2018: A significant year in Spider-Man history.

[Batman Begins 2005]

The co-creators of Spider-Man, Stan Lee and Steve Ditko sadly passed away.

Dan Slott's long tenure on Spider-Man came to an end.

Nick Spencer's The Amazing Spider-Man is great so far: Back to Basics was the title of his first arc but the name can extend to his run so far. Spencer gets the voices, Spidery solve things himself and the mystery about the identity of the centipede villain.

Chip Zdarsky's run on Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man ended with the best Spider-Man issue of the year with #310, fittingly called Finale. It's a must read. You must!

Spider-Man making his debut in an Avengers movie, Avengers: Infinity War.

The year ended with Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse getting rave reviews and deserved them.

[Mister Mets]

Adding to your summary...

- 2018 basically included the entirety of Slott's finale, kicking off with the lead-up to the Red Goblin saga.
- The Venom comics relaunch was very successful.
- The Venom film made a lot of money, changing the considerations for Marvel and Sony. It's a big deal that Sony has hits with Spider-Man outside of the live action solo films.
- Spider-Geddon brought back the Inheritors and the concept of the interdimensional warfare.
- Spider-Man's "I don't feel so good" in Infinity War became an iconic movie moment.
- Into the Spider-Verse won major awards and nominations.
- Bendis left Marvel.
- Saladin Ahmed took over the Miles Morales title, and had a clever take on the alien costume saga in the Amazing Spider-Man annual.

[Kevinroc]

And you didn't even mention Insomniac's PS4 game, which became the fastest selling superhero game ever made.

(https://comicbook.com/gaming/2018/12...e-of-all-time/)

[Batman Begins 2005]

Thank you both. Can't believe I forgot BMB leaving Marvel and the PS4 Spidey game.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Significant years in Spider-Man history include stuff like 1987, the year Peter and MJ got married, the year of publication of ''Spider-Man vs. Wolverine #1" (not necessarily a great story but it's the first time Uncle Ben was attributed to having said "With Great Power comes Great Responsibility"), the year of Kraven's Last Hunt.

2018 doesn't measure up too high against that in terms of seminal long-lasting and imperishable contributions to Spider-Man. What you have is mainlining of already existing stuff into the mainstream and an extension of status-quo. So you know Sony Pictures continues to hold on to the rights of Spider-Man for the forseeable future. You have one controversial and polarizing writer (Dan Slott) making way for another (Nick Spencer) and Slott's run is exceptional mostly for its longevity rather than original contributions, since it largely consisted of elaborate spinning of wheels, while the new guy goes "Back to Basics" (Peter is impoverished, unpopular, and so on). Lee and Ditko passing away is definitely significant in terms of off-screen "end of an age" optics but fundamentally none of them were involved with Spider-Man creatively since 1971-1972 (and also 1987 for Lee) and 1966 respectively. So it's more a confirming of a reality that already exists than anything else. The PS4 game is great and successful but Spider-Man and games have had a long history and there have been a run of good-to-decent 3D games before the PS4 with his greater polish made something better.

Bendis leaving Marvel on the other hand is a big thing and 2018 is a coronation for his legacy and significant to him. Miles Morales, Peter's greatest and most successful legacy character became the star of ''into the Spider-Verse'' and playable in the PS4 game.

I am not saying that 2018 is not an important year for Spider-Man, but if we are saying significant, then it's nowhere close to 1987, and what you see is confirming and perpetuating of general trends.

[Snoop Dogg]

I am not saying that 2018 is not an important year for Spider-Man, but if we are saying significant, then it's nowhere close to 1987, and what you see is confirming and perpetuating of general trends.

w0t

10charrrr

[WebSlingWonder]

Significant years in Spider-Man history include stuff like 1987, the year Peter and MJ got married, the year of publication of ''Spider-Man vs. Wolverine #1" (not necessarily a great story but it's the first time Uncle Ben was attributed to having said "With Great Power comes Great Responsibility"), the year of Kraven's Last Hunt.

