Spider-Verse: Spidey Super Stories

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. (Although see here for more information on that.)

Today's entry is Spidey Super Stories.

The Electric Company was an educational sketch comedy show that ran on PBS from 1971 to 1977 and was meant for children who had graduated from Sesame Street. The original cast featured such talent as Morgan Freeman, Bill Cosby, and Rita Moreno, and it was very successful. One of the recurring segments, beginning in 1974, was "Spidey Super Stories", which featured Spidey taking on different bad guys, none of whom were from the comics. One interesting feature of the shorts was that, despite being live action, Spider-Man spoke in word balloons to help children learn how to read.

This Spidey was mentioned in Spider-Verse #2 (January 2015), along with another Spider-Man. But whereas (speculation time) that Spider-Man may only be mentioned because they don't have the rights to use him, I think this one may only be mentioned because it'd be hard to convey that his word balloons are actual word balloons, whereas everyone else's word balloons are just speech.

Spider-Verse: Turn Off the Dark

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. (Although see here for more information on that.)

Today's entry is Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.

Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark is a 2011 Broadway musical by Julie Taymor, the woman behind The Lion King Broadway musical, Across the Universe, and several other things. If you're familiar with her work, you can definitely tell she did it. The sets, especially, are her all over, which means they're quite inventive. They use weird angles, perspectives, and optical illusions to make the stage feel like a comic book panel or to see the world how Spidey sees it; there are several moving parts, such as conveyor belts and panels that rise and lower, and projectors are used to distort scenes or otherwise enhance them

That being said, the production was pretty much a mess from Day 1. The villains costumes are atrocious, and the story wasn't much better, because it tried to tie the whole thing to Arachne and make her the villain, and because of its Greek ties, it included something called the Geek Chorus. The story was eventually rewritten to diminish the unwanted elements as much as possible...but not get rid of them entirely, which probably turned out even weirder. Another problem was that the musical featured extensive use of wire work and aerial stunts, which makes sense, but frequently injured cast members.

Even so, this version of Spider-Man was mentioned in Spider-Verse #2 (January 2015), along with a second Spider-Man:

Spider-Verse: Turkish 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.

*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. (Although see here for more information on that.)

Today's entry is Turkish Spider-Man.

What's that, you say? You didn't know there was a Turkish Spider-Man? That's because there's not. Officially. See, back in the lawless 1970s, there was little movie produced in Turkey called 3 Dev Adam, which translates to "3 Giant Men".

As you might be able to tell from the poster, this movie is about Spider-Man, Captain America, and a luchadore named Santo (who is 100% a real person). What you definitely cannot tell, however, is that Spider-Man is a villain, or that he looks like this:

See, this Spider-Man is a crime lord with a gang (Spider's Gang) who, appropriately enough, has been counterfeiting US dollars. Captain America finds out and is none too pleased, so he teams up with his girlfriend Julia and his favorite wrestler (I'm guessing??) Santo to take down Spider-Man and break up the counterfeiting ring. Unauthorized materials are weird.

Anyway, this Spider-Man showed up in a crowd shot in Spider-Verse #2 (January 2015).

Spider-Verse: Spider-Man The Manga

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. (Although see here for more information on that.)

Today's entry is Spider-Man: The Manga.

In the 1970s, Marvel tried to bring Spider-Man comics to Japan, but they were not very successful. Instead, Japan tried again with Spider-Man: The Manga, originally written by Kosei Ono and drawn by Ryoichi Ikegami. The manga told the story of Yu Komori, a high school student who gains spider powers and starts to fight crime as Spider-Man. Overall the series was pretty faithful to the original comic, except that the radioactive spider came from Yu's own experiments and he didn't decide to start fighting crime because his uncle died (though he does have an aunt Mei). Originally the series adapted Spider-Man villains, but when Kosei Ono was replaced with Kazumasa Hirai, the book started to go in its own more violent, more sexual direction.

