(Photo: Marvel Entertainment)

It would be a dramatic understatement to say that the last 10 years have been good for Spider-Man. No matter what fans of the character were looking for they were likely to find. Dan Slott delivered a run that went to every corner of Spidey’s world, delivering both small, heartfelt stories and massive events. Crossovers like Spider-Verse and spinoffs like Spider-Gwen offered innovative new spins on a classic mythos. Small corners of the Spider-Man universe were fleshed out in amusing ways with series like Superior Foes of Spider-Man. There have been a lot of great Spider-Man comics in recent history.

That context is important to consider because even with so many great things occurring, Chip Zdarsky has written some of the absolute best Spider-Man comics of the 21st Century in the pages of Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man over the past year and a half. The 24 issues with Zdarsky’s name on them are just that good.

The last issue of his run arrived this month in the incredibly emotional form of Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man #310, both written and drawn by Zdarsky. That standalone issue captures so much of what has made his run a place where Spider-Man fans could go to be entertained, moved, and reminded as to why he is one of the best superheroes ever. In honor of that issue and the run preceding it, it is worth looking back at a few of the key elements that make Zdarsky’s Spider-Man the essential Spider-Man.

(Photo: Marvel Entertainment)

Spider-Man Can Go Anywhere

Many creators with notable runs on superhero comics are defined by a specific style or tone that runs throughout their stories. What is notable about Zdarsky’s approach to Spider-Man is how he managed to avoid being defined. There are issues that focus entirely on an intimate conversation. There are issues that feature time travel and secret siblings. Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man has been going everywhere in Marvel Comics, both literally and metaphorically during its revival.

That is a mark of a skilled and flexible writer, but it is also something notable about the character of Spider-Man. Many heroes have a sweet spot in which they are best suited. Daredevil, often noted to bear a close resemblance to Spider-Man at his conception, consistently functions best in street-level stories. Spider-Man can thrive in that location, but he’s also capable of telling wild science-fiction tales featuring robotic alien invaders and everything in between. It was true of the first few decades in which some adventures centered around school while others went to nuclear power plants or outer space, and it remains true today. Spider-Man is capable of finding a home anywhere and at his best will thrive in a constantly fluctuating environment. Zdarsky never slowed the pace of change within his run and made sure that each new chapter in Spider-Man’s ongoing adventures took the hero to new locales and new types of stories. This not only made for a regularly engaging read, but one that played to Spidey’s strengths as an adaptable everyman.

(Photo: Marvel Entertainment)

Spider-Man Has a Spectacular History

Spider-Man has been around for more than 55 years. That’s a long time filled with a lot of truly great stories as well as plenty of others. When a creator encounters Spider-Man or another similarly iconic superhero, they have to grapple with that history. Some choose to aim for a version of the character that feels definitive, while others strive to reinvent the wheel, and far too many simply imitate the past. Zdarsky’s approach to Spider-Man was none of these things. While there were callbacks and new takes on classic ideas, Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man regularly managed to embrace its history and use that to continue telling a story in the mode of a grand tapestry.

There are lots of great examples of this approach, including a story that literally took Peter Parker into his past and allowed him to mentor and assist himself during the Ditko and Lee years of the series. However, the best case is made by Spider-Man’s evolving relationship with J. Jonah Jameson during the series. These two foes have been at one another’s throats for years and have caused one another genuine harm in a variety of manners. Zdarsky addressed that history, Spider-Slayers and all, and used it to take an amazing leap forward. In a dinner where the two talk through their history, the series reshaped and contextualized decades of stories before altering their relationship forever. The final twist of the issue in which Peter Parker reveals his identity to Jameson has the effect of feeling inevitable while still stunning, marking it as the sort of twist that can only come from great storytelling. Zdarsky simultaneously managed to embrace and change Spider-Man’s history, revealing just how well he understands both the character and genre.

(Photo: Marvel Entertainment)

Spider-Man Is a Working-Class Hero

Elements of tone, setting, and history are all about the world around Spider-Man though. It is possible to get all of these things right and to get Spider-Man very wrong as a character. This is where it is worth addressing Zdarsky’s final issue specifically, although the strengths of that one story run throughout the entire series. After 24 issues filled with adventures that reshaped the continuum of time and prevented a robotic armageddon, Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man #310 focused on some of the smallest stakes of any Spider-Man comic this year. It told the stories of hot dog vendors, single mothers, film students, and dozens of other New Yorkers based on mundane interactions with Spider-Man. Given the stakes of a single superhero fight where dozens of lives are at risk, even the most heart-wrenching story was individualized. This is where Spider-Man’s heroism shines brightest.

By providing so many different perspectives this issue helped readers see the world through Spider-Man’s eyes. It made every person in the background of a panel into a human being with their own personality, quirks, and story to tell. There was no big picture, because each character was deserving of being the big picture, even a cranky stock broker. This perspective is the essence of Spider-Man, a hero who knows everyone is someone’s Uncle Ben and that there is no battle too small to be worth fighting.

Even when Zdarsky’s stories were big, they never lost track of Spider-Man’s soul. They remained tales of how every decision matters and how a hero always strives to make the world a little bit better. Saving the world. Helping a student with their homework. Through the mask of Spider-Man, each of these actions are valuable. That is what gives Spider-Man the ability to inspire so many comic book readers, and it is what makes Zdarsky’s approach to the character something that can only be described as spectacular.