Sony’s big holiday season PlayStation 5 exclusive this year is Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, the follow-up to Insomniac Games’ 2017 Game of the Year contender. As mentioned in our review, this blockbuster is one of the strongest takes on the iconic webslinging superhero to date thanks to a tight narrative which holistically expands upon its predecessors.
No superhero tale lives in a vacuum, however. Behind each new iteration lies sixty years of tales which can subtly influence the “language” of a Spider-Man. Though the team at Insomniac set out to put their own unique mark upon the hero’s mythos—as Creative Director, Bryan Intihar told us back in June—the character’s history is inescapable.
So, if you’re about to dive into Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, or if it leaves you wanting to see more from these classic characters, there is a veritable gold mine of storylines in the comics that make an excellent complement to this holiday-season blockbuster. Some are origin stories for characters shown in the game’s trailers, while others include moments that define their identities—watershed moments for some of Marvel’s most memorable heroes and villains.
Honorable Mention: Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 (2023) #1
If you snagged this exclusive single issue at Free Comic Book Day, or through other selective distribution methods, or even on the Marvel Unlimited service, the official tie-in comic is too obvious to include earnestly. As an intermission between Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales and Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, we see Miles, Peter, and Mary Jane finding their balance as the couple returns from their trip to Symkaria and adjusts to life with two Spider-Men. It’s a fun little slice-of-life that helps set the sequel’s stage.
5) Spider-Verse
Before Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, there was the comic event Spider-Verse, which (as you might imagine) featured variant spider-heroes from all corners of the multiverse. When a cabal of vampires begins murdering each world’s version of Spider-Man, those heroes must join forces to not only beat the undead villains, but to survive.
Well before their team-up in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, the comic iterations of Peter Parker and Miles Morales crossed paths for the first time in this event. Soon after, Miles migrated to the “proper” Marvel Comics timeline, Earth-616, when the Ultimate comic universe ended.
Not only is this a pivotal moment in the history of both men, Spider-Verse is almost essential reading for any fan of the character. It features the first appearance of Spider-Gwen, heavily informs the world of the blockbuster animated films, and is a great introduction to the various alternate-universe spider-heroes seen both in Across the Spider-Verse and in the game’s staggering closet of costumes.
4) Venom
The villain known as Venom has haunted Spider-Man since the “Black Suit Saga” in the mid-80s, quickly ascending to the upper ranks of the webslinger’s rogue’s gallery. Peter picked up a strange symbiotic organism while in deep space with an all-star team of Marvel icons during the original Secret Wars storyline. What seemed like a handy tool for both fighting crime and living his daily life soon proved to be corrupting the hero, and he discards it—only for the organism to bond with his real life rival, Eddie Brock.
The iconic villain debuted properly in The Amazing Spider-Man (1963) #300 and has been a thorn in Peter Parker’s side since. He’s popped up in movies like Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 3, taken his own starring roles in comics and film, and practically spawned a full franchise in his own right. Now Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 brings this dastardly foe into Insomniac Games’ own mini-Marvel universe.
Given Venom’s popularity, the original storyline has been collected and reprinted many times, like in Marvel’s “Epic Collection” line, and can be found on the Marvel Unlimited service. It’s a classic run that any Spider-Man fan should read at least once—not only for setting up one of the hero’s best villains, but because it’s peak eighties comics. The legendary Todd MacFarlane, creator of Spawn, illustrated most of the storyline, giving Venom his iconic look.
3) Maximum Carnage
If the origins of Venom are peak eighties, Maximum Carnage is peak nineties. In the five years following Venom’s debut, Marvel capitalized on his instant popularity by creating an even more diabolical offspring of the black symbiote: Carnage, a red symbiote that bonds with serial killer Cletus Kasady. The 14-part crossover event Maximum Carnage sees him break out of Ravencroft Asylum to rampage across New York with a cabal of other likeminded villains, like Shriek and the Doppelganger Spider-Man.
This leads to an unlikely alliance between Spider-Man and Venom, along with a handful of other Marvel heroes. The struggle between Peter’s refusal to kill Cletus and Eddie’s insistence that it’s the only way to be rid of Carnage for good is a foundational philosophical moment for the hero—and it relates to the way Insomniac’s Peter thinks in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2.
In a lot of ways, Maximum Carnage became a template for future events like Spider-Island, Spider-Verse, and Absolute Carnage, and for that alone it’s worth a read. It also spawned a beat-em-up by the same name on SNES and Genesis which, despite a mixed reception, was one of the best early Spider-Man games until Neversoft, Treyarch, and then Insomniac raised the bar.
2) Kraven’s Last Hunt
Venom’s announcement for Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 brought instant hype, but he’s far from the only threat facing the Spider-Men this time around. The more immediate threat is Sergei Kravinoff, also known as Kraven the Hunter, who turns New York City into his own personal safari ground for hunting super-powered heroes. Naturally, Spider-Man ends up becoming his prime target. Like any tale involving Kraven, it draws from the 1987 crossover/miniseries Kraven’s Last Hunt, written by J.M. DeMatteis and illustrated by Mike Zeck.
In this event, Kraven finally succeeds in hunting Spider-Man, shooting and burying him. If that wasn’t enough, he puts on the hero’s (black, non-symbiotic) costume and “completes” his victory by becoming Spider-Man, or at least, a more vicious version of him. Eventually Spider-Man awakens from the tranquilizer which Kraven shot him with and escapes from the grave for a dramatic finale.
As a cornerstone moment for Kraven’s characterization, echoes of this iteration’s personality can be seen in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2. Plus, Kraven’s impersonation of Spider-Man helps define what the real hero stands for, as the people of New York recognize that something about the webslinger has changed—a theme that turns up in the game as well.
1) Spider-Men
Most of these suggestions have been essential reads for the villains of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, but we would be remiss not to include the first real team-up of Peter Parker and Miles Morales. Before they fought together in Spider-Verse, or before Miles moved to Peter’s Earth-616 in Secret Wars, they crossed paths in Spider-Men, a 5-issue miniseries by Brian Michael Bendis and Sara Pichelli.
Peter is teleported to the Ultimate universe by Mysterio, a timeline where Peter Parker has supposedly died and been replaced by Miles Morales (a beat that the Spider-Verse films have adopted). Given the Ultimate universe’s history with clones, the heroes’ first meeting is not entirely friendly, but before long they join forces against Mysterio’s machinations.
The miniseries set the tone for Peter and Miles’ relationship long before they cohabitated one universe for the long-term. That same mentor-mentee dynamic seen in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 and Into the Spider-Verse began here, in a fun, relatively self-contained story—plus there’s a taste of multiversal meta-humour as Peter interacts with the Ultimate counterparts of loved ones like Gwen Stacy. With Marvel bringing the Ultimate universe back next year, it could even double as an appetizer for that new paradigm.
As a longtime Spider-Man fan who dove into the comics as soon as he could read, I adore what the studio has done with their unique take on the character’s universe, especially now, on the other side of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2‘s ambitious campaign. If they continue drawing on the essence of the tales that came before in this fashion for years to come, I could not be happier.
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is available now, exclusively on the PlayStation 5. Read our review here.)
