What should the Spider-Man comics be if the Marvel Universe were rebooted?

[Mister Mets]

This came up in a discussion on status quos. If the Marvel Universe had some Crisis on Infinite Earths style reboot, what should the Spider-Man comics be like after the reset?

Should it start completely from the beginning with the spider bite? Or should there be a different status quo with a Peter Parker who has been Spider-Man for a few years?

[Matt Rat]

A cleaner, tighter Ultimate Universe or Marvel Adventures style universe

Another option would be to 'half reboot' and spin a title out of DeMatteis' two most recent Spider-books set in the Clone Saga, where Ben is active as Spider-Man and Peter and MJ are married and expecting Mayday. I'm not saying keep Ben as Spidey forever there, but it'd leave both of them in a better position than they are now and gives them a forward-thinking direction. Maybe next time Norman isn't the mastermind either.

[Mister Mets]

This is from the other thread...

Personally, I'd go in the main title with Peter Parker starting his sophomore year in college. This way he's still relatively young, but has been Spidey for a few years so the major villains could be established (and so Marvel could later/ simultaneously publish the year one stories.)

He would be working at the Daily Bugle, and perhaps transitioning to a science beat. His friend group would be Harry, Flash, Mary Jane, Gwen and Randy Robertson. Potential additions would be Liz Allen, Betty Brant and Ned Leeds. Peter went on a date with Gwen, and it didn't work out. He hasn't seen MJ in years, before she pops up again.

Peter may be trying to recover from burning bridges after acting really out of character in the alien costume saga. So he's on academic probation, Aunt May's upset at him and Flash Thompson is telling people that Peter deserves a second chance. He also had a relationship with Black Cat, while possessed by the alien costume so that's something that plays into the story.

One question would be the races of the character. Should the characters introduced in the silver age be white (except for the Robertsons) as they were in the comics, or should they be more diverse like in the movies? If Flash, MJ, Liz and MJ were white, obviously new characters could be introduced or other characters (Janice Lincoln, Sajani Jaffrey, etc.) could be part of this Peter's life. I think I'd go with that approach.

The reboot would coincide with Miles Morales gaining powers through someone else's effort to duplicate Spider-Man's abilities, so his origin would be told at the same time. My feeling is that it's easier to reset Miles' status quo because part of his appeal is that he is the younger and less experienced Spider-Man, although I'm curious about the insight from his fans.

One effort might focus on multiple titles.
Amazing Spider-Man: This could also be twice-monthly.
Spider-Man: This would be a monthly title dealing with contemporary topics.
Amazing Fantasy: This could be the year-one title, filling in the backstory.
Miles Morales Spider-Man: His adventures. This would also be Spider-Verse heavy.

Another strategy would be to have Peter's adventures in a weekly title with occasional intermissions, when Marvel publishes year one style adventures.

I'd probably start with something similar to John Byrne's Man of Steel, a 5-6 issue arc of Amazing Fantasy retelling the origin and published in lieu of any other Spider-Man comics. The Vulture is the villain to set up the idea that he is Spider-Man's first true supervillain. Mary Jane would be a major character, someone close to Peter who discovers his secret identity. She's more of an artsy type in this story like Zendaya's version. The story ends with her departure, to establish a contrast when she returns in the regular comics a bit different from what Peter remembers.

One rule would be that this version of Spider-Man has fought the major bad guys before, with the exception of legacy villains. So Hobgoblin, the Harry Osborn Green Goblin, Alistair Smythe and Carnage would all be new to him.

[Hypestyle]

high school isn't going to last forever. So I'd start with a college freshman setting.

[Lee]

This came up in a discussion on status quos. If the Marvel Universe had some Crisis on Infinite Earths style reboot, what should the Spider-Man comics be like after the reset?

Should it start completely from the beginning with the spider bite? Or should there be a different status quo with a Peter Parker who has been Spider-Man for a few years?

Every DC reboot has shown how messy partial reboots and undefined pasts get. If it's a reboot, then it should be back to the beginning, for EVERYONE. Otherwise it defeats the whole purpose of doing a reboot.

