WARNING: The following article contains major spoilers for The Amazing Spider-Man Annual #42, by Dan Slott, Cory Smith, Terry Pallot, Brian Reber and Joe Caramagna, on sale now.


When it comes to comic books, death – more often than not – is just a temporary condition. It's a tool used to create dramatic effect, to revitalize a stale character, or to merely set the stage for the ensuing hype surrounding their inevitable resurrection. There are few exceptions to this rule, and the few who manage to stay dead are typically those whose deaths are intrinsically tied to a hero’s origin story, a la Ben Parker, or Thomas and Martha Wayne.

That being said, when characters do die, the lengths of their stints in the afterlife tend to vary wildly; Captain America was gone for two years, while Bucky Barnes was placed on the back burner for a whopping 41. However, a hiatus of that length is practically unheard of in today’s mainstream comics, so it certainly comes as a surprise that in The Amazing Spider-Man Annual #42, Marvel brought back a familiar face that hasn’t been seen since 1987: Ned Leeds.

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Debuting in November 1964’s The Amazing Spider-Man #18 by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, Ned Leeds was a reporter for the Daily Bugle who competed with Peter Parker to win the affection of Bugle secretary Betty Brant – a battle he would ultimately win. Nevertheless, Ned and Peter remained friends, and he even chose Peter to be his best man as his and Betty’s wedding.

Ned’s sweet life eventually began to turn sour when he’s tasked with investigating the mysterious new villain known as the Hobgoblin. Following him to his hideout, Ned is captured by the man whose real name is Roderick Kingsley and brainwashed into not only serving the Hobgoblin, but acting as his stand-in, which has a detrimental effect on Ned’s marriage.

Eventually, Kingsley decides he no longer has any use for Ned, and having spent a good deal of time turning him into the perfect scapegoat, he reveals his identity as the Hobgoblin to the criminal underworld. As a result, Ned is killed by associates working under the Foreigner in the gang war for Kingpin’s criminal empire, and his lifeless body is left strapped to a chair until it’s discovered by Peter. However, as Spider-Man, Peter is shocked when he obtains photos of Ned dressed as the Hobgoblin. It isn’t until years later that he begins to speculate that he must have been framed, and these suspicions are eventually confirmed when Spidey and Betty coerce Kingsley into a taped confession.

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Now, let’s fast-forward to The Amazing Spider-Man Annual #42, where we meet up with the cloned version of the criminal group known as the Enforcers. Entering a smoke-filled room, the group is tasked by a shadowy figure to track down Betty and ensure that a potentially damaging story surrounding the Revolutionary Battle of Blood Creek, which Ned was investigating shortly before his death, never sees the light of day. Sure enough, though, Betty’s already in the process of putting together the pieces of the unfinished puzzle her late husband left behind.

As it turns out, the statue commemorating the battle isn’t made of copper, but tritium – a rare metal that’s every bit as expensive as it is explosive. Essentially, it’s a ticking time-bomb sitting in the middle of a public park, and as Betty soon discovers, it was planted there by Ernesto Karnelli of the international crime syndicate known as the Maggia.

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Thankfully, Betty and Spider-Man are able to stop Karnelli’s associate from detonating the bomb, and thanks to Ned’s final story helping to expose the Maggia, the statue is replaced with a memorial to the deceased reporter. However, as Peter and Betty admire the commemorative fixture at the park, we see a familiar face in the background: a homeless man who attempted to assist Betty in the earlier skirmish. Rather than approaching them, though, he walks over to a nearby trash receptacle and removes his hat, coat and what we learn is a fake beard. Then, as he throws a smile in his wife’s direction, the man we now know is Ned Leeds walks away without uttering a single word.

ned-leeds

Much like Wolverine, it appears as though Marvel plans to play the long game with Ned’s surprising return. Still, a number of questions remain, the least of which being the obvious: Is he actually a clone? After all, we’ve already seen a Ned clone pop up recently in Dead No More: The Clone Conspiracy. Even if he does prove to be a clone, he obviously has Ned's memories and emotional connections, thus essentially returning the character to Spidey's world.

Whatever the case may be, Slott is either setting up something big for the end of his massive run on The Amazing Spider-Man, or perhaps he's simply setting the table for the next creative team.