Comic Book / The Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows

aka: Renew Your Vows

One More Day? Not today!

"I can do this! I can keep you safe — without compromise. In this moment, I renew my greatest vow."

The Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows is a Spider-Man comic book set on Earth-18119, which was first introduced as a Battleworld formed during Secret Wars (2015).

The original five-issue miniseries follows the story of how a super villain known as Regent managed to assimilate the superpowers of the majority of Earth's heroes and villains. He turns the entire world in an Orwellian dystopia with the intention of hunting down all the remaining superheroes, but especially Spider-Man, whose Spider-Sense is the power he wants the most. This forces Peter Parker and Mary Jane, who are still happily married in this universe, to live in hiding for eight years... alongside their daughter, Anna-May "Annie" Parker, who has started to develop her own spider-powers. This miniseries was written by Dan Slott and drawn by Adam Kubert.

After the conclusion of Secret Wars (2015), these versions of the characters disappeared until the series was continued in January 2017 as an ongoing under Marvel NOW! (2016). Taking place after the events of the original mini-series, Peter has now developed a suit from Regent's technology that allows him to share his powers with Mary Jane. Meanwhile, Annie has started to gain full control of her own abilities, but find herself secretly learning new ones as well. From this point forward, the series focuses on the Parkers as a Super Family Team, with MJ and Annie adopting the names of Spinneret and Spiderling, respectively. This run was initially written by Gerry Conway ^note The writer who elevated Mary Jane Watson as Peter's true soulmate, albeit Conway was never on board with marrying them in the regular continuity, with artist Ryan Stegman stepping up to take the role when Conway started fighting with editors during the comic's Venom arc. The Renew Your Vows characters made appearances outside the book in Venomverse.

Following the Marvel Legacy branding in late 2017, the comic gained a new writer in Jody Houser from issue 13 onward. This was concurrent with the series undergoing an eight-year Time Skip, with Annie now being a teenager wishing to prove herself as a hero outside her parents' constant supervision. The comic would come to end the following year with Issue #23. Both Christos Gage's Spider-Geddon and the tie-in Spider-Girls miniseries (written by Houser) served as a coda for the series. It would not, however, be the last time readers would see the Spider-Family, as they would cameo in Marvel Comics#1002. Annie would go on to play a significant role in the 2022-2023 End of Spider-Verse' event, with her co-creator Dan Slott returning to write this latest ordeal. The family would next appear on the Marvel Infinity app title Spider-Man Unlimited with Jodie Houser again at the pen.

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Renew Your Vows provides examples of:

