A Spider-Man in any era just cannot seem to catch a break. While our favorite vintage Webslinger has managed to score his share of wins lately in both his hero life (namely defeating a super-powered Nazi named Plasma-Man and the evil Dr. Helga Haag) and his personal life (starting a relationship with the lovely Gwen Stacy), he's still plagued by one enormous problem looming over everything: the murder of police captain George Stacy. A death that has weighed heavily on many Spider-Men throughout the multiverse, but in this universe in particular, it carries a different kind of weight. For this was not a death caused by a moment of heroic sacrifice that Spider-Man might have prevented, but rather one caused by a moment of self-defense by none other than the Webhead himself. And now that he's finally come clean to Gwen about who killed her father (albeit in a roundabout manner so as to protect his secret identity), she has charged him with a new case: find out who Spider-Man is.
Things are not about to get any easier for the Webslinger.
*Mild spoilers ahead for Spider-Man Noir (2025) #4*
Issue 4 starts off on a surprisingly light note. Considering that the last issue dealt with a Nazi scientist kidnapping a young boy to experiment on, and ended with Gwen's request of Peter, I'd expected to see this streak continue here. What I could not have anticipated, however, is where the story would pick up from that cliffhanger. Rather than immediately jump back into it, we instead open on Spider-Man enjoying an egg cream at the Black Cat Club (in full costume, nonetheless). He's interrupted from his drink by the arrival of a supposed ghost-hunter, who barges in claiming there are ghosts everywhere. A claim that might have been funnier if he wasn't armed with high-tech weaponry, which he immediately begins firing into the crowded room. Spider-Man manages to stop him without too much trouble (in spire of said ghost-hunter adorning the cover of the issue) and the club's patrons go back to their drinks as if nothing happened. Before Spidey joins them, however, curiosity gets the best of him and he dons the man's strange goggles, unnsure of what to expect. To his surprise the goggle reveal that the hunter hadn't been entirely crazy, as there are in-fact ghosts filling the room. Seeing as how the specters don't appear to be doing anything harmful to any of the club's patrons, however, Spider-Man chooses to leave them be and return to his drink.
Pretty lighthearted opening, right? Don't expect this tone to continue.
With the bizarre opening concluded, the story jumps right into Marvel's favorite trend of complicating Peter's love-life as he tries unsuccessfully to convince Gwen to call off her search for Spider-Man's secret identity. By this point, she's well aware that her father's death was caused by self-defense on Spider-Man's part rather than cold-blooded murder. She also knows that her father was involved in some shady activities that brought about the circumstances of his demise. Nevertheless, he was still her father, and she justifiably wants to know the person that killed him. Something that Peter fully understands, even if he doesn't yet know how to reveal the truth to her.
Fortunately, there's something to help take his mind off of this for a time. There's a killer roaming the streets of New York, garbed in tattered clothes and a large diving helmet. Though he's uncertain, Spidey is fairly certain that this individual escaped from Dr. Haag's lab in the previous issue, though whether they're associated with the Nazi plot still unfolding throughout the city or something else entirely remains to be seen. Not that it ultimately matters at the moment. Either way, the man's a killer who's leaving a steadily growing trail of bodies behind him as he cuts his way through the city.
Spider-Man soon finds the mysterious being, coming upon him just after he's finished killing his latest victim. Not wasting any time, Spidey swings in to engage the helmeted murderer, only to discover a painful realization: the killer can drain the life force of his victims by touching them. Spider-Man manages to break free from his clutches before he can join the growing list of bodies left in the man's wake, but the victory is a brief one. The helmeted killer strikes him so hard that the force of the blow sends him flying up onto a nearby rooftop. Crazy that this is only issue 4 and this is already the second time this has happened to him. Where last time he was found by the Back Alley Boys and fared well enough to swing off without too much trouble, this time, however, he falls unconscious after he lands bloodied and battered at the feet of the building cleaning man. He awakens the morning on the man's couch, sore and weary, his mask gone and his suit in tatters. This will quickly prove to be the least of his problems.
While the events of the previous two issues were exciting in their own right, issue 4 provides some much needed escalation to push the story forward. That's not to say that the story lines involving gangsters and Nazis didn't carry stakes of their own, because they most certainly did (and likely will continue to do so going forward). But these plot points ultimately felt removed from the overarching conflict caused by George Stacy's death, which had begun to feel like more of a B-plot rather than a central binding element like it was in the first issue. We've really only seen it being brought up when the story was focusing on Peter's personal life, before brushing it aside once more in favor of whatever threat Spider-Man had to contend with.
Here, however, the plot points converge, taking Spider-Man's killing of George Stacy and escalating it drastically. For the killer didn't just steal Spidey's life force; he stole Spidey's powers. But where Spider-Man abides by a strict code, this mysterious being has no such restrictions. So now New York finds itself afflicted by a murderous Spider-Man who's rampaging through the city while Peter is forced to watch, powerless.
The concept of a murderous, imposter Spider-Man is an interesting enough development on its own, particularly given the mysterious nature of this life force stealing being and his currently-unknown connections to the Nazis operating in New York. But with the added complication of the real Spider-Man having already killed someone, it becomes even more of a nightmare for the Webhead. Especially since this will ultimately only incriminate him more in the eyes of Gwen, whose reasons for wanting Spider-Man's identity are still unclear.
This also makes for some tense (albeit somewhat comedic) moments with Aunt May and Mary Jane when they first encounter him, as they've seen the news reports that Spider-Man has been killing people and both of them already know he killed Captain Stacy. It's great seeing the way both of them handle this, particularly one moment from Aunt May that genuinely shocked me.
Despite all of the great parts of it, however, issue 4 suffers a bit in my eyes from the fact that it feels like it's just meant to set-up something bigger. Granted, this has been the case for all of the issues thus far, with each ending on a cliffhanger to progress the ongoing conflict of George Stacy's death, but here it feels more noticeable. In the previous issues, there was a core conflict that was at least mostly wrapped up within the issue itself. Issue 1 had Spider-Man trying to figure out who killed Captain Stacy. Issue 2 was a bit all over the place, but it still felt like a concise story in itself, setting up the threat of the Nazis while still ending fairly neatly. Issue 3 focused in on the Nazi threat, establishing that something bigger was going on, but still remaining largely contained in its primary conflict. By comparison, issue 4 feels like part one to a multi-part episode. This isn't a bad thing by any means. I love watching the story expand over the course of several issues, especially since this is still technically a mystery. It does, however, cause the issue to struggle as a standalone work.
Additionally, there's the continued trend of focusing on Peter's life outside of the mask only to focus on his complicated love-life. While this is nothing new for a Spider-Man series, I'd been hopeful that we'd see more of the detective side of things from these sections after issue 1. Sadly, that's proven not to be the case, as what little we see of him without the mask is more often than not relegated to him either dealing with complications with Gwen or discussing said complications with Aunt May or Mary Jane.
With his powers currently gone, however, perhaps we'll see a shift in this for coming issues. Because powers or not, Spidey is ultimately a hero. He's not going to sit by and do nothing as a crazed murderer rampages through the city, especially when said murderer is posing as him. It will be interesting to see what he will do against such a threat now that he's seemingly an ordinary human, and if the final panels are anything to go by, we'll likely see that interaction sooner rather than later.
Spider-Man Noir (2025) #4 is available now from Marvel Comics.
