Amazing Spider-Man: Spider-Versity #1: Class is in Session

It’s hard to have faith in legacy characters established in the modern day. Unless they manage to hit it big with readers or secure a major Hollywood appearance, Marvel and DC are quick to sweep them into the closet until creatives come around to dust them off and decorate the background of a major moment in the life of the character they’re an offshoot of.

That being said, Marvel has most consistently been able to grow the “Spider-Family” in a meaningful way since Dan Slott introduced the cult hit Spider-Boy, which also introduced us to a new and underrated Spider-Girl. Stephanie Phillips has helped breathe consistent life into Ghost-Spider and Silk, with Anya Corazon finding renewed relevance within the young adult space. Cody Ziglar has, with much fanfare, delivered the strongest run on Miles Morales: Spider-Man since the character debuted in the 616.

Spider-Versity takes all that recent success and spins it into something meaningful, with a premise you could have paid me to fake confidence in. A “training arc” for a group of characters, most of whom have been around since the early 2010s, initially reads as regression. Outside of the Spider-Kids, it still does, even after the issue attempts to justify its premise through Norman.

Gwen, Miles, and Silk have already lived through enough Goblin events and Spider-related crossovers to have earned their stripes. The horror of an unhinged Norman Osborn is nothing new to them; they’ve handled threats of that nature alone and alongside each other more than once. For Bailey and Maki, the need to level up their expertise makes sense, but it’s in the handling of everyone else where the premise strains.

If you can accept that limitation, the rest of the book’s promise becomes clear. By removing the usual Spider-Verse gimmick from the center of its plot, Morris and Kelly instead focus on character relationships that have been developing in the background of Spider-Man comics for years. Not unlike Battle for the Cowl, Marvel continues to treat these characters with a level of care that makes them compelling as a unit, even when individual familiarity varies.

Norman and Jess function as strong figures of authority within that structure. Jess, shaped by a tortured past involving combat training at the hands of terrible men, has every reason to stay and act as a guardrail against the potential return of the Green Goblin. Norman is handled with similar care; his awareness of the bomb inside his brain and his desire to orchestrate his own downfall continues to push his redemption forward without erasing the version of him readers know and loathe.

As for the art, it’s solid. The panel layouts are dynamic in a way that doesn’t always feel intentional. Marvel’s house style of “exciting page layouts” has become increasingly recognizable, even artificial at times. Pere Pérez works within that constraint of polished safety competently. His clean linework keeps a large cast and overlapping dynamics readable and easy to follow. For a story this grounded in character conflict, he is a more than fitting choice. It could be more stylized and distinct, but that lack of a strong visual identity also allows the script to carry the issue’s strongest elements without distraction.