Photo Credit: Sony Pictures
It’s not unusual for a Marvel movie to pull from the comics, or vice versa. Several characters, like the Guardians of the Galaxy, who have become major fan favorites thanks to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, have been rewritten on the page to match the characterization of their big-screen counterparts.
However, for possibly the first time, the comics and the movies will be running with the same idea at roughly the same time. With the unveiling of the Midnight Universe today, it seems that both Midnight Spider-Man and Marvel Studios’ Spider-Man: Brand New Day will be taking their versions of Peter Parker down a monstrous path.
Peter Parker is going through a mutation in both Brand New Day and Midnight Spider-Man
Midnight Spider-Man will focus on a young Peter Parker who is “transformed into a hideous spider hybrid by the ruthless Oscorp Corporation in their pursuit for eternal life,” per the comic’s logline. Brand New Day has already teased a similar version of events happening to Peter in the MCU. In the first trailer, Bruce Banner warned Peter that if his “DNA is mutating, it would be enormously dangerous.”
Mutation isn’t an entirely new concept for the superhero. Spider-Man: The Animated Series previously mutated the hero into Man-Spider as part of its “The Six Arms Saga” adaptation, while the comic book storyline “The Other” saw Spider-Man being reborn with new spider-powers after emerging from a cocoon.
While it’s doubtful that Brand New Day will go so far as to have Peter mutate into Man-Spider, given that it’s still a PG-13 movie that needs to appeal to the entire family, the Midnight Universe is being marketed with the tagline, “The Light Had Its Turn,” meaning that fans should expect darker versions of the Marvel superheroes.
Leaning into the spider side of Peter Parker’s DNA is being done to keep Spider-Man fresh with casual audiences. I, for one, cannot wait to check out both Midnight Spider-Man and Spider-Man: Brand New Day to see how these two wildly different projects tackle such similar subject matter.
So, while the extent of Peter Parker’s mutation in the MCU remains to be seen (although it does look like organic web-shooters are on the way), one thing has become abundantly clear with the Midnight Universe announcement today: Marvel is not afraid of shaking things up with Spider-Man. And after the success of the 2024 Ultimate Spider-Man series, can we really blame them?
