This thread's for the Spider-Man comics and spin-offs, whether they're decades old or brand new.
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- Characters and comics that originated in Spider-Man but are no longer directly connected to the spider-franchise (e.g. Punisher, Silver Sable) are not on-topic, unless you're discussing historical connections and crossovers. If in doubt, check before you write a long post. If this isn't the right place, there's a more general Marvel Comics thread
which covers them.
Technically, Marvel's Infinity Comics (and their predecessors, Infinite Comics) are webcomics, not comic books, but it's fine to talk about their Spider-Man stories here.
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Edited by MacronNotes on Jul 10th 2023 at 10:58:13 AM
Even so, the audience watching that show and the audience that is going to be buying comics I guarantee has almost no overlap. So who on earth would be asking for synergy of this kind?
Disney100 Marathon | DreamWorks MarathonIt might seem like a strange time to ask, considering how we're all a little sour on synergy, but while many can name the instances where it's been detrimental since the MCU, do we have some examples of Synergy actually helping characters and comics in some way?
I figure there have to have been some benefits to the entire thing.
One Strip! One Strip!Magneto's telepathy-blocking helmet, the Xavier Institute hosting students beyond the actual X-Men team, Tony Stark's personality, Loki's character development, and Blade's costume and dhampyr status are the ones I can think of.
Disney100 Marathon | DreamWorks MarathonEhh, I dunno. I like movie Mantis but Guardians comics Mantis wasn’t bad either. And the only place the comics used MCU Mantis was in the fairly maligned Grootfall run.
Forever liveblogging the AvengersI mean, the whole Celestial Madonna thing didn't seem all that forward.....or did she do something else beyond that? I've got no clue, to be honest.
One Strip! One Strip!The Celestial Madonna stuff got done with pretty early in her history. Since then, she was supporting cast to Silver Surfer and Guardians of the Galaxy. You’re right that it’s kind of shitty that she’s important because she’s going to pop out an important baby but it’s funny to me that she did her destiny stuff and then just kept living life, having adventures, getting arrested for telling people she’s the Celestial Madonna
Forever liveblogging the AvengersYeah the Dn A era of cosmic Marvel from the 2000s effectively served as a soft-reboot for a lot of the characters, such as Drax being reincarnated into his more intelligent self.
Mantis from what I read of the Dn A Guardians run made little mention of her being the Celestial Madonna, but was more the surly team mom who was grumpy cause her precog future vision gave her a window of how disastrous events are going to go, such as when Quill convinced her to mental probe the Guardians into forming.
Now she suffers a similar issue to Quill where she's written as kind of dim and weird because her movie self is dumb and weird.
Edited by slimcoder on Jul 25th 2025 at 2:44:03 AM
"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."....ok. Synergy kinda sucks.
Except for the examples mentioned where it doesn't.
Marvel really needs to tone that shit back.
One Strip! One Strip!Synergy between the movies and the comics is usually weird and clunky because the movies aren't usually based on the current spiderman run or even any particular one. The movies are usually a grab bag of greatest hits like Peter loses Uncle Ben, the death of the Green Goblin, Peter's identity is revealed, Aunt May Dies, the Death of Gwen Stacey, etc.
The big moments are usually remixed and reimaged to fit the movie alongside the visions/ideas of all the people who help make the movies (director, writers, choreographers, actors, editors, producers). So, when they try to backport stuff to the comics, it's usually a bit of a mess because their either taking stuff from across decades of continuity and trying to make it all stick with whatever stuff was happening in the current run or they are changing stuff completely to fit with an idea made exclusively for the movie.
I think a lot of comic industry higher ups are still under the impression that if they make the comics move like the movie in some superficial way then they will get some of that huge overlap. It doesn't work most of the time, but the idea still remains.
Edited by Freshwater on Jul 25th 2025 at 5:20:55 AM
It doesn't help that a lot of characterization changes especially for the MCU is just making the characters more goofy and comical.
Yelena went from a serious charmless assassin to a snarky quipster to mimic Florence Pugh's more personable portrayal of her. It also the effect of making comic Yelena come across like a teenager when she's an experienced grown woman.
Imagine if they synergized Moon Knight. Mr Knight would go from being a stone-cold badass to a goofy clown constantly tripping over himself.
Al Ewing made a whole joke about it in Immortal Thor during the Roxxon Thor arc where Thor's decrease in intelligence correlated with increasingly quipy and cliche dialogue.
Edited by slimcoder on Jul 25th 2025 at 5:30:33 AM
"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."This could still work NGL. Moon Knight is kinda a mess with all his personas. Backtracing the tv show's take on it and have there be 3 personas, each with their own take on the "Knight" superhero form, would do great for streamlining it.
But yeah, Spector, Moon Knight, Lockely etc would transition easily for that streamlining. Grant and Mr Knight wouldn't.
Edited by Spirit on Jul 25th 2025 at 8:44:48 AM
#IceBearForPresidentIt could work but you can't force it on an already established character.
