Dan Slott is a busy guy. From expanding the Spider-Boy part of the Marvel Universe to returning to DC Comics for Superman Unlimited, he was thankfully able to make time to hit the stage at WonderCon 2025 for a spotlight panel that, per the name, was about “Playing The Long Game In A Shared Universe.”
Here’s the official synopsis of the panel from the WonderCon schedule. For our recap, read onward, below!
From kicking off The Superior Spider-Man saga in Amazing Spider-Man #698-#700 from a story development seeded a hundred issues earlier in ASM #600 to paying off a clue set up in the first issue of Silver Surfer Vol.3 in the last issue of Silver Surfer Vol.4. Marvel & DC writer Dan Slott looks at all the pitfalls, pitfalls, rewards, and . . . mostly pitfalls of long-form storytelling in a shared comic book universe.
True to form, Dan Slott just sat down on stage and started riffing several minutes early, talking about how you could pull off the perfect murder with a bunch of koalas because they have human fingerprints. He then transitioned into starting the panel proper by recalling a previous WonderCon panel where he hooked up his laptop early, only to accidentally reveal he was doing a Silver Surfer comic because of what was on his desktop. “That was a good day for Bleeding Cool,” Slott said, laughing.
But on the actual topic of panel, he wanted to talk about how to lay in the long game for stories, citing things dropped in Amazing Spider-Man #600 that paid off in #700.
“One of the big things is you have to do it about things only you care about,” Slott said, recalling how he set up something called The Reckoning War — but that other creators killed off pieces of the story in other books, meaning he ultimately couldn’t do it the way he wanted. “You save up the pieces only you care about.”
On the opposite end of the spectrum, Slott noted that Matt Fraction had a story with Doctor Octopus that they had to keep killing because they had big plans for Superior Spider-Man.
“It helps if your book sells,” Slott continued, on how to preserve your plans for a story, but added that it goes the other way, too. In “Ends Of The Earth,” he had plans for Black Cat, which were thrown sideways by Mark Waid writing her in his book, or Rick Remender using Agent Venom. However, that he noted, was one of the joys of working a shared universe.
Continuing to riff, Slott explained that when stories shift like this, not for political reasons, but for story reasons — despite what fans might think. For Franklin Richards, “on the day they found out they could use Fantastic Four characters again,” Slott pitched his take and that he was writing the book. “I don’t want to write a book with a boy in the book with the powers of god,” he explained on the change of reducing Franklin’s powers. That naturally shut down anyone else’s plans for Franklin, but similarly Silver Surfer was being used elsewhere, and The Watcher had been killed by Jason Aaron. As frustrating as it might be, you figure out how to work around it.
“Well, how is this a gift?” Slott says. “I had a lot of guys who did not want Doc Ock as Spider-Man… They all wanted their Spider-Man that they grew up with in their books.” Slott recalled that a lot of people wanted the storyline to wrap up as quickly as possible in a six-issue arc, because they wanted to use the regular Spider-Man. But Slott didn’t want to bring him back until Amazing Spider-Man 2 hit theaters, so they could do the marketing tie-in of Peter Parker returning.
Continuing, Slott explained that someone in the room suggested double-shifting the book, at which point some people thought, “We think this has 12 issues,” meaning they could set their books before or after Superior Spider-Man in the same amount of time as six monthly issues. But then the book started to sell out, which changed everyone’s tune.
Slott then talked about Donny Cates pitching, and how he wanted to take characters and spread them all over the universe, but because Cates’s books were selling everyone said “let Donny do what Donny does.”
Opening up to questions, Slott called out Al Ewing as someone who is good at, “Just barrel ahead and do it anyway.” He also noted that when you have a flagship book like One World Under Doom, it’s easier to set those long-term plans because you’re the spine of the universe.
Back to Silver Surfer, Slott recalled hiding several eventual reveals about the characters from his artist, Michael Allred — but editor Tom Brevoort figured out the twists from reading the script for the first issue.
