Chip Zdarsky, Pasqual Ferry and Matt Hollingsworth will explore a “What If?” style universe where Peter Parker not only kept the symbiote suit he found on an alien world in the original Secret Wars, but he also embraced its darkness.
Spider-Man: Spider’s Shadow will tell a darker Spider-Man story in April.
“I’m thrilled to be kicking off a new era of What If? stories with this tale of a Spider-Man gone bad! How bad will he be? Will he have a goatee and no hyphen in his name? Pick up issue one to find out! But seriously, I feel that with Spider’s Shadow we’re exploring some dark situations with Spidey and the Marvel Universe, while making it cool and fun to read. I think longtime fans will love it and new readers will be amazed at what Marvel lets us do,” Zdarsky told Marvel.com. “Pasqual and Matt are producing amazing work on this book. When every page comes in, I share them with all of my friends even though Marvel says I’m not allowed to do that.”
As you can see in the preview images below, this more ruthless Spider-Man will take his anger out on the Hobgoblin:
“Since I started working at Marvel some long years ago, I always dreamed of drawing Spider-Man. I came close a couple of times to get it, but the God of Thunder and Iron Man got in the way at the last moment— which were quite a joy too. So when I was offered the opportunity to draw this miniseries, you can imagine my happiness. In addition, I always wanted to experiment with the black suit from Secret Wars so the icing on the cake was doing that in the form of a What If? series set at the beginning of that journey,” Ferry said. “Chip’s script is really shocking and surprising, a delight for someone fan of the character like me, and I’m sure it will catch the readers as much as it is drawing it with me. Hold on to the seats, because Spider’s Shadow is going to surprise you in a way that you cannot imagine!”
Spider-Man’s symbiotic suit originally debuted in the pages of Amazing Spider-Man #252, but chronologically, in Marvel time, he actually found it while participating in Marvel Super Heroes: Secret Wars. As we know now, the suit is very much alive — it’s an alien, with a really mean god who is the subject of the current King in Black crossover. Peter Parker started to go dark when he originally wore it, but with some help from his friends in the Fantastic Four, he was able to remove the suit, which eventually bonded with another human, Eddie Brock, a.k.a. Venom. Marvel’s What If? series, which debuted way back in the 1970s, gave creators the chance to re-imagine big events in the Marvel Universe going a different way — like Phoenix not dying in Uncanny X-Men #137 or Sue Storm marrying Namor instead of Reed Richards.