Spider-Man Newspaper Strip 30 July 2023 - 21 October 2023

Background

It looks like Newspaper Spidey is stuck in a permanent time loop. And not a very big one, at that.

Story 'Marvella 2 (Part 1) (Reprint) (Again)'

Do you remember back on March 23, 2019 when the original strip ended with Peter and Mary Jane on a plane to Australia (Spider-Man Newspaper Strip: 12 November 2018 - 23 March 2019 and, wondering what was coming next, you found, on the 24th, that the reprint selected was from just four and a half years before? (Marvella 2 (Part 1), Spider-Man Newspaper Strip: 17 November 2014 - 14 March 2015)

Oh well. Maybe they needed a little time to set up a new creative team or change the concept of the strip. Except when that story ended, they went on to the next one (Spider-Man Newspaper Strip: 15 March 2015 - 23 August 2015) and have done so for the last four and a half years.

But now, we have come full circle once again and the reprint of the last original strip took place yesterday, on July 29, 2023. There were Peter and Mary Jane in the plane to Australia again. There were Roy Thomas and Alex Saviuk on the plane with them. And I wondered, “What are they going to do this time? Are we finally going to get a new strip? Perhaps, as Roy put it back in 2019, “Marvel was planning to either revive the strip with a new team or to start a new strip that might not be a Spidey strip per se, but more the equivalent of DC’s latter-day successor to its Superman strip, The World’s Greatest Heroes, which had featured the whole panoply of DC heroes.” Perhaps, we’ll get some older reprints, preferably stories that have not been reprinted in any of the hardcover collections. Perhaps, the series will end altogether. After I read Saturday’s finale, I was looking forward to Sunday’s strip to see just what they’d do.

And what did they do? Began reprinting the same Marvella 2 (Part 1) story that they used to begin the reprints before. Which makes me uncomfortably certain that we will get the same 9 stories for the next four and a half years, only to begin all over again. And again. And again. And again.

General Comments

Which means, if you've been hanging in there with the newspaper strip, as I have, it may be time to jump off.

Overall Rating

Only because I can't give it 0 webs.

Footnote

So long, Newspaper Spidey! Enjoy facing Mysterio, the Hobgoblin, the Sub-Mariner, Xandu, Egghead, Ronan, the Mole Man, Tyrannus, the Lizard, the Golden Claw, the Kingpin, and Killgrave over (and over) again.