A Spoiler Filled Walk On The Great Web Of Spider-Verse, Part One

When the comic book scholars of the future look back on Spider-Verse they may view the crossover as a disappointment. I can see that. There really isn’t much meat on the bone here. Most issues are generally the same:

• introduce or revisit a Spider-Man from an alternate dimension
• Inheritors attack
• multiversal Spider-Men show up to help
• some live, some die, the survivors escape
• Inheritors move onto the next dimension in search of another meal

Pretty standard and repetitive stuff. But to take this view, is to miss the whole fun of Spider-Verse. The interaction of all these Spiders new and old amongst themselves and the Inheritors. Checking in on old favorites. Seeing the fate of Spider-Men you grew up watching on TV. I’m sure we’ll have Spider-Man multiverse crossovers again in the future (*cough*Secret Wars*cough*) but likely never to this degree again.

And when is the last time a comic book event spilled over into TV and video games concurrently with the publication of said event? We’ll touch on that a bit later, but I don’t recall any event having such cross domain synergy especially with the core being a comic book and not a movie.

What you’ll find below in the Guinness notarized longest post in Gabbing Geek history (at least it was until Taskmaster Jenny made me slice it up into more consumable pieces) is a reading order for the event, and my spoiler laced ramblings about the history that lead to Spider-Verse and the event itself. While I do summarize a lot of issues, I try to keep my thoughts at a high level so that you will still get a lot more out of reading the actual stories that the Spider folks at Marvel spent so much time preparing.   Except for the deaths…for some reason I had to catalog all the deaths…

For those that want to avoid spoilers, here is a spoiler free reading order, come back when you’re done…

Some homework:
First Ezekiel and Morlun: Amazing Spider-Man Vol 2 #30-35
The Other: Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man #1-4, Marvel Knights Spider-Man #19-22, Amazing Spider-Man #525-528.
Superior Spider-Man: Just read the whole thing. 🙂 But specifically issue #19
Original Sin (1st Silk): You can ignore the main series, but read the Amazing Spider-Man tie-in issues #4-5. And you might as well read the conclusion of that story in #6 and you’ll be reading #7 and beyond for Spider-Verse anyway.

Edge of Spider-Verse:
Free Comic Book Day 2014
Superior Spider-Man #32
Edge of Spider-Verse #1 – Spider-Man Noir
Amazing Spider-Man #7 (Story 2)
Edge of Spider-Verse #2 – Gwen Stacey: Spider-Woman
Superior Spider-Man #33
Edge of Spider-Verse #3
Edge of Spider-Verse #4
Edge of Spider-Verse #5
Spider-Man 2099 #5
Amazing Spider-Man #8 – (Story 2)

Spider-Verse (there is quite a bit of overlap between the main story in Amazing and the tie-ins, so it is hard to come up with a perfect listing)
Spider-Verse Team-Up #1
Amazing Spider-Man #9 – Spider-Verse Part 1
Spider-Verse #1
Amazing Spider-Man #10 – Spider-Verse Part 2
Spider-Woman #1
Scarlet Spiders #1
Spider-Man 2099 #6
Amazing Spider-Man #11 – Spider-Verse Part 3
Spider-Verse Team-Up #2
Scarlet Spiders #2
Spider-Woman #2
Amazing Spider-Man #12 – Spider-Verse Part 4
Spider-Man 2099 #7
Spider-Verse #2
Spider-Woman #3
Scarlet Spiders #3
Amazing Spider-Man #13 – Spider-Verse Part 5
Spider-Verse Team-Up #3
Spider-Man 2099 #8
Amazing Spider-Man #14 – Spider-Verse Part 6

Spider-Verse Epilouge
Spider-Woman #4
Amazing Spider-Man #15

Up next in Part Two: Weaving The Web of Spider-Verse