Spider-Man is a 2022 series from Marvel Comics, a relaunched solo series starring the eponymous Spider-Man. It's written by Dan Slott with art by Mark Bagley and John Dell. Edgar Delgado provides color art.
The series is set in the shared Marvel Universe and part of the main Spider-Man comic continuity.
Following on from the Edge of Spider-Verse anthology series, the first issue launches into the End of the Spider-Verse event.
The first issue was released October 19, 2022. After issue 12, the title was split into two books - Spider-Boy, featuring the young 616 Spider introduced in End, and Superior Spider-Man (2023), returning Otto Octavius to his iconic form.
Spider-Man (2022) contains the following tropes:
- Alliance of Alternates: A recurring theme in Spider-Verse stories, with Peter's equivalents from many different worlds banding together. Unfortunately things are different this time, as Noir, Spider-Punk, Ghost Spider, Earth-982's Spider-Woman and others appear, but not to help Peter - they have all been corrupted by Shathra.
- Eats Babies: After infecting Spider-Ma'am, Shathra lets her eat all of the infant Inheritors.
- Enemy Mine: In End of the Spider-Verse, Morlun teams up with Spider-Man and many of his alternate counterparts to oppose Shathra in this story.
- Face–Monster Turn: Shathra has been infecting and converting Peter's Alternate Universe counterparts.
- Lawyer-Friendly Cameo: The severed arm that Morlun used to get back to Earth-001 belonged to Spider-Boy.
- Origins Episode: Issue #11 functions as one to Spider-Boy (Bailey Briggs), showing how he came to know Spider-Man and became his sidekick.
- Power Incontinence: The second storyline, "Maxed Out", has Peter trying to amplify his Spider-Sense after he failed to save a man from a burning building. Instead, it completely overloaded it, driving Peter crazy.
- Psmith Psyndrome: As established in some earlier stories, Spider-Man can hear when people miss the apostrophe in his name. In the first issue, this prompts a Mythology Gag and a rendition of the Hyphen-Man song.
- Retcon: New villain Madam Monstrosity is revealed to have been indirectly responsible for the creation of various animal-themed superhumans—namely the Scorpion, Human Fly, Lizard, Morbius, and Rhino—due to the experiments that created them using her human/animal hybridization research]]; and sabotaged those experiments — which otherwise would have been successful — purely out of spite.
- Ret-Gone: Shathra has a blade that, when used on the Spiders, severs them from the Great Web so thoroughly that they will never have existed. After Jessica Drew is stabbed in the first issue, Peter himself is stabbed in #3, which ends with him disappearing.
- Series Continuity Error: In #11, the Rhino is listed among the various animal-themed superhumans to have been created as a byproduct of Madam Monstrosity's human/animal hybridization research... but Aleksei Sytsevich was never a human/animal hybrid, his powers having come from from gamma ray bombardment—making him more akin to the Hulk than Spider-Man's other animal-themed villains.
- Sssssnake Talk: A variant. Shathra and Nestling have z emphasized, not s, so that they seem to be buzzing, like insects, rather than hissing. Once his infection and Face–Monster Turn is revealed, Noir talks the same way.
- Villain Song: After Princess Petra is corrupted by Shathra.Web-Weaver: She's singing her reprise in a minor key.
Sun-Spider: Yeah. Show tune-wise, that's villain music! - What the Hell, Hero?: "Maxed Out" ends with Peter - very much not happy with the whole child endangerment thing and annoyed at the boy's apparently flippant attitude towards crime-fighting - blowing up at Spider-Boy and declaring that not only will the kid not be acting as his sidekick, but he is also done being Spider-Boy entirely.
- Wouldn't Hurt a Child: When Spider-Boy jumps into the fight with Electro, the villain initially (and apparently genuinely) claims to subscribe to this trope, stating that sure he's a ruthless criminal who would eagerly kill Spidey but he's not going to fry a little kid. As Spider-Boy proceeds to demonstrate that he is actually quite a skilled fighter and humiliates Electro, however, he quickly changes his tune and says that he's starting to see the appeal.
