Spider-Verse: Mini-Marvels Spider-Man (And A Bonus)

Spider-Verse is a currently running event in the Spider-Man comics that will involve every* Spider-Man we've ever met, including several Spider-Women and Spider-Girls (not to mention Scarlet Spiders and Spider-Hams and whatnot), and several brand-new versions. The premise is simple: there's a group of people trying to wipe out every Spider character across the multiverse, so all the Spider characters will team up to stop them. This is, of course, a massive event - multimedia even, since it will also feature in the Spider-Man Unlimited video game and the animated series Ultimate Spider-Man - and given the premise, it's only natural that it will add a few entries to this catalog.

*I say "every" because Marvel says "every", but there are a few that won't be showing up, such as Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield.

Today's entry is Mini-Marvels Spider-Man.

From 1999 to 2001, Marvel published a comic strip called Bullpen Bits in "Bullpen Bulletins", a page set aside in comics each month to deliver news and answer fans' questions. The comic strip was drawn and written by Chris Giarrusso, and it presented the majority of Marvel heroes as children who always wear their costumes (even in their everyday lives) and sometimes fight crime but mostly just hang out.

Since Bullpen Bits ended, they've been collected in numerous trade paperbacks and one-shots, usually along with new material by Chris Giarrusso or others, under the name Mini-Marvels.

In Amazing Spider-Man #12 (January 2015), this Spider-Man can be seen as a member of the "Spider-Man Recruitment Drive" that started last month with Ultimate Spider-Man and 1967 Spider-Man:

Note the diminutive stature, cartoony hands and feet, and - arguably the most notable feature - the black part of the costume instead of blue.



Also worth mentioning is that in the bottom panel of the page this Spidey appears on, Ultimate Spider-Man calls this team the "Web Warriors", which Other Ultimate Spider-Man (Miles Morales) objects to.

This, of course, is a reference to the current season of Ultimate Spider-Man, Ultimate Spider-Man: Web Warriors, which features a four-part Spider-Verse crossover event.