The sentiment behind BND is a good one, but time is not a bubble, and hindsight has shown that most of BND was all smoke and mirrors. What could have been truly fresh and interesting quickly devolved into stagnant storytelling and cyclical drama. Returning to the same problems and conflicts as the 70s and 80s, just with a revolving door of new faces, held no longevity, especially as editorial insisted that Peter regress and be frozen in time while the rest of the Marvel universe evolved and grew up.

After nearly two decades, Spider-Man as a book is exactly in the same spot it was during BND. And that’s unfortunate. Rather than open the character up to truly new directions, it became the limbo of arrested development we’re still struggling to overcome to this very day.