Spider-Man Officially Comes to Avengers Academy, and He’s Bringing Some Amazing Friends

Hope you weren't planning on taking a moment to catch your breath in Marvel Avengers Academy. Just as the Captain Britain event has come to a close, which followed almost immediately on the heels of the Civil War event, TinyCo and Marvel have announced a special Spider-Man event kicking off this week. If you're like me, you've been furiously checking in every day, making sure all your characters are completing as many tasks as possible to save up the necessary in-game currency to unlock the newest roster additions. As of late, that's proven to be an incredible challenge. The upcoming Spider-Man event looks to be no different, in that at least six new characters are coming to the Academy. Oh, and a bunch of alternate costumes.

A number of you may already actually have Spider-Man recruited to your Avengers Academy roster as he did appear as an early buy-in option during Civil War. This is his more official debut, as now everyone will have a chance to get Peter Parker involved at the school. If you have had him wandering around rather aimlessly --- as many of the pre-release purchasable characters do --- at least in the coming weeks, he'll finally have some missions and adventures to tackle. Plus, we'll likely be able to earn more of those crucial items to help level him up once again.

Speaking about the game, Allen Warner, Senior Narrative Designer, discussed a bit about what we can expect from the event, including how it all gets started and who may be up for recruitment for a limited time. It doesn't sound like any new core story areas will be opening up, but J. Jonah Jameson will be bringing a Daily Bugle office to the school grounds in the hopes of teaching this generation of kids about old school journalism. That and putting a stop to Spider-Man's antics once and for all. Even in this alternate, time warped dimension, Parker just can't catch a break from that ol' curmudgeon.

Jameson isn't the only person interested in a satellite station on the campus, as Norman Osborn also seeks out the school for a new expansion for his labs. Where better to compete against the most brilliant scientific minds like T'Challa and Tony Stark but on the very same ground where they work. As you can probably guess, Norman doesn't exactly have the noblest of intentions with his business decisions, and brings the likes of Doctor Otto Octavius and Curt Connors with him to stir things up. There aren't any details yet as to how the battles against these bad guys will go, but Avengers Academy has kept rotating its mechanics every time new villains were introduced, so that might happen again.

In addition to Spider-Man joining the roster, Norman and Octavius will be recruitable at some point. You'll also get a chance to earn characters like Spider-Ham and Black Cat. Spider-Gwen and Venom can be seen in the teaser key art, so they'll likely be joining the fray as well. New costumes for the Wasp and Black Widow are on the way, and the symbiote costume for Spider-Man will also be included. That opens up a new quest chain that deals with Peter's relationship with the symbiote, and lends even more credence to the idea Venom will be unlockable at some point.

TinyCo is billing this as the biggest event in Avengers Academy so far, which there isn't exactly a lot of competition for. Still, Civil War was fairly substantive, so if this Spider-Man event is going to offer more content than that did, we're in for a fairly packed six weeks. The Spider-Man event is actually being split into two parts, with the second half adding even more characters and costumes to the mix, and it will play off events that transpired in the first half. While it would be nice to get a moment to collect ourselves after a seemingly endless parade of new content, it's hard to argue with adding so many fan-favorite characters into the mix. Maybe just give us a little bit more real estate to throw some of these new buildings down though? I really don't want to have to store the Milano in the inventory garage.

The Spider-Man special event has a tiny prologue available right now, with the event set to officially start soon.