10 Essential Storylines To Read If You're Just Getting Into Spider-Man

7. Spider-Man: Blue

Spider-Man Blue
Marvel Comics

Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale are about as iconic a creative duo as you could possibly get, with their Marvel: Colours series garnering praise for its reappraisals of characters like Daredevil, Captain America, Hulk, and of course Spider-Man.

Spider-Man: Blue is about as emotional a Spidey story as you can get, with Loeb electing to tell the story of how Peter dealt with Gwen's death even after he married Mary Jane. It's a refreshingly honest book, and while it's steeped in tragedy, it's a romance through and through - one that takes a look at one of the medium's most tragic deaths without the blare and bombast the genre is commonly seen to boast.

The text is yet to lose its salience, and honestly, it should've been on everyone's minds after Marc Webb's ill-fated Amazing Spider-Man films. If you're a fan of what lies beneath the wall-crawler, and of seeing Peter at his most personal when it comes to Gwen, then Spider-Man: Blue is a simply unmissable comic book.

And, as far as comics do go, they don't get more accessible than Blue either. As long as you know who Pete, MJ and Gwen are, you're pretty much set. Get on it as and when you can.

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Content Producer/Presenter

WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.