Marvel Might Be Bringing Back a Controversial Comic

Oliver Brandt
·2 min read

Spider-man Reign teaser

Spider-Man comics have been… a bit dicey lately. The friendly neighborhood spider-comic was used to kill off Ms. Marvel, something that has not gone down super well among fans. Still, it’s far from the most controversial run in Spidey’s history — that honor goes to Spider-Man: Reign. And Marvel might be bringing it back.

Marvel Comics posted a teaser poster on the official Spider-Man Twitter account, showing a disheveled Spider-Man holding a seemingly dead Mary Jane Watson, Peter Parker’s one and only (except all the other ones and onlys). At the top of the poster is a tagline: “The most notorious Spider-Man story ever told…” and a big 2 sits at the bottom.

If we take it all together, it certainly seems like Marvel might be producing a sequel to the much-maligned Spider-Man: Reign. In that series, Mary Jane is dead, and it certainly is one of the most notorious Spider-Man comics ever to have existed.

So why is Reign so controversial? Well, there’s a lot of reasons, some bigger than others. It was dark and edgy, coming off the back of Frank Miller’s gritty The Dark Knight Returns. There are weird monologues about pain and blood, about the rush of feeling something when injured. It’s all very melodramatic and intensely stupid.

It’s perhaps better well known for the way Mary Jane died. We won’t go into too much detail, but as Peter himself says, all of his body fluids are radioactive, and that’s bound to have an effect over time. Yeah. It’s um, not exactly a great piece of literature, and that’s putting it way more lightly than perhaps it should be.

So what exactly could a Reign 2 look like? I’m not sure I’d want to know. It could be a sequel series, set after the events of Reign, or it could be a prequel, showing what Peter’s life was like shortly after the death of Mary Jane, before Peter hung up the suit for a few decades. Either way, it’s sure to be interesting. Is that the right word?

If you’re looking for something perhaps a little less disturbing, perhaps you should keep an eye on the upcoming New X-Men series Marvel teased earlier this year. Or the sequel to the best Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic.