Spider-Man Noir

Game

Created by Stan Lee & Steve Ditko
Spider-Man Noir created by David Hine & Fabrice Sapolsky

In their endless battle to reel in more customers, it’s long been an established practice in the comic book biz to take established superheroes and revamp, revise, reboot and regurgitate them.

Pump some new air into tired lungs. Or just squeeze some more milk out of the teat.

Nothing it seems, is sacrosanct or sacred, with everything and anything up for grabs. Gender, race, abilities, age, their very identity (secret or otherwise)? Their very essence? 

Pffft!

Gone, baby, gone. Here’s something new.

Immediately forgotten, of course, if it doesn’t work out.  Nothing to see here. Move on.

But if it does work out, if the idea generates enough ka-ching, these dudes stick around. Of course, generally, the much-beloved original character usually also hangs in there (Like, dude, it’s canon!), so these changelings are usually (but not always) presented as imaginary, former one-offs now shuttled off to some other dimension, some alternate universe, some other world. Or a dream. Maybe a bad one.

Like a certain friendly neighbourhood web-slinger from Marvel Comics who was eventually recast as… a 1930s private eye.

And this most definitely wasn’t your daddy’s SPIDER-MAN.

Nope, this version of the wall crawler took considerable liberties in the 2009 mini-series Spider-Man Noir, starting with his origin story. It’s New York City and the Depression is coming down hard. While tracking down a smuggling ring, young, ambitious news photog Peter Parker is chomped on by a venomous spider with apparently mystical powers. When Peter awakes, he finds himself in a giant web cocoon. Clawing his way out, he discovers that he’s somehow acquired super-human abilities similar to a spider (or the original Spider-Man): proportionate super-strength,  the ability to stick to walls and to shoot webs from his wrists.

And so he becomes a costumed vigilante… and what a costume.

Gone is the familiar red-and-blue onesie; replaced by a black shirt and pants, over which he wears a black trench coat. Must be real fun in NYC in the summer.

Anyway, with his new-found powers and spiffy new dark duds, he’s ready to avenge the murder of his Uncle Ben and take on the criminal underworld of New York City, much of it under the thumb of crime lord, Norman:”The Goblin”  Osborn, who has a variety of thugs at his command, including the Vulture, Kraven the Hunter, and the Enforcers.

Other bits of the canonical Spidey also remain. Aunt May is still an elderly widow, and still worries about Peter, doubly so since she knows of his secret identity. And Uncle Ben is still dead, although the circumstances of his murder have changed. Plenty of his foes are hanging around, as wella as Mary Jane, and eventually even Gwen Stacey pops up.

Of course, Spidey’s still a wise-ass, twisting and turning while spewing out a steady stream of snappy one-liners, performing amazing gymnastic feats of derring-do while knocking around the bad guys. But the most surprising change is that the friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man you may have grown up with isn’t so friendly anymore — or at least to criminals. He carries twin pistols, and isn’t shy about using them, blasting away various miscreants with glee and abandon, like a web-slinging version of The Shadow, although true to form Peter later (but only later) broods about it.

Spider-Man Noir was intended as a one-off; simply part of Marvel’s recasting of some of their biggest superheroes (X-Men, Daredevil, Iron Man, etc.) as pulpy, 1930s-style heroes, in a string of  mini-series over a couple of years (2009-10) under the umbrella of what they called Marvel Noir. 

Some of the titles were more successful than others —Luke Cage Noir in particular worked well for me — perhaps because he was always sort of private eye/pulp adjacent to begin with. But I guess Spider-Man Noir worked better for everyone else.

So much so, in fact, that Spider-Man Noir kept popping up. First there was a 2010 sequel, Eyes Without a Face, which found him going up against Doc Ock, The Lizard, The Sandman, The Crime Master and — why not? —Nazis. It was the thirties, after all.

And then came the Spider-Verse, a game-changing cash cow for Marvel which cracked open any semblance of continuity like an egg (clones weren’t bad enough?), spinning off into a tangled and seemingly endless multimedia barrage of cross-overs, one-shots, cameos and even eventualluan ongoing monthly comic book series, Edge of the Spider-Verse. Spider-Noir flittied in and out of all of them, joining an ever-growing multitude of alternate Spideys. It was here that Peter Parker eventually finds himself resurrected (literally) as a private eye, and adds a black fedora to his ensemble — otherwise, how would we know he’s a private eye?

So, gumshoe by day, super-hero by night?

The Spider-Verse was a hit, and Spider-Man Noir was one of four featured Spideys in the 2010 video game Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions, the 2012-2017 television cartoon Ultimate Spider-Man, the 2018 animated feature film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (a box office smash), and he even had a brief, non-speaking cameo at the end of that film’s sequel, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023).

