Does... some of the things a spider can.
Spider-Boy is a 2023 comic book from Marvel Comics. It's initially written by Dan Slott, with art by Paco Medina and Ty Templeton and color art by Erick Arciniega and Dee Cunniffe.
Set in the shared Marvel Universe, the story is part of the wider Spider-Man franchise and stars Bailey Briggs, the kid sidekick known as Spider-Boy. However, Spider-Man doesn't actually remember having a sidekick. A Cosmic Retcon erased Bailey and his Spider-Boy identity from the world and now, even though he's been restored, all records of him are gone.
Trying to rebuild his life in a world that no longer has space for him, and trying to reclaim his identity as a hero, Spider-Boy immediately tumbles into a series of adventures.
The first issue was released November 1, 2023.
Spider-Boy contains examples of the following tropes:
- Absurdly Sharp Blade: Taskmaster's sword cuts cleanly through a metal robot without any noticeable resistance. The only thing shown to stop it is Captain America's indestructible Vibranium shield.
- An Ass-Kicking Christmas: The main story of the second issue takes place on Christmas Eve. After getting a vision of Taskmaster threatening people at F.E.A.S.T., Bailey rushes off in search of him and teams up with Captain America to foil the mercenary's plans to steal a top-secret piece of technology.
- Angel Unaware: The Santa Claus who is participating in the New York City Thanksgiving Day Parade turns out to be the actual Santa.
- Animals See in Monochrome: When Madame Monstrosity complains about Mr. Muttman getting the colors of Boy-Spider's outfit wrong, the dog man meekly points out that he can only see in black and white, an explanation which Madame Monstrosity takes surprisingly, quipping, "Ah. You're right. That's on me."
- Another Side, Another Story: Issue #4's backup story shows the origin of the Spider-Monster Peter and Miles mistook for Bailey, as it happens in the main story.
- Arc Welding: In the short prologue in Amazing Spider-Man #31, Madame Monstrosity calls Dr. Shannon Stillwell, and they mention scientist brothers Farley Stillwell, who created the Scorpion way back in the 1960s, and Harlan Stillwell, who created the Human Fly in an Amazing Spider-Man Annual. Monstrosity is the Stillwell siblings' mother. Monstrosity also implies she had a hand in the creation of the Lizard, Morbius and the Rhino.
- Artificial Hybrid: Madame Monstrosity is a Mad Scientist who developed a process to merge humans with animals, making bizarre creatures named "Humanimals". She uses them as minions and muscle in her various schemes. Bailey was one of her victims, but he was rescued by Spider-Man before she could bend Bailey to her will.
- Attention Whore: Killionaire is a Bad Influencer who streams all of his money-enabled crimes to his followers. His actions are at least partially motivated by a desire for clout and attention, as he mutters about getting likes for his rampant property damage while asking his chat what Avenger to transform Toy Soldier into next.
- Badass Santa: Santa Claus helps Bailey to defeat the helium-powered parade balloons and spouts One-Liner after one-liner like the protagonist of an action movie.
- Bait-and-Switch: Spider-Boy makes Taskmaster flinch by shouting "Thwip!" The mercenary expected a web blast, but Bailey taunts him by revealing that he has no web-shooters. Taskmaster's confusion and outrage distract him long enough for Captain America to open the door and kick Taskmaster out of the helicopter.
- Bland-Name Product: Fast Car Family, a riff on The Fast and the Furious. We get a glimpse of a scene in the tenth installment in which a character warns a Vin Diesel-lookalike that they do not have enough nitrous to use the Pyramids as ramps to jump the Sphinx."Dirk": Our cars don't need nitrous... they run on family!
- Berserk Button: Professor Emilio Helio, the Helium Man, suffers from a condition that forces him to breathe helium instead of oxygen. This also means that he suffers from perpetual Helium Speech. Mocking him for it is the fastest way to set him off.
- The Bus Came Back: The Vulturions, a group of robbers whose gimmick mirrors the elderly Vulture, appear in an action scene in issue #4.
- Commonality Connection: After teaming up to fight Taskmaster, Captain America tells Bailey that he understands what it's like to be someone forgotten by time and stuck in a world that has moved on without him. He then promises to help Bailey if he ever needs it.
