New Spidey "Event" Starts in October

As the entry below makes pretty clear, most of my comics focus has been on DC, but there are a few characters from Marvel that I try to keep up with at least through the industry news sites. Top of that list of course is Spider-Man, whose main books I don't read at all anymore, though I still keep up with Ultimate Spider-Man via trades.

When J. Michael Straczynski (JMS) first started on Amazing Spider-Man over four years ago, he introduced a cool concept that put Spidey's origin in a new light -- that Spider-Man was part of a legacy, and Parker was chosen to be the next in line. It introduced the character of Ezekiel, a previous "chosen" one, and Morlun, an energy vampire that Spidey has yet to defeat.

After this initial story, the book got further and further away from what I liked about the character and I stopped buying the trades (I have the first 4 from the JMS run; I should have stopped 1 or 2 before that).

Now, in the first multi-title crossover since the books were revamped four years ago, Marvel is introducing "The Other," a 12-part, 3-book crossover event premiering in October. Besides JMS' Amazing Spider-Man, the story will be found in Marvel Knights' Spider-Man (currently written by Reginald Hudlin) and the debuting Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, which features writer Peter David returning to the character for the first time in well over a decade.

The story, which is written about in the current issue of Wizard, features the return of both Ezekiel and Morlun and revisits the legacy idea. According to a follow-up article on Newsarama:

Strazynski, Hudlin, and Marvel Editor in Chief Joe Quesada tease the storyline in the Wizard piece, neither confirming nor denying the identity of “The Other,” or if Peter Parker will be under the Spider-Man mask after the final word is written and page is drawn.

This of course brings back memories of the infamous "Clone Saga" an intriguing story that saw Peter replaced as Spider-Man by a clone named Ben Reilly. The story now stands as a symbol of eveything that was wrong with comics in the 90s, as it was driven by marketing , rather than editorial, and ran on aimlessly far too long (over 2 years), shifting directions constantly, and finally concluding in a way that pretty much no one was happy with.

It took quite a few years for Spider-Man to emerge from the mess, which happened with JMS' arrival on Amazing Spider-Man (hey, full circle!).

We can only asume Marvel has learned from this mistake. While the new arc is 12 issues long, since it takes place in 3 titles, the whole thing will wrap up in 4 months. However, with JMS' recent major mis-step with Gwen Stacy and Norman Osborn, fans are a little skeptical.