Superior Spider-Man #2: The Boy Is Back In Town

Superior Spider-Man #2 picks up with Doc Ock’s past as the Superior Spider-Man coming back to haunt everyone in the modern day as a supervillain with the powers of the sun rampages on New York looking for the man who wronged her, Spider-Man. Much like the first issue, this series serves more as a spiritual successor to the original Superior Spider-Man while acting more as a follow up series to Dan Slott and Mark Bagley’s prior adjectiveless Spider-Man book that spun out Edge of the Spider-Verse. With all of those factors in mind, Superior Spider-Man #2 works well as an excellent continuation of those stories without losing the spark that makes Spider-Man work so well.

Whereas Dan Slott is seeking to use his Spider-Boy series to inform the Marvel universe of his existence and place him firmly within today’s continuity, Superior Spider-Man has been furthering Spider-Man’s story with his new teenage sidekick close by. Much of this issue deals with the latent fallout of the Superior Spider-Man’s actions from a decade ago; however, a great deal of attention is paid to the relationship between Bailey and Peter. Slott seems to be touching on many of the old criticisms Stan Lee had of child sidekicks with how he handles their relationship in Superior Spider-Man #2, highlighting how irresponsible it is for Peter to allow such a young boy to join him on his adventures. This seems like it will be a plotline that flows between this series and the simultaneously running Spider-Boy, so it will be interesting to see how Slott decides to resolve it all.

The main plot here continues to revolve around the scientist that Doc Ock screwed over while he was Spider-Man. Meanwhile, Ock confronts Peter with the newly remembered knowledge that he knows he is Spider-Man. All of this with the return of Anna Maria Marconi really makes this book feel like a true successor to the original Superior Spider-Man series. These are the kinds of stories that can be told when a creator invests this much time into their planning process, giving readers a well thought out, deeply canon rooted story.

Mark Bagley never ceases to amaze with the way he has drawn Spider-Man over the years, continuing to do excellent work here with inker John Dell in conjunction with colorist Edgar Delgado. Together, this art team does a stellar job in capturing that Spider-Man flair that makes these books read so well. A lot of this may be confused with nostalgia bate; however, it cannot be ignored that the attention to quality still supersedes everything, making this book a marvel to look at.