Batman Has Officially Replaced Spider-Man As Marvel's New [SPOILER]
Warning! Spoilers for Heroes Reborn #7!
Despite there not being a Spider-Man in the altered reality that is the current Heroes Reborn event, Marvel’s Batman, Nighthawk, has managed to find a way to draw the ire of the Daily Bugle’s most intense employee and number one Spider-Man hater, J. Jonah Jameson. Spider-Man may no longer be a menace that Jonah can obsess over, but now with Nighthawk replacing Spidey in this new world instead, the guy doesn’t have to miss a beat.
Set a few years before the current events happening in the Heroes Reborn series, Heroes Reborn #7 by Jason Aaron and Aaron Kuder, sees a flashback sequence during a time when the Squadron Supreme’s most iconic members -- Hyperion and Nighthawk -- beat each other senseless in a riff on Marvel’s Civil War storyline. Consumed by a familiar symbiote suit that the original Spider-Man was able to overcome in the original Marvel universe, Nighthawk has lost himself to the influence of an alien organism that's doing him no favors.
Pummeling each other with abandon, Hyperion and Nighthawk tussle over more than just Nighthawk’s new clothing choice as their friendship has boiled over into something more violent. Crashing across a ruined cityscape of their own doing, Hyperion blasts Nighthawk through building after building, even smashing him through a familiar angry and mustached face on a nearby billboard complete with the Daily Bugle logo emblazoned across it.
Blowing a hole through the center of the billboard (and just barely missing Jonah’s enormous head in the process), the text on the signage reads, “Nighthawk: Hero or Menace? An Editorial by: J. Jonah Jameson”, effectively showing fans that in a world without Spider-Man, Nighthawk has officially replaced Spidey as Marvel’s newest menace! Talk about a reality hopping obsession!
Usually reserved for calling out Spider-Man and his antics to sell papers and push his flawed thinking on the individuals of his city, Jonah has kept the exact same “Hero or Menace?” line in place in this new Heroes Reborn reality, simply swapping his Spider-Man obsession with the next best hero available in the Squadron’s Batman pastiche of Nighthawk. Clearly needing an outlet to still complain about the heroes around him, Jonah might actually be on to something by calling Nighthawk out as a “menace”, a far cry from his consistently flawed take on Marvel’s friendly neighborhood hero that he very rarely lets up on.
So now with Marvel’s Batman, Nighthawk, officially replacing Spider-Man as J. Jonah Jameson’s obsession of choice, Heroes Reborn has found yet another way to incorporate little details pulled straight from the Marvel-616 universe proper; just with a twist. This world may not be meant to last, but fans should still take note of how Jonah’s hang-ups with heroes has now found a way to literally transcended different realities.