Ryan Stegman had already earned himself a lot of fans providing artwork for the popular Scarlet Spider series featuring Kaine Parker, but really hit the big time when writer Dan Slott enlisted him as part of Superior Spider-Man's creative team. That saw Doctor Octopus take control of Peter Parker's body, becoming the new Spider-Man in the process; needless to say, it was controversial!
Despite that, Doc Ock's time as Spidey is now looked back fondly by man fans, and it's a storyline that is still having consequences on what happens in the pages of Amazing Spider-Man.
Talking to us about a piece of bespoke artwork he created for My Hero Academia: World Heroes' Mission, Stegman reflected on the impact Superior Spider-Man had on his career, opening up about the response from fans and whether he hopes to return to the wall-crawler's world one day.
The acclaimed artist recently wrapped up a best-selling run on Venom with writer Donny Cates, and you can find more on that here. Check back tomorrow for news on their creator-owned series Vanish, or if you can't wait, watch our full interview with Stegman in the player below:
You’ve mentioned Spider-Man and you were, of course, part of that Superior Spider-Man run. It was interesting because it was critically acclaimed and there were a lot of people who loved it, but then you had the opposite because it was such a divisive premise. Looking back, how did it feel to be involved with telling that story because it’s one that still affects storylines to this day? That shows the majority did enjoy it.
That’s one where it was so awesome to have done it. I still, when I go to a show, can’t believe I’m signing copies of it. I feel like at this point I must have signed every single one that’s ever existed! That was one of my favourite storylines. It has to be up there with Venom because it was so well-written by Dan Slott and it was kind of my breakthrough project. I had done Scarlet Spider and people kind of knew who I was, but this was on a whole new level.
It was really fun to watch when it was announced because the hatred and vitriol from the fans was insane. Most of it was directed at Dan and not me; I kind of sat on the sidelines. It was so funny to then go to conventions and see all these people on Twitter where they would say, ‘I really thought I was going to hate this, but I read it, and I loved it.’ The only other response was, ‘I hate this and refuse to read it.’ The people who read it all ended up loving it and the people who didn’t missed out. I think it’s cool to have that seminal moment of Dan’s Spider-Man run which was a legendary run.
Spider-Man is such an iconic character, but looking ahead, are you hoping to return to him and characters you’ve worked on before or are you keen to keep doing something new as you have with this project?
I absolutely love doing creator-owned. There’s nothing like it. My two goals when I started doing comic books were obviously Spider-Man and then I wanted to do creator-owned. I want to own something I’ve made and is successful. In the event I do more Marvel stuff, I absolutely would love to do more Spider-Man. To me, there’s nothing else like that. He’s my favourite character of all time. When I was doing samples trying to break into comics, it was all Spider-Man. So, yes, I imagine at some time in the future I will do more Spider-Man and hopefully also be doing creator-owned. Just all of it.
My Hero Academia: World Heroes' Mission is out now in UK cinemas!