Be honest with me, does Spidey need a reboot?

[Max_Power]

When DC did their reboot of Superman in 1986, I never understood why they chose to ignore Power Girl as his cousin. They tried to retcon her story and it failed badly at that time. If she was integrated into the rebooted Superman from the start, there would not have been a need to bring back Super Girl from the early 2000's.

Well, for one, while a cool character, I don't think Powergirl had the same iconic and memorable nature as Supergirl, so in that regard, Powergirl was always destined to be screwed.

On the other hand, it's not like Supergirl didn't also have a myriad of problems of her own before the 2000's version: She's made of protoplasm and from a pocket universe, she's an Earth woman, she's an Earth angel etc. I don't even remember how it ended.

But in the end, all those weird choices were taken because they really wanted to make Superman the very last kryptonian. Considering how things are currently that wasn't really a good decision. But in the end, I can sort of see why it was done what was done.

And back to Ultimate Spider-Man I think that would have been better: Whatever changes are made, at least make them for a purpose, not for the sake of just being different. Doubly considering how much it seemed to follow the original Spider-Man anyway.

[Darman456]

I don't see any need for a reboot. That's what Ultimate Comics is for.

Not anymore. With Peter gone, we have a boring character in Miles Morales (which wouldn't be so bad if Bendis could write him a little more like he wrote Peter, like, I dunno, that he was actually an amateur!). Wolverine and many of the main characters in 616 are dead from the God awful Jeph Loeb event known as Ultimatum. I am actually excited for MARVEL NOW! I just hope that Peter will stay and change his name or something. If not, then I guess I'll read Iron Man, Guardians of the Galaxy and Avengers. This will actually serve as a great jumping on point.

[Kevin Nichols]

Not anymore. With Peter gone, we have a boring character in Miles Morales (which wouldn't be so bad if Bendis could write him a little more like he wrote Peter, like, I dunno, that he was actually an amateur!). Wolverine and many of the main characters in 616 are dead from the God awful Jeph Loeb event known as Ultimatum.

No offense, but this sounds like wanting something new, but then complaining once you get it. USM is a totally different book than ASM. It's a new character with a new origin. How much more of a reboot can you ask for? As far as Ultimatum goes, people are always moaning about how comic book deaths don't "mean anything", but when an event comes along that legitimately kills characters off, people complain about that too. I dunno. Marvel can only do what they can do, and they are obviously not going to please everybody.

[hunter_peterson]

All of Marvel needs a reboot. Though in regards to Spidey in particular, I think that he'd work best in college, post-Gwen Stacy and Clone Saga. The fault with the latter was in the telling and could be easily trimmed into something concise, like in Ultimate Spider-Man. That would include most of the biggest Spider-Man events, put him in a school situation and give him room to move forward. It'd be the best of both worlds.

[Mister Mets]

When DC did their reboot of Superman in 1986, I never understood why they chose to ignore Power Girl as his cousin. They tried to retcon her story and it failed badly at that time. If she was integrated into the rebooted Superman from the start, there would not have been a need to bring back Super Girl from the early 2000's.

Power Girl's origin went against two of DC's Post-COIE edicts. They wanted Superman to be the only Kryptonian. And they wanted there to be one "Earth."

[Luck911]

Reboot? No Spiderman needs to be allowed to grow Spiderman as teenager is the best everyman character in comics but it that all that can ever happen to character? I am in the opposite camp i want Spiderman to grow up,I want Spiderman to get married have a kid,I want Spiderman to move beyond street level and fight big level enemies,I want Spiderman to be leader of the Avengers and respected member of Superhero world,I want Spiderman to take over horizon and be rival of Tony Stark or Reed Richards and have deal with problems of success.

The only problem is once you go forward it makes it hard to go back,I believe they are more compelling stories as Seasoned super hero,I can see Spiderman working as hybrid Batman/Iron Man/Reed Richards where Spiderman is owner of big tech company who moonlights as Superhero saving his city and while trying to have normal life and to protect his family Mary Jane and his daughter Mayday.I would love to see a story where Spiderman as business owner out smarts Osborn in business takes over Oscorp, Spiderman traveling to different parts of world because Peter company is doing something there and spiderman being more of global hero rather just a local New York hero but none of that progress could every happen because people are too caught up teen everyman hero with problems.

For years we have read different version of teen peter and young peter well the thing is he is not that young anymore and he can't remain forever younger. It is losing fight he will age and so will rest of Marvel,Instead of Marvel fearing that they will lose a cash cow they should embrace a little change and work hard to delvolp some other heroes

[The Black Guardian]

No reboot. But he needs to be married again.

And a dead aunt.

[E. Wilson]

I'm against any plan that puts Peter back in high school.

[midnightshrink]

He needs to knock up Mary Jane before Norman or Superior Spiderman do.