Start with the origin. Introduce every supporting character and villain from scratch.

[Mercwmouth12]

Every DC reboot has shown how messy partial reboots and undefined pasts get. If it's a reboot, then it should be back to the beginning, for EVERYONE. Otherwise it defeats the whole purpose of doing a reboot.

Start with the origin. Introduce every supporting character and villain from scratch.

That was the whole point of the ultimate universe which was a good novelty line and only thing that came out of it was Miles and the Maker

[Lee]

That was the whole point of the ultimate universe which was a good novelty line and only thing that came out of it was Miles and the Maker

The Ultimate line was intended as an entry point for new readers. Ultimate Spider-Man was one of Marvel's most successful books for years, and the linchpin of their then-new graphic novel line. The purpose of the Ultimate line wasn't to introduce new characters to an audience who already knew all of the old characters. The point of the Ultimate line was to revitalise the classic characters and introduce them to a new audience.

The Ultimate line was a big success initially, but made too many mistakes to be viable long term. Mistakes that include:

1. Arbitrarily changing iconic characters, such as Green Goblin being a Hulk who generates fireballs. He should have had the costume, the glider and the pumpkin bombs. A new reboot should keep what's iconic about the characters. (See also: teenage Fantastic Four, Doctor Doom, Gah Lak Tus, Vision.)

2. Making heroes unlikeable: making Hank Pym an outright abuser, Hulk a murderous cannibal, Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch incestuous, Captain America a xenophobe.

3. Having content that skewed too old (The Ultimates) when the initial premise was to bring in a new generation of kids. Ultimate Spider-Man was the flagship book and kept that audience in mind, but the rest of the line generally didn't. A new reboot should keep a PG/PG-13 tone.

4. Introducing major characters as guest stars. Instead of doing an Ultimate Hulk, Ultimate Iron Man, and so on, they introduced them as guest stars in Ultimate Marvel Team-Up. They didn't get the clean slate that Spider-Man did.

5. Prematurely killing off characters. This applies to Ultimatum, which all but killed the line, but also characters like George Stacy. One of the benefits of a reboot is to have all the characters back on the table again. Killing characters off after just a small number of stories doesn't have much impact, and is generally wasteful. George Stacy's death in the original comics had an impact because he'd been around for numerous stories, the readers had grown attached to him, and it was unexpected. The readers of Ultimate Spider-Man barely got to know George Stacy before he was killed.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe was much more careful in how it introduced and modernised the Marvel characters. I would expect a modern Marvel Comics reboot to have more in common with the MCU than the Ultimate line.

[Mister Mets]

That was the whole point of the ultimate universe which was a good novelty line and only thing that came out of it was Miles and the Maker

Not quite.

The Ultimate universe served as a model for how the regular comics could be more accessible. Bendis would very quickly become the most important Marvel writer since Claremont, changing the Avengers, in addition to his runs on Daredevil, Moon Knight, Iron Man, Alias/ The Pulse and the X-Men books. Millar would write Civil War, Marvel's biggest event mini of the 21st Century.

The Ultimate books weren't meant to introduce new characters or concepts, as much as it was to streamline what already existed. We got good comic books out of it. That's the main things that matters.

An issue with starting from scratch is that it gets messy pretty quickly if all the characters are introduced at once. Venom requires the Alien Costume saga to have occurred. It's a very different dynamic with Miles if he gets his powers at the same time as Peter. This does mean that early on, you're stuck with a particular type of story of new superheroes figuring things out for the first time.

With the new 52, DC made some mistakes that might be possible for Marvel to avoid. Though it's also possible they'll make their own mistakes.

It shouldn't be too hard to have an internal sense of what the backstory for the characters is.

One thing to recognize is that it would be really hard to continue ongoing stories, so the writers would need to tie up loose ends before the reset. The new DC was a bit of a mess since some writers started with radically different status quos, and other writers continued big arcs from earlier.

An advantage for Marvel in a reset in the current environment is that right now there doesn't seem to be any title that can't be wound down in three years.

