by Nick Dowell
If you’re at all into comics, it’s likely you’ve recently heard about the biggest event in Spider-Man history: The Spider-Verse.
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| Edge of Spider-Verse #2 features Gwen Stacy as a Spider-Woman who also plays drums in a rock band. |
While the plot is exciting, it’s not the coolest part about this event, nor is the return/introduction of some of the coolest versions of the hero I’ve ever seen.
The exciting part about this is the fact that it is really the first ever cross-media event in comic book history.
As per usual with a comic event, the Spider-Verse takes place over the course of about several different comic series, a few of which were created just for the event. What separates this from a normal cross over is that this event also enters into television and video games.
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| Donald Glover plays Miles Morales in this special Ultimate Spider-Man arc. |
Spider-Man Unlimited is an iOS and Android running game similar to that of Temple Run, but it features everyone’s favorite web slinger, as well as those of other dimensions, fighting different versions of the Sinister Six.
In the decades of comic book history, something like this has never been done. Every time a movie, a show, a game, or a new comic spinoff is created, it exists in its own universe. The plots are all independent of each other and the events of one world almost always have no bearing on those of another. But it’s also well established in both Marvel and DC franchises that multiple universes exist. And sometimes worlds do collide, which they literally did in a recent New Avengers arc. But there never really is a story or event that goes, “Hey, we’ve got all these universes across all these different mediums and characters who are easily able to traverse them. Why not work with that?”
That’s what we’re getting right here. And it’s extremely exciting.
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| The Walking Dead has seen so much success, it's gotten a decent group of games and TV series in the works. |
The comic book industry hasn’t spent much, if any, time recently trying to get more readers. You never saw huge ad campaigns or promotions for comics like you would TV shows and movies. The sudden influx of comic-based shows and movies might have brought in a few more readers (or more than a few since the numbers indicate comic book sales have doubled in the past 10 years), but for the most part the plan was to tell the story to a larger number of people, and obviously make some more money.
Now, that’s happening. People who have never read a superhero comic can have legitimate discussions about superheroes. People are rightfully excited about upcoming stories in the movies and shows.
Comic books may not be gaining massive popularity anymore, but their stories are. And all-in-all, that’s pretty fantastic.
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Source: Comichron
Images: Marvel, Marvel Wiki, i7 World, Phandroid
