What exactly is the Spider-Verse?
With the upcoming movie Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse looming ahead, you may be asking yourself, what, exactly, is this so-called Spider-Verse?
In short, the Spider-Verse is kind of a loose name for all the different Spider-Men and Spider-Women from all the different alternate universes in Marvel. At various points over the last several years, multiple universes' versions of Spider-Man have met, fought together, and sometimes died in battle, pretty much all of which occurred in the Spider-Verse story arc of the comic series The Amazing Spider-Man.
In the latest Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse trailer, we seem to be getting just a little taste of that, with at least three different versions of Spidey coming together in one story: There's the original Spider-Man Peter Parker, his protégé and Spider-Man successor Miles Morales, and Gwen Stacy as Spider-Woman (a.k.a. Spider-Gwen).
Originally, all three of these characters came from separate universes. Peter Parker came from the most well-known universe where pretty much all the big stories have happened since Marvel comics began (known as Earth-616). Meanwhile Miles Morales came from the Marvel Ultimate universe but came to Earth-616 not long after being introduced. The Spider-Woman version of Gwen Stacy comes from a third universe, Earth-65, where Gwen gets bit by a radioactive spider instead of Peter.
The trailer for Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse isn't exactly clear about whether the characters come from different universes — probably because that would be a lot to throw at people in a trailer — but that's likely the case.
Into the Spider-Verse may be setting up a larger Spider-Verse story similar to the one that graced the pages of Amazing Spider-Man in 2014 and '15. If that's the case, expect a lot of inter-dimensional travel, time travel, and a whole lot of Spider-Men.
The Spider-Verse story arc from the comics contained every single version of Spidey that has ever existed and then some. There was a future version of Spider-Man, Cyborg Spider-Man, Animated Spider-Man, Vampire Spider-Man, Spider-Girl, and an anthropomorphic pig named Peter Porker, a.k.a. Spider-Ham.
The Spider-Verse storyline involves a family known as The Inheritors from Earth-1 hunting down all of the different Spider-Men and feeding on them. It's pretty rough, and they manage to kill quite a few Spider-Men.
If Into the Spider-Verse dives that deep into the Spider-Verse, that would be quite the spectacle. Based on the trailer, though, it looks like Marvel is just dipping its toes into the Spider-Verse on the big screen. At least for now.
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse arrives in theaters Dec. 25.