2018 doesn't measure up too high against that in terms of seminal long-lasting and imperishable contributions to Spider-Man. What you have is mainlining of already existing stuff into the mainstream and an extension of status-quo. So you know Sony Pictures continues to hold on to the rights of Spider-Man for the forseeable future. You have one controversial and polarizing writer (Dan Slott) making way for another (Nick Spencer) and Slott's run is exceptional mostly for its longevity rather than original contributions, since it largely consisted of elaborate spinning of wheels, while the new guy goes "Back to Basics" (Peter is impoverished, unpopular, and so on). Lee and Ditko passing away is definitely significant in terms of off-screen "end of an age" optics but fundamentally none of them were involved with Spider-Man creatively since 1971-1972 (and also 1987 for Lee) and 1966 respectively. So it's more a confirming of a reality that already exists than anything else. The PS4 game is great and successful but Spider-Man and games have had a long history and there have been a run of good-to-decent 3D games before the PS4 with his greater polish made something better.

Bendis leaving Marvel on the other hand is a big thing and 2018 is a coronation for his legacy and significant to him. Miles Morales, Peter's greatest and most successful legacy character became the star of ''into the Spider-Verse'' and playable in the PS4 game.

I am not saying that 2018 is not an important year for Spider-Man, but if we are saying significant, then it's nowhere close to 1987, and what you see is confirming and perpetuating of general trends.

Why is there always one guy who runs the party?

[Frontier]

The Marvel's Spider-Man cartoon also featured the return of the Eddie Brock Venom in animation, the debut of Anya Corazon as Spider-Girl, and the first real adaption of the Superior Spider-Man storyline.

But in terms of a lot of other Spider-Man related stuff that came out this year, either because of prominence or the cartoon being on hiatus for so long, the cartoon was pretty quickly overshadowed by basically everything else.

Spider-Man making his debut in an Avengers movie, Avengers: Infinity War.

Unless you count Civil War as an Avengers movie .

[Revolutionary_Jack]

2018 is heavier than usual with Spider-Man stuff I will grant that much. I can't think of any time when Spider-Man was so omnipresent in every medium at once (games, movies, cartoons) and with at least definitive interpretations in both in a short span (Spider-Man PS4 and Into the Spider-Verse). It's certainly a full-spectrum year. I know that I had not been interested in Spider-Man for a long time until the game and then the Spider-Verse movie came out which led me to revisit stuff and explore old issues, and basically become another comics scholar of Spider-Man publication history and so on. I think this year could potentially be the biggest influx of newcomers to Spider-Man's market since ''Spider-Man 1'' came out. I know from experience that a lot of people came out of ''Into the Spider-Verse'' asking about Peni and Spider-Man Noir and wondering which comics to read more about. I recommended and directed them to Bendis' Spider-Men, and the Spider-Gwen comic as much as I could but there's not much about Peni for them to find in the comics, and Spider-Man Noir is totally different from the 90s Edgelord riff in the movie.

The Marvel's Spider-Man cartoon also featured the return of the Eddie Brock Venom in animation, the debut of Anya Corazon as Spider-Girl, and the first real adaption of the Superior Spider-Man storyline.

I saw the S1 of the cartoon and found it pretty meh. It had the Spider-Island story or a version of it. I did like the Harry Osborn - Peter friendship but my understanding was that it was downplayed in S2.

[Frontier]

I saw the S1 of the cartoon and found it pretty meh. It had the Spider-Island story or a version of it. I did like the Harry Osborn - Peter friendship but my understanding was that it was downplayed in S2.

Yeah they do kind of write Harry out at the start of season 2, apparently to shift the focus back on other characters who they then proceed to not do very much with...

[bob.schoonover]

Certainly a significant year. In terms of variety of momentous events/benchmarks, you'd probably have to go to 1994 for something similar across titles and media* - Animated Series debuts to solid reviews and great ratings, Maximum Carnage video game comes out, Diane Duane's novel series begins, Michelinie ends his ASM run, beginning of the Clone Saga, etc. Much like that year, it'll take awhile to suss out which of the 2018 events are most impactful, but 2018 was a fun time to be a Spidey fan.