• Action Mom:
  • Mary Jane in the final issue of the miniseries, donning a set of exoskeletal armor and joining her family in beating the hell out of Regent. While wrecking all the tanks that are holding captured heroes, Annie starts throwing around the idea of them both getting superhero codenames.
    Mary Jane: I've already got one. "Mom!"
  • In the ongoing, Peter uses that armor and other pieces of Regent's technology to make a suit that lets him share his spider-powers with Mary Jane, so they can both keep an eye on Annie as she engages in super-heroics.
• Actually Pretty Funny: Peter's 'spider-cents' gag makes Regent throw back his head and laugh. Peter was going to use this opportunity to slit his throat, but punches him out instead.
• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: Venom begs for his life when he realises that Spider-Man is intent on killing him. When the symbiote leaves Eddie Brock from the fire, Eddie Brock screams for mercy as Peter leaves him to die as the burning building collapses on top of him.
• All Your Powers Combined: The Regent, who has captured and stolen virtually every superhero's power in his area.
• Alternate Universe: The series takes place on Earth-18119, where, similarly to the Earth-982 MC2 universe, Spider-Man and Mary Jane are married and had a daughter with spider powers. Instead of The Clone Saga being the divergent point, however, the split away from the main continuity is Civil War (2006). The events of that storyline were averted when Charles Xavier and The Avengers proposed the self-policing of mutant and super-hero communities as an alternative to the Super Registration Act, which averted Spider-Man revealing his identity, thus preventing One More Day from occurring. Additionally, thanks to Regent, most of the Earth's heroes have lost their powers, leaving the X-Men as the only hero group left.
• Anti-Villain: Regent. The reason he has taken the powers of every other hero in their slice of the Marvel multiverse is because he believes this is the only way to protect their Earth from destruction should the events of Secret Wars (2015) spill into their reality. When he tells this to our heroes, who are completely unaware of said multiverse war, they dismiss him as being completely insane.
• Artifact Title: As the title for a miniseries where Peter "renews" his vow to take on the responsibility that his powers give him, Renew Your Vows makes a lot of sense. As the title for an ongoing series centered of Spider-Family antics? Not so much. Although, in a meta-sense, the title is likely a reference to the fact that the series takes place in an Alternate Universe where Peter remains married to Mary Jane.
• Badass Family: The Parkers in the final issue of the miniseries. Doubly so in the ongoing, where they decide to start fighting crime regularly as a family.
• Bait-and-Switch: Issue #2 of the original miniseries begins with Peter and MJ telling Annie that she can't be caught using her powers. Then a random sweep detects at least one superpowered individual at the school she attends. But it's not Annie that gets found, but the Power Pack.
• Batman Gambit: Peter pulls off one by getting Regent to laugh. He was about to stab him with a piece of shrapnel in the jugular, but he ultimately decided to knock him out. Mary Jane does call him out a bit on this point, making them realize that things would have turned out differently.
• Berserk Button: Normie Osborn has a very simple one: Don't treat him like a child.
• Beyond Redemption: Unlike in the main continuity, Venom was evil to the core and made it clear that he would never stop harassing Peter and his family. To protect his family, Peter breaks his Thou Shalt Not Kill rule to put Brock and the Venom symbiote down for good. Unfortunately for Peter, the vengeful symbiote survives and finds a new host in his wife, Mary Jane.
• Brought Down to Normal: Spinneret abruptly loses the Venom symbiote while fighting the Goblin mech.
• Bully Hunter: Annie was shown beating up bullies with her super strength.
• Canon Immigrant: The Regent, who has an Alternate Self in the 616 universe with the same MO. This gets a Call-Back when the Earth-616 versions of Spider-Man, Mary Jane, and the Regent express an inexplicable sense of deja-vu when fighting.
• Cheap Costume: Annie's first costume is just her normal street clothes with knee pads, fingerless gloves, a dog leash for a belt, a sheet for a cape and swimming goggles for her eyes. The Power Pack made it for her.
• Clothes Make the Superman: In the ongoing series, MJ dons a Spider-suit that uses the Regent's tech to give her Spider-Man's powers. The downside is that this prevents Peter from using his powers to their full potential and risks knocking him out if she draws on too much. She tries to get around this using the Venom symbiote, but is forced to go back to her old costume after it's killed.
• Dead Guy Junior: Annie has a double dose of this. She's named Anna-May Parker, after her great aunts Anna (MJ's aunt) and May (Peter's Aunt May). It also counts for Normie Osborn, Harry Osborn's son.
