Japanese Spider-Man Returns At Last This November In Marvel’s ‘Spider-Verse’

Did you need more proof that we were living in the best of all possible worlds? If so, here you go: At long last, editor Nick Lowe has confirmed that Japanese Spider-Man is returning in the pages of November's Spider-Verse event.

The event, which kicks off in