How Did The Amazing-Spider-Man End? Is It Ever Coming Back?

The last, for the known future, original Amazing Spider-Man daily strip ran on Saturday, the 23rd of March. It has Mary Jane and Peter Parker on an airplane — first class — travelling to Australia. This is what they had planned to do before that whole Luke Cage/Killgrave problem got going.

The final strip has the creative team drawn in. Roy Thomas, longtime (ghost) writer reported that artist Alex Saviuk drew the two of them in the last strip. I suppose that the third person — the older man in the first panel — to be Sunday strip inker Joe Sinnott. Sinnott’s retiring after 69 years with Marvel Comics on what I’m sure is the great heaping pile of gold coins that I imagine comic strip artists get.

Mary Jane, in the first-class seat: 'All my LIFE I've dreamed of going to Australia! My Broadway and Hollywood careers PAID for this vacation - and we get to ENJOY every minute of it together, Tiger!' Peter Parker: 'Which makes me one lucky guy, MJ!' The first panel features an older white-haired man, and a blond-haired man, prominently; the third panel features a sleeping man with pencil-thin moustache, and Peter holding up a copy of the Daily Bugle showing off Spidey and the banner headline 'NUFF SAID!' — Roy Thomas and Alex Saviuk’s **The Amazing Spider-Man** for the 23rd of March, 2019. The ‘Nuff Said is the Stan Lee cameo for the farewell strip, although I understand the people who figure the older man in the first panel was the Stan Lee cameo. But Stan Lee’s appeared in the comic strip, as the Comics Curmudgeon folks found, and let’s not worry about what this implies for the nature of reality in the Spider-Man universe. Incidentally, that time was when she started making the Marvella 2 movie, a spinoff of the storyline we’re just about to start rerunning. And which she’s been doing publicity tours for, in threads that got the strip to meet up with Rocket Raccoon, with King Melvin of the Mole Men, and with the Incredible Hulk and all.

Had the comic not been cancelled, Thomas reports, they’d have gotten to Australia to face The Kangaroo. There are several The Kangaroos in Marvel Comics history. Given the loosely original-Marvel-Universe theme of the comic strip I’d guess it to be the first, the one who debuted in the comic book in 1970, but who knows? Both had great powers of leaping.

Sunday the 24th showed a weirdly hacked-together comic. It has the narrative tag “Peter Dreams of Good Times”, suggesting that all the reruns to follow are simply Peter Parker, asleep on a plane, thinking of the past. It’s not a bad way to set up rerun sequences. For that matter it excuses any plot holes in past stories, or any inconsistencies made by presenting them out of order. It’s not a good way to overcome the snark community impression that Peter Parker mostly wants to nap. Never mind.

The strip from the 24th is an edited version of one from the 16th of November, 2014, as commenter seismic-2 on Comics Kingdom tracked down. When this Sunday strip first ran it was a transition. The storyline had Doc Octopus feigning being a hero and framing Spider-Man as villain. Thus the second panel; when it was talking about and showing Doc Octopus it fit the action of that storyline. The next storyline, and the one I’m assuming we’re repeating, features Mysterio, supervillain master of special and practical effects. He’s a goofy villain, but one I like, since part of his gimmick is supposed to be that he doesn’t have “real” powers, he just puts on a good performance.

[Peter dreams of good times] Peter, swinging around town: 'All in all, not a bad night's work! Killgrave revealed as the CRIMINAL he always truly was. Your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man as public hero #1 again. And MJ riding high on her success The heck with it! The way I feel right now, NOTHING can bring me down!' (Swinging into his apartment.) 'Hi, honey! I'm ho --- ' Mary Jane: 'Oh, Peter ---- ' [ ... and not-so-good times. ] Mary Jane: 'My Broadway show --- it's closing!' Peter: '!' — Roy Thomas, Alex Saviuk, and Joe Sinnott’s **The Amazing Spider-Man** for the 24th of March, 2019. When this first ran the 16th of November, 2014, there were no narrative bubbles in the first and fifth panels about “Peter dreams of good times … and not-so-good times.” In the second panel, it was a picture of Doc Octopus, and that’s whom Peter was talking about. Also the newspaper in the third panel read “Spider-Man Exposes Doctor Octopus! Web Crawler Stands Alone As City’s Major Criminal”. The “Mayor Breaks Ground For New Condo Site” does show whoever was on the shutdown team read the last story, though. That was the front page story that the Daily Bugle was planning for back on the 14th of March, when Peter confirmed he was heading for Australia.

Mary Jane talking about her play’s theater being destroyed is not an edit. When this story first ran in 2014 the Mammon Theater was closed for repairs. The theater got to host a gunfight and then had a helicopter dropped into it in the Iron Fist storyline, the one previous to the Killgrave story that closed up the strip. Coincidence but, I suppose, a useful one. If someone didn’t know this was all Peter’s dream, well, there’s reason for the theater to need repairs.

I’d like to know, too, whether the comic is ever coming back. The press releases have claimed they’ll “be back soon with great new stories and art to explore even more corners of the Marvel Universe”. Fine, maybe so, but I’ll believe it when I hear someone’s been hired.

If I hear anything, I’ll pass it along at this link.