In Spider-Verse #2 (January 2015), a Spider-Man counters the idea that all Spider-Men are Peter Parker with the fact that he met a Japanese kid named Komori:

In case you're wondering about the other Japanese Spider-Men that Spider-Man Black mentions, you can find out more here and here. There's also another one, which you can learn more about by googling "Marvel Mangaverse".

Spider-Verse: Marvel Vs Capcom

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. (Although see here for more information on that.)

Today's entry is Marvel vs. Capcom Spider-Man!

The Marvel/Capcom relationship first began in 1994 when Capcom made The Punisher, a side-scrolling beat 'em up. This was followed by X-Men: Children of the Atom (1994) and Marvel Super Heroes (1995), two fighting games that created the basic format of the Marvel vs. Capcom series using only Marvel characters. Capcom would mix these with their hit Street Fighter series in X-Men vs. Street Fighter (1996) and Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter (1997), and then finally brought other characters into the mix in Marvel vs. Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes (1998), which led to Marvel vs. Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes (2000), Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds (2011), Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 (2011), and Marvel vs. Capcom Origins (2012). It also led to a slew of other Capcom vs. titles that aren't relevant here. Of these games, Spider-Man appears in all but The Punisher, X-Men: Children of the Atom, and X-Men vs. Street Fighter. Makes sense.

Just like Spider-Verse #1 featured a couple short stories about Spider-Men from other media, Spider-Verse #2 (January 2015) does as well, and this time it's arcade Spider-Man:

"Web Ball", "Spider Sting", and "Maximum Spider" are special moves featured in all of the games he appears in. Morlun, however, has never appeared in the games.

Spider-Verse: Movie Spider-Men (!!!)

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.


...at least, that's what my Spider-Verse boilerplate has been saying, but haha! The writers tricked us! Or maybe tricked Sony, I'm not sure. Either way...

Today's entry is the movie Spider-Men!

Of course, we'll never actually see them, but they were clearly referred to in Spider-Verse #2 (January 2015):

Spider-Man Blue is clearly referring to Tobey Maguire, who played Red Pollard in the 2003 horse-racing movie based on a true story, Seabiscuit. But more importantly, he also played Peter Parker/Spider-Man in Sony's Spider-Man (2002), Spider-Man 2 (2004), and Spider-Man 3 (2007).

And Spider-Man Black is talking about Andrew Garfield, who played Eduardo Saverin in The Social Network (2010), but also played Peter Parker/Spider-Man in The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014). Whether he'll continue in this role remains to be seen.

This is big news. The Spider-Verse writers have mentioned that there are eight Spider-Men they aren't able to use, and although it doesn't seem like anyone knows who the eight officially are, the top two always mentioned are Maguire and Garfield. (Other possible ones include Spider-Man: The New Animated Series, Spider-Man (CBS), Spectacular Spider-Man, Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, Electric Company, and the Amalgam comics characters Spider-Boy, Spider-Boy 2099, and Unfriendly Neighborhood Spider-Clone #1. As you can see, that's more than eight; Spider-Boy has in fact appeared, although perhaps illegally, and Electric Company was listed in the examples of every Spider-Man ever appearing, so that one's probably ok.) But even though we'll never see them, we know they're out there, somewhere, fighting for the rest of the multiverse along with the rest of their spider-brethren.

Just A Small Little Thing: The Stark Industries Logo

Even though Stark Industries has existed in the comics since 1963, it never really had a logo. When the name did appear on a building or product (usually a building), the name has been written simply and inconsistently, like so:

This is true as recently as Avengers Vs. X-Men #1 (April 2012):

So when they made the movie Iron Man (2008), they had to create a logo for the company, and they came up with one that was simple, sleek, adaptable, and recognizable. That is to say, it's a pretty good one.

And I don't know if this is the absolute first appearance of it in comics, but it definitely appeared in this month's Ant-Man #1 (January 2015) when Scott Lang is looking for a new job.

UPDATE (6/28/16): I have found an earlier instance in Moon Knight #9 (November 2014). It's not the full logo, but it's obviously derived from it.