You don’t often find comic book writers sticking around on certain titles for too long. Whether it be dismal sales, a change in editorial or a whole host of other reasons, writers tend to stick around for a dozen issues or so before they move on to other projects. There are a few exceptions to the rule of course. Robert Kirkman’s run on The Walking Dead an Invincible, Peter David’s legendary Incredible Hulk saga and Erik Larsen’s work on Savage Dragon spring to mind.
And then there’s Dan Slott, the writer of the Amazing Spider-Man for close to ten years now. One of Marvel’s flagship series, Amazing Spider-Man has often been weird, crazy and spectacular under Slott’s control of the story. Controversial at times, Slott’s tenure holds one distinction that many a writer would kill for: It’s never been boring.
After 189 issues of webhead wonders however, Slott is hanging up the web-shooters as he starts a new gig with Marvel’s most important character: Iron Man. “This was a long time coming. I had all these benchmarks I really wanted to hit. I was talking to [former Spider-Man writer] Gerry Conway about how long I had been on the book at one point, and he was talking about the speed with which the book was coming out,” Slott said to Vulture.
This is the best job I’ve ever had
This is the best job I’ve ever had, doing something I very much love. And there’s that point where you just have to be grateful for everyone that you’ve gotten to work with and everyone who’s decided not to pull you off a book. Whether it’s [former editors-in-chief] Joe Quesada or Axel Alonso, or just … yeah. That was a weird thing, to go to Axel and say, “Yeah, this is when I’m leaving, I think,” because he was very nice.
And when [new editor-in-chief] C.B. [Cebulski] was brought on, the day everyone found out the news, I got a call from him within five minutes of seeing it. Like, “What?” And he was like, “So, you know, I’ve talked with everyone. I heard you’re now going to be on this. I think that will be a great book for you.” And I was like, “Okay, cool.” So, yeah, I was kinda scared because it was like, “Oh, I’m leaving Spider-Man and we have the next book lined up, but now here’s a new EIC.”
And he was okay with me going to that book.
The Amazing Spider-Man #801 will be Slott’s final issue, before he moves on to new horizons with Iron Man. “I grew up in a world where you could ask a layman on the street, you could ask the guy in the deli carving the meat, you could ask anybody, ‘Who’s Clark Kent?’ and they could go, ‘Superman.’ ‘Who’s Bruce Wayne?’ ‘Batman.’ ‘Who’s Peter Parker?’ ‘Spider-Man.’ And that was about it,” Slott explained of his new gig.
And now, we live in a world where people know Tony Stark is Iron Man. Everyone in the world knows who this character is, and everyone in the world knows who Tony Stark is. This is Tony Stark, Iron Man. This gonna be about technology in the Marvel universe in a very specific way and it’s gonna lead to very big things. There will be a very unique cast in this book of characters. Iron Man characters you love and Marvel characters that you haven’t seen folded into the Iron Man cast.
The facet of Iron Man that Slott is most excited to tackle? That Tony Stark is a self-made superhero:
he stands amongst the gods
At the end of the day, there’s Captain America with super-soldier serum, and there’s a god of thunder, there’s all these characters around him with these amazing abilities,” Slott said. “But his abilities came from his own two hands. He made it, and he stands amongst the gods because of what he can imagine and what he can make. That’s exciting.
After ten years of Spider-Man stories that have taken the wall-crawler in many daring new directions, I’ll say this about Slott’s tenure. It has been amazing. I can’t wait to see that energy applied to Iron Man later this year.
Last Updated: January 22, 2018
