It's time to meet Alpha. The 15 year-old teenager who will get Spider powers in a fashion which will pay homage to the 1962 origin of Spider-Man. Alpha will become Spider-Man's sidekick to celebrate his 50th anniversary in the pages of The Amazing Spider-Man #692.
Writer Dan Slott and artist Humberto Ramos will introduce Andy MacGuire, who will be venturing on a school field trip with his class to Peter's lab at Horizon. Andy will be seeing an experiment Peter Parker will be holding which goes horribly wrong and turns Andy into something he definitely wasn't bargaining for. When Peter is reminded of his own origin as a superhero, he knows that the right thing to do is to help Andy use his newfound powers for good (unlike Peter, whose initial actions resulted in his Uncle's death). Peter will offer Andy the chance to become his new sidekick, naming himself "Alpha".
The cover to The Amazing Spider-Man #692
Axel Alonso, Editor-In-Chief at Marvel Entertainment had this to say about Peter finally gaining a sidekick:
"Part of it is that Spider-Man is grown up, He's older, more seasoned, but young at heart. He's still a young man, but he's been around. It's interesting because it flips the paradigm. Teen hero Spider-Man is now responsible for this teen hero sidekick. He's responsible because one of his inventions caused this kid to get his powers. He's directly responsible for the responsibility this kid now has with his new powers. He feels he has a responsibility to make sure this kid walks the right path, which won't prove easy."
True Believers shouldn't worry as this story will not be a retelling of
Amazing Fantasy No. 15! Peter Parker had been a nerd and bully magnet during his high school years and lacked confidence. All of that made his becoming a superhero more easy to relate to, but Alpha will have more of an edge to him than most teenagers. He'll be more difficult to train and probably more arrogant than Peter ever was but it will help add uniqueness to a Spider-Origin story that we have yet to see. Will he be like Ben Reilly? Probably not, but it'll be nice to check out the full Alpha story before judging.
Alpha looking on at his first comic book cover, The Amazing Spider-Man #693
Amazing Spider-Man writer Dan Slott had this to say about comparing the new couple to Batman and Robin:
"If you put Spider-Man and Batman in the same situation, you're going to have way more fun with Spider-Man, With Batman, he never really screws up the way Spider-Man does; he always seems to make the right decision. But with Spider-Man, he always screws up. He's us as a superhero. Batman is a paragon of what we'd like to be, but in reality, we're more like Spider-Man. He makes all the mistakes we make."
It's not a surprise that after countless alternate costumes, movies, cartoons, video games and 50 years of history, Dan Slott and Marvel still find a way to shake up Spider-Man's life more than ever. An addition of a new sidekick that parallels Peter's life is definitely going to be interesting. How will comic fans react? You can sound off your full thoughts in the comments below.