7. Superior Spider-Man #19 By Dan Slott And Ryan Stegman (Marvel)
I absolutely adore Superior Spider-Man and am definitely not one of those people who belly-ache about the death of Peter Parker and how Otto isn't really Spider-man and blah blah blah. This comic rules and is easily one of Spider-man's most interesting storylines in years. So why so low on the list? Well, in a word: Spider-man 2099. This story arc (which concludes with this issue) has been the least interesting in the series so far for me, featuring Peter David's fan favourite character, the Spider-man of the future. Spidey 2099 has travelled back in time for the usual time-travel reasons, except right now in Horizon Labs the timestream is breaking down and looks to take the whole of New York with it. And Superior Spider-man has just knocked out the guy who's the key to it all! Meanwhile Wraith and Carlie have followed the money funding Spider-man back to its source and discovered none other than Otto Octavius' name behind it all - is this the beginning of the end for Otto? And stirring amidst the shadows of Otto's mind - is that... Peter? Stegman's art is fantastic as ever, Slott's dialogue is snappy and his plot moves quickly, cramming in all kinds of great moments into the comic. There's an ambiguous shadow tease of what looks like Peter emerging from the recesses of Otto's mind, and the sequence where Otto tries to remember Peter's past in order to get the code to stop the explosion is particularly brilliant with Stegman drawing classic Spider-man moments with Otto's head! Time-travel stories in general tend to bore me and this one is the same way - it's still an interesting-ish story but I'm glad it's over and done with. It also looks like a Spider-man 2099 series is on its way too, so fans of the character will have plenty to look forward to at issue's end. Superior Spider-Man #19 has some fine writing and art, but the various story threads Slott's set up are much more intriguing to read about than the Spider-man 2099 one we've had these last 3 issues, so it's great that we're going back to that in the next comic. Superior Spider-Man is still one of the best titles Marvel's putting out and is well worth a look even if you're not much of a webhead.