- Continuity Nod: Peter is concerned when he learns that Christina knows Bailey's Secret Identity, telling Bailey that he has to be more discreet about it since he's only been back a few days. Bailey retorts that Peter once had Doctor Strange remove everyone's memory of his Secret Identity, referencing the events of Amazing Spider-Man #641.
- Cursed with Awesome:
- Bailey's powers were forced upon him by Madame Monstrosity, turning him into a spider-human hybrid. However, after being rescued by Spider-Man and tutored by Daredevil, Bailey has learned to control his suite of spider powers and can retract his spider features to live a normal life. This is in contrast to Hellifino, who is a fusion of an elephant, a rhino, and a kid Bailey's age with no apparent ability to return to human form.
- Downplayed regarding Bailey's Cosmic Retcon predicament. There's not much about his situation of being erased from everyone's memory that Bailey isn't upset about. But he finds a small silver lining in how Madame Monstrosity, the villain who turned him into a spider-human hybrid in the first place, can tell that he's a product of her experiments but has no memory of him and is being driven bonkers by this.
- Destination Defenestration: Captain America pulls the door open and kicks Taskmaster out of a helicopter while the mercenary is distracted by Spider-Boy faking a web blast. Spider-Boy expresses worry that Taskmaster might die from such a fall, but the mercenary uses a Jet Pack to fly away before he hits the ground.
- Dude, Where's My Reward?: In Issue #3, Bailey asks for twenty bucks when a woman he saved from a dangerous fall asks what she can do to repay him. She refuses to even entertain the idea because of the expectation that superheroes work for free. After trying and failing to talk his way onto the Avengers, Bailey reluctantly continues to be a superhero for free.
- Everybody Has Standards: Spider-Boy scolds Squirrel Girl for laughing at Professor Helio's squeaky voice, pointing out that he can't help it due to the accident that gave him his powers. Though he also is aware of how the villain reacts to such mockery, so it could have just been a practical attempt to keep the situation from escalating.
- Evil Knockoff: Madame Monstrosity uses leftover material from her experiments on Bailey to create an inverted clone of him called "Boy-Spider."
- Family-Friendly Firearms:
- Gutterball's guns only shoot full-sized bowling pins... somehow.
- The soldiers accompanying Captain America in escorting a piece of highly dangerous technology are armed with laser rifles instead of traditional guns. Even then, they prove largely useless inside the confines of a helicopter due to the risk of hitting allies. The soldiers only open fire once Taskmaster is thrown out of the helicopter, though none of the lasers actually hit.
- Later on, Killionaire is shown with bodyguards who carry much more realistic pistols. But aside from waving them around menacingly, they never actually fire at Spider-Boy, who never lays a finger on Killionaire given that the main threat is the superpowered Toy Soldier.
- Go Through Me: When Spider-Boy is on the backfoot against Hellifino, Christina throws herself between them in an attempt to buy time for Bailey to get free of a wall. He scolds her for putting herself in danger like this.
- Lighter and Softer: When compared to the main The Amazing Spider-Man book by Zeb Wells, Bailey's adventures are comparatively lighthearted. Bailey's rogues are much sillier and zanier villains like Gutterball and Balloon Man in the vein of the Silver Age of comic books. The stakes are generally lower and there's none of the blood and bruising seen in the fights of the other spider-hero books.
- Missing Mom: Bailey believes that his mother is not dead, but does not expand on the subject. He's reunited with his Mom in issue 6, but tragically, she doesn't remember him, just like everyone else.
- Mistaken for Related: The Daily Bugle publishes an article on Spider-Boy's "first" public appearance which speculates on his connection to Spider-Man, one theory being that he's Spider-Man's son.
- Mr. Exposition: Because Spider-Man has no knowledge of Bailey or his rogues, Bailey often has to be the one explaining who these "new" rogues are and what they can do.
- My Little Panzer: Toy Soldier is a remote-controlled action figure intelligent enough to respond to voice commands while also having the Super-Adaptoid's ability to use the powers of any of the Avengers. This means it can flatten cars at Killionaire's behest with ease and can cross the distance between planets (albeit not as quickly as the Silver Surfer or Thor given its size).
- Mythology Gag:
- Like Peter did to the Fantastic Four in the first issue of Amazing Spider-Man, Bailey tries talking his way onto the Avengers in Issue #3 to solve his money woes. Unlike Peter, Bailey doesn't get into a fight because Jarvis slams the door in his face.
