Superior Spider-Man #5

History

The third volume of Superior Spider-Man launched in November 2023 to coincide with the ten-year anniversary of the original body-swap saga, with Dan Slott returning as writer alongside frequent collaborator Christos Gage, who shares the writing credit on issue #5. The creative team reunited Slott with artist Mark Bagley — who had been working alongside him on the preceding Spider-Man series — with John Dell on inks and Edgar Delgado on colors, under editor Ellie Pyle. The series had been announced at the 2023 San Diego Comic-Con and was preceded by a one-shot, Superior Spider-Man Returns, which established the Supernova threat that issue #5 resolves.

Trivia · 8 facts

• Released March 27, 2024 (cover-dated May 2024); story titled 'The Hell Turn'; part of Superior Spider-Man Vol. 3 (2023–2024), which ran for eight issues.
• Written by Dan Slott and Christos Gage; pencils by Mark Bagley; inks by John Dell; colors by Edgar Delgado; letters by VC's Joe Caramagna; edited by Ellie Pyle.
• Supernova (Estrella Lopez) — a former lab assistant of Otto Octavius who was transformed into a living stellar-energy being after merging with a miniature sun she herself helped stabilize — appears here as the primary antagonist; her first appearance was in Superior Spider-Man Returns (2023) #1.
• Spider-Boy (Bailey Briggs) is possessed by the hive-mind entity Spiders-Man (Earth-11580) in this issue, a plot escalation that leads directly into Bailey's 'Superior Spider-Boy' transformation in issue #6; Spiders-Man's own first appearance was in Spider-Geddon #3 (2019).
• The central dramatic conflict turns on Spider-Man (Peter Parker) wanting to cure Supernova while Doctor Octopus wants to exploit her as an unlimited energy source — a direct expression of the series' core theme of Otto's unresolved moral ambiguity.
• Issue #5 is the final single issue collected in the Superior Spider-Man Vol. 1: Supernova trade paperback (April 2024), which also collects Superior Spider-Man Returns #1, Superior Spider-Man (2023) #1–4, and material from Amazing Spider-Man (2022) #31.
• Spider-Boy (Bailey Briggs), who also appears here, was created by Dan Slott and Humberto Ramos and debuted in Spider-Man vol. 4 #7 (April 2023); his ongoing entanglement with the Superior Spider-Man cast was a deliberate connective thread across Slott's concurrent Marvel titles.
• The broader Vol. 3 series concluded with issue #8 (June 2024), and was launched to mark the tenth anniversary of the original 2013–2014 Superior Spider-Man run that had shocked readers by replacing Peter Parker with Otto Octavius.

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