[Digifiend]

It's not just Peter's two books and Miles's that changed creative team, so did Gwen's.

Unfortunately, we did just lose Scarlet Spider and Renew Your Vows.

Superior Spider-Man is about to come back.

[Miles To Go]

It certainly has been a banner year for Spider-Man.

Not even the loss of Renew Your Vows seems that depressing in light of so much goodwill everywhere else, it served it's purpose in keeping Peter and MJ in the spotlight until the mainline comics picked things up with them again, it ended on a feel-good note and then they survived and evolved a bit in Spider-Geddon. They can afford a bit of a break for now I feel. Marriage content will continue to exist through the daily strip, which is very easy to find online.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

This makes me think what are Spider-Man's most significant years from a brand and cultural perspective as well as in terms of introducing permanent story elements:

1966-1967: This is a huge cheat I know, because this is technically two years, but Ditko left the title in July 1966. The Spider-Man animated cartoon arrived in September 1967. So I'd say it's a year and two months at best. But this 14 month stretch saw the following stuff happen one-after-the-other:
1) Green Goblin unmasked as Noman Osborn after unmasking Spider-Man before, the first time any villain did that.
2) Peter finally gets himself a peer-age appropriate supporting cast: Harry Osborn, Gwen Stacy, Flash Thompson (gone from bully, to sorta cordial).
3) Mary Jane Watson as designed by John Romita makes her grand debut after being teased by Lee-Ditko in many appearances. She becomes the breakout character and over time would become (alongside Jameson and Aunt May) the most important member of Peter's supporting cast, and one of the most famous and charismatic characters in comics.
4) The Peter-Gwen-Mary Jane love triangle.
5) The introduction of Rhino and the Kingpin, two of the longest lasting post-Ditko rogues.
6) Spider-Man No More, Issue #50, a classic trope in Spidey mythos, ultimately adapted into ''Spider-Man 2''.
7) The Spider-Man 1967 Cartoon Series and the Theme Song. Spider-Man's first adaptation into any media, and the theme song became a popular standard and remains Spider-Man's theme song to this day.

That's quite a high, and I don't know if Lee-Romita ever recovered from that peak, even if you had great stories in the years to come. And I don't know if any other stretch in Spider-Man history matches that.

1975-1976 This is the tail end of Gerry Conway's run, and it's kind of arbitrary. But this is basically the end of what we consider the classic Spider-Man Silver Age era and the shift to the bronze age. From July 1975 to February 1976, you had two iconic stories and events. One is Mary Jane and Peter being established as the great love story of the series which happened in #149. The First Clone Saga and the Jackal, the seeds for the second one (and vastly inferior but still profitable and famous). Then you had Superman vs. The Amazing Spider-Man. First ever inter-company crossover. One of the greatest battle issues ever. And also a coronation in terms of Spider-Man's fame. At this point of time Superman was the biggest hero in comics, Batman was still second banana (albeit you had a very good run in the same period under editor O'Neill) and now Spider-Man was treated as his equal. It basically signified Superman and Spider-Man as the biggest heroes in comics. It established Spider-Man as Marvel's mascot hero, the one given the honor to crossover with Superman (rather than the Fantastic Four who originated first and have First Family status).

I mentioned 1987 already, and bob/.schoonover talked about 1994. The next one has to be 2002, simply because this is the year of Raimi's ''Spider-Man 1'' and it's hard to appreciate what that movie did for Spider-Man as a brand and character here.

[John Ossie]

And you didn't even mention Insomniac's PS4 game, which became the fastest selling superhero game ever made.

(https://comicbook.com/gaming/2018/12...e-of-all-time/)

And one that I am very much looking forward to playing tomorrow

As for it being a significant year for Spider-Man. Yeah it has been a big year for the things that've been listed so far in this thread. Looking forward to seeing how Spidey gets on in 2019.