Warning! Spoilers ahead for Amazing Spider-Man #51
Spider-Man's friends and spider-allies have been corrupted by Kindred, a demonic transformation of Harry Osborn, who himself was once one of Peter Parker's closest friends as well. Short on options to get them back to their old selves on his own, Spider-Man goes to one person who has always had his back when it comes to conflicts of the mystical and supernatural: Doctor Strange. Spider-Man visits the good doctor in the latest issue of The Amazing Spider-Man, but Doctor Strange makes a shocking discovery that prevents him from fully helping Peter: Spider-Man once made a deal with the devil.
2007 saw one of the most controversial Spider-Man stories ever, entitled One More Day from J. Michael Straczynski and Joe Quesada. In this story, Aunt May was shot by an assassin whose primary target was Spider-Man himself. This resulted in Peter and his then-wife Mary Jane making a deal with Mephisto, the literal devil of the Marvel Universe. In exchange for saving Aunt May's life, Mephisto took Peter and MJ's marriage, which resulted in a large erasure of Spider-Man's history including his relationship with Mary Jane. In this way, much of his current narrative was retconned back to a more core version of who Spider-Man is, as Marvel's publishers felt that they had recently gone too far with his development such as with his marriage and the exposure of his identity to the mass public after Civil War. While this story was met with heavy criticism (some of which came from Straczynski himself), it happened nonetheless. Peter's history and the present were rewritten thanks to Mephisto, and furthermore, no one knows or remembers that it ever happened, including Spider-Man...until now.
Now, in Amazing Spider-Man #51 from Nick Spencer and Patrick Gleason, Doctor Strange may have just uncovered Spider-Man's dark deal he made all those years ago. When Spider-Man visited Strange for help, the Sorcerer Supreme recommends that they use the Hand of the Vishanti in order to find and track down Kindred via the Astral Plane. While Strange begins his incantation over Spider-Man and the Hand, he stops midway through when he senses that something is wrong. While he can only suspect at the details, the failure to get the Hand of Vishanti to work has alerted Strange to fact that Spider-Man had at one point made a dark deal in his past.
Now, Doctor Strange's seems keen to look into said details of the deal Spider-Man made, which Peter himself has no memory of (though has been waking up from nightmares feeling inexplicable guilt.) Strange announces that he, unfortunately, can't help Spider-Man anymore, and the doctor must save Peter's friends himself on his own with other methods that won't require Spider-Man's help. However, after Strange escorts Spider-Man out of his Sanctum Sanctorum, he turns around to find that the Hand of Vishanti is gone. Apparently, Spider-Man couldn't afford to take no for an answer, so he preemptively asked Black Cat to help him steal what was needed to find Kindred just in case Dr. Strange declined to help him.
Now, Spider-Man is going to have to deal with the consequences of going ahead and entering the Astral Plane on his own to find Kindred. There was a reason why Doctor Strange said that path wasn't going to work, and it's more than likely that it has to do with the deal made in One More Day. Finally, there's someone in the Marvel Universe who knows what happened to Spider-Man, aside from Mephisto himself. Will Nick Spencer actually restore Spider-Man's marriage to MJ? Does Harry/Kindred have a connection to One More Day? Will the awful retcon actually get retconned itself? Fans will have to wait and see as Spencers' Amazing Spider-Man continues.