Hello and welcome to Comic Drake, where I talk about comic books and my name is Drake!
So obviously if you can’t tell, I’m wearing a Spider-Man suit that I was sent by OppoSuits.
Now these guys are not a sponsor, they just sent me the suit, but I liked it a lot and
I wanted to give them a shout out, but also, it got me thinking about my all time favorite
Spider-Man suit, the Iron Spider.
I love this thing so much that I actually have a shrine dedicated to it here in my office.
In fact, these comics that are on the wall right now are actually from that shrine and
I noticed that a lot of videos online about the Iron Spider armor are generally just the
origins or powers of it from Civil War, but there’s actually a lot more going on and
there are multiple people that have worn the Iron Spider suit outside of just Peter Parker
So today, I want to give you the complete history AND origins of the Iron Spider armor.
Let’s take a look!
When Aunt May’s house burned down, she, Peter, and Mary Jane all ended up moving to
Avengers Tower.
During this time, Peter essentially became Tony Stark’s protege and he made Peter a
brand new suit on a whim.
This is the Iron Spider armor, a super high tech outfit that combines the wall crawler’s
old aesthetic with the technology and color scheme of Iron Man’s.
This thing is extremely durable, being made out of heat resistant kevlar and microfiber
that’s capable of resisting small-caliber bullets.
It also has deployable mesh lining that allows for gliding.
Outside of being more sturdy than Spider-Man’s standard suit, this thing is also stuffed
to the brim with features including built in fire, police, and emergency scanners, audio
and visual amplification, infrared and ultraviolet vision, a short range GPS microwave communication
system, and carbon mouth filters with highly compressed air that lasts for around eight
minutes in a pinch.
All of this is controlled through a computerized system in the titanium chestpiece.
The suit’s wrists also open up automatically to allow for Peter to fire organic webbing
and brandish his stingers.
Yeah, for more information on that, I’d recommend checking out the episode we did
on the time that Spider-Man got new powers… from a kiss.
Anyway, this armor seems pretty sweet, right?
Well literally in the VERY NEXT issue, Tony decided to upgrade the suit even further!
So forget about the kevlar and microfiber because the Iron Spider is now made out of
liquid metal that can more or less disappear when needed and is activated by neurochemical
impulses.
This material is also adaptive, allowing for the costume to camouflage itself or change
in appearance to previous Spider-Man costumes.
If that wasn’t enough though, parts of this liquid metal can also detach from the suit
itself and be controlled through Peter’s mind.
He can also use it to stretch parts like Mr. Fantastic, such as this fight with Electro
where Spidey used a long finger so siphon his energy and redirect it back at him.
This upgrade however introduced what is arguably the most iconic aspect of the Iron Spider
suit, three extendable legs called waldoes that have built in cameras that are connected
to Peter’s eyepieces.
They also have pseudo-fingers with adherence devices allowing for Spider-Man to use them
for interacting with and grabbing things.
These COULD be used for combat, but sparingly since they’re relatively fragile.
Now I’m sure it’s no coincidence that as soon as Tony gave Peter this suit, he booked
them flights to Washington D.C. to discuss with lawmakers about the upcoming Superhuman
Registration Act.
Although he might have good motivations, it really does seems like Tony used this armor
to butter Peter up so that he could be used as the face of the pro-registration side.
Of course as many of you know, the Superhuman Registration Act led to the infamous superhuman
Civil War and despite Spider-Man being one of the major players, he ended up switching
to the anti-registration side right after it was discovered that Tony had sanctioned
the creation of both a clone of Thor and a prison inside of the Negative Zone.
When he lashed out at Iron Man, Tony activated an override inside of Peter’s suit which
Spidey immediately counters.
Although Spider-Man was able to escape, he was ambushed by government sanctioned villains
and was nearly killed until he was rescued by The Punisher.
As a result, the Iron Spider suit was massively damaged.
That means that from then on out, Spidey was back in his old costume, helping symbolize
his change in loyalty.
That wouldn’t be the last we’d see of the Iron Spider though since following the
Civil War, the 50-State Initiative was launched, putting a government sanctioned superteam
in every state of America.
