A few months back, we learned that Spider-Man was getting a sidekick. Later, we learned that his name was Alpha and he was a total douche. Now, beginning in February, writer Joshua Hale Fialkov and artist Nuno Plati will do their best to change our minds about the character in a new 5-issue mini-series from Marvel.

Fialkov, who recently wrote a spectacular back-up tale in The Amazing Spider-Man #692 with Plati (not to mention that he writes the always rad I, Vampire at DC), told USA Today, ""He was a freak and then he became famous, and now he's infamous and powerless essentially as far as the world knows. He's that creepy kid who used to be on a sitcom when he was 5."

We'll meet up again with the depowered Alpha before his mini-series in The Amazing Spider-Man #700, the events of which will lead directly to the Alpha mini-series. "It's a classic Marvel situation where you've got a kid with power who is making some wrong decisions," added Spidey overlord/editor Stephen Wacker. "That's an inherently dramatic story, watching someone screw up and learning along with them and seeing how they change."

Alpha will move to a new city -- Pittsburgh, PA -- in Marvel's further efforts to spread their heroes, particularly of the spider variety, outside of New York. Why Pittsburg? "Look, any way I can ingratiate myself back to my hometown city and somehow inspire a free trip and free Primanti Brothers sandwiches, I'm 100% behind," joked FIalkov. "It's actually a city about reinvention. It's a city that has transformed itself over and over and over again."

As for Alpha's levels of super-douchery, Fialkov told the paper, "I genuinely believe that Alpha is not a [jerk] like everyone says. He literally is just us. The tragedy in his life is that he was given this great gift and then it was more or less taken away from him. So let's explore what that means and what that does to a kid."

For more on the new Alpha mini-series, head on over to USA Today.

Joey is IGN's Comics Editor and a comic book creator. Follow Joey on Twitter @JoeyEsposito, or find him on IGN at Joey-IGN. He loves superhero pets so hard.

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