[Lee]

Rebooting dozens of shared universe books all at once is a fool's errand. If Marvel were to do a reboot, I think it would be wise to do it slowly. There should be two lines, with two distinct trade dresses: the Classic Marvel Universe and the New Marvel Universe (with better, more marketable names than that).

Peter Parker's story would be wrapped up in Amazing Spider-Man, then the next month Amazing Spider-Man would be relaunched as a New Marvel series. Then they'd do the same with Fantastic Four. A few months later it would be Iron Man, Captain America, Thor and Hulk. Several months after that it would be Black Widow, Captain Marvel and X-Men. Two years down the line the Avengers title would make the jump from Classic Marvel to New Marvel.

Classic Marvel would keep on going with characters like Venom, Miles Morales and She-Hulk, but eventually they would be introduced into New Marvel.

No DC style Crisis event, just two separate universes, with the old universe titles slowly being phased out.

[Daibhidh]

I would keep the comics-616 continuity but cut out as far as possible all instances of characters acting like jerks out of character, and anything that got retconned later (except stuff that was retconned to spite properties that Marvel had sold the movie rights to). I'd end up with there being officially eight years since the start of the Fantastic Four.

Spider-man however is a mess thanks to That Story. Some of the best Spider-man stories depend on bits that would be dropped under that rule. Well, they'll still exist on Marvel Unlimited.
So Peter is coming up to his twenty-fourth birthday having been Spider-man for nearly eight years. He's still in graduate school doing it part time ostensibly because he needs the money but actually because he's fighting crime. Teresa grew up with him, but she's at college somewhere else and Peter and she don't know each other's secrets (yet).
Most of the sixties and seventies happened. Peter dated Betty, then Gwen, then Gwen died and he dated Mary Jane for a bit, MJ and Peter break up. Then we pull in some of the better bits of the BND-era and early Dan Slott, before moving back to the Stern-era, with details altered for the new timeline. And then we open with Mary Jane and Peter just beginning to date seriously, so that the story with Mary Jane's family and the Spider-slayer robot that led to the marriage only led to them openly acknowledging that they're a couple.
None of their peers are married or have children. Harry is alive and dating Liz.
Peter is on the Avengers Reserve Team, which otherwise consists of the main solo Avengers (Steve, Thor, Tony, T'Challa, Carol) plus say Kamala and Jessica Drew or Natasha. They come together only for emergencies which happen regularly enough to hang an ongoing comic run on.

I am tempted to say that MJ was shaken by Gwen's death and by being nearly killed by Harry's bomb and gave up on becoming an actor to study law. That way, I might drop teasers by saying only that Peter has a new girlfriend who is a law student.
(Preview page ends with Peter changing from Spider-man to Peter.
Unseen speaker: 'Nice view.'
Peter: 'You startled me.'
Unseen: 'Don't you have that spider-sense that stopped you being surprised.'
Peter: 'Only unpleasant surprises. How's New York's hottest law student?'
End preview. Page turn.
Reveal Mary Jane: 'Scorching, tiger. Scorching.')

And then I'd contrive to have them think they're going to die together after saving the world or some such, and joke about spending the rest of their lives together, and then after they're rescued or think of a way out, they realise they were serious about spending their lives together, and after teasing that the marriage won't happen, they do get married.

[CaptainUniverse]

I would keep the comics-616 continuity but cut out as far as possible all instances of characters acting like jerks out of character, and anything that got retconned later (except stuff that was retconned to spite properties that Marvel had sold the movie rights to). I'd end up with there being officially eight years since the start of the Fantastic Four.