• Decomposite Character: Hinted at, but it was soon confirmed Annie is not an Alternate Self to May "Mayday" Parker, but rather the baby May still existed previously like in the 616 and MC2 continuities, only to be forever lost like in the former. Thus, if May had lived in this setting, Annie would be her younger sister. The two eventually meet in Spider-Geddon.
• Did You Just Hijack Cthulhu: Mary Jane is ultimately able to dominate the Venom symbiote with her willpower after it tries to take over her.
• Dragon with an Agenda: Normie Osborn's personal assistant Ms. January was seemingly in love with Harry Osborn, and appears to have passive-aggressively encouraged Normie's obsession with avenging his father's death while at the same time subtly preventing Liz Allan from interfering by pretending to be her Double Agent. When Normie has a Heel Realization and abandons his plans at the eleventh hour, an enraged January knocks him out and tries to kill the Spider-Family herself by hijacking Normie's Humongous Mecha Goblin.
• Evil Matriarch: Liz Allan, Normie's mother, has plans of taking out the Spider-Family using leftovers of the Symbiote. All for her son.
• Foil: Annie has one in Normie Osborn pre-time skip. Where she grew up with both her powers in a loving family that includes a retired Superhero, Normie spent the first years of his life with his father Harry Osborn as the Green Goblin and his mother becoming an Evil Matriarch after Harry died saving Peter once. And where Annie grew up naturally developing her powers, Normie's been giving himself small doses of the goblin formula. Overall, Annie was a happy child, while Normie was a Creepy Child fueled by revenge.
• Generation Xerox: Annie is the spitting image of her mother at least in the original series. Later writers gave her a more distinct appearance (Girlish Pigtails and then after Time Skip, a more modern hair style with curls) that also blended MJ's features with Peter's.
• Happily Married: In this universe, One More Day never happened, so Peter and MJ remained married. It's arguably the comic's main selling point.
• Kid Hero: During the miniseries and the first twelve issues of Volume 2, Annie is eight years old but perfectly capable of kicking butt and taking names. The Time Skip ages her up to sixteen.
• Lame Pun Reaction: This is how Regent is defeated. It turns out Spider-Man can weaponize dad jokes.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: When Annie refuses to head for safety and ends up kicking the Sinister Six's ass, Mary Jane decides now is the time to team up and save a captive Peter.
• Lies to Children: When during the bedtime story reveal about Spider-Man's origins, Annie asks MJ if her father ever failed. MJ flashes back to the deaths of Uncle Ben, Gwen and Captain Stacy, before slowly telling her daughter, that no her Dad always won.
• Lighter and Softer: It's much lighter than the main continuity, Ultimate Marvel, and even Spider-Girl.
• Little Miss Badass: Little Annie-May Parker stops running and hiding, and starts wailing on most of Regent's Sinister Six.
• Loves My Alter Ego: Norman Osborn Jr, Harry's son, develops a crush on Spiderling. This doesn't stop him from having her kidnapped to lure Spider-Man into a trap. Whether he retained it into his teenage years is a mystery.
• Mama Bear: For MJ, with Peter being a Papa Wolf. When Annie's school is attacked, both Peter and MJ race to save her, fearing she's been targeted. While it's the Power Pack that was the real target, MJ does save Annie and Peter buys the Power children time to escape. When she falls for a hallucination of Spiderling dying, Spinneret snaps, draws on her husband's full strength, and throws a subway car at Mysterio. When Spiderling is kidnapped by Rhino, MJ pays Liz Allan a visit and threatens to cut the Venom symbiote loose on her if she doesn't fess up.
• Morality Chain: While the desire to keep Annie safe at first drives Peter to return to crime fighting and become more ruthless, she ultimately keeps him from going too far and renew his vow to uphold his Uncle Ben's motto.
• Mum Looks Like a Sister: Both Peter and MJ remain looking like they're in their twenties even when Anne becomes a teenager.
• Never Trust a Title: You'd be forgiven for thinking that Renew Your Vows would be a story that would undo One More Day and restore Peter and Mary Jane's marriage, or at least their relationship. In reality, this is an AU with no bearing on the main Earth-616 universe. What the title actually refers to is the renewal of Peter's "with great power comes great responsibility" mantra, which he abandoned after killing Venom.
• Not Allowed to Grow Up: The Power Pack are for some reason still depicted as being grade schoolers around Annie's age. One would assume that this is because they were born later than their Earth-616 counterparts, yet everyone seems to know who they are, which implies that they were active prior to Regent's takeover.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Annie freaks out when she sees Peter's old black suit, thinking it's the shadow monster that tried to kill her as a baby and haunts her nightmares.
