Wednesday’s Amazing Spider-Man #65, from writer Joe Kelly and artist Carlos Alberto Fernández Urbano, is “one of the most emotional comics I’ve ever worked on,” editor Nick Lowe teased in December. The poignant issue, which is part 5 of the 10-part 8 Deaths of Spider-Man saga, sees Peter Parker suffer a fate worse than death: being powerless but to watch everyone he loves die.
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Kelly’s run began with Doctor Doom, the new Sorcerer Supreme, choosing Spider-Man to be Earth’s champion against the Eight Scions of Cyttorak — the children of the dark god of destruction who empowers the unstoppable Juggernaut. To aid him in his fateful task, Doom equipped Spider-Man with an arcane armor to protect him and give him access to the mystic arts, and eight of the life-restoring Reeds of Raggadorr.
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Spider-Man spent the first of his eight extra lives when he was pulled apart on an atomic level by Cyntros (cause of death: spaghettification). The second was spent against the Scion Cyperion (cause of death: instantaneous dissolution of atoms through an infinitely recursive fold of space). The third was spent against the time-jumping Cyrios (cause of death: consciousness simultaneously split across past, present, and future).
When he was challenged by Callix and his sister Cyra, Spider-Man defeated Callix without suffering another excruciating death in the process. But then Cyra presented Spider-Man a different challenge: to win, he must hold Cyra’s crimson sphere until he can no longer bear it. The orb shows only “truth,” she says, and with it, another type of pain: “The inevitability of death.”
Over the next eight pages, Cyra’s sphere shows Spider-Man the deaths of everyone he’s ever loved. His once cancer-stricken Aunt May is hospitalized by the Essex Virus that kills over three million people in a month. The 79-year-old chooses to offer her bed to someone with a greater likelihood of survival, and so May Parker dies “wishing that she could have kissed her Peter, her son, one last time,” Cyra taunts.
Peter’s ex, Mary Jane Watson, dies in Spider-Man’s arms after she’s fatally wounded during a battle between the Hobgoblin and her superhero alter-ego Jackpot. J. Jonah Jameson, Peter’s former boss (and former family member by marriage), suffers a brain embolism at his desk. His girlfriend, Shay Marken, is struck and killed by a drunk driver. Randy Robertson, Peter’s activist friend and former roommate, is trampled to death at a rally addressing the housing crisis.
Felicia Hardy, Spider-Man’s former lover and partner, falls to her death while prowling the city as the Black Cat. Betty Brant, another friend and former coworker, dies in her bed surrounded by loved ones. The reformed Norman Osborn dies in a science experiment and is forgotten by history. Young Bailey Briggs (Spider-Boy), Gwen Stacy (Ghost-Spider), and Miles Morales (Spider-Man) die in the Cataclysm.
Spider-Man knows these deaths aren’t inevitable. These are potential fates in a future that has yet to be written. And yet Peter bears witness to these deaths, feeling them, all of his loved ones shepherded from life by Phil Coulson, the embodiment of Death. “Everything that lives, dies,” Coulson tells the anguished Spider-Man as he dutifully escorts countless lives into the arms of Death. And Spider-Man is powerless to save any of them.
“It’s not the pain of dying. You have felt it before,” Cyra tells Spider-Man. “You’ve died yourself. It’s not the fear, though that can be terrible at times… but you understand fear. It’s not the loss itself, great as it may be… sorrowful as it is… uncelebrated, unnoticed, or even heralded. What you understand now with crystal clarity each time you see a fellow human die… is the utter lack of impact they had on the world. With a long enough view to the horizon of the cosmos, no single life matters.”
Cyra continues, “A foundational element of your worldview is crumbling more with every death to which you bear witness. Everyone dies. Everyone is forgotten. Every legacy ends. Every great work is lost. You came from nothing… you return to nothing. Life is nothing. This is why you fight… in defense of ephemeral whispers who were dead the instant they were born… trapped in meaningless lives with inevitable ends whose echoes fade and leave only… silence.”
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Spider-Man, feeling the weight of each vanishing life, collapses in Coulson’s arms. As Callix takes the opportunity to beat the champion to death, Spider-Man never lets go of the sphere. He endures. Coulson tells Spider-Man that he held on through Cyra’s trial, and now only three Scions remain — all of them worse than the five he’s faced so far.
Back at his apartment, Peter is reminded by Doctor Strange’s astral form what’s at stake should the covenant be broken: the world falls. And though Spider-Man lives, Cyra’s trial killed — extinguished — something within Peter Parker, who regretfully declares: “I quit.”
The Amazing Spider-Man #65 is on sale now from Marvel Comics.
