Spider-Verse: 1967 Spider-Man

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. And it has, as you can see to the right.

*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 Spider-Man (1967).

Spider-Man is the first animated Spider-Man series, most famous for its theme song ("Spider-Man, Spider-Man, does whatever a spider can..."). It's also known for the poor production values and limited animation that plagued animated series of the time. It ran for three seasons, and while the first was pretty faithful to the comics, the second two did away with Spider-Man villains and had him fight generic monsters to re-use animation from Ralph Bakshi's Rocket Robin Hood series.

The Spider-Man from this world first appears in a cameo in Amazing Spider-Man #9 (October 2014)...

...and the world itself first appears briefly in Amazing Spider-Man #11 (December 2014), which makes note of the simple animation style:

But as you can see in that final panel, the world mainly shows up in Spider-Verse Team-Up #2 (December 2014), where it's visited by the Spider-Man from the Ultimate Spider-Man animated series and Miles Morales from the Ultimate Spider-Man comic book.

In addition to mentioning criminal copycat Charles Cameo (whose first appearance was in the episode "Double Identity", 1967), we also see the show's versions of Electro and Vulture:

Spider-Verse: Ultimate Spider-Man

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. And it has, as you can see to the right.

*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 Ultimate Spider-Man.

Ultimate Spider-Man is a 2012 animated series that is a weird mix of the regular, Ultimate, and Cinematic versions of Marvel, with its own twist on top of that. In the show, Spider-Man is a teenage superhero that has garnered the attention of SHIELD, who brings him in and puts him on a team with White Tiger, Nova, Power Man, and Iron Fist to help keep an eye on him and train him to be a proper superhero. They also give him some new gadgets like the Spider-Cycle. The show can be too aimed directly at kids sometimes to be fully enjoyable, but overall it's pretty decent and can have some good stories. (I've also only seen the first season, so it may have gotten better in that time.)

This Spider-Man appears in Spider-Verse Team-Up #2 (December 2014), where he teams up with the actual Ultimate Spider-Man, Miles Morales. And it's funny, because while he shares "Ultimate" status with Miles Morales, he also shares animated status with the other Spider-Man in the story: 1967 Spider-Man! I highly doubt this is a coincidence.

Spider-Verse: Newspaper Spider-Man

Last week I mentioned that Spider-Verse #1 (November 2014) featured six stories about alternate Spider-Men, and I showed you one of them. Turns out there was a second one I didn't know about:

Yes, this world is the one that belongs to still ongoing Amazing Spider-Man strip that is credited to Stan Lee and Larry Lieber (I don't know if they actually still make it or not). There are some neat things going on here, with the panels broken up into individual strips and Morlun commenting on how long it takes for anything to happen. It's been suggested that Master Weaver saves this Spider-Man because his story is still ongoing; I'm not sure if that's true, but it's an interesting story either way.

Appearance Spotlight: Star-Lord

Star-Lord has had a few different looks over the years. When he first appeared in Marvel Preview #4 (December 1975), he looked like this:

When he came back as part of "Annihilation", he looked like this:

And until around May of this year, he looked like this:

In the Guardians of the Galaxy movie, which was released August 2014, Star-Lord had a look inspired by his "Annihilation" look, but overall a pretty big departure:

Finally, in June 2014 (but cover dated August 2014), Guardians of the Galaxy #16 showed off Star-Lord's new look, which looks pretty familiar:

Spider-Verse: Hostess Spider-Man

As I've mentioned before, Hostess used to run a series of one-page ads in the 70s and 80s that featured superheroes defeating villainy with the power of Hostess snacks. Here's an example:

In Spider-Verse #1 (November 2014), there are six stories about six different Spider-Men either being killed or joining the group that will fight the killers. (You can read more about "Spider-Verse" here.) One of these stories is about the Spider-Man featured in the Hostess ads, and rather cleverly, it's a one-page story done in the style of Hostess ads.

This Spider-Man unfortunately doesn't make it, but it was nice to see him while it lasted!

52 Shakeup: The Batmobile

As I was looking for confirmation for yesterday's post, I noticed that Batman #1 (September 2011) has a scene in the Batcave that shows a variety of vehicles. One was a batcycle, a couple were various models of batmobile, but then there was this one:

And that is clearly the batmobile from Batman and Batman Returns:

So while Batman no longer has a parking lot sized number of Batmobiles from throughout his history and across media (as seen here), at least one made it through.

Area Spotlight: Gotham City Train Terminal

In 2005's Batman Begins, Thomas Wayne and a young Bruce go for a ride on Gotham's new train system to Wayne Tower. As Thomas notes, he designed Wayne Tower to be the central hub for Gotham, so all of the train, water, and power lines run through it. This becomes important in the climax, because if a microwave emitter on one of the trains makes its way to Wayne Tower, Gotham's water system will be destroyed.

The New 52's Batman #2 (October 2011) notes that Union Station, aka the central hub for Gotham rail lines, lies beneath Wayne Tower. No word on utilities.

As noted in the article I've previously linked to about Gotham's architecture, this tower first appeared in Anton Furst's concept sketches for Batman (1989), which makes it one of the few canon immigrants to survive the New 52.