It’s the day you thought would never come. After years of rumors cropping up around every renumbering or soft relaunch – rumors which had only intensified over the last several months – it’s official: Dan Slott is preparing to bring his run on ‘Amazing Spider-Man’ to a close. The news, which was at last confirmed via a lengthy interview that ran Friday morning on Vulture, marks the end of Slott’s decade-long association with Spider-Man (an eternity in comics publishing), a character (and book) often described as Marvel’s flagship.
Dan Slott began his run on ‘Amazing Spider-Man’ with the first storyline of the ‘Brand New Day’ initiative, an effort to establish a “hipper,” more “back to basics” Spider-Man (in practice, this was accomplished by doing away with the wall crawler’s marriage and much of his post-1985 character growth). The resulting run was wildly uneven, to say the least, owing to the necessary complications of maintaining a thrice monthly publishing schedule with a rotating roster of writers and artists. Regardless, Slott quickly established himself as a standout among the myriad writers working on the book at the time, and after three years, ‘Brand New Day’ came to an end in November 2010, when Slott took over as the sole writer of ‘Amazing Spider-Man’. Since then he has overseen two relaunches, the character’s fiftieth-anniversary celebrations, and the ‘Superior Spider-Man’ era. The sheer longevity of his run puts him among the longest serving writers in the character’s history (surpassed only, as of this writing, by Brian Michael Bendis’s time on ‘Ultimate Spider-Man’).
Slott’s run (or perhaps, after ten years, I should say “era”) will come to an end later this year with the release of ‘Amazing Spider-Man #801’. No release date is currently available, as the issue has yet to be solicited, but it will likely arrive in either May or June depending on how the publication schedule shakes out. But what’s next for Slott? As he puts it, he’s transitioning ‘from the flagship character of the Marvel Comics of my youth to the gem of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.” In other words, Iron Man.
No word yet on who will follow Slott on ‘Amazing Spider-Man’, though the online rumor mill (take that for what it’s worth) has long pointed to Nick Spencer as a likely candidate. Who would you like to see take over ‘Amazing Spider-Man’? Let us know in the comments and be sure to check back with ScienceFiction.com for more information as it becomes available!
