Marvel Celebrates 50th Anniversary of Spider-Man By Giving Him a Sidekick

Heard about this a few months ago when it was tipped off to sites like “Comic Book Resources” and IGN.  Hon­estly, I ques­tion if giv­ing a char­ac­ter with an intense his­tory of death in his sup­port­ing cast a side­kick is one of the wis­est things you can do for him.

“With Great Power comes Great Respon­si­bil­ity,” but it also gives your char­ac­ter one hell of a guilt-complex. 

To cel­e­brate Spider-Man’s 50th anniver­sary, Mar­vel Comics is intro­duc­ing a teenage side­kick for its most pop­u­lar super­hero in an issue hit­ting stores on Wednesday.

Meet 16-year-old Andy Maguire — a nod to big screen Spider-Man stars Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire — a slacker from Peter Parker’s old high school. Until, that is, a sci­ence exper­i­ment gone wrong grants him pow­ers, includ­ing super­strength and flight.

“The fact that it’s never been done before with Spider-Man is part of the fun of it,” says Dan Slott, who wrote “Amaz­ing Spider-Man” No. 692. “We’re 50 years in and he’s never had a side­kick because part of you goes, he shouldn’t, he really shouldn’t have a side­kick because he’s the ulti­mate loner.”

Fans seem split on whether this could be an intrigu­ing plot twist for the char­ac­ter first cre­ated in 1962 by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko — or the comic book equiv­a­lent of New Coke.

“Even though I am opposed to the idea at first, it could work out in the long haul,” says graphic designer Antuan Rut­ledge, 24, a life-long Spidey fan from the Bronx. “I’ll give it a chance.”

“I’m not sure why they’re adding a side­kick, but I’m cau­tiously opti­mistic,” says 34-year-old Clint Kak­stys, a comic book reader from Man­hat­tan. “As long as Peter Parker is still there, Spider-Man will work no mat­ter what.”

Accord­ing to the pre­view pages I’ve seen else­where, the kid becomes his side­kick as he and the rest of his sci­ence class are invited by Peter Parker — now a bud­ding super-scientist at a think tank, hav­ing hung up the cam­era years ago for real income — to watch a pre­sen­ta­tion of Parker’s newest exper­i­ment, a sort of zero-point energy which could put him on the map with Marvel’s great­est sci­en­tists (Reed Richards, Hank Pym, Tony Stark).

At the same time in the con­trol room, Peter’s boss is talk­ing to another sci­en­tist about an open­ing at the think tank and how he didn’t get it.  While not vis­i­bly out­raged about not get­ting the job, the other sci­en­tist sab­o­tages the safety pro­to­cols of Peter’s exper­i­ment and the kid gets bom­barded with energy from Peter’s equip­ment and instead of being toasted like a crisp, gains superpowers.

Inter­views since then with writ­ers and edi­tors have been about Peter teach­ing the lessons of “With Great Power comes Great Respon­si­bil­ity” and such and such.

If they make the new Spidey side­kick cool, then I’m open to his intro­duc­tion into the Spider-man mythos.  If this kid is just meant to be noth­ing more than a rea­son to have a bump in sales, then why the hell are they doing it at all?

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