J.J. Abrams is making the Spider-Man comics a father-son affair, both literally and figuratively. After a lot of speculation, it was recently revealed that the popular filmmaker is co-writing the new series with his son Henry and the duo are already making their mark on the beloved superhero.
Spider-Man #1 opens with Peter Parker dueling with a mysterious new antagonist named Cadaverous and his henchmen. Mary Jane goes to find her lover out on the battlefield, only to be impaled by the villain. As if this twist wasn’t shocking enough, we then learn that the couple has a child together.
Following that, the issue fast forwards 12 years into the future to find that Peter is no longer the web-slinging superhero we all know him as. He’s given up that life to focus on his career as a photojournalist. Unfortunately, this commitment has led to the deterioration of his relationship with his son.
Ben Parker is now a teen who struggles to fit in at school. Much like his father, his thirst for justice in an unjust world often lands him in trouble. Returning home after detention, the boy gets his hand stuck on a doorknob. Later that night, he wakes up to find that he’s stuck to the ceiling. The oddities only continue to grow from there, causing Ben to worry and ask questions.
The elderly Aunt May tells him to go up to the attic to look through his father’s old things and before long, Ben encounters Peter’s old Spider-Man costume beneath a mound of letters and photographs. The suit’s still damaged from the hero’s last bout with Cadaverous, but is instantly recognizable. It seems like Aunt May purposely laid the groundwork for the teen to follow in his dad’s footsteps and it appears as if Marvel Comics is now about to have a brand new Spider-Man running around and fighting crime.