[Knightsilver]

Luck911;16138484]Reboot? No Spiderman needs to be allowed to grow Spiderman as teenager is the best everyman character in comics but it that all that can ever happen to character? I am in the opposite camp i want Spiderman to grow up,I want Spiderman to get married have a kid,I want Spiderman to move beyond street level and fight big level enemies,I want Spiderman to be leader of the Avengers and respected member of Superhero world,I want Spiderman to take over horizon and be rival of Tony Stark or Reed Richards and have deal with problems of success.

The only problem is once you go forward it makes it hard to go back,I believe they are more compelling stories as Seasoned super hero,I can see Spiderman working as hybrid Batman/Iron Man/Reed Richards where Spiderman is owner of big tech company who moonlights as Superhero saving his city and while trying to have normal life and to protect his family Mary Jane and his daughter Mayday.I would love to see a story where Spiderman as business owner out smarts Osborn in business takes over Oscorp, Spiderman traveling to different parts of world because Peter company is doing something there and spiderman being more of global hero rather just a local New York hero but none of that progress could every happen because people are too caught up teen everyman hero with problems.

For years we have read different version of teen peter and young peter well the thing is he is not that young anymore and he can't remain forever younger. It is losing fight he will age and so will rest of Marvel,Instead of Marvel fearing that they will lose a cash cow they should embrace a little change and work hard to delvolp some other heroes[/QUOTE]

Agree with this completely.

[chakal]

I side with reboot all the way. New Spider-Man=new possibilities instead of rehash!

[Trallis]

If by reboot you mean cancel the current series and start from the beginning again.. Then no he does not.. And a lot of people still love the spider-man we have now.

But if you want a spider-man reboot read Ultimate Spider-man. You need to recognize that marvel is a shared universe with a lot of interaction between characters. To reboot one character you need a rebooted universe..
So if you want to see a spidey reboot stsrt Reading that..its good.

Also, i would love for Marvel to add a third continuity where all of the characters would age at some rate. Every character would have new story potential, and new young characters could stsrt to emerge and they wiuldnt have to worry about keeping the character young just so spider-man's comstant late 20s would still make sense. Theres tons of characters id love to see grow old.

[Russell]

I think Spider-man needs a reboot in the sense that i want his story to have an end. A satisfactory end to Peters story. Some enemies getting their final story, deaths meaning something and a resolution to the major plots in his life: May, Love life and the Osborns.

I thought The Final Adventure was a good way to end things personally, but obviously it didn't take.

I think Spider-Girl is as you described, and the closest we will most likely ever get.

Hey, that's the way Ultimate Spider-Man was sold to me, and that's what I wanted Ultimate Spider-Man to be.

Unfortunately, it tried to both follow the old Spider-Man and do its own thing. It should have tried to concentrate in doing one or the other, but no dice. As a result, it felt like it revisited too much old stuff, while none of that really had the same weight of the original Spider-Man.

Take the villains, for example. Most of them were lame reinterpretations of the original Spider-Man's foes: Shocker? Once cool and dangerous in Amazing Spider-Man. Very, very downgraded nowadays. In the Ultimate Universe, he started as a straight-up joke who looked stupid to boot. Electro? Once upon a time a very cool looking, dangerous foe. Now, even the ever so serious (Ha!) Amazing Spider-Man is embarrassed of his cool starfish mask, but also has downgraded him a lot. In Ultimate Spider-Man he was a lame and ugly freak, easily defeated. Not a joke like Shocker, but close. Green Goblin? A clever madman in Amazing Spider-Man; a hulking, stupid beast in Ultimate. He probably developed some intelligence later, given that he killed Peter Parker. I don't know and right now don't even care.

Then, there was the Kingpin, the unbelievable strong bodybuilder that had the misfortune of having his giant muscles shaped like blobs of lard. He was virtually unchanged from Amazing Spider-Man to Ultimate Spider-Man. The result? The bad guy that dominated everything!

And of course, the storylines: There was a Clone Saga, a death of Gwen Stacy and some other stuff that really felt like a very underwhelming reflection of what happened in Amazing. For example: Why the need of killing Gwen Stacy? She wasn't anything like the Amazing Spider-Man Gwen, her role was that of an older sister, rather than a girlfriend. Her death had a very different meaning than that of Amazing's Gwen, so it probably shouldn't be a shock that it was more or less undone later.

And then, the pacing: Felt like reading the Phantom in the Daily comic strips, everything happens so quick, and yet it drags for months. Granted, it had nothing to do with its rebooty nature, so maybe I should let that one slide.

I don't mean to tell that Ultimate Spider-Man did everything wrong. It did very nice characters (even if they were taken of the original Spider-Man cast and given new personalities. Brainy Jane? No one would ever give that nickname to the Mary Jane of Amazing), character relationships, teen drama and characterization. But as I said sometime against Dan Slott's run: I need my superheroics to be exciting.

To make it short: Ultimate Spider-Man wasn't at all the reboot I wanted. Something like the reboot of Superman in the eighties would have been fine.

I need to re-read USM in full, but I thought it was very good. Only Gwen's death seemed out of place, and them 'dating' near the end. Great character though, ultimate Gwen. Until the new movie, by far the best interpretation of the character.