Surprising absolutely no-one it appears the controversial, but decent-selling 'Superior' run of the Spider-man comic will come to a conclusion (of sorts) in the next few months. The story-arc saw Peter Parker killed by his nemesis Otto Octavius, with the villain swapping bodies with the webhead and assuming the identity of Spider-man and Peter Parker. With Parker's full memories, no-one was the wiser and the 'Superior' storyline saw Otto trying to balance his own intolerant personality with some of the genuinely heroic traits he sought to emulate. This gave the Marvel universe and its readers a more aggressive, pro-active Spider-man, one that might well be willing to kill, but one that brought a technical genius to crime-fighting.
However, long-time comis-readers know the way that the Pearly Gates work in the world of Marvel, it's hard to find a hero that will stay dead for very long and the heavenly revolving doors usually spin a full 360 degrees to return a status-quo before long. Most readers felt it was a matter of when the dynamic story would go back to its roots and the major money was that it would happen around the time of the big Hollywood sequel arriving in cinemas. Lo and behold, with the Andrew Garfield/Marc Webb film hitting screens this summer, it appears that the real Peter will be back under the mask around April, though Marvel are promising there will be a few ongoing twists surrounding the resolution. Writer Dan Slott admits (despite earlier point-blank denials and his criticisms of those fans who predicted it) that this return of Peter Parker was ALWAYS going to happen, it was just a matter of when.
The relaunch of the 'Amazing Spider-man' comic (which had been repalced with the 'Superior' title) combined with the launch of the film should secure maximum publicity. Slott had warned fans to avoid spoilers and beware of the news-stories surrounding the return of Parker while simultaneously giving an interview to the New York Post (published today) that revealed the intent, suggesting that he and Marvel know how to yank a few chains and strands of webbing at the same time...
One can be cynical about such stunt-storylines and their eventual somewhat inevitable conclusions and reboots, but the ongoing storyline has been popular with some readers and the fact that it did give new story opportunities. With the character having been around for so long and needing to be ongoing rather than self-contained, such temporary 'big' landscape-changing stories (costume-changes, unmaskings etc) are always going to be marketing exercises rather than purely creative endeavours.
