Before the release of
Spider-Man #1, it very much sounded like it was going to be a typical story featuring the wall-crawler taking on a new villain, despite the impressive creative team of J.J. Abrams and his son Henry (along with artist Sara Pichelli). Well, it turns out that there's a lot more to this tale than meets the eye!
In the prologue, Spidey comes up against a formidable new villain called Cadaverous and while we don't see how that battle started, Peter has clearly been through the wringer as his arm has pretty much been destroyed. Moments later, Mary Jane winds up being killed by the villain, and it's then we learn that these two have a young son: Ben.
Jump forward twelve years and it's revealed that this series is actually about the young Ben Parker as he discovers that he has spider powers! He lives with his dad's Aunt May because the one-armed Peter has turned out to be something of a deadbeat father who travels the globe as a journalist.
As the issue ends, May discovers that Ben has superpowers and tells him to go into the attic where he finds the tattered remains of his father's Spider-Man costume (he clearly gave up being the hero after what happened to MJ).
Now, it seems like this tale will actually be about the future Marvel Universe getting a brand new Spider-Man...