- In Marvel Adventures, Spider-Man defuses a hostage situation by bluffing a gangster into believing that he could summon spiders to do his bidding. In Issue #3, Bailey reveals that he can talk to spiders for real, helping to defuse a fight between Thor and an irate Asgardian spider who'd been transported from her home in Nornheim.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: In a flashback, Bailey remembers his friend Eli who was also a prisoner of Madame Monstrosity. They joke about Bailey's situation to lighten the mood and accidentally give the woman an idea to merge Eli with a rhino and an elephant, when M. Monstrosity has only merged one animal per person before.
- Non-Human Head: Gutterball's head is an indestructible bowling ball that doubles as an Expressive Mask.
- No Ontological Inertia: Once the Helium Man is taken down, all the balloons he's controlling quickly deflate and become harmless despite not having any holes in them.
- No-Sell:
- Spider-Man punches Gutterball in the head in the first issue, discovering the hard way that not only is his head indestructible, but he doesn't even react to the punch.
- In the same issue, Bailey tries to use his paralyzing venom to incapacitate Hellifino. But the elephant-rhino hybrid's skin is too tough for Bailey's fangs to penetrate.
- Poor Communication Kills: Due to his Ret-Gone status, Bailey struggles to reconnect with the people in his life he once trusted most. But being constantly told Not Now, Kiddo and that he's Just a Kid grates on him even as he tries to reclaim the recognition he once had. This comes to a head when he's blamed for a string of robberies by a "Boy-Spider" that then attacks Miles. Bailey's frustration with how quickly his friends ignored and turned on him leads him to leave the F.E.A.S.T. shelter and strike out on his own since, in his mind, everyone hates him anyways.
- Pun: Madame Monstrosity's cat girl maid is based on a tabby cat. "Tabby" can be a nickname for Tabitha, also the name of Bailey's missing mother.
- Punch! Punch! Punch! Uh Oh...: After Hellifino proves too tough for Bailey's fangs to be of use, Bailey tries to use his Super-Strength to free himself from Hellifino's trunk. It doesn't quite work out.Hellifino: [after Bailey fails to inject his paralyzing venom] Was that it?
Spider-Boy: No! I'm just getting gnnh— started! [tries and fails to force himself free] G-Gimme a sec. Um... this is kinda tight actually... Uh-oh. - Psychometry: Bailey's Spider-Sense works differently from most other spider heroes. Instead of alerting him to danger, touching a person or a related object can trigger prophetic visions of other people who will be in danger in the near future. This is accompanied by a buzzing sensation that won't subside until Bailey intervenes himself.
- Pungeon Master: After defeating the bowling-ball-headed Gutterball in the first issue, Spider-Boy and Spider-Man keep making bowling puns about their victory. Gutterball yells at them to stop even as he's being arrested.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Madame Monstrosity idolized the High Evolutionary, and was devastated when he dismissed all of her work as worthless, sneering that he helped elevate beings, while all she was doing was crudely smashing them together and creating nothing but "sideshow freaks."High Evolutionary: Quite frankly, Madame, you disgust me.
- Ret-Gone: Along with Spider-Boy himself, this also appears to be the case for his villains, for some reason, as no one but Bailey knows who they are (even though Bailey has mentioned fighting them before, indicating that they have been around for years); in the Spider Woman crossover, Jessica had no idea who the Red Heron was, even though she had previously fought him alongside Bailey.
- The Reveal: Madame Monstrosity's Cat Girl maid, Tabby, is Bailey's missing mother, Tabitha.
- Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory:
- Although Bailey doesn't realize it at the time, Santa refers to Bailey by name while teaming up to defeat the Helium Man despite Bailey being Ret-Gone from memory and record. Bailey finds a picture of himself and his mom under the Christmas tree at the end of the issue, proving that Santa knows exactly who Bailey is and somehow produced a picture that was erased by cosmic retcon.
- In the Spider Woman crossover, Bailey is revealed to still remember Jessica's son, Gerry, due to being temporarily nonexistent when everyone else had their memories of him erased by Hydra.
