Spider-Verse Field Guide: Know Your Spiders

Spider-Woman

Gwen Stacy, Earth-65

In Spider-Verse, she’s introduced as “your new favorite,” a description that seems to have ticked off some readers but one that this writer took as a tongue in cheek acknowledgement of the fact that many fans love Gwen Stacy and that a Spider-Gwen, as she’s also known, was bound to be a slam dunk.

On her Earth, Gwen got bitten by a radioactive spider instead of Peter Parker. With everything twisted around, Peter ends up using his scientific mind to transform himself into the Lizard, and Spider-Gwen ends up getting branded as a menace when Peter dies during one of their battles. Her power and responsibility equation is a little different since she was forced to reveal her identity to her dad, a police Captain who presumably should help hunt her down.

She’s also getting her own series that will spin out of Spider-Verse, so we can assume Dan Slott isn’t going to kill her off.

Spider-Man

Ben Reilly, Earth-94

The Ben Reilly of the main Marvel Earth is dead. How can we get one into Spider-Verse anyway? Simple! Just have him come from another world.

In any case, this Ben surprised the prime Peter Parker by being alive. He’s wearing the costume the 616 Ben wore during his stint as Spider-Man, complete with the web-shooters on the outside. Anything else we need to know will presumably unfold during the event.

Cosmic Spider-Man

Peter Parker, Earth-13

Once upon a time not long ago, when people wore pajamas and lived life slow …

Sorry, that’s something else. Once upon a time, our Peter Parker accidentally ended up bonding with the Uni-Power and gaining the vaguely defined but incredibly awesome powers of Captain Universe. It also gave him a spiffy new costume, as well as a reason for writers to have Spidey fight villains that would otherwise squash him like a bug.

He was eventually forced to give up the powers, because otherwise it’d seem like he was just trying to continually one-up Captain Planet. However the Peter of Earth-13 never gave up his cosmic might, giving the spiders a safe home base from which to operate against the Inheritors.

Dan Slott even provided a good explanation as to why Cosmic Spider-Man doesn’t go kick the Inheritors’ butts himself: he can’t, as his powers are linked to his home dimension. Convenient but satisfying.