The Many Lives of Peter Parker in Secret Wars
By C.T. Smith
Secret Wars has been firing on all thrusters for the past couple of months, and I thought this would be an opportune time to take a quick look at the many lives of Peter Parker. Battleworld is a harsh planet, and in most cases life isn’t going too well for our favorite web-slinger, and it seems even different versions of spidey can’t escape the good ol’ Parker luck; but fret not, the Spider-Man of Earth-616 that we all know and love is alive and kicking despite the events that brought about the destruction of the universe. Let’s jump right in.
Having been chosen as one of the worthy, and lucky, few that boarded the incursion proof ship built before the end of all days, Peter and company were unearthed and released by Sheriff Strange (the OG Doctor Strange) eight years after Doom patched together Battleworld from remnants of realities. Unfortunately they ran into God Doom, and Doom wasn’t too happy about their presence. Luckily, Sheriff Strange was able to magically scatter them to the winds.
Name:
Peter Parker, family man. |
Status:
Depowered |
Location:
Arachnia.
Next up is another Peter who was living with his family incognito. Unfortunately in this case, his daughter has inherited spider-powers in a city where a power stealing, hero murdering despot named Regent is hunting down powered people. This Peter Parker went into hiding on the day Regent rose to power and slayed both the X-Men and the Avengers, only to take up the mantle of Spider-Man once more to protect his daughter and those around him. This Peter is ruthless, deadly, and dons his the black costume that seems to reflect that nature (such as when he wore it and beat down the Kingpin way back when); but in the end he proves that no matter what, Peter Parker has some heroism in him. He’s currently chilling in Regent’s headquarters with the good ol’ Sandman.
Name:
Peter Parker, Dad |
Status:
Captured |
Location:
The Regency
Rounding out the “Mephisto deal never happened” Peter Parkers is the mechanical wing using, always stoic, and non-costume wearing Spider-Man of the
Civil War
. Operating as the right hand man of the leader of the Blue, Captain America, Peter lives apart from his wife and child and is an integral part of the war against the Iron. A man who does not joke, this Peter does not take what happened during the Civil War lightly, and is openly aggressive toward Tony Stark and his side. In order to turn the tide of the war, he’s currently infiltrating the Iron to extract materials needed to operate a machine called Project Bellcurve, a machine that will change the tides. In my personal opinion, he’s pretty darn cool. Click next for part 2!
Name
: Blue Peter Parker. |
Status
: Sneaky. |
Location
: The Warzone.
Now we’ll have a moment of silence for our next Spideys. The first one is the shiny and robotic Peter Urich, otherwise known as Spyder-Man. He lived in Technopolis, a futuristic city where a disease forces every citizen to wear Iron-Man like armor, designed by brothers Tony and Arno Stark. Much to the chagrin of Peter’s friends, including an upgraded War-Machine Thor, he was viciously murdered. If you want to know more, such as who killed him, and how awesome he looks in his armor, then you’ll have to take a visit to the city itself in Armor Wars.
Name:
Peter Urich. |
Status:
Dead and Holey. |
Location:
6 Feet Under, Technopolis.
If you recall the 2011 event “Spider-Island,” you’ll know that Peter led a final push against the Spider-Queen who spread a virus that imbued the citizens of Manhattan with Spider-Man-esque powers. In return, they eventually transformed into mindless spider monsters. With the help of his hero friends, and a Kaine fastball special, they were able to slay the queen and restore order. Secret Wars gave the queen a second chance, and this time, Peter Parker failed in his rally and ended up dying (according to Agent Venom’s first hand account) -leaving Venom, Vision, and Spider-Woman to lead a resistance against the spiderized version of their friends. It turns out Peter was alive the whole time, and has freshly been busted out to resume his fight against the Queen. You can read the review of Spider-Island #3 here.
Name:
The Peter Parker who couldn’t. |
Status:
Not Dead! |
Location:
Spider-Island.
Continuing the list is a Spider-Man who’s in a peculiar situation. He’s mashed between a take on the heroes of 616 and the Ultimate heroes of Earth-1610. Right now he’s heading toward a crash course with the Ultimate heroes and it doesn’t look like it’s going to turn out too well -with God Doom watching his experiment and deciding not to stop the impending clash and a crazed Punisher preparing to snipe every costumed hero in his sights. While these don’t seem to be the true versions of the heroes (maybe some of them are) there is one more Spider-Man… an Ultimate Spider-Man who’s about to drop the word “Ultimate” from his name, on the way. And this time, he’s the real deal. You can read Stillanerd’s review of the latest issue of Ultimate End here.
Names:
Peter Parker (not pictured) & Miles Morales. |
Status:
Swinging into action. |
Location:
Beatdown Town.
And there you have it, this is a quick recap of the Peter Parker’s/Spider-Men milling around Battleworld. There are definitely more Spideys not in this list though, a Modok Spidey, some kind of Wolverine Spidey maybe, a version of Prowler who’s wearing a Spider-Man cowl, and though I haven’t seen him just yet I’m sure there’s a patient zero zombie Spider-Man skulking around somewhere. I’m interested to see where all these Peters end up, and to finish off this list, I’ll leave you with baby Spider-Man, who is definitely having a better time on Battleworld than any of his counterparts.
Name:
Pete. |
Status:
Having fun. |
Location:
Marville.
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