Today, Spider-Man Will Swing Away Into Eternity

PHILADELPHIA: The lights are going out for Peter Parker, the high school student bitten by a radioactive spider whose wall-crawling and web-slinging antics have made him a touchstone of Marvel Comics' universe of heroes and villains.

The publisher said on Tuesday that Parker's alter ego, Spider-Man, will die, finally succumbing to one of his most pernicious foes in the final issue of "Ultimate Comics Spider-Man" due out Wednesday.

Fans of Spider-Man need not worry much, though, because the Ultimates imprint is separate from Marvel's bigger universe. Whatever fate may befall Ultimate Spider-Man won't count in the pages of the other series, including Amazing Spider-Man.

The death, while dramatic, is not entirely unexpected. In November, Marvel said that the Ultimate Spider-Man was going to face an uncertain fate in the latest storyline by writer Brian Michael Bendis fittingly titled

"The Death of Spider-Man", an eight-issue arc that saw the return of original series artist Mark Bagley. Bendis and Bagley had worked together on the series for 111 issues.

Bendis said that in issue No 160 Parker fights valiantly but will pass on, heroically, in a pitched fight. To whom?

"He will pass heroically, but he will die at the hands of the Green Goblin," Bendis said.

In Marvel's Ultimate Comics imprint, death is not something taken lightly. Characters in that universe are dead and gone, never to return. The roll of the deceased includes Magneto, Wasp and Wolverine.