Astonishing Spider-Man & Wolverine #2

History

The miniseries was launched in May 2010 as part of Marvel's Heroic Age publishing line, written by Jason Aaron and drawn by Adam Kubert, with Nick Lowe serving as editor and Daniel Ketchum as associate editor; Justin Ponsor colored and Rob Steen lettered. Issue #2 was released on July 14, 2010, with a September 2010 cover date, on a bi-monthly schedule. Aaron — then riding momentum from critically acclaimed work on Wolverine: Weapon X and PunisherMAX — used the miniseries as a sandbox for maximalist genre experiments, a creative instinct that Marvel's Appendix fan researchers have since noted foreshadowed his later multi-era dinosaur mythology work on Avengers. The complete six-issue run was subsequently collected in a hardcover trade paperback and has been included in Jason Aaron complete-collection editions.

Trivia · 8 facts

• First appearance of Doom the Living Planet (Earth-10964): a future version of Victor von Doom who transferred his consciousness into a living planet to circumvent his own mortality, devastating most of Earth's civilization in the process.
• First appearance of Czar and Big Murder, the diamond-wielding time-manipulating antagonists who are gradually revealed to be behind the heroes' forced time displacement across the series.
• First appearance of Mikal, a gorilla-man (Small Folk) who serves as Spider-Man's research assistant in the post-apocalyptic future setting.
• First appearance of the Heralds of Doom, giant robotic insects deployed by Doom the Living Planet against the last remnants of civilization.
• The issue introduces the Phoenix Gun — a weapon containing a Phoenix Force bullet capable of destroying a living planet, but guaranteed to kill its user at the subatomic level — a device central to the series' climax.
• The dystopian future setting is designated Earth-10964, where Wolverine's 'Small Folk' (descendants of the primitive tribe Logan led in the prehistoric arc of issue #1) have survived as the dominant humanoid species and venerate Logan as a messiah.
• The issue was part of Marvel's Heroic Age publishing initiative and shipped bi-monthly; it received an 8.5 out of 10 review score from IGN.
• The full six-issue miniseries, including material from issue #2, was collected in a trade paperback (ISBN 9780785140801) and has been reprinted as part of Jason Aaron's complete Marvel collections.

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