Like the portrayal of Steven Grant. Comics Steven is a playboy movie producer/executive, MCU Steven is a neurotic poor museum guide. They are completely different characters, you can't just transplant the latter in the comics without issue.
It be like that MK run by Bendis where he completely changed MK's mental state by having his multiple personalities be apparitions of Wolverine, Spider-Man, and Captain America. With Steven and Lockley going completely unacknowledged.
"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."Apparently Superior Spider-man was ended earlier than Dan Slott would have liked in order to have Peter back in the comics for the release of TASM 2, so I count that as a win
MCU Synergy specifically or just Marvel adaptation Synergy in general?
First thing I thought of regarding synergy in general is probably that, like, the entirety of modern symbiote lore can probably be traced back to the initial synergizing with Spider-Man The Animated Series' rewriting of the symbiote to be an evil corrupting alien.
YMMV on whether that's a better thing, of course. I personally think the symbiote beineg an innocent being corrupted by its experiences and its emotionally tumultuous hosts is a more interesting idea than the symbiotes being a race of yadda yadda invading alien demon body snatchers, but I think I'm in the minority on that one.
Overall, though, I think DC probably has more examples of positive synergy than Marvel does.
Edited by KnownUnknown on Jul 26th 2025 at 10:22:23 AM
ultimate spider-man #19 we see richard in his suit meeting with felicia and he is apologizing for what happened last time they met when she betrayed him. we then flashback to then and see richard telling the suit ben he is scared and ben telling him to close his eyes and he goes full venom. kingpin runs away and felicia begs them to stop when he is about to hurt her and her dad. later kingpin asks his crew if they know what happens to kraven and says he will kill whoever spider-man is but for now they are leaving felicia out of it. harry and gwen hear this meeting through wesley. mole man breaks through the wall on 2nd floor and says its his power that let him go there. he asks peter if he would have what it takes to take down kingpin for good because he is tired of working for him, mole man leaves but tells peter the offer stands. richard sneaks back in from meeting felicia and is caught and mj gets so upset peter tries to calm her down, and activates his spider-sense a few times by saying the wrong thing. she ends the issue by asking to be told everything
@Known Unknown - I also generally prefer the "innocent corrupted" take on the symbiote, with one caveat. I like some of the Knull mythology in terms of how it goes between science fiction tropes and fantasy tropes depending on the type story.
So like symbiotes are like body snatchers or the Thing (the John Carpenter one), but they are also an Elric of Melinbone-style demon sword when providing a meta origin for the Black Knight and Gorr and when they show up in a Conan the Barbarian story.
The only thing I like about Knull is that it's nice to see there are Elder gods on planets besides Earth. I know a lot of Thor fans love Ghor the god butcher though. I'm stammering "But we already had a god slayer" but I guess that's a good thing to come out of synergy, my personal thoughts on the matter being ignored.
No, really, Spider-Man's movie costume from the Raimi triology was cool. It was cool to see it make its way back into the comics. I personally could take or leave X-23, but if you like her, that's a plus. Blade actually having powers I'd count as a minus if the writers hadn't been having him perform blatantly super human feats for a decade at that point. The explicit vampire powers at least gave them a justification.
As for MCU synergy specifically? I think it's almost all been largely misguided. Marvel Contest Of Champions sold itself on the idea of a Crossover between the comic books and the movies, so synergy between the two seems counter productive. You're doing The Multiverse now, so just embrace the differences. Or don't. If Marvel wants to work against itself who am I to stop them? At the same time, I think too much of what we(I?) don't like about Marvel comics gets blamed on synergy, or at least MCU synergy. America Chavez retcon? Turns out the Doctor Strange sequel basically used her as originally written. That can't be blamed on the MCU. Wanda Vision totally changed Monica Rambeau, but in a completely different way than the Photon mini, so again, not the MCU's fault. Some blamed Carol Danvers becoming Captain Marvel and her push on synergy, but Brian Michael Bendis, one of the worst Danvers writers, had nonetheless been trying to make her Captain Marvel for years. I think the worst Marvel synergy has all been X-Men and mutant related, a de emphasis on Fantastic Four to a lesser extent, but that was in the works long before the MCU. If nothing else, we got some of Tony Stark's movie charm brought back into the comic books after Civil War was what it was, though that was also before the MCU was really established.
In short, I think MCU synergy has largely been bad for the comic books, but I think too much of what's been bad for the comic books has been blamed on MCU synergy, and Marvel's track record with synergy over all has been more middling. Going from the beautiful comic book style textures of Marvel Versus Capcom 3 to the butt ugly "realism" of Marvel Versus Capcom Infinite is still a sin I haven't forgiven, however.
Buldogue's lawyer

It would make some sense back kn the 90s or so when the comic industry as a whole was verging on bankruptcy. But are they doing fine now? They can stand on their own feet.
#IceBearForPresident