- Rule of Cool: In the Show Within a Show Fast Car Family, two cars are racing over the faces of an Egyptian pyramid. Of course, the pyramids do not have a flat, smooth surface, but the movie series the scene lampoons has tossed physics out of the window.
- Santa Claus: In the first issue's second story, Bailey and Christina Xu attend the Thanksgiving balloon parade, and the boy sights a Santa in the parade. He believes that the Santa on the parade is real, just like gods Thor and Hercules, which do exist as modern day heroes in the Marvel Universe. The second issue reveals that the parade Santa is the real one, helping Bailey defeat the Helium Man. At the end of the comic, Bailey finds a picture of himself and his mom together gift-wrapped under a Christmas tree despite all such records being cosmically removed.
- Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: Spider-Boy points out that Killionaire will probably be thrown into juvie for ordering Toy Soldier to go on a rampage and streaming it for thousands to see. Killionaire retorts that his highly-paid lawyers will get him out of anything.
- Shout-Out: When Peter visits Bailey at the FEAST center, he greats him and Christina with, "How do you do, fellow kids?"
- Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome: Inverted with Christina, who started out looking much older and taller than Bailey, only to seemingly be de-aged (and shrunk down) a bit in subsequent appearances, something that is probably most obvious in the main story of Issue #3.
- Speaks Fluent Animal: Bailey is able to talk to spiders, even those from other worlds like Asgard, but only while manifesting his more freaky, spider-like traits. He doesn't like doing this because it means baring his Scary Teeth and the subsequent horrified looks he gets from onlookers, but Christina convinces him to do so when Thor is locked in battle with an alien spider to defuse the situation.
- Spin-Off: Spider-Boy was introduced in Spider-Man (2022) and the End of the Spider-Verse crossover event before spinning off into his own comic book when that Spider-Man series ended.
- Sweet and Sour Grapes: At the start of the second issue, Bailey's phone is stolen when he offers it to someone to take a picture of the Christmas festivities. While Spider-Boy could catch the thief relatively easily, he's sidetracked by a vision he gets of Taskmaster plotting to do something to the F.E.A.S.T. center. Bailey reluctantly gives up the chase to follow his Spider-Sense and battle Taskmaster instead. At the end of the issue, Bailey glumly notes that his phone was his last worldly possession aside from his superhero gear and is struggling to find his Christmas cheer. But he finds a present addressed to him from Santa beneath the Christmas tree. In it is a framed picture of Bailey with his mom, something that should be impossible due to Bailey's Cosmic Retcon. He then calls it the greatest gift he could have ever gotten.
- Team-Up Series: The first two issues of the comic feature Bailey teaming up with another popular Marvel character. The backup story features Bailey working with Squirrel Girl to stop the Helium Man's attempt to terrorize the New York City Thanksgiving Day Parade. The second issue has Bailey fighting Taskmaster alongside Captain America while the backup story has Santa Claus join in Bailey's and Squirrel Girl's efforts to save Thanksgiving. The backup of the third issue has Bailey ending a fight between Thor and an Asgardian spider by talking to the spider and realizing what it wants.
- Thanksgiving Episode: The backup story in the first two issues has Bailey, Christina, and Squirrel Girl attend the Thanksgiving Day Parade, which ends up being crashed by Balloon Man.
- Touché: Peter is unimpressed when Bailey tells him that Christina knows Spider-Boy's Secret Identity. He tells Bailey to do better than that. Bailey retorts that Peter once had Doctor Strange wipe everyone's memories of Spider-Man's identity. Peter replies, "Fair point."
- What You Are in the Dark: After realizing that it has free will and a desire to do good like the Avengers it's copying, Toy Soldier offers to fight alongside Spider-Boy as his sidekick. While Bailey is tempted to keep the "coolest toy in the world" after losing almost all of his personal possessions, he concludes that it's better for Toy Soldier to do good on its own rather than making it subservient to him. Toy Soldier thanks Spider-Boy for his example and flies off to fight crime.
- Wingdinglish: Squiggly vertical lines are used to represent the spider language that Bailey and Klöpp converse in in the backup story in Issue #3.
- Younger Than They Look: Hellifino is a human-rhino-elephant hybrid thrice Bailey's size and can crush stone with ease. From appearances alone, you'd never guess that he's a ten-year-old boy named Eli being forced to work for Madame Monstrosity.
