Spider-Verse Field Guide: Know Your Spiders
By Nick Tylwalk
Scarlet Spider
Kaine Parker, Earth-616
Dan Slott’s into caption in Amazing Spider-Man #9 pretty much nails it by calling Kaine “Spidey’s darker, brooding clone.” But can you really blame him? This is one clone who has been through some stuff.
I mean, he’s not just a copy of Peter Parker, but a failed one at that, discarded by the Jackal after he began to degenerate. Out of a twisted sense of clone togetherness, he tried to help Peter when everyone thought he was the clone and Ben Reilly was the original, and …
You know what, this is too much to get into here. Let’s just say that Kaine has most of Peter’s powers, a couple of extra ones, a cool red costume, and a desire to finally try to do the right thing, and we’ll just leave it at that. We’ve seen him most recently with the New Warriors, which is where Morlun’s brother finds him to begin his stint in Spider-Verse.
Spider-Man
Bruce Banner, Earth-70105
If there’s one thing we’ve learned during the road to Spider-Verse, it’s that on some other worlds, someone other than Peter Parker becomes Spider-Man. That’s the case on Earth-70105, where Bruce Banner becomes Spider-Man instead of the Hulk, probably a trade-off he would take in a heartbeat.
We’ll never get a chance to ask him about that, though, as this Banner sadly falls into the “cannon fodder” category of Spider-Men. After getting his spine broken by Morlun’s brother Karn, we next see him on the Inheritors’ table for the feast in the backup story in Amazing Spider-Man #9. A life turning into the Hulk sounds pretty good compared to that.
Old Man Spider
Identity Unknown, Earth-4
We don’t know who this is, yet. He wears a costume similar to the one Spidey wore in Spider-Man: Reign, a dark tale of a possible future in which an older Peter Parker has to come out of retirement to deal with an authoritarian government and some of his greatest foes. It was also notable for making something other than a joke out of the Hypno-Hustler, which is pretty amazing if you think about it.
That story was said to take place on Earth-70237, so this isn’t that Spider-Man. It could be a different but still older version of Peter, or it could be someone else entirely. We’ll just have to wait and see if the revelation of his true identity is somehow important to the overall Spider-Verse saga.