Lightning can strike twice — and so, apparently, can radioactive spiders. Marvel Comics is introducing a brand new character, a mysterious female super powered figure named Silk, in this Wednesday’s Amazing Spider-Man #1. And though she’s brand new, her origin is familiar to comic book fans. That’s because her spider-based powers come from the same irradiated arachnid as the one that changed the course of Peter Parker’s life.
“The spider lived long enough to bite one more person,” explains writer Dan Slott. “When I pitched that idea at one of our creative summits, everyone went, ‘Oohhhh.'”
To help make the retcon, Slott wrote an origin that uses dialogue verbatim from the legendary science demonstration scene first chronicled by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko in 1962’s “Amazing Fantasy” #15. If she’s been around since that fateful General Techtronics Laboratories East atomic demonstration, where has she been through 50 years of comic continuity?
“Where has she been all these years? That sounds like an incredibly big secret, he said twirling his mustache,” answers Slot.
Getting more information out of Slott would require a S.H.I.E.L.D. clearance of at least seven. Silk’s real origin spins (ahem) out of the publisher wide event “Original Sin,” in which many deep, dark secrets haunting all of Marvel’s major heroes. Slott adds that the new character will weave her way into his upcoming “Spider-Verse” event, which brings together all the different versions of Spider-Man that have appeared in Marvel over the past 52 years.
As if Slott’s “Amazing Spider-Man” #1 needed any more buzz. The issue — which features the return of Peter Parker to his own title two years after being left to die by a terminally ill Doctor Octopus who swapped his consciousness into Spider-Man’s body — is the single most ordered comic in the last decade.
“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.” Story By Ethan Sacks
“Why was this kept from Peter?” asks writer Dan Slott, in an interview with Marvel.com. “A good question to ask is ‘Who is keeping this from Peter?’ What parties would know about the existence of this person? Why haven’t we seen her all this time since the events of Amazing Fantasy #15?” “If you’re going to do a big story like Original Sin, where everybody’s got such a big secret,” Slott continued. “You go big or you go home.”
All will be revealed when Silk’s story is fully revealed as the Amazing Spider-Man crashes headlong into Original Sin! And seeds sown here blossom into cataclysmic results for the webslinger in the highly anticipated Spider-Verse later this year! With Peter Parker’s life about to be turned upside down, no fan can afford to miss the first appearance of Silk this July in AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #4!