So by this point Slott had written four different Amazing Spider-Man launches (five if you count Brand New Day) and here was another Amazing Spider-Man #1 offered up as every Marvel title got relaunched (again) following Secret Wars. By this point, Guiseppi Camuncoli was the solo artist on the book which was essentially back to monthly and had been for a good while. Following Secret Wars, there had been some missing time before us (being the readers) was reintroduced to the Marvel universe and a few things were noticeably different. One of these things was that Peter was now a successful businessman with a global empire. Parker Industries was now the biggest company in the world and had branches all over the world that were run by some of Peter’s closest friends including Anna, Harry Osborn and more. This period known as Spider-Man: Worldwide was like seeing Peter achieve his full potential, but not everyone was on board.

Once again, Slott received criticism for turning Peter into Tony Stark, but I disagreed. Peter has always had the potential to be the man Tony was…but better in many ways. This is why their relationship prior to Civil War and in the Marvel movies is so interesting. There we see Tony look upon Peter like a better version of himself and here we see that in full swing (pardon the pun). There are some elements that Slott clearly riffed from Iron Man such as Spider-Man officially being Peter’s bodyguard, but that to me came across a loving nod rather than a rip off. Immediately, Peter was set against a responsibility he’s never known the scale of before due to his company being all over the world and him being able to travel from place to place. Once again, I was confident this change was just to explore a story idea and wasn’t permanent. Slott built himself a back door in the first issue where Peter explained that he didn’t draw a salary from his own company so if anything went awry, he wouldn’t be billionaire broke with enough money to live out the rest of his life comfortably, but he would be just plain broke. I was satisfied to ride the wave of the concept though as by now, Slott had earned my trust over and over.

Before I talk about the main points of the first story of this latest chapter in Slott’s Amazing run (we’re up to the end of 2015 for those keeping score at home) lets talk about all the seeding Slott did in his first issue for what was to come. The end of the first issue included some teasers including a mysterious man in a red suit reintroducing the Rhino to his dead wife, Doc Ock’s consciousness inside the Living Brain robot and Regent now being in the main Marvel universe. So from the get go, Slott laid out a lot to deal with, and it was clear he still had a ton of ideas up his sleeve. While these various stories simmered in the background, Spider-Man himself took on the Zodiac who are a group of super villains based around the various constellations. Their leader, Scorpio (not Hank sadly) wants to get his hands on the Zodiac key which apparently gifts its holder a full years worth of knowledge which I’m sure can come in handy. The Zodiac isn’t a villain group I’m too familiar with and was an interesting choice for the first villains for Spidey to take on in this new status quo, but I think it worked. Eventually Scorpio got his hands on the key, but Spidey managed to lock him up for a year so any knowledge he gained would be moot and he could worry about him later.

In the middle of this larger story, Slott also revisited Mr. Negative and had Cloak and Dagger drop in/get corrupted by his influence temporarily. This was the final time Slott would write Negative before he left Amazing, so it was great to see him revisit the character he himself invented all that time ago. We were then onto the Regent story which had Spider-Man interacting once more with Mary Jane who had recently become Tony Stark’s new PA cause…Bendis? So here Regent had used his real identity to purchase the Raft (super villain prison of the Marvel Universe) and was using incarcerated villains to siphon their powers before he turned his attention to the heroes. It was like the precursor almost to the near success of his plan in Renew Your Vows, but this time Spider-Man was there to stop him and he wasn’t alone. In a really interesting turn of events, Mary Jane donned the Iron Spider costume that Spider-Man wore during Civil War and helped our hero take down Regent, but not before the three of them had the oddest feeling they had all been in that situation before. With Regent defeated, it was now time for another Spidey-epic from Slott in the form of the Clone Conspiracy: Dead No More.

This had been a story that had been building in the pages of Amazing with a man in a red suit and Anubis mask approaching people with loved ones alive once more, making them swear loyalty to him in exchange for having their dearly departed back once more. There was a lot of mystery to this individual who referred to himself as the Jackal- who Slott had brought back during Spider-Island after spending over a decade on the ‘no no’ list following the Clone Saga. This individual didn’t seem to be Miles Warren or close to any previous version of him, however, so there was something clearly more than meets the eye. The story was told in both Amazing and a separate mini-series drawn by comic superstar Jim Cheung. Curiously sales wise, the main mini trailed behind Amazing (which was dealing with side stories to do with the event by and large) quite significantly. It was clear that either retailers missed the memo on where the actual story was taking place or Marvel didn’t communicate it properly or a mix of both. Either way, despite odd sales the story was excellent and brought back some familiar faces like Gwen Stacy, George Stacy, Doc Ock, Marla Jameson and more. Suddenly the amount of people that had been killed off over the last number of years made sense, they were all being brought back. The real villain of the piece was revealed to be Ben Reilly, the original Spider-Man clone who after being thought dead for decades (again, no no list) was revealed to have been resurrected by the real Jackal only to be killed and resurrected multiple times as a part of a sick experiment. This resulted in Ben not quite being in control of his own facilities and planning to bring everyone back from the dead. Great in theory, but not exactly right either. Of course Spider-Man with some help from Spider-Gwen stopped him, some of the clones survived and skulked off while most of them perished all over again.

