Aww. In Marvel’s current “All-New, All-Different” comics, Peter Parker is the head of a global business that also helps Spider-Man confront threats all over the world. In an upcoming trip to London in the book, artist Alex Ross celebrated Spidey’s British adventure with a variant cover starring a familiar face... but it was not to be.
Before Capaldi became best known outside of the UK for his role as the time-traveling Twelfth Doctor, it was for his role in the BBC political satire series The Thick of It. Set in the offices of a fictitious British government, Capaldi played the extremely foul-mouthed Director of Communications Malcolm Tucker, infamous for his poetic streams of profanity. Here’s
See? Delightful.
Well, Ross was going to pay tribute to The Thick of It in his variant cover for The Amazing Spider-Man #5, filling a London Bus that Spider-Man is slammed into with various characters from the series, including Tucker:
Which, let’s be honest, is pretty spectacular. But alas, it was not to be. The issue, out this week, still has a variant cover from Ross, but it’s been modified to remove the Thick of It characters. The reason? According to Amazing Spider-Man writer Dan Slott, it proved to be too much of a challenge to get everyone involved to sign off on Marvel running the cover:
What a shame! Who wouldn’t want a Malcolm Tucker/Spider-Man crossover, no matter how brief? Here’s the new cover, which will forever remain Capaldi-less:
It’s still Alex Ross, so it’s lovely, but man. It just isn’t the same.
[Via Bleeding Cool]