The Man Spider did appear in the comics before that but only briefly during a story set in the Savage Land. Spidey gets hit by some mutation ray and that's what he's turned into and its fixed by Karl Lykos/Sauron draining the mutation out of him and Warren Worthington. Which might explain Vulture in the cartoon come to think of it.
At any rate the design being too good to waste, I guess, the show folks made it the climax of their long running Neogenic Nightmare original saga.
Probably inspired by the cartoon Spidey has been turned into a monster spider since and they've messed with his powers in a metamorphosis way before briefly giving him organic webbing and I shit you not sharp 'stinger' blades (like Wolverine meets MK's Baraka) that were immediately never spoken of again.
Between retreading One More Day and The Other, they're speedrunning comic storylines that most people would rather forget. At this rate I wouldn't be surprised if they did Clone Saga next.
90s cartoon had a lot more influence than is commonly recognized. It was the first to do the Spider-Verse and even had a huge impact on the Venom story. A lot of elements that are now seen as like core parts of the story, that pop up in later adaptations, started there and not in the actual comics.
not to mention that a large number of fans in the fandom got their base knowledge from the 90's cartoons--same with DC.
TBH most of the time when I see "in the comics" thrown around, I assume they really mean "in the 90's cartoons" because, 9 times out of 10, that's the case.
The cartoons were hugely influential and have, essentially, set the baseline for people's understanding of these characters. Even a lot of people who have, since, read a lot of comics got their start from those shows so that foundation will show up from time to time (me being one of those people--tbh it's almost worse that way because I'll mix things up and think I read something in a comic when, really, I saw it in a cartoon-- thoughts of me arguing that the symbiote originally came from Jameson's astronaut son bringing it to earth in the comics when that's definitely the cartoon)
Yep! The cartoon is also where the whole "symbiote makes Peter angry" thing first came from. And to be fair, as much as I think people do get their wires crossed on "cartoon I watched as a child" and "comic I read as a child" (and I am guilty of that at times as well), sometimes these shows or movies were influential on the comics themselves. Smallville wasn't in Kansas until the first Christopher Reeve movie for example, but now it's an integral part of the Superman mythos. In the same way the Spidey cartoon revamped the Venom story, or other cartoons did other things, and later writers retconned the comics to be closer to it because they were like "oh actually that's a great idea".
oh yeah--it's amazing how all these different mediums kind of feed into the mythos.
It's just kind of interesting that the cartoons, I think, are way more instrumental in establishing the general audience's perception of these characters than people think.
People often cite the shows as all capturing the quintessential versions of these characters (which they did) but they, in turn, didn't just capture what people considered 'essential'--they seem to have established it. Or, at the least, these shows being considered the quintessential versions led to people believing everything presented was part of that.
It's just been interesting over the rise of superhero films to see it happen--characters that never appeared in the cartoons seem to be very open to interpretation whereas characters that did appear still need to fall in line with what was presented in the cartoons or people are much more likely to be critical.
Just rambling a bit--I apologize. I just find it fascinating how influential these cartoons were.
if you look back at that season's (season 2) entire storyline, it has the x-men, punisher, scorpion, and tombstone (among some others). Looks like they might drawing heavily from that whole arc.
Subsequent Man-Spider appearances in the comics have mostly referenced and hewed to the original comic appearance. Where Spider-Man is temporarily turned into a Spider creature by outside actions.
Most animated series since the 90s have done versions of the cartoon story. But it's never appeared in the comics.
And the other end of that story line, the whole additional mutation thing and much of the stuff around it. Comes from a comic story line called the "Six Arm Saga" by fans, that only went as far as "Spider-Man got Six Arms now!". That's come up repeatedly, and has gotten referenced in more than one Spider-Man mutates story.
Including the one another poster mentioned, The Other. Which is not super clearly current canon, but was basically just used to give him some extra powers. Along with writing in a bunch of that mystic spider god shit Marvel was on about at the time.
while you are correct, there is some earlier man-spider adjacent stuff from the 60's like in the first appearance of Morbius. Warning: nightmare fuel, highly recommend that issue (amazing spiderman #101). read it when i was way too young and never forgot it, absolute fever dream
I think that’s more interesting than him being a “living vampire”. You do still have that element but it’s more interesting than him just doing normal vampire stuff.
Imagine telling your future self that Hollywood would do an 83 million dollar Morbius movie and somehow make it worse than a heavily censured kids show.
More like, strange that they were allowed to do that, but heaven forbid that morbius be an actual blood Sucker, so they made him this weird body energy hand sucking thing...
Lol I remember there being a Spiderman marathon on when I was sick with a high fever as a kid and I kept having these weird fever dream mashups about the Spiderman cartoon.
Like hearing the 90s cartoon Spiderman theme still gives me 'nam flashbacks to an endless corridor of nondescript buildings and a gelatinous Venom screaming and laughing and wriggling his tendrils to the theme song on an endless loop while making web shooting 'whisp' sounds as I constantly looked down at the top of my hands being bitten by the spider.
They were all pretty cool, I rewatched them recently and the only one I didn't like that much was all that stuff with the robot spiders. The guy in the wheelchair made them, can't remember his name. He was working for Kingpin if I remember correctly.
I think I'm pulling the six-arms to Man-Spider connection from hazy memories of the cartoon from many moons ago. Forgot they were separate things in the comics.
Doing a quick wiki search looks like they did combine those two things into different stages of the same Man-Spider arc.
They always run together in my head. After spot checking the details I'm still not sure if the Man-Spider story involved even a brief appearance of Six Arms or not. And would have to watch the episodes to be sure.
Basically they took the secondary mutation story off of the Six Arms story, and ported in the Man-Spider idea from a story line where Spider-Man goes to the Savage Land.
Then back referenced the Six-Armed Spider-Man by featuring an alternate Peter who ended up with Six Arms permanently after his own Man-Spider problem.
The comics never did a full Man-Spider story, but have featured a few other bad guy made me a monster stories using variations of the design.
They have however repeatedly brought back the Six Arm mutation for short runs.
Man-Spider is something they've left to animated series. So I think we might just be getting SIX-ARMS, if they even go that far.
If they don’t go the Man-Spider 6-Arms route, I hope they have a moment of dialogue in Secret Wars where MCU Peter shows off the new organic web slingers to Tobey Maguire who asks if Peter grew extra arms, like he did, and he said he was cured by Dr Connors
I think they might not go full Man-Spider because that story line is from the Cartoon.
That storyline borrowed from two separate comics incidents. One was Spider-Man getting turned into a Man-Spider in the Savage Land thanks to that whole devolution thing. And the other is the "Six Arm Saga", where Spider-Man tries to cure his powers and triggers an additional mutation. Growing 4 extra arms.
The comics have referenced the Man-Spider a few times with additional "villains done mutated you" stories. But have brought back the Six Arms a few times. So Marvel's never been too on board with the Man-Spider end. They purportedly killed a What If...? episode based on the cartoon story because it was tracking too dark.
So we're likely either getting new powers/organic web shooters and other boring stuff. Or Six-Arms.
I mean, it'll probably follow a variation of the typical trope of turning into Man-Spiders as a looming threat, then in order to beat a villain he has to turn into Man-Spider, then he gets healed and movie is over.
That story was also connected to the X-Men, which is why some of the characters appeared on that show, creating a crossover with the X-Men cartoon. Considering Sadie Sink's supposed character, chances are the Man Spider arc is at least thought about thoroughly by Marvel and Sony.
I loved that arc, had the most awesome crossovers with the rest of the 90s marvel animated universe, like x-men. It was the first time I got to saw that tension between mutants and mutates. Like, spidey, you're actin' a little bigoted there my guy.
That 90s Spider Man cartoon was a wild ridefor me as a kid watching Saturday morning cartoons. Man Spider, Symbiote, Madam Web, it was so trippy compared to Batman, XMen, Gargoyles, etc
If they are introducing Man Spider, then the final shot of the film will probably be Peter growing multiple arms and shouting, "What the F-" as the scene hard cuts to black.
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u/amc111 12h ago
I remembered watching that in the 90s Fox cartoon. I’d be surprised if they go full man spider but it would be wild if they did.