This thread's for the Spider-Man comics and spin-offs, whether they're decades old or brand new.
- Apart from the main Marvel Universe titles, Ultimate Spider-Man, Spider-Man "What If?" stories, crossovers, guest appearances in other books, Alternate Universe tales and things like Marvel's manga adaptations are all on-topic here.
- Spider-Man 'family' books are on-topic (as are their own crossovers, guest appearances etc.) - e.g. Spider-Man 2099, Miles Morales, Spider-Woman, Silk, Spider-Gwen, Venom, Carnage, Black Cat, Red Goblin and Spider-Verse.
- Characters and comics that originated in Spider-Man but are no longer directly connected to the spider-franchise (e.g. Punisher, Silver Sable) are not on-topic, unless you're discussing historical connections and crossovers. If in doubt, check before you write a long post. If this isn't the right place, there's a more general Marvel Comics thread
which covers them.
Technically, Marvel's Infinity Comics (and their predecessors, Infinite Comics) are webcomics, not comic books, but it's fine to talk about their Spider-Man stories here.
Discussions that are only about Spider-Man adaptations in other media (films, video games etc.) are off-topic, but discussing the differences between the adaptations and the original comics is fine - as long as spoilers for the adaptations are tagged.
Please follow the spoiler policy rules
- tag spoilers for the latest issues, for any previews or content leaks, and for off-topic comics. When including spoiler tags, try to write so that tropers can make an informed decision before viewing them (e.g. which series and issue will they spoil?).
Edited by MacronNotes on Jul 10th 2023 at 10:58:13 AM
Hasn’t the head Spider-editor, Nick Lowe, expressed a belief in the No Such Thing as Bad Publicity principle? That could be your answer right there.
Do we know how that character died? Depending on the circumstances there might be a way out besides 'wait a couple IRL months/years'.
The Protomen enhanced my life.Probably from that boring evil Mayan God villain trying to kill the Scarlet Woman "MJ". Kamala being the selfless girl she is most likely took the bullet hence why MJ and Paul are shown grieving in that panel
Side note isn't it funny the reason MJ and Peter split is a literal diabolus ex machima popping up at random and poofed them to a random dimension where Paul is the only grown man alive
Edited by FKJ10 on May 16th 2023 at 12:11:46 PM
Maybe the stupidest thing about killing Kamala is that it's clearly planned to resurrect her as a mutant, probably with energy powers, as MCU synergy, something that will turn away a chunk of her existing fan base while absolutely failing to attract any new readers. It's a shitty bit of fridging and an obnoxious bit of MCU synergy. A two-for-one of garbage!
X-Men X-Pert, my blog where I talk about X-Men comics.Entertainment Weekly has a summary and images of what happens with much clearer imagery; not providing a direct link because spoilers. (It also had a summary and cover for the upcoming July issue focusing on that character's death.)
Edited by lalalei2001 on May 16th 2023 at 5:55:22 AM
The Protomen enhanced my life.
Dangit Mephisto!
EDIT: Marvel.com released an article about what happens as well.
Edited by lalalei2001 on May 16th 2023 at 6:37:59 AM
The Protomen enhanced my life.![]()
![]()
Some are noticing that the article is trying to make it so that Kamala being an intern for Oscorp was a huge thing when it was barely looked at in ASM, right? Clearly this is just spin to regain control of the situation because the beans got spilled too early. Good luck with that, Marvel!
And oh wow, they got G. Willow Wilson back to write a part of that Fallen Friend one-shot. Poor lady's probably having an internal scream session over the fact that this is happening at all. I feel so sorry for her.
And look, I actually don't care about MCU synergy. I don't love or hate it. I'm just ambivalent to it. Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch aren't mutants anymore because MCU? Whatever, they had a whole legal thing going on with Fox. No Fantastic 4 for a while? Fine, I guess Marvel wanted people to forget about that grim excuse of a movie.
But here? This is borderline the most insulting example ever because they could have easily done this whole "Kamala is actually a mutant" thing without having to resort to death. This whole ordeal just feels like a complete slap to the face to literally anyone who gives a damn about superheroes, especially in light of Kamala's movie coming out later this year. And even that has an impending slap to the face because said movie has Zeb Wells, aka Kamala's murderer, as one of the four writers.
Exactly what kind of message does Marvel think they're spreading here?
Edited by TargetmasterJoe on May 16th 2023 at 6:48:30 AM
In this context synergy means "changing things in the comics to reflect the movies/shows."
The Protomen enhanced my life.There's also the Unfortunate Implications of taking a character whose identity is very tightly tied to her religion and ethnicity and possibly shipping her off to Krakoa, which prioritizes mutant identity over everything else.
By now, it should be clear to all except the most dense of us that sheep are secretly conspiring to kill us all and steal our pants.![]()
And I've heard nothing to indicate that the X-office has had much interest in intersectionality lately. I sure as hell haven't heard anything about the X-office giving a shit about human supporting characters. So if this has Kamala shoved into X-Men madness, and kept separated from the supporting cast that was such a big part of her success in the first place? Yeesh.
Also, it's looking increasingly likely that these "leaks" were probably deliberate. Which, uh, don't pretend they're leaks, Marvel? The audience isn't actually as stupid as you think they are.
