Warning: SPOILERS for Amazing Spider-Man: The Sins of Norman Osborn #1.
Spider-Man's "new" villain Kindred has the potential to be his best ever - because he seems to have a mysterious tie to the Web of Life and Destiny. Nick Spencer's Amazing Spider-Man run has been going for two years now, and incredibly he's been building up a single narrative arc over all that time.
Spencer has introduced a mysterious new villain called Kindred. He seems to have a deep and abiding hatred of Spider-Man, apparently for personal reasons, and he knows an awful lot about the wall-crawler. In fact, Kindred has been manipulating Peter Parker's very dreams, attempting to twist him and drive him mad. It's all been pretty sinister, but in truth readers are beginning to get a bit frustrated. Kindred has literally been messing with Spider-Man's life for two years now, and yet he feels little-developed as a character. Even his basic abilities remain a mystery. This week's The Amazing Spider-Man: The Sins of Norman Osborn #1 offers an important clue, finally suggesting an explanation for some of Kindred's powers - and hinting at his true potential.
Norman Osborn has been targeted by the Sin-Eater, and Spider-Man has resolved to save his greatest nemesis from a threat he believes to be far worse. Osborn apparently knows Kindred's secret, and so Spider-Man's mystery nemesis wants him taken off the table. To that end, Kindred manipulates the dreams of the rest of the Spider-Family - Miles Morales, Spider-Woman, Spider-Girl, Spider-Gwen, and possibly even Madame Web - to persuade them Peter Parker is in grave danger. Crucially, though, Madame Web identifies these dreams as warnings from the Web of Life and Destiny itself.
The Web of Life and Destiny binds all time and space together, and spider-totems like Peter Parker and his friends are all attuned to it. This is actually how Spider-Man's spider-sense works; an instinctive, intuitive connection to the Web of Life and Destiny grants a spider-totem a hyper-awareness of the world around them and events that are about to happen. It looks as though Kindred is actually a spider-totem, able to access the Web - and, through it, to get into the minds of other spider-totems. Finally we have a potential explanation for Kindred's mysterious ability to mess with Peter Parker's head.
But if Kindred is indeed a spider-totem, then he is essentially a dark mirror of Spider-Man himself. He would presumably possess many of Spider-Man's own abilities; what's more, his ability to manipulate the Web of Life and Destiny suggests he has cultivated other powers as well. He has the raw potential to match Spider-Man in a way even Venom cannot. The only question will be whether or not that potential is realized; whether writer Nick Spencer is able to give Kindred as exciting a character and origin as his powers. Hopefully, after two years of waiting for answers, it won't be long now before he finally offers them.