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that Marvel released two weeks ago has already been paid off. This morning, Marvel gave Fox News the scoop that Alpha will be the name of a new character introduced in the pages of Spider-Man: A sidekick for the webhead whose story “will pay homage” to Spider-Man’s own, so that just in time for the character’s fiftieth anniversary, he’ll get to play Uncle Ben to a young hero.”Part of it is that Spider-Man is grown up,” Axel Alonso, editor-in-chief of Marvel Entertainment, told Fox Nation. “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.”While the trend for the last several years has been away from giving characters sidekicks, the Batman and Robin/Captain America and Bucky dynamic remains one of the defining ones in superhero storytelling, and the introduction of Alpha might be a way to try and grab hold of some of the younger readers who publishers always hope will wander into a comic book store after a movie hits (The Amazing Spider-Man is in theaters on July 3). Either way, series writer Dan Slott is identifying Alpha not as a tragic character (like Robin, for instance, or like you might expect from a character whose origin mirrors Spider-Man’s), but a source of fun for the readers.