Spider-man however is a mess thanks to That Story. Some of the best Spider-man stories depend on bits that would be dropped under that rule. Well, they'll still exist on Marvel Unlimited.
So Peter is coming up to his twenty-fourth birthday having been Spider-man for nearly eight years. He's still in graduate school doing it part time ostensibly because he needs the money but actually because he's fighting crime. Teresa grew up with him, but she's at college somewhere else and Peter and she don't know each other's secrets (yet).
Most of the sixties and seventies happened. Peter dated Betty, then Gwen, then Gwen died and he dated Mary Jane for a bit, MJ and Peter break up. Then we pull in some of the better bits of the BND-era and early Dan Slott, before moving back to the Stern-era, with details altered for the new timeline. And then we open with Mary Jane and Peter just beginning to date seriously, so that the story with Mary Jane's family and the Spider-slayer robot that led to the marriage only led to them openly acknowledging that they're a couple.
None of their peers are married or have children. Harry is alive and dating Liz.
Peter is on the Avengers Reserve Team, which otherwise consists of the main solo Avengers (Steve, Thor, Tony, T'Challa, Carol) plus say Kamala and Jessica Drew or Natasha. They come together only for emergencies which happen regularly enough to hang an ongoing comic run on.

I am tempted to say that MJ was shaken by Gwen's death and by being nearly killed by Harry's bomb and gave up on becoming an actor to study law. That way, I might drop teasers by saying only that Peter has a new girlfriend who is a law student.
(Preview page ends with Peter changing from Spider-man to Peter.
Unseen speaker: 'Nice view.'
Peter: 'You startled me.'
Unseen: 'Don't you have that spider-sense that stopped you being surprised.'
Peter: 'Only unpleasant surprises. How's New York's hottest law student?'
End preview. Page turn.
Reveal Mary Jane: 'Scorching, tiger. Scorching.')

And then I'd contrive to have them think they're going to die together after saving the world or some such, and joke about spending the rest of their lives together, and then after they're rescued or think of a way out, they realise they were serious about spending their lives together, and after teasing that the marriage won't happen, they do get married.

*Inhales deeply*

I love it.jpg

[TinkerSpider]

*Inhales deeply*

I love it.jpg

You can have my money, too, Daibhidh.

The other reboots just seem to be the Ultimate universe under a new name. I do think Marvel should lean into the multiverse and try to create another alternate universe that can support multiple book ala Ultimate - and maybe this time not go asinine edgelord which is really what killed Ultimate - but there’s no real need to reboot 616. The only thing 616 needs is smart, talented writers and new editorial blood that has zero ties to the Quesada regime. Time to clear out the cobwebs and hidebound thinking that has kept the 616 from fully coming into the 2020s and beyond.

It’s sad when the letters published in ASM seem to come mostly from readers who qualify for an AARP card, based on how long they say they’ve been reading the book.

[Mister Mets]

Rebooting dozens of shared universe books all at once is a fool's errand. If Marvel were to do a reboot, I think it would be wise to do it slowly. There should be two lines, with two distinct trade dresses: the Classic Marvel Universe and the New Marvel Universe (with better, more marketable names than that).

Peter Parker's story would be wrapped up in Amazing Spider-Man, then the next month Amazing Spider-Man would be relaunched as a New Marvel series. Then they'd do the same with Fantastic Four. A few months later it would be Iron Man, Captain America, Thor and Hulk. Several months after that it would be Black Widow, Captain Marvel and X-Men. Two years down the line the Avengers title would make the jump from Classic Marvel to New Marvel.

Classic Marvel would keep on going with characters like Venom, Miles Morales and She-Hulk, but eventually they would be introduced into New Marvel.

No DC style Crisis event, just two separate universes, with the old universe titles slowly being phased out.

Multiple lines is a plausible idea under these circumstances.

It can be a tough balance. It is a way to get some fans upset at the larger line to follow a small number of books, but they don't want to make it easy for fans to forget the regular Marvel.

But there could be a main new Marvel Universe which starts with iconic versions of the major characters.

There could also be a different line with the 616 Universe years later. There could be a new series with Spider-Man's daughter, along with something on the next generation of the Fantastic Four and the Avengers and the X-Men.

Embracing multiple universes could make it easier to get top talent to tell stories which don't require familiarity with the larger Marvel Universe. It could be possible to set up new shared universes with their own approach, although it may make sense to start with one or two.

[Frontier]

If they could reboot they'd totally put him back in high school. Or at least back in college with all the Lee/Romita stuff relatively back in place.

[TinkerSpider]

If they could reboot they'd totally put him back in high school. Or at least back in college with all the Lee/Romita stuff relatively back in place.

But then what do they do with Miles?