Published May 28, 2026, 11:55 PM EDT
CBR senior staff writer Brian Cronin has been writing professionally about comic books for twenty years now at CBR (primarily with his “Comics Should Be Good” series of columns, including Comic Book Legends Revealed). He has written two books about comics for Penguin-Random House – Was Superman a Spy? And Other Comic Book Legends Revealed and Why Does Batman Carry Shark Repellent? And Other Amazing Comic Book Trivia! and one book, 100 Things X-Men Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die, from Triumph Books. His writing has been featured at ESPN.com, the Los Angeles Times, About.com, the Huffington Post, Vulture and Gizmodo. He features legends about entertainment and sports at his website, Legends Revealed and other pop culture features at Pop Culture References. Follow him on Twitter at @Brian_Cronin and feel free to e-mail him suggestions for stories about comic books that you'd like to see featured at brianc@cbr.com!
Last year, Amazing Spider-Man went through a dramatic story shift when Peter Parker was suddenly trapped in outer space following a battle with a mysterious new villain. With Peter gone from Earth, Norman Obsorn filled in as Spider-Man, but Peter's clone, Ben Reilly, took over as Peter Parker, and used the time to try to prove that he was a superior Peter Parker than the "real" Peter Parker, including excelling at Peter's job at Rand Industries, a job that Peter got through an old middle school friend, Brian Nehring.
Ben (as Peter) routinely belittled Brian, and when he and Brian were close to completing a major research breakthrough involving fungi, Ben realized that if he went through with this, he wouldn't get credit for it himself, he'd just be helping Peter's image, so Ben instead sabotaged it with some code mocking Peter. Well, the code led to a nearly fatal accident, and the result left Brian bonded with the spores that they were working on.
Brian's body was no longer human, and he could now control people's minds through the spores, and he brought a number of his co-workers together, including Peter, to force Peter to reveal why he sabotaged Brian. Peter told the truth, that it wasn't him, but his clone, Ben Reilly, but, well, that did not sit well with Brian. Peter instinctively hit him, and feared he hit him TOO hard, but was shocked to discover that, as noted earlier, Brian is no longer quite human!
In a CBR exclusive preview of next week's Amazing Spider-Man #30, see how Brian responds!
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #30 (LGY#994)
JOE KELLY (W) • PETE WOODS (A) • COVER BY MARK BAGLEY
AMAZING VISIONS VARIANT COVER BY LEE BERMEJO
AMAZING VISIONS VIRGIN VARIANT COVER BY LEE BERMEJO
MARVEL SOCCER VARIANT COVER BY NETHO DIAZ
VARIANT COVER BY SUMIT KUMAR • VARIANT COVER BY TBA
MAGIC: THE GATHERING VARIANT COVER & VIRGIN VARIANT COVER ALSO AVAILABLE
SPIDEY VS. SPORE!
SPORE is spreading, and it’s all SPIDER-MAN’s fault! But should Peter even BE fighting in a tragedy of his own making?! And DON’T MISS the answers to an earth-shattering riddle from the battle with Torment in ASM/VENOM “Death Spiral”!
32 PGS./Rated T …$4.99
In the preview pages, Brian is a bit thrown by Peter's surprisingly powerful punch, and his control over the others is wavering a bit, but Brian is still mostly in control, and he continues to hound Peter to get Peter to admit why he sabotaged their project.
At that moment, though, Brian is attacked by the shield of Kintsugi, the neophyte superhero who had been inspired to become a superhero by Spider-Man, and now here he was, saving Spider-Man's bacon (while he didn't even know it). However, Kintsugi doesns't actually have superpowers, so this might be a tricky situation that he just got himself into the middle of, and you're going to have to pick up a copy of Amazing Spider-Man #30 to see how he gets out of it (if he even DOES, that is)!
English (US) · 