Amazing Spider-Man #4-5 to debut second spider-bite victim Silk
By Daniel Wood
Silk
Earlier this week I posted the story that Marvel Comics were planning a pretty shocking retcon by introducing a second spider-bite victim as well as Peter Parker. That’s right, the radioactive spider that turned Peter Parker into Spider-Man also bit a female just before it died.
So, meet Silk! A new mysterious superpowered female with presumably the same powers as Spider-Man, her morals remain ambiguous so we don’t know if she’s a good guy or a bad guy. In fact we don’t know much at all about this ground-breaking character addition.
“The spider lived long enough to bite one more person,” explains writer Dan Slott to nydailynews.com. “When I pitched that idea at one of our creative summits, everyone went, ‘Oohhhh.'” To be honest when I first heard about it I went ‘Oohhhh’ too until I started thinking ‘how are they going to actually do this?’
Silk
If she’s been around since the very beginning and got her powers at the same time as Peter Parker where has she been all these years? Where was she during the clone saga, during Spider-Island, during Doctor Octopus’ reign as Spider-Man? That’s over 50 years of Spider-Man storyline that she’s been absent from? How will that be explained?
“Where has she been all these years? That sounds like an incredibly big secret, he said twirling his mustache,” answers Slot. Typically ambiguous as always, however I’d be happy if her introduction has nothing to do with people’s minds swapping bodies, I think we’ve had enough of that thankyou!
To help make this retcon believable Dan Slott wrote an origin that uses dialogue word for word from the original Peter Parker spider-bite scene that started Spider-Man in 1962’s Amazing Fantasy #15, helmed by none other than Stan Lee and Steve Ditko themselves!
Silks introduction is actually part of the Original Sin storyline that Marvel are rolling out across the board with the motto ‘everyone has one’ as the story-arc looks set to reveal several deep dark secrets that have been haunting our superheros. It looks like Silk has something to do with Spider-Man’s ‘original sin’.
"“One thing we’re exploring with Original Sin is the revelation that many heroes of the Marvel Universe are either keeping a terrible secret or that a terrible secret is being kept from them,” Slott said. “That is the case with Peter Parker. There is a secret that’s been kept from him, and the secret is that the spider that bit him lived just long enough to bite one other person”"
Silk
Slott has also revealed that the new spider-based character will also be appearing in the much shouted about Spider-Verse that will see ‘every single one’. ‘Every single one’ of course being every iteration and version of Spider-Man we’ve ever seen all appearing in the same storyline to take on the Spider-villain Morlun.
Of course with Silk being a spider-based character it only makes sense that she’ll be appearing in the Spider-Verse, although if the picture to the right is anything to go by this won’t necessarily be a good thing for our friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man.
“I wanted to do something that had a major ramification to Spider-Man’s world,” says Slott. “Something that really struck all the way to its core. But at the same time could leave everything you knew intact. This adds to Spider-Man’s world and it doesn’t take anything out of foundation and crumble it.”
So there you go guys, a new character called Silk! What do you think? Personally I’m rocking the design, I like the idea that her costume seems to be made exclusively out of webbing and it’s a bit unordered and untidy. I also like the way her webbing also asks as a mask covering the majority of her face.
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