Jumping over to Superior Spider-Man, Slott told a story about keeping the secret of Spider-Man coming back to life, that he would lie to everyone even “small children.” He explained that eventually he would shout at conventions “Peter Parker is dead. Dead! He’s not coming back.” And then at Spanish conventions, he would shout, “Peter Parker está muerto. ¡Muerto! No volverá.”
There were only two people Slott told about Peter Parker coming back. “I got a call from Stan Lee. ‘Is Peter Parker really dead?’ No.” The other person who knew was Andrew Garfield, who Slott met on set for Amazing Spider-Man 2. “So you killed me?” Garfield said, to which Slott broke down the whole plot for him. To which Garfield riffed back, “So I’m a ghost now?”
The next story off of that? A little kid who loved Ghost Peter, who came to a signing to buy the issue where they kill Ghost Spider-Man. The kid left, read the issue, and came back, crying. Slott tried to tell him how sad he was when Captain Stacy died, but the kid wasn’t having it, and just said, “No.”
“Everyone has the thing that will send them over the edge,” Slott explained. “You will find that one Jenga piece you shouldn’t have pulled that made Spider-Man important to them. And now, you are Satan.”
And recalling a signing he did once, a fan approached him and apologized about going after him online for Superior Spider-Man because the ending turned it into one of his favorite Spider-Man stories ever. “I learned I have to wait until the end of the story,” He told Slott, to which the writer thanked him and asked about a concurrent storyline. “What do you think about Hydra Cap?” Slott asked to which the fan shouted, “F**k Nick Spencer!”
One long-running storyline that didn’t work out the way he wanted? “The Reckoning War.”
“It hurt because it wasn’t what I wanted it to be,” Slott said and noted that part of it was the pandemic, and “I was not good at pitching in Zoom.” Every time he had to pitch it, it was a two-day-long Zoom; celebrities would pop up, and it threw him. He’d end up pitching this line-wide event at the end of the day, and it was always, “Okay, you can do Reckoning War in five minutes, right? This thing I’ve been seeding for twenty years? Sure.” Ultimately, Marvel didn’t have faith in the event because of this.
Prompted to talk about DC, he noted that the first time DC knocked at his door, he wanted to finish Superior Spider-Man. The second time he was really close, but didn’t take it — and then saw Brian Michael Bendis writing Superman. “He took my lifeboat!” Slott joked. And then this time he would have had to leave Spider-Boy at issue three. Instead, he’ll take it to issue 20. “Twenty felt right,” Slott said.
Jumping into his run on Superman Unlimited, he explained that we’ll get the “Capra” version of the Daily Planet, and they’ll have to battle other journalists for scoops. Jack Ryder, aka The Creeper, will be another journalist — a podcaster — going after the same stories. Right now, Slott’s name for The Creeper podcast is “No Laughing Matter,” and it’s taking all he’s got not to turn this into a Creeper book.
Slott further teased that if you read the Summer of Superman Special there’s a setup with other members of the Superman family in his section that feels like it could be another book — but his focus is on Superman now.
When asked by a fan about when there will be Spider-Boy pens (he collects pens), Slott explained that you vote with your dollars. There were no plans for a Spider-Boy series until the debut of the character became the best-selling issue of the year at the point it was released.
Next up, one of the writers from the unfortunately killed Silk TV series asked about his thoughts on the character. Slott said he told producer Amy Pascal when asked to join the writers room that, “I’m the last person who should be involved in a Silk TV show. You want female writers. You want Korean writers… I’ve apologized for certain aspects of Silk so many times it’s now in her wiki.”
On the origins of the character, who was bit by the same spider as Spider-Man, he explains sort of pitching the idea under duress, knowing it would go over in the room, but on a nerdy level, not wanting to go down that route. Specifically, because he had a bit he would do about how insane it is to try and explain the circuitous way writers keep tweaking Batman’s origin — and he did the same thing to Spider-Man, so he can’t do that bit anymore.
Asked about other characters, Slott said that he can’t write Thor, and he can’t write real scientists. He can write Hank Pym, who can do fake science — but not DC’s The Atom, who talks about real science.
And that was it for the panel! See you at the next one.
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