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It’s been a weird few years in the comics for Spider-Man. His recent adventures have included mystic fights against forgotten gods, dying multiple times, a long space odyssey, a new alien love interest, and having to deal with his ex-girlfriend teaming up with his ex-costume.
Now, in the latest issue of his solo book, Peter Parker has met his long-lost cousin, and Marvel promises that his life will never be the same. (Again.)
If you’ve lost track of what the comics’ Spidey has been up to lately, here’s what you need to know ahead of what could be a pivotal moment in the character’s 64-year history.
In Amazing Spider-Man vol. 7 #31, written by Joe Kelly and drawn by Patrick Gleason, a man named Cormac Crane showed up at May Parker’s front door claiming he was her long-lost son. That was a surprise to readers, but also to May. The start of Cormac’s story goes back a few issues. During the crossover story Death Spiral, which ran through both Spidey and Venom’s solo books earlier this year, they were up against a new villain. Torment was a serial killer with the superhuman ability to detect people’s genetic connections, who liked to work his way towards a particular target by eliminating their families. Both Peter and Eddie Brock ended up on Torment’s hit list.
(Torment wasn’t all bad, as he found time during his rampage to stab the infamous Paul Rabin to death, but that’s not relevant to this particular story.)
In one chapter of Death Spiral, Torment targeted a seemingly random person in New York. Spider-Man was able to save him, but not before Torment identified him out loud as Spider-Man’s first cousin. That man was Cormac Crane.
Source: AIPT preview pages
After his rescue, Cormac scheduled a genetic screening, which led him to May Parker. In issue #31, he introduced himself, which led May to tell her side of the story.
About 15 years before Ben and May Parker took Peter in, they tried to have children of their own, but May’s poor health made that difficult. She eventually gave birth to a son, who was immediately taken to the hospital’s neonatal unit. May never saw him again.
According to Cormac, who’s a dead ringer for Ben Parker, his genetic screening led him to discover that he’d been switched at birth. May and Ben were told that Cormac (who they’d named Richard Benjamin) had died from respiratory distress. Instead, he grew up with someone else’s family.
That’s where the story has left off for now. Cormac appears to be Peter Parker’s biological first cousin, which adds a new face to the Spider-Man supporting cast, and he has a lot to talk about with Aunt May. Given the timing of Torment’s revelation, Cormac also probably has a solid hunch about Spider-Man’s secret identity, which puts him in an exclusive club of, uh, several hundred people. In every universe, Peter Parker’s never been good at keeping his mask on.
Ordinarily, this would seem to be just one more soap-opera twist for Spider-Man in a comic full of them. What’s gotten fans curious is that Marvel has released its solicitations for September 2026 on June 19, which includes information about the forthcoming issue #1000 of Amazing Spider-Man.
(That does seem like a high number, but ASM has frequently shifted from monthly to biweekly and back again over the years. There was even a while in 2008 when it came out three times a month, in a story arc that lent its name to the latest MCU Spider-Man film. In addition, while ASM has been relaunched several times, it’s never left publication. That gives ASM a numerical edge on other long-running Marvel comics likeThor and Fantastic Four.)
In the September solicits, Marvel notes that Spider-Man “faces his greatest fear and his most frightening new villain in decades… Ravage!”
That’s led fans to speculate that Cormac’s appearance might be a step along the road to issue #1000. Maybe he is this mysterious Ravage, or maybe not, but either way, it’s a safe bet that even more changes are coming in the Spider-Man comics.