With the new spider-man movie, Spider-Man: Crossing the Multiverse, taking theaters by storm, we may wonder what so many wall-crawlers are doing together. Where do they come from? There are many. A few are Peter Parker, like the original; others are relatives, like Uncle Ben or even a daughter, or a first girlfriend, Gwen Stacy; but there are also Indians, Japanese –with a mecha robot included–, or even a pig, yes, Spiderham –named Peter Porker–. Not to mention Miles Morales, the most recent of those who have continuity, even anointed as a successor for the new –perhaps not so new– generations of readers.
Each one of them forms part of its own multiverse, one of the parallel worlds that physics theory postulates and that literature, and especially science fiction, has been exploring for decades –with authors such as Terry Pratchett or Stephen King–, but which has become popular especially from Marvel superhero movies, such as Doctor Strange in the multiverse of madness (2022).
The multiverses are widely explored by all Marvel superheroes, the house of ideas, and they are also the cause of one of the most popular, Spiderman, being currently represented on paper, above all by two very different characters who bear this title. : Peter Parker and Miles Morales. Each one is in bookstores with their own series and also in theaters, either in the cycle of the so-called UCM (the Marvel Cinematic Universe) or in the animated films Spider-Man: A New Universe, first, and the current Spider -Man: Crossing the multiverse.
Let’s remember that the story of the wall-crawler begins in 1962, when a cartoon about the new superhero appeared on the pages of Amazing Fantasy magazine, with a script by Stan Lee and drawings by Steve Ditko. It was so successful that they closed it to dedicate themselves to spider-man, whose first number came out a few months later: this series, Amazing Spider-Man (in Spanish, The Amazing Spiderman), is one of the three in production today and the main one, 60 years later and with more than 900 deliveries. This is where the main characters have come from, whether they are friends or antagonists, with various creators: Lee left the scripts from number 100, while the drawing had already passed in 1966 by John Romita –died on June 12–, who signed one of the most outstanding periods, with art that passed on to his son, John Romita jr., who today runs the series, with scripts by Zeb Wells.
In addition to this, there is also what is simply called Spider-Man, born in 1991 at the hands of Todd McFarlane, and currently run by Dan Slott and Mark Bagley in a series called The End of the Spider-Man Universe and which, precisely, brings together many of alternate realities around spiders.
And, of course, the series around Miles Morales continues, the young man who has led to his most important renewal and who stars in the latest animated films.
About their particular universes: Marvel numerically names each incarnation of reality, many based on our Earth, but with the additions that the history of the publications has been shaping. Thus, Earth-616 is the main universe of Marvel superhero comics, where both the original Peter Parker and the Avengers or the X-Patrol are present. Instead, the universe where the Miles Morales from the comics comes from is Earth-1610, where the new Spider-Man gains his powers shortly before the Spidey there dies trying to save the world from him. The world of cinema is a separate case, since, although a large part of the UCM takes place on Earth-199999, the series of films by Sam Raimi take place on Earth-96283, and those by Marc Webb, on the other hand, on the Earth-120703. Thanks to this separation, the three were able to converge in Spider-Man: No Way Home.
And all this without neglecting the reissues, not only of the classics –with all the convoluted plots, with points and asides and the various reboots in other multiverses–, but also of the alternative ones that had not been published here, like the first in which the Indian Spiderman, Pavitr Prabhakar, or Peter Porker’s, Spiderham, appeared in Spanish recently. There are many spiders, yes, but these are not scary.
Catalan version, here
