Face front, true believers!
This episode we’re covering S1E3: ‘The Return of the Spider Slayers’.
Alistair Smythe is back and that mullet seems to be cutting off the circulation to his brain, because he’s got some needlessly elaborate schemes and *even more* spider robots to finish the job. Henry and Jack delve into what turns out to be the most fun episode yet, and not just because Eddie Brock has the worst day of his life.
After our talk about the third episode of the series, we look into the origins of Alistair Smythe in the obscure and absurd The Amazing Spider-Man Annual #19.
And then, for our third entry into the weird lore bullshit corner, Jack talks to Henry about some of the strangest editions to the extended Spider-verse family.
Listen on iTunes here
Spotify here
YouTube
And Stitcher Here
Further podcast notes:
First off, while there’s no one-to-one recreation of any of the comic book spider slayers in this episode, the way he is caught and brought back by one is reminiscent of one of Spencer Smythe’s schemes – specifically the model that shows up in The Amazing Spider-Man #106.
The Amazing Spider-Man Annual #19 is pretty strange for a number of reasons, but it does have a killer cover. Here’s that intriguing cover art we mentioned in the show:
The issue doesn’t quite live up to that cover, unfortunately.
As I hadn’t read through the entire issue at the time of recording, I left out some major stuff. Namely, that Alistair Smythe is not wheelchair-bound in his origin, and that Smythe’s main weapon is a flying saucer… and the idea of the exoskeleton was all his idea.
Eventually, with Anna Watson’s life in danger, MJ bites and goes with the ludicrous idea.
And that wasn’t even this week’s choice for Weird Lore Bullshit Corner. For our third entry into the weird lore bullshit corner, Jack talks to Henry about some of the strangest editions to the extended Spider-verse family.
First up, there’s the ‘Spiders-Man’ of Earth-11580, made up entirely of a colony of spiders who share the consciousness of Peter Parker (or believe it).
He first turns up in Spider -Geddon #3, from January this year.
He’s pretty weird.
But that’s not all. There’s another Spiders Man, one that time forgot…
This guy is from Earth-9997, first appearing in Earth X #3 back in 1999.
He’s a little hard to track down, but there’s more information on him on the Marvel wiki. And here’s a few more shots:
And a sketch from the end of Earth X #4
If you missed out on it, you can check out our last podcast right here.
That '90s Spider-Man Show 