J. J. This is Henry Abrams’s first interview ever .

HENRY I’m nervous, but I will do my best. Nick Lowe, the editor of this comic, reached out about 10 years ago. More recently we began to develop an idea: a new and different and exciting take on Spider-Man.

J. J. Nick had been pressing me to do a book with him. A year or so ago, I started talking about it with Henry and it sort of happened organically. And that has been the joy of this. Even though I’ve been talking to Nick for a long time, weirdly, this feels like it just sort of evolved from the conversations of Henry and I, having ideas that got us excited and Nick being open to the collaboration.

Were you both comic book fans growing up?

HENRY Most of my exposure to comics came when I was super young: Calvin and Hobbes, Tintin, Spy vs. Spy. I did have a Marvel compendium when I was 6 or 7 that I adored and I would always land on this page of Spider-Man, not knowing anything about the character or the back story or the powers, but connecting with the visual designs of Steve Ditko. I didn’t really start reading him until I was 11 or 12. And at that point, I realized that this is a character that I see myself in and that was probably the first time I ever felt that way with any fictional character.

J. J. I remember working in a comic store in high school and there was the Amazing Fantasy comic that Spider-Man first appeared in that they had under glass. It really wasn’t until that job that I started to get into comics. And while I’ve never been the die-hard comics fan that Henry is, I’ve always appreciated the way that an emotional and weirdly relatable story is being told through this extraordinary circumstance.

How was it to work together on this?

HENRY Great!

J. J. I told him he has to say it’s great!

HENRY I feel like I’ve developed not just as a writer, but someone that can appreciate stories more . Spider-Man is one of those superheroes where the more you read about him, for me at least, the less I understand him. He’s so anti-everything that you’d expect from a hero. I think Stan Lee said something about putting the human in superhuman. That is what we’re trying to do.