As I haven’t read a Spider-Man book in ages but have been around the comics block on and off for decades, I’m not too surprised that Marvel has decided to phase Peter Parker out of the Marvel Universe and replace him (thanks to a mind and body swap) with Doctor Octupus, who will now star in the new Superior Spider-Man comic (“Superior?” What, they couldn’t find better word than that?). Can I get an “Eh, whatever” here?  Let’s see now, Superman died, he came back. Same with Supergirl. Batman got his back broken – he got better. Robin died, he was replaced with a new one or something (I forget, as it’s been a while since I read a Batman comic too). The list goes on and on and every time some fans go out of their way to be as unpleasant about these changes as possible.  Sometimes, a little dying can be good for a character, but it’s up to the writer to lure you in and surprise you every so often…

Alan Moore killed off Swamp Thing so he could free the character from his Dr. Alec Holland persona and afterward wrote some of the most memorable and frightening mainstream comics to date (with a big visual assist from artists Steve Bissette, John Totelben, Rick Veitch and a few others). Moore’s Watchmen (done in collaboration with Dave Gibbons) is still a seminal work of the 1980’s with death and rebirth one central theme explored in its pages. Earlier, Moore’s and after he left, Neil Gaiman’s work on Miracleman (formerly Marvelman) made for even more unsettling and grim reads, but these books have been out of print for almost two decades thanks to pretzel-like legal issues that involved Marvel Comics (which now owns the character, but we’ll probably never see those older stories in new reprint editions). SO yeah – light a candle or whatever for Peter Parker, but at the end of the day, wise up – Marvel still wants your money, things change every few years and yeah, he’ll be back in one form or another when sales need a big knock upwards.