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In 2000, Marvel Comics launched Ultimate Spider-Man, a series that placed Spider-Man’s origin in the 21^st century. The series was a resounding success, selling over 20 million copies worldwide and launching Marvel’s Ultimate imprint. Ultimate Spider-Man’s success becomes even more amazing (no pun intended) when you remember that Marvel had tried a similar premise two years earlier and failed.

In 1998, Marvel published Spider-Man: Chapter One, a limited series written and penciled by John Byrne. The series retold the original Lee/Ditko Spider-Man stories but set them in the present day. Sound familiar? While Chapter One sold modestly, critics and fans rejected the series. In 2000, the memory of Chapter One was still fresh, and it made Mark Bagley hesitant about penciling Ultimate Spider-Man. Bagley had been trying to get extra work at Marvel, but he wasn’t sure if Ultimate was the right book for his career.  

“I was still kind of pissed off at Marvel,” Mark Bagley says during a spotlight panel at Toronto Comicon 2012. “I was doing Thunderbolts and tired, but it was still the sort of resentence of me doing something else. I was ready to try and do something else, and Bob Harras was still editor-in-chief, and [publisher] Bill Jemas had come on, and he had shaken things up pretty good. And apparently, I had drawn a series of trading cards for him years before, and he’s just a huge fan of mine. I did not know this.”

Related: How Sony's Spider-Verse movies changed Marvel's Spider-Man comics forever

“[Jemas] was pushing for me to do Ultimate Spider-Man. Now, in the context of all this, John Byrne had just done something called [Spider-Man: Chapter One], which is kind of a revamp of Spider-Man, which had gone down in flames. It was like a turd in church. It was bad. And so, I read the idea for this. I had never heard of Brian Bendis. Who is this guy? And I was like, ‘I don’t want to do this. This is just going to be bad.’”

“Harras called me, and somebody else called me, and I said, 'No, I really would rather not.' It was put to me basically, look, you’re always looking for extra work because I can do more than one book a month. They said if you don’t do this, you’re not going to get any extra work. You’ve got to do this. Jemas really wants you. Okay, fine.”

One of the key differences between Ultimate Spider-Man and Spider-Man: Chapter One is how they were sold to readers. Chapter One was a retelling of the Lee/Ditko stories, acting as an update of modern continuity, while Ultimate Spider-Man was set in an alternate universe, meaning it wasn’t overwriting anything. Maybe that was one of the reasons it was a success. However, we can all agree that Bagley’s artwork played a key part. Not only did Bagley accept the assignment, but he had so much fun that he wound up staying on for 111 issues, and that’s something to be proud of.

Marvel's most reliable superhero has proven he can do a whole lot more than just 'whatever a spider can.' Swing into Spidey's history with Popverse's...

• Best Spider-Man comic books 
• The best Spider-Mans (or is it Spider-Men?)
• Spider-Man movie watch order
• Spider-Man's actors, ranked
• The best Spider-Man suits
• and the Spider-verse explained!

Just watch out for that radioactive blood.