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If you’ve ever wondered what happens when you kill one of the most beloved characters in pop culture, Dan Slott is here to give you a pretty clear picture. Most comic book fans are familiar with Slott as the Spider-Man writer who killed Peter Parker and whisked us all on a storyline where Doc Ock became Spider-Man, known as Superior Spider-Man. And as popular as Superior Spider-Man was, fans were still approaching Slott over whether or not Peter Parker was actually dead or not. 

At WonderCon 2025, Dan Slott revealed in his spotlight panel that he had an efficient way of handling repeated questions concerning Peter Parker’s fate. Slott noted that he was instructed by Marvel editorial to tell any fan who asked him if Peter was going to come back to life that he was dead for good, and he was never going to be resurrected. “I did this with convention after convention… and someone would come up and go, ‘When is Peter coming back?’ And then you go, ‘He’s never coming back,’ and they’re like ‘Ohhh.’ And then 20 minutes later, someone asks you the same question. So in order to stop that, when I was at conventions, the first time someone would ask me that, I would lean down the line and go, [yelling] ‘PETER PARKER IS DEAD! HE’S NEVER COMING BACK! IT’S OTTO OCTAVIUS.’ And I could spare myself a couple hours without hearing the question.” 

Slott brought this approach with him when he was a guest at a convention in Mexico City, stating that he knew just enough Spanish to get across the same message to fans. Now, the question is, do any fans who got books signed by Slott at this time remember hearing him yell “PETER PARKER IS DEAD!” down the line?

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