It's wild to think how influential Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions was. The actually pretty good videogame from 2010 gave us a meeting of four alternate Spider-Mans, though that wasn't enough for one its writers, Dan Slott, who thought it would be better with all of them. That inspired him to write the crossover Spider-Verse, which in turn inspired the animated Spider-Verse movies, the live-action movie Spider-Man: No Way Home, and the character's whole modern status quo where he's part of his own multiverse of Spider-People.
Which includes Spinneret and Spiderling, as depicted in this preview card from Magic: The Gathering's Spider-Man set. They're from an alternate Earth where Peter Parker and MJ stayed married and had a daughter, Annie-May Parker, who developed spider-powers of her own. She became the superhero named Spiderling while MJ, thanks to a high-tech suit that lets her share her husband's abilities, fights crime alongside her family as Spinneret.
This is told in a series that began as a crossover spin-off called Renew Your Vows, focusing on the domestic life of this Spider-Family. The struggle of two constantly exhausted parents who are not as young as they used to be makes for a surprisingly grounded superhero saga, one where heroes still have to worry about having breakfast on the table for their kid in the morning. The least realistic thing about it is that a fashion expert like MJ would wear an outfit with those boot cuffs.
The cards revealed so far in Magic's Spider-Man set show plenty of similar multiversal deep cuts, like Spider-Cat from Spider-Island, Lyla the hologram sidekick from Spider-Man 2099, and multiple cards sharing the keyword ability "menace" because it's J. Jonah Jameson's favorite word for summing up Spidey. Which is cute.
The Renew Your Vows storyline that gave us Spinneret and Spiderling felt like a continuation of Spider-Man's original promise. The early issues back in the '60s depicted Peter Parker's changing life as he grew up, but at a certain point the clock was wound back to trap him in bachelor stasis. Renew Your Vows let us see how Spider-Man would have changed if he'd been allowed to reveal his quips were dad jokes all along, and how his supporting cast could have grown alongside him to become co-stars in their own right.
It was only ever an alternate timeline, but thanks to the Spider-Verse we get to spend time with it and every other possibility, from the cartoon world of Spider-Ham to the hard-boiled Spider-Man Noir, and Magic's clearly leaning into that variety with this set. They even brought back the Riot keyword from Ravnica Allegiance just for Spider-Punk. We owe it all to the outsized influence of Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions, a seven-out-of-ten game that nevertheless reshaped an entire corner of popular culture.
Magic: The Gathering x Marvel's Spider-Man will be available from September 26. Prerelease events begin on September 19.
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