Also also, from what I've heard, Kamala was barely even present throughout this run of ASM. So Wells is banking on the audience's existing affection towards her from her previous run in order to carry the emotional weight of the thing, and that is, to be blunt, some shitty-ass writing. It's lazy. Whenever you're making any kind of fiction, it is your job to make the audience care. If you don't have the room to do that, then change your story. Either move things around to make the space, or just cut that element entirely.
That was part of Jim Shooter's philosophy. Every comic is someone's first comic, so try to make them care about what's happening in that comic. The fact that Wells - and editorial - clearly didn't care enough to put in the effort to make readers of ASM care about Kamala? That they felt comfortable just banking on readers already caring about her? It's just plain shitty and lazy. Especially because, hey! Plenty of ASM readers never read any of Kamala's comics! So those readers aren't going to actually give a shit!
And readers also know how cheap death is! So if you're going to kill someone off, you need to put in the effort to make it meaningful! And they didn't!
Like, nothing I have heard makes this sound like anything even remotely resembling a good idea, or even a bad idea executed well. Every single thing I have heard from anyone is, "holy shit what is wrong with the Spider-office."
Just utterly baffling on every single level.
Edited by Tiamatty on May 17th 2023 at 6:54:26 AM
X-Men X-Pert, my blog where I talk about X-Men comics. Newsarama's piece on it
is pretty telling. They label it a jump the shark move. That is not the kind of publicity you want to elicit from news sites.
Edited by Zarius on May 17th 2023 at 5:07:27 AM
Not trying to mini-mod here, but can we please keep spoiler-tagging this stuff? And maybe add a note when offsite links lead to massive spoilers...
I know it's not just an unauthorised Content Leak any more, but forum guidelines do say posts discussing official previews for unreleased work should be tagged if they contain spoilers... and I think we can all agree this is one hell of a spoiler?
(Mods have already thumped posts for this over on the Marvel general thread)
Edited by Mrph1 on May 17th 2023 at 11:18:39 AM
Well, it is. But yeah, I'll remember the spoiler blocking. But anyway, the General Marvel Thread was also having mini-discussions about the leak, but I'm cross-posting here because it's the ASM thread:
Huh. I also heard that Marvel leaked the story themselves. Not to build hype, but because they themselves were getting frustrated with Nick Lowe and ASM's direction. Not sure how often it was going with previous runs, but this run has been teeming with leaks to a noticeable degree.
Like, this leak in particular? Shows up two weeks before ASM #26 is supposed to appear. Like, this is a major storyline development and someone just found a copy like two weeks ahead of everyone else? "Highly suspect."
...Is what I would be saying if Dan Slott didn't already put to bed
that theory that this announcement was planned to show when it did.
This isn't rocket science.
Spoilers for you-know-what.
On one hand, it strongly suggests she'll be back for the movie release and Wells' isn't going to fridge the character without a comeback plan.
On the other hand - as others have commented - it's a bit sad that Kamala gets killed off to further Peter's angst arc. And it says something about how Marvel have handled Ms. Marvel that despite the Disney+ series, the breakout success of the first run, the Champions team... her only solo stories in the last year were the Dark Web mini and the Infinity Comic webcomic. Meeting her death as an unexpected Sacrificial Lion in a Spider-book is disappointing in so many ways.
And bridging the two points - Peter needs some closure if/when she's resurrected, but they'd better do it in a series that puts her own story and characters on center-stage. If she returns in another Peter and MJ-focused tale I will be really disappointed.
It struck me that in a weird way that spoiler makes sense as a plot development because Kamala has always deliberately been a parallel character with Peter. Specifically the younger and more "teen sidekick" version of Peter. And it struck me that Kamala's death here parallels Peter's temporary death in Infinity War. Which happened to give Tony emotional pain just like Kamala's death does for Peter here.
Except Peter didn't discover Kamala, mentor her, provide her with gear like MCU!Tony did with MCU!Peter.
Outside the occasional team up Peter and Kamala barely had any interaction.
It was Miles that was Kamala's closest companion next to Carol, Young!Scott and the champions to the point he made a deal with Mephisto to save her life before.
Which is why I say her death will be used to burn the bridge between Peter and Miles to further isolate the former from every other hero
Edited by FKJ10 on May 17th 2023 at 9:51:48 AM
Because that's exactly what we needed a lot more of! More heroes getting mad at Peter over stuff that was (hopefully) beyond his control!
Frankly put everyone kinda hates 616!Peter even the Spider heroes kinda hate him to some extent.
Mayday, his alt universe daughter, resent him for being a disappointing version of her dad (Which let's be honest 616!Peter literally is after OMD)
Spider-Woman just straight up doesn't like him.
Ben Reiley has gone back to hating him with the hole Chasm fiasco.
Kaine and Miguel just find him annoying to be around.
Only two notable exceptions I can think of are
Silk who has gone from mad pheromone induced lust for Peter to a "brother sister relationship" (Marvel really tries to ignore the two used to go at it like it was there last day one earth)
Spider-Gwen because they reserve all the Gwen agnst/guilt when they clone 616!Gwen back to life for the 54th time.
In hindsight Ultimate!Peter got off easy dying, getting better then riding off into the sunset with MJ before his universe got erased then reset as an excuse to get Miles into 616.

Hey he retconned Sins Past,
Changing Gwen Stacy getting her back blown out by her future murderer to Mysterio and Mephisto!Harrry hypnotizing Norman for an elaborate prank is a win in my book.