  • Liz Allan — already having a very bad day due to Ms. January and Normie backstabbing her — is understandably terrified when Spinneret — who she had tricked into bonding to the Venom symbiote — threatens to eat her if she doesn't help find her daughter, who Normie had kidnapped to lure Peter into a trap.
  • Venom mocks Spidey during their battle at first, thinking that he is just talking a big game when he says he's ending this once and for all. Venom's reaction quickly turns into this when he realises that Spidey is serious.
• Parental Sexuality Squick: When MJ is telling Annie a bedtime story about Peter's superhero origin, Annie asks her how Peter looked in his old Spider-Man outfit. MJ says that he was very sexy, prompting Annie to tell her to stop.
• "Rashomon"-Style: The first three issues of volume 2 cover the same events from the perspective of each of the three lead characters (Peter, MJ and Annie).
• Relative Button: Harming or threatening Annie is a VERY. BAD. IDEA. Venom gave it a try. Spidey dumped a flaming building on him. It also gives Spidey the Heroic Second Wind he needs when the Regent has him imprisoned in a power-absorbing chamber. No other super hero was able to break out of them until he did. When Rhino kidnapped Annie on Normie Osborn's orders, Peter hunted him down and beat him to a bloody pulp despite Rhino being willing to tell him where she was.
• Retcon: As explained in the Letters to the Editor section, Gerry Conway's Marvel NOW! (2016) series is set in the same continuity as Dan Slott's Secret Wars (2015) series, with the differences between them being the result of retcons Conway implemented.
• Retired Badass: Spider-Man retired after the Regent kills all the other heroes, and kills Venom to protect his family. He returns to full activity during the mini-series.
• Running Gag: Peter asking some variation of "Annie, are you OK? Are you OK, Annie?" Annie herself gets a bit tired of it.
• Seers: In addition to the usual Spider-Sense, Annie has a special variant that grants her a psychic vision of near-future disasters and dangers several minutes or hours in advance, the activation of which she describes as a buzzing sensation. She keeps the existence of this super-sense a secret from her parents far into her teen years.
• Sexy Backless Outfit: The older Spiderling's outfit for some reason has a V-neck on the front and on the back, with the one on the back being about twice the size as the one on the front.
• Spiritual Successor: Renew Your Vows can be considered this to Tom DeFalco's Spider-Girl series as both are stories about Peter Parker's superpowered daughter. The similarity is most apparent in Jodie Houser's run, where the series time-skips to have Annie as a high-school student.
• Superpowers for a Day: MJ is Venomized for a handful of issues before losing the symbiote to the Goblin Mecha, leaving her once again reliant on the Power Copying Regent tech.
• Things That Go "Bump" in the Night: Little Annie fears Venom is still around, freaking out when Mary Jane pulls out Peter's old black and white costume. She's right. Venom comes back in the Marvel NOW series and Mary Jane becomes its host.
• Time Skip: Legacy jumps eight years forward to Annie in high school.
• Thou Shalt Not Kill: Averted in one scenario and played straight in another.
  • Averted when Peter does not hesitate to kill Venom/Eddie Brock to defend his family; although he regrets it having to do it, he does not regret the deed itself. He also kills Dr. Octopus later on, while searching for supplies to make a device that would stop Annie's powers from being detected. Played straight when Peter seems like he is going to kill Regent, he instead knocks him out and gives him to the newly rebuilt SHIELD, lead by Hawkeye. That said, when MJ asks him if he would have killed him to protect their daughter, Peter doesn't respond while MJ silently realizes that he would have.
• Unexplained Recovery: Regent kills the X-Men off-panel in the miniseries, but they're alive again with no mention of the fact that they died in the ongoing series.
• Villainous Crush: Normie Osborn, the stern and oddly mature-for-his-age heir to Oscorp, is very intrigued by Spiderling.
• With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility: The miniseries gives us the subversion heard 'round the world. Peter Parker gives up being Spider-Man to protect his wife and child from his enemies. And the world isn't suddenly free of crises, either. In fact, by the end of the first issue, Spider-Man is now one of the last superheroes alive and shown to be intentionally ignoring cries for help to focus on his family.
• Written-In Absence: Mary Jane doesn't appear at all (outside of a brief flashback) in Issue #10. While Peter at one point reassures Annie that MJ is just at a "doctor's appointment", in reality the absence was probably due to her inclusion in the Venomverse event.

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