However, several OTHER teams were also organized and directly controlled by the government.
One of these was the Shadow Initiative which employed not one, not two, but THREE Iron
Spiders.
Let me explain.
So there was this guy called Michael Van Patrick or MVP for short who was the great grandson
of Abraham Erskine, the dude that created Captain America’s super soldier serum.
It turns out that the doctor also discovered a totally natural formula that would yield
a super soldier in the form of a revolutionary diet and exercise routine.
The only issue is that in order to achieve these results, they’d need to be followed
for a lifetime.
Since the government wanted results instantly, this project was passed over in favor of Weapon
I, better known as Project: Rebirth that led to the creation of Captain America.
As a quick tangential side note, many of you guys might know Weapon X as the project that
created Wolverine.
The X is actually the roman numeral for ten and is a direct descendant of Project: Rebirth.
That's actually a video topic that I want to cover sometime in the future, so if that's
something that you wanna to see, let me know down there in the comments.
Anyway, the government didn’t even deem Erskine’s experimental diet and routine
worth classifying so it was just passed along in the family until MVP’s father said “screw
it” and tested the regimine on his son.
The result was a 100% natural super soldier comparable to Captain America!
MVP was recruited into the Initiative, but was killed pretty quickly in a training mishap.
His body wouldn’t go to waste though since he was cloned by a former Nazi scientist for
the United States government.
Because comics.
Three of these clones were given the names Michael, Van, and Patrick which is pretty
damn clever.
This trio was trained by the mercenary, Taskmaster, in the combat techniques of Spider-Man and
were each given an Iron Spider suit.
Now although they could have easily been named the Iron Spiders, these clones of MVP were
instead dubbed the Scarlet Spiders, a reference to the most famous Spider-Man clone of all
time.
The Scarlet Spiders’ suits are further modified from the one that Peter wore, now sporting
an additional fourth arm, mechanical web shooters to make up for their lack of organics, pulse
cannons that fire repulsor grenades, and holographic projectors.
Of the three Scarlet Spiders, Patrick was the only one to survive combat, ending up
with an anti-Initiative counter force that disbanded in 2010.
I have not been able to find any record of Patrick since in my research so I’m pretty
sure he’s still out there with an Iron Spider suit and that writers just forgot that he
exists.
The next time that an Iron Spider suit would pop up again is in 2015 where Peter Parker
has it alongside several of his older costumes.
It’s unknown if this is the original suit that Peter wore or if he remade it from scratch,
but we do know that it is fully operational when it was donned by Mary Jane Watson for
a single issue one year later in order to help out Spidey and Iron Man take down a baddie
named Regent.
A year after that, we can see that a criminal outfitter and weapons designer named Ceres
Goldstein has her own Iron Spider suit.
Note that on both Peter and Ceres’s suit, there are four mechanical arms.
That makes it very possible that these could in fact be remnants of the suits that are
worn by the Scarlet Spiders.
Anyway, Ceres further modified her suit into this black and gold armor that she sold to
Aaron Davis, the uncle of Miles Morales.
Ceres said she added and removed features in the armor, but the full extent of that
is relatively unknown at the time of this recording.
However, we have seen on Davis’s suit that the Waldoes detach and act like a mechanical
drone which is pretty damn cool.
And although it doesn't relate to the history of the Iron Spider suit, I just want to say
that Aaron Davis using the Iron Spider and fighting against his nephew, Miles Morales,
is really freaking cool and I’m so glad that my favorite Spider-Man costume has made
a comeback in such a significant fashion.
Thank you guys very much for bearing with me and letting me gush about one of my favorite
things in all of comics.
And I hope you learned at least a little something new about the Iron Spider armour.
But if you liked this video, then why not consider subscribing or even watching another
one?
In fact, in this video I mentioned that we did an episode on the time that Spider-Man
got organic webs and stingers from a kiss, so maybe go check that out it's one of the
umm…
most interesting videos that we’ve ever done on the channel.
Anyway, hopefully I’ll see you next time!