He’s back – and he’s bringing the mob with him!

Gerry Conway will be writing a five-part storyline that takes Spider-Man into the frothy depths of a deadly gang war and pits him against most every grubby crime boss in “Spiral“. The legendary writer is returning to write alongside Amazing Spider-Man via point-one issues ala “Learning To Crawl”; in example: 16.1, 17.1, and ext. So far there has been no indication that this story will take place in the past (like “Learning to Crawl) – as Conway has referenced the effects of “Spider-Verse” and the dethroning of the Kingpin as the catalyst for the turf war that “Spiral” will see play out.

In an exclusive interview with Newsarama, Conway recounts the events freshly impacting the webslinger:

“Spider-Man’s story in this reflects that he’s someone who has recently been through a lot of crap. He’s been sort of a passenger on the voyage Doctor Octopus took from being a bad guy to being a good guy, and he’s also, at this point, been through the “Spider-Verse” event and seen many of the different paths that becoming a hero can take you on. Peter’s aware that being a hero is more complicated than he thought; he thought catching crooks and leaving them hanging from a streetpost with webfluid to be handled by the justice system was all he had to think about. Now, because of what Yuri Watanabe is going through, he’s asking himself – is that sufficient? If justice lets the bad guys go, how should Peter deal with that? How should Spider-Man deal with that?”

Wait, Yuri Watanabe? The Police Captain… AKA Wraith?!

You heard in your head as you read right – the dear Captain introduced by Dan Slott way back in Amazing Spider-man #600 plays a big part in “Spiral”, along with Gerry Conway’s own creations from way way way back: Tombstone and Hammerhead – with other crimelord wannabes including Mr. Negative and Black Cat.

Conway explains:

“It’s a story about two people. A Spider-Man who’s returning from his huge “Spider-Verse” event and entering into a crime war, and the story of one of his supporting cast. What I pitched Nick [Lowe, editor of Spider-Man] was to take a character in Spider-Man’s orbit who is heroic and put them on a  dark journey; to take them down a path that at every turn readers can empathize with but it keeps taking them to a darker and darker place. And to see what it does to Spidey. The character we picked is police captain Yuri Watanabe, the current Wraith… she’s both a stickler for the law but also a vigilante; this story will tip her over a little bit”.

Conway joins artist Carlo Barberi (Amazing X-Men, Deadpool, Scarlet Spider) to serve a story that hopes to show off Spider-Man in his nitty-gritty, street-level element, engorged with petty crime and mob boss opportunists still salivating for all the real estate that Kingpin and Goblin King left behind, “It’s a lot of fun. Here in this new story we have a gang war rippling across Manhattan, but our focus is on Watanabe’s precinct as a microcosm of the larger war,” Gerry was excited to write a friendly neighborhood Spidey, “Speaking of this kind of thing, I think Spider-Man works well in a street level milieu. Spidey is great in stories where he faces off against powerful super beings, but he’s also terrific fighting street crime, so doing a gang story lets us operate on that level. It’s a fun venue.”

After taking some time away from Marvel with new projects (including writing for TV shows like Law and Order), Gerry Conway made his way back to writing Spider-Man – a role that garnered a lot of whiplash for his infamous storyline killing Gwen Stacy: whom received a lot of whiplash for losing a fight with velocity. Despite this, Conway was eager to get back to the world of Peter Parker, “Even though I haven’t worked in the field for a number of years, my heart is deeply attached to the field and to Marvel. I’ve always considered myself a comic book writer who’s doing other work. In some sense, I’ve never quite left the field emotionally…”.

“Spiral” is coming to Amazing Spider-Man in March in issue #16.1 and will run through #20.1 – until then, catch up with the great and renowned man himself in our podcast, where we discuss that fateful Gwen Stacy story and the movie adaption via “The Amazing Spider-Man 2.”