The Amazing Spider-Man 2026 Annual #1: Rapid Recovery

Another year in the bucket means it’s finally time for your regularly scheduled Amazing Spider-Man annual: an issue caught between wanting to be its own story and trying to justify its existence by stapling on a side story that’s only as important to the main title as it is to this issue’s advertising. That said, as superfluous as these have become, I found myself rather impressed with the annual’s first story.

This untitled Rapid adventure picks up where we last left off with the newest addition to the Spider-Man mythos, as Peter sits down with Rapid to catch up after the latter’s most recent exploits. It’s still unclear what Marvel ultimately wants to do with this character, but the more time we spend with him, the more I genuinely believe they have something special on their hands. Something that deserves to break free from Spider-Man backups and into a series of its own. Saladin Ahmed and Federico Vincentini focus on the innate chaos Rapid’s powers are meant to contain, as he pushes past debilitating exhaustion to help Peter shut down Screwball’s latest brand of nonsense.

The result is a tense, relatable popcorn story that showcases not only Peter’s strengths as a mentor, but also Rapid’s pathos as a new hero whose relatively small world feels constantly on the verge of collapse. Vincentini, in particular, draws out the excitement with his characteristically kinetic penciling, moving from beat to beat with an uncontrollable violence that rivals Screwball’s own petulant destruction. What ultimately holds this back from fully succeeding as the centerpiece of a Spider-Man annual is how little it does with Spider-Man himself. Rapid continues to exist on Peter’s periphery, but he’s reached the point where a solo series feels like a no-brainer—given proper editorial support and advertising muscle.

Following this is a brief snapshot from Joe Kelly and Roi Mercado that expands on the technological union between Roderick Kingsley and his benefactors, leading to the creation of the Goblin Slayers. While it’s a nice bit of narrative layering for the main book, this is the sort of backup that could have been condensed into a single flashback page in the core title. Doing so would have left more room for the annual’s lead story to breathe, or perhaps allowed Kelly to begin building interest in the upcoming symbiote crossover—one that will finally see Peter and MJ cross paths again after both characters’ particularly wild recent status quo shifts.