barely gotten any of the ‘old’ stuff through the past eight years or so of Slott’s run, alien invasion plot for the first bloody issue (remember when Spider-Man was a street hero who tackled organised crime?), and so on. It all just sounds like Marvel have learned nothing coming off of Slott’s run and we’re getting more of the same.
I mean I’ll give it a shot and who knows, maybe it’ll turn out alright in the end, but I’m not holding my breath.
Something that we may get from Spencer is original stories. All Slott did was copy stories from other sources:
Big Time: Amazing Spider-Man Vol 2#1
Spider Island: The Sensational Spider-man #35-37
Spider-Verse: The last two episodes of the Spider-Man TAS 90’s
Worldwide: Iron Man
Dead No More: 90’s Clone Saga
And these were considered his best…
Anyone wants to help he figure out which stories he aped for Ends of The Earth and Dying Wish?
Re: The constant criticism on this site of Secret Empire…
Lord knows that Marvel Comics have never taken a political stance or used the comic medium to make controversial statement… sheesh. Its not like Marvel has never used the character of Captain America to make a point about the current state of politics … except… oh wait. The Original Secret Empire of 1975, which was a thinly veiled story about the corruption of the Nixon administration. You may not agree with Spencers politics, but he is following a grand tradition of comics and Marvel in particular of making a “Timely” statement and using the medium of comics to do it.
I couldn t be more excited about him taking on Spider-man
@Bertone: I think this is the third one.
@Al: I think it’s supposed to be Peter’s new roommate.
BTW who is that character Peter is seen helping in the preview pages?
I don’t think it’s Randy because he seems to be given more prominence than Randy is usually given.
The return to classic renumbering didn’t even last 10 issues.
Prediction.
Spencer will be terrible but fans and official review sites will say he’s good because he’s either different or not AS bad as Slott but will still demonstrate a fundamental misunderstanding of the character and core concept.
In other words he will be Zdarsky after issue #6 where people think he’s good and gets the character but when you look more closely no he does not.
BTW…Spencer doesn’t deserve to write Spider-Man.
He spent his credit after he dragged Cap, Sam, Red Skull and the readership throguh the mud with the asinine garbage that was Secret Empire.
Spider-Man fans cannot catch a break!
ANOTHER NUMBER ONE?!!?!?
How many has this been in the last 4 years???
I’m a little mixed on what I’ve seen of his work, but Superior Foes was indeed great, so I’m gonna be cautiously optimistic. I guess his past quality on Spider-Man related content is no indicator of how good he’ll be on the main title though, Slott’s Spider-Man/Human Torch mini-series was a million times better than any of the arcs he ended up doing on Amazing in my opinion. Ottley has done some great work, so no matter what the story quality is, the pages will at least look lovely.
As for the renumbering, I look forward to the original numbering being brought back as soon as we get to the 900th issue only to be reset again as quickly as possible.
The art looks gorgeous and I love Boomerang is showing up!! And please oh please Nick Spencer let Peter Parker be intelligent and actually act his age and not be a goober who leaves his fly down during a meeting. Please respect the character enough that he won’t be running around in a web diaper. Please let your stories not insult my intelligence and don’t push love interest #1446889 down my throat and let me like characters naturally and let them develop naturally. Am I asking too much?
I am cautiously optimistic about this. I think Spencer can be a great writer and his Superior Foes run made me learn to be patient and enjoy the ride. While I never read his Cap run, I think the fan backlash over the Hydra-Cap stuff was way overblown. I also think that the Captain America book lends itself to be more political storytelling, versus in a Spider-Man book, it would be way off base to approach stories like that. I think with Alonso out and the subject matter being Spidey, I believe that those excesses that people disliked about his Cap run will be absent.
But renumbering to #1 AGAIN?! Really…?
Compromise – Have two numbering systems, based on Runs or Major Story Arcs. Number the books with the total ASM issues in shadow-grey (like when they brought back the old numbering in Vol 2) and have “current run” numbering next to it in bold black. Problem solved, everyone’s happy.
If Spencer can keep his politics out of his writing and actually interact decently with fans/customers on social media (both of which I’m honestly not very optimistic about knowing Marvel’s current state), maybe we’ll actually get some entertaining stories.
Great news!!!!!! He’s the perfect choice to take of Spidey. I loved the Fix and Superior Foes. Secret Empire started strong but fell apart at the end, but I don’t blame him for that.
This is going to be great! So excited.
I’m down. I like Spencer, and think he’s written more good then bad. I didn’t even dislike secret empire that much even if the ending was lame and I got tired of the twists at the end of every issue. The Pymtron issue was a lot of fun too.
*groan* It’s not the Nick Spencer-ness of this news that frustrates me. I’ll give him a shot, because when he’s good, he’s very good. It’s the f*$%^ng RE-NUMBERING! Marvel needs to pick a numbering system and effing STAY with it. I loved the return of the original numbering! Sadly, that was practically the only good thing about Legacy. I imagine that’s why Marvel is doing this again, because Legacy underperformed, but I doubt that that’s the numbering’s fault so much as it is the poor story qualities’.
Not really familiar with Spencer’s work, but anybody has to be better than Slott. Although, the last two issues have felt like more of a return to the old Spider-Man. He’s not relying on tech. His witty banter is spot-on. We get to see more of a personal life. The dialogue overall has been better.
I’m not a fan of returning back to yet another #1. At least we’ll get Action Comics #1,000.