Stan Lee, Marvel sound off on death of Peter Parker

Stan Lee, Marvel sound off on death of Peter Parker

Comic book fans are crawling up the walls in anguish after the shocking end to this week’s “Amazing Spider-Man #700” that left beloved alter ego Peter Parker squashed like a bug.

To add insult to mortal injury, Parker goes out losing to the nefarious Dr. Octopus - who trapped his arch-enemy’s mind in his own dying body - in the story by writer Dan Slott and artist Humberto Ramos. Doc Ock, aka Otto Octavius, survives in Parker’s body to take up the mantle of Spider-Man with no one else the wiser .

“We didn't make this move lightly,” Marvel Comics editor in chief Axel Alonso told the News. “No one loves Peter Parker more than Dan Slott, the man who killed him.”

Slott is just one of millions of fans across generations and continents to fall in love with the nerdy Queens boy whose run-in with a genetically altered spider grants him super powers but not the ability to overcome problems in his personal life.

Ever since Stan Lee and Steve Ditko (and possibly Jack Kirby) launched the awkward super hero in 1962’s “Amazing Fantasy # 15,” Parker even more than Spidey has been the publisher’s most popular creation.

In fact Alonso initially vetoed the idea of killing him off - just like he did another creator’s pitch to wipe out the entire Avengers lineup including Spider-Man in another storyline. But Slott’s pitch to continue the Dr. Octopus as a hero concept won him over. (His adventures in the blue and red costume will begin next month in "Superior Spider-Man" #1.)

“You're going to kill Peter Parker in an issue that hits stands a few days before Stan Lee's birthday, you better have a good plan,” says Alonso. “People fell in love with Peter Parker first and then Spider-Man second." 

No one was more “shocked and saddened” at first than Lee himself:

“That's one helluva birthday present for me, thought I,” Lee, who turns 90 on Friday, said by email. “But then, a little voice in my head whispered, "’never say never. Just go with it while you can because Marvel, the House of Ideas, will always have a surprise up its creative sleeve for you and the rest of Marveldom Assembled!”

When word of Parker’s impending doom leaked early on the Internet a few weeks ago, the reaction online ranged from intrigued to nasty to disturbing - including death threats.

“Peter Parker has the most emotional resonance with the readers of any character in the Marvel universe, so you're going to have some outrage,” says Jeff Ayers, manager at Forbidden Planet, a comic book store near Manhattan’s Union Square.

“I can say for our subscription base though that a lot of people are signing up to buy the revamp.”

Death never seems to last long in the pages of comic books. DC Comics revived Superman less than a year after his “death” and had the Flash eventually sprint back to the mortal coil two decades after his demise. Captain America was killed off in 2007 â€" only to turn out to be lost in time, courtesy of a high-tech ray gun blast.

Another version of Peter Parker - in Marvel's alternate "Ultimate" universe line - was killed off last year and replaced as Spider-Man by a half Latino, half African American teenager.

"It can feel like professional wrestling where there are these sort of melodramatic kabuki theater storylines," says Entertainment Weekly's Geoff Boucher of the trend towards killing off characters in comics. "It starts to feel a little gimmicky to the point where you roll your eyes when it happens.

"At some point do you begin to cannibalize your own credibility? But to me...if you look at who's buying Marvel and DC, it's long term fans and those readers are going to complain about this and debate about it -- but are going to buy two copies."  

And with a sequel to this year’s “The Amazing Spider-Man,” starring Andrew Garfield, scheduled to hit the big screen in 2014, Parker is unlikely to stay dead for long.In the meantime, Slott, Alonso and Otto himself have a lot of hearts and minds to win over.

“I have no doubts that the same fans that are screaming bloody murder now will be on the edge of their seats in a few months,” says Alonso.