The story also featured the continuing story of Slott’s epic Doctor Octopus saga. Brought back in his original body, but without the memories of his decision to let Peter be Spider-Man again due to his consciousness being saved to the Living Brain, then an Octobot due to some time travel milarky (I need to sit down) Ock was determined to get revenge on his hated foe. However, once more Ock redeemed himself seemingly, but not before transferring his consciousness once more into a new type of clone that Ben was developing that was an advanced version of Peter. Also Ben, after being defeated and seemingly shown the error of his ways, headed to Vegas and has since starred in his own title, another addition to the range of Spider titles that have spawned due to Slott’s concepts or ideas. So with Ben defeated and Spider-Man questioning if he did the right thing, he didn’t get much time to rest as his other arch nemesis Norman Osborn was waiting around the corner.

Clone Conspiracy was the last arc for artist Guiseppe Camuncoli and Slott was joined by the final long term artist of his Amazing run, Stuart Immonen. Get a board of Marvel heroes, throw a dart and whichever one it hits will likely have seen Immonen draw them at one time or another. He’s a fantastic artist who had been one of Marvel’s biggest and most dependable talents for close to two decades (and before that for other companies such as the underrated DC classic, Superman: Secret Identity) until he announced he was kinda/sorta retiring following Amazing Spider-Man 800. Immonen was no stranger to Spider-Man having followed Mark Bagley on Ultimate Spider-Man and drawing him in various Avenger’s titles over the years, but I was really excited to have him on board for what turned out to be Slott’s final period on the title.

So Norman was back and using a militant group in a foreign country as a tool in his revenge against Peter/Spider-Man. Having lost his Goblin strength and such during Goblin Nation in the final issues of Superior, Norman here was a calculating mastermind who used others as pawns in various deadly games. This arc also reintroduced Silver Sable, revealing her to be alive after seemingly being killed off way back during Ends Of The Earth. Heading to the country to save the day along with his new kinda/sorta girlfriend in Mockingbird, Spider-Man defeated Norman who skulked away promising revenge and a desire to regain his former strength to use it to destroy his arch enemy once and for all.

Following this, Amazing tied rather loosly into Marvel’s larger (and controversial) Secret Empire which had Doc Ock in his new body (now calling himself the Superior Octopus) team with Hydra to get revenge once again on Spider-Man. Revealing that since it was he who created Parker Industries, Ock had left a booby trap in the company’s structure so that the technology the company provided backfired around the world and it made it look like Peter was responsible. Once again, Peter managed to defeat Otto (who got away) but there were vast consequences. Peter’s reputation was in tatters and his company was ruined. He was now left with nothing once more with the remnants of Parker Industries being picked up by Alchemex or the newly relaunched Horizon Labs. No longer the head of his own company, Peter once again joined the unemployed, but it seems that Slott had somewhere new in mind for him to go…well a new place at somewhere very familiar anyway.

Before we talk about that though, I want to talk about Amazing Spider-Man issue 32 which was an issue that focused on Norman Osborn and drawn by guest artist Greg Smallwood. This issue focusing on Norman once again seeking a way to regain his goblin serum induced strength saw him take inspiration from Doctor Strange. He sought out mystical monks that could teach him magics powerful enough to gain his revenge on Spider-Man once and for all. The issue is largely Norman’s imagination running wild with the power he could gain only for his would be mentor to deny him the knowledge in the end. It’s a great issue, maybe the best issue of Spider-Man focusing on Norman since the 90’s one shot, Osborn Journals. It not only kept Norman’s presence fresh in the readers mind, but was a great study of his character and made it clear to the reader that Dan Slott was cooking something major with Spider-Man’s most iconic foe.

Back in the much less mystic New York, Peter found himself working again at the Bugle, but instead of being a photographer, he was employed as the science editor. I liked this since it brought Peter back within the Bugle supporting cast, but didn’t have him regress all the way back to being a freelance photographer again, something I fear may happen since the new Amazing run hastily dispatched him from this job which, on paper, seemed ideal. The title then went back to original numbering picking up from Amazing 789 due to Marvel’s Legacy roll out and the majority of titles being put back to original numbering. The countdown was now on until Amazing 800, Slott’s third centennial issue in a row and he started to build towards a story worthy of such a big anniversary issue. Before that we saw Peter clash with…errr Clash, the villain from Learning to Crawl who had worked at Parker Industries before embracing his villainous side once more in a Civil War II tie in that was written by Christos Cage. He was also dating Mockingbird, participated in a big Venom story with Eddie Brock back in the symbiote driving seat and dealt with Scorpio upon his return. All great stories, but it started to become apparent that Slott was cleaning house, doing odds and ends to tie up little things here and there. I hoped that it wouldn’t lead where it seemed to be, but then the announcement came.

Dan Slott was leaving Amazing Spider-Man after years of saying he would never leave. Its hard to speculate why Slott chose now to leave, the length of his run meant that he had written more issues of Spider-Man than anyone, he had outlasted many other celebrated runs and crafted many a great story over his tenure. Had he told all the stories he wanted to tell or could he not resist the allure of new challenges in Iron Man and Fantastic Four? Over his tenure in Spider-Man, Slott had transformed from fan fave who wrote cult hits to one of their biggest writers and the guy who delivered solid to brilliant numbers on arguably their top book. He had nothing left to prove, but he still decided to go out with a bang with one final pit stop. Despite writing Amazing Spider-Man for 10 years, Slott had never written an annual, but that was about to change in Amazing Annual 42 where Slott delivered more of a mystery. Teaming with Betty Brant, Peter investigated a story that Betty’s deceased husband Ned was working on involving a statue in the centre of New York which was primed to explode due to it being built using a volatile metal. It was a pretty good story that established that Ned Leeds was alive again following Clone Conspiracy, but was keeping that information to himself. The story was pretty decent but nothing special, it read like Slott had one last story he had to get out before his grand finale which isn’t a bad thing mind you but the story in the annual kind of got put to the back of my mind once Slott’s finale really got underway.

I reviewed Slott’s final two issue in depth on this very site, but essentially his final arc was a big showdown between Spider-Man and the Green Goblin. Not Spider-Man vs the Goblin plus the Thunderbolts or Spider-Otto vs the Goblin or even Spider-Man vs Norman Osborn, this was on the surface a classic throw down between the two rivals. Of course though, as always Slott had something else to throw into the mix. Bonding with the Carnage symbiote, Norman expelled the very thing that took away his powers and he became the Red Goblin, a perfect blend of both of these enemies strengths and none of their weaknesses. It was a story with a huge scope that I’m sure others had considered in the past because ‘what if Norman Osborn had a symbiote?’ seems like one of those stupidly obvious ideas that can go horribly wrong, but long story short, Slott stuck the landing. He delivered a suitably epic confrontation with a satisfying conclusion in the 800th issue, his third centennial issue in a row in an accomplishment by a comic writer that might never be matched. Then he delivered a more personal farewell in Amazing 801 that had Marcos Martin return to deliver a heart felt goodbye.

Slott’s run on Spider-Man, whether you liked it or not, is undoubtedly going to go down as one of the most definitive in the characters history not only for its length but for its contributions to the Marvel Universe as a whole. It will be looked back on in the same way that people revere Clairemont On X-Men or Brubaker on Captain America or Stan/Jack on Fantastic Four. Some may not have enjoyed his run as much as I did, some couldn’t wait for him to go, but reading Slott for some readers he was the only writer on Amazing Spider-Man they had ever known due his length of time on the book is something that really struck home for me. I’ve been a Spider-Man fan for decades, I’ve seen writers come and go but in todays comic world, like it or not, Slott stuck around and maybe reminded us what it was maybe okay to have your favorite super hero be a lovable goofball who could love, laugh and lose, but still somehow no matter what costume he wore or what job he held never stopped being Amazing.

Who then dared step into Dan Slott’s shoes? An unenviable task for sure, but Marvel wasn’t short on options. There are more comics on the stands and available through other means than ever. Like in most other mediums, we’re drowning in choice and the talent has to be sharper than ever to even get a hope of catching the readers eye. Now more than ever, Marvel had a lot of talent to choose from. They could go with someone like Jason Aaron who is now their biggest writer and has delivered brilliant runs on near everything he’s touched or maybe someone like Peter David or Gail Simone who are both well liked and well respected and could do the best work of their already illustrious career here? Maybe a rising star like Jody Houser or Saladin Ahmed who could bring a fresh voice to the title. Maybe even an indie creator they could take a chance on or someone outside the industry who can’t resist the opportunity to write one of the most iconic comic titles and one of the most iconic characters? The options are unlimited and now more than ever, following such an iconic run the choice must be made carefully. Indeed you might say that Marvel has this…great power…and with it…great responsibility.

Or they could get the guy that turned Captain America into a Nazi and we can all hope for the best.

Find the last Post-Mortem HERE.