Like, of course the most tragic death in the history of Spider-Man is going to be the time Peter Parker himself met his maker. Before you all start freaking out about spoilers or whatever, we've not got any insider info or owt. This was the Ultimate Spider-Man, from the alternate universe/publishing line which hoped to sucker in new readers by jettisoning the decades of community the regular Marvel comic books had, whilst also updating everything and hopefully managing to do something new and interesting with these established characters. Which Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley certainly did with Ultimate Spider-Man, producing what may just be the definitive version of the wallcrawler. Bendis went out of his way to provide an accurate depiction of a modern teenager's life, albeit one that involves being a masked superhero with the abilities and proportionate strength of an arachnid. The new versions of classic storylines and supervillains were all super good and exciting, but the strongest part of the series was probably the characterisation. Bendis and Bagley (the artist later replaced by Stuart Immonen) took that awesome supporting cast and ran with it, fleshing out all of the characters to the point that the best storylines came not from outside threats but from the internal drama of these people dealing with a crazy, crazy world. After over a hundred issues with the same creative team, Ultimate Spider-Man gave us the most consistent version of Peter Parker, his friends and family of all time, and golly if we didn't just totally fall for all of them. So when we turned the page and saw that the next issue of Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man would feature "THE DEATH OF PETER PARKER", we swore out loud. Because Bendis is a total sadist who likes to torture us, and because we were genuinely upset at the idea of Spidey dying. Of course it all worked out, with the half-Latino, half-black Miles Morales taking the title, but the actual scene of Peter Parker dying? Total weepie. Having helped save New York and, specifically, his Aunt May, he dies with a smile on a face. Because he didn't manage to stop Uncle Ben dying, but he managed to save May. All of the feels. Dag nabbit.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