The latest? Nicolas Cage, who’d previously voiced Spider-Man Noir in the 2018 animated feature Into the Spider-Verse will star as a now-aging private eye, struggling to come to terms with his past life as a costumed superhero, in the live-action television series, Spider-Noir, set to debut in 2026 on Amazon Prime.

I dunno. I still love Spidey, but there’s a disappointing lack of mystery or detective elements here, with the whole PI thing reduced to a trench coat and fedora, and most of the legwork consisting of Spider-Man Noir kicking someone in the teeth.

Plus, there’s also the looming threat of the always irritating Spider-Ham appearing.

Still, if you want to see Spidey as a “private eye”….

 

COMICS

  • SPIDER-MAN: NOIR
    (2009, Marvel Comics)
    4 issues
    Based on characters created by Stan Lee & Steve Ditko
    Writers: David Hine & Fabrice Sapolsky
    Art by Carmine Di Giandomenico
    Costume design by Marko Djurdjević
  • SPIDER-MAN NOIR: EYES WITHOUT A FACE
    (2010, Marvel Comics)
    4 issues
    Based on characters created by Stan Lee & Steve Ditko
    Writers: David Hine & Fabrice Sapolsky
    Art by Carmine Di Giandomenico
  • EDGE OF SPIDER-VERSE 
    (2014–, Marvel Comics)
    Spider-Noir flits in and out of various storylines, in this apparently never-ending series, joining a seemingly endless list of alternate Spideys. 
  • SPIDER-MAN NOIR: TWILIGHT IN BABYLON
    (2020, Marvel Comics)
    5 issues
    Based on characters created by Stan Lee & Steve Ditko
    Writer: Margaret Stohl
    Art by Juan Ferreyra
  • SPIDER-MAN NOIR
    (2025, Marvel Comics)
    5 issues
    Based on characters created by Stan Lee & Steve Ditko
    Writer: Erik Larsen
    Art by Andrea Broccardo

COLLECTIONS

  • SPIDER-MAN NOIR | Buy the book | Kindle it!
    (2010, Marvel Comics)
    Collects all four issues of the original 2009 miniseries.
  • SPIDER-MAN NOIR: EYES WITHOUT A FACE| Buy the book | Kindle it!
    (2011, Marvel Comics)
    Collects all four issues of the original 2010 miniseries.
  • SPIDER-MAN NOIR: HARD-BOILED ORIGINS | Buy the book | Kindle it!
    (2025, Marvel Comics)
    Laying the groundwork (baiting the hook?) for the 2026 Spider-Man Noir TV show, this jumbo-sized collection rounds up Spider-Man Noir, Eyes Without a Face, and various odds and end  fromEdge of Spider-Verse, Spider-Geddon: Spider-Man, and the Noir Video Comic Spider-Verse Team-Up.

VIDEO GAMES

  • SPIDER-MAN: SHATTERED DIMENSIONS | Buy the game
    (2010, Activision)
    Platforms: Nintendo DS, PlayStation 3, Wii, Xbox 360, Windows
    Developed by Beenox
    Writers: Mark Hoffmeier, Daniel Strange, Dan Slott
    Starring Christopher Daniel Barnes as SPIDER-MAN NOIR (voice only)
    Also starring Neil Patrick Harris, Dan Gilvezan, and Josh Keaton
    This action-adventure game followed four different versions of Spider-Man (the original, plus Spider-Man Noir, Spider-Man 2099, and Ultimate Spider-Man), each  from a different part of the Marvel Comics multiverse as they bounce around slinging webs, punching bad guys and hunting for something called the Tablet of Order and Chaos. Not much detective skills required here, and it didn’t rank well with customers, but it is rare and collectible ($$$) now. Christopher Daniel Barnes voiced Spider-Man Noir.

TELEVISION

  • ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN
    (2012-2017)
    Animated
    Starring Milo Ventimiglia as Spider-Man Noir (voice only)
  • SPIDER-NOIR
    (2026, Amazon Prime)
    8 45-minute episodes
    Black & white
    Developed by Oren Uziel
    Showrunners: Oren Uziel, Steve Lightfoot
    Starring Nicolas Cage as PETER PARKER/SPIDER-MAN
    Also starring Lamorne Morris, Brendan Gleeson, Li Jun Li, Abraham Popoola, Jack Huston, Karen Rodriguez
    Nicolas Cage stars as an aging private eye struggling to come to terms with his past life as a costumed superhero in 1930s New York City.

FILMS

  • SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE
    (2018
    Starring Nicolas Cage as Spider-Noir

FURTHER INVESTIGATION

Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.

Published

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