Could Dead No More Bring Back Spider-Man’s Uncle Ben?

Maybe we’ve been looking in the wrong part of the Marvel Universe to figure out what “Dead No More” is all about.

When Marvel’s first teaser image for the upcoming storyline arrived a few weeks ago, it was delivered in white text on a plain black background, giving us no real hints as to who might be returning from the other side. Naturally, our first guess was a high profile hero — meaning Wolverine, since he’s been dead for quite a while by 21st century comic book standards.

Today’s teaser, which you can see above, flips the script on that guess. With a spider web as a prominent part of the image, smart money now says that someone from Peter Parker’s life is going to be coming back. And in the Spider-Man mythos, no one has been dead longer or would shake things up more by his return then Uncle Ben.The man whose death caused Peter to learn his lesson about power and responsibility would turn heads if he was restored to life, to say nothing of touching off an online argument or two.

Then again, it could be more than one person, since Marvel’s press release for the Free Comic Book Day issue that will kick off “Dead No More” included the following bit:

"If you got a chance to bring back someone who died, would you? And how will CLASSIFIED deal when ones they thought long dead once again walk the earth? Find out on FREE COMIC BOOK DAY!"

So if Peter Parker is the “CLASSIFIED” person in question, maybe multiple figures from his earlier days are involved. Comic Book Resources names Gwen Stacy and Doctor Octopus as two likely candidates, but we say what the heck: Why can’t it be both of them and Uncle Ben too?

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Unless the identity of the person (or people) saying goodbye to death leaks out in the interim or Marvel decides to announce it, we’ll discover exactly what’s going on when Free Comic Book Day rolls around on May 7.