The Avengers are gone, the world feels wrong, and Spider-Man’s danger sense would very much like everyone to start panicking.
Sometimes Peter Parker’s Spider-Sense warns him about a pumpkin bomb.
Sometimes it tells him somebody is about to punch him.
And apparently sometimes it says:
Hey, Peter? The entire universe may be breaking.
Cool.
Very manageable.
Avengers #1 launches a new era with Earth’s superhero community scattered, wounded and politically unpopular. Bucky is declared dead. Captain America nearly died. Tony Stark has left town. Carol Danvers is operating at a fraction of her former power. The Avengers themselves have disbanded.
And Peter?
Peter just has a bad feeling.
Which, considering his track record, everyone should probably listen to immediately.
PROS
The smartest thing this issue does is make Spider-Man’s unease part of the story’s connective tissue.
Peter visits May, who still doesn’t remember their life together, and his Spider-Sense starts buzzing beneath an otherwise quiet conversation. There’s no immediate villain. No collapsing building.
Just something waiting.
Later, Peter admits his anxiety to Luke Cage, connecting it to everything unraveling around them.
Luke reasonably tells him:
Buddy, you’ve picked a rough day to unload existential dread on the mayor.
Fair.
But Peter knows his Spider-Sense.
And when it suddenly spikes?
He listens.
That instinct leads him to Stark Tower, where he meets David Colton, the former Captain America whose recent actions overseas have left a trail of destruction and death.
Colton is clearly not doing great.
Peter, naturally, handles this delicate encounter by immediately accusing him of helping destroy half of Europe.
Spider-Man diplomacy!
He doesn’t automatically trust somebody because they wear superhero colors.
Colton claims he didn’t cause the explosion. Peter pushes back. Thousands died. Somebody has to answer for that.
Then Colton punches him through a building.
Debate concluded.
Except things get stranger when Wolverine arrives—also looking for answers—and confirms what Peter suspected:
Colton may not actually be the problem.
That brings us to the issue’s larger mystery.
All across New York, old supernatural “deals” are apparently being nullified.
Paige Rowley discovers a mysterious book connected to a bargain her parents made before she was born. Winged enforcers arrive to collect. Other characters begin experiencing similar consequences.
And suddenly Peter Parker realizes something horrifying.
He made a deal too.
With Mephisto.
He doesn’t remember making it.
He doesn’t remember what he traded.
He doesn’t even remember who he saved.
But somewhere beneath all that erased history, one name remains:
May Parker.
Uh-oh.
For longtime Spider-Man readers, that is one heck of a loaded grenade to roll into issue #1 of an Avengers comic.
CONS
There is a lot happening here.
This issue checks in with Peter, May, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, Carol Danvers, Daredevil, Wolverine, Rogue, Gambit, David Colton, Paige Rowley and her family—while also establishing an election, public distrust of superheroes, mysterious supernatural contracts and a new Avengers lineup.
Take attendance carefully.
You may be tested later.
That scope is exciting, but it also means some threads feel more like trailers than fully developed scenes.
Carol and Daredevil’s conversation is emotionally strong, particularly Carol struggling with losing her ability to fly and operating at roughly ten percent of her former strength, but it currently sits beside the main plot rather than inside it.
The same goes for the political material involving mayoral challenger Amanda Spring. It clearly matters, especially as anti-superhero sentiment grows, but issue #1 is mostly planting those seeds.
This is less “Avengers assembled” and more:
Avengers… please check your messages.
FINAL THOUGHTS
What makes Avengers #1 work is that the characters aren’t brought together because somebody sends a group text.
They’re brought together because the world has started feeling wrong.
And Spider-Man feels it first.
That makes Peter surprisingly central to the issue without making the book revolve entirely around him.
He becomes the alarm bell.
The guy whose instincts keep telling him that these scattered tragedies aren’t actually scattered.
Then the final revelation turns that intuition into something brutally personal.
Peter once made a deal with the devil.
The deal is apparently ending.
And whatever Mephisto changed in Peter’s life may now be trying to correct itself.
That means an Avengers-level crisis has suddenly collided with one of the most infamous pieces of Spider-Man history.
Fantastic.
Avengers assembled.
Terms and conditions apply.
FINAL GRADE: A-
A confident, ominous Avengers relaunch that makes Spider-Man the canary in the cosmic coal mine. The team hasn’t fully assembled yet, but Peter’s Spider-Sense—and one terrifyingly familiar deal with the devil—make sure this first issue already feels dangerously personal.
