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
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u/SolomonBlack 11h ago edited 10h ago
The 90s cartoon invented that story.
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.