Spider-Man’s status quo at the movies is changing in a big way. As reported last week , Sony will share joint theatrical custody of Peter Parker with Marvel Studios, allowing the character to websling alongside his fellow Avengers Black Widow and Iron Man. For any Spider-Man fan — even halfway cynical ones like me — that’s huge, but for current Spider-Man comics writer Dan Slott, it’s exciting beyond all reason.

Slott has spent the last 20 years writing comics. In that time he’s written for Batman, The Avengers, Silver Surfer, and others, but he’s currently Marvel’s steward of Spider-Man lore, a mythology that’s evolved over the last half century. Thousands of Spider-Man stories have been told by now — some intimate and others parallel universe-spanning, many classic and plenty that are best left forgotten — and Slott is well-regarded among fans for his ability to weave canon into new, often innovative stories. Like giving all of New York City spider powers for one. Or having Peter Parker found a startup for another. As a writer and the Spider Guy, he’s in a singular position to feel ecstatic about the character’s cinematic prospects. I took time to speak with him this week about the movies, telling Spider-Man stories, and what it means to be Peter Parker in a vast multiverse.

What were your thoughts around Spider-Man finally coming to the Marvel Cinematic Universe? I was completely side-swiped. I didn’t see it coming at all. I had so long been told about the politics of it, and had been told by the powers that be that it was never, ever, ever going to happen. So, I was gobsmacked. You write Spider-Man right now, but you’ve also written The Avengers in comic form. Especially since there can’t exactly be a clean slate for the character, what do you think this means for Spider-Man at the movies? The thing that’s exciting about it — and I don’t want you to walk away going "Oh! He hated every Spider-Man movie." — is that I love Spider-Man. I loved the first two Sam Raimi movies. And with the new Amazing Spider-Man movies, there are certain things about [them] that I love. I love the chemistry between Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone, between Peter and Gwen. They’re just adorable. You don’t even need to swing around town or anything, you just put the two of them onscreen the whole time, and you can just watch that.

"It's the Golden Age of Heroes." The great thing is, and there’s no denying, the best superhero movies in the world are coming out from Marvel. Those are the movies that get everyone the most excited. Especially the Marvel Studios movies. A lot of people are trying to replicate what they did by having that combined universe, but what they did was astounding. They did these great single-unit movies first, so you really cared about Iron Man and Steve Rogers and the Hulk. You cared about Thor. And when you put them all together, it was like "Oh my God!" That’s what’s great about the comics. That it’s this giant shared universe. It’s this sandbox where all the comic books and all the characters and creators get to work in and weave this giant tapestry together. That hopefully everything that works makes all the other stuff that works even stronger. And the idea that you could bring Spider-Man into that world, that sandbox? It’s the most exciting thing ever. As cool as it is to see Spider-Man onscreen, now I get to see Peter Parker and Tony Stark. I can’t believe this day and age we live in. When I was growing, we had Christopher Reeve Superman, and that was it. You’d better like it! [Now] it’s the Golden Age for Heroes. I can’t even imagine if I was a little kid, and if stuff like that came out when I was young. I would’ve lost it. Kids have no idea how lucky they are. They are! And get off my yard! Reboots means telling old stories in a new way. As far as writing Spider-Man is concerned, what’s that process like? Taking an origin story, like what you did in last year’s "Learning to Crawl" and finding new wrinkles. [In " [In " Learning to Crawl "] we told a story that fit in the cracks of Spider-Man’s first 60 days of being Spider-Man, which dealt with the first time he really had to fight a bad guy that was his own age, and also dealing with the fallout of everything that should be happening in his personal life. You know, his grades slipping, and Aunt May wondering what he’s up to, and whether or not he should show off his powers at school. And it was fun to revisit that stuff.

I don’t think you should think of them as old characters. I think they’re more like archetypes that have always been around. It’s saying, "How can you tell a new story with the nerdy guy? How can you tell a new story with the fool or the trickster?" These characters have a resonance because they are eternal, and there’s always something new to say. If not, we stop telling stories altogether. There’s always some new thing happening in the world, so how would Spider-Man react to that. It’s all very fun. Right now, in the comics, Spider-Man has his small startup company. That’s a new thing for him! We’ve never seen him try to do that. During the time I’ve been working on the book — I’m going into my eighth year writing Spider-Man — we passed the 50th anniversary. Spider-Man’s been around for 50 years, and at some point if he’s still taking pictures for the Daily Bugle, you go, "Oh my God, what’ve you done with your life Spider-Man?" That’s gonna look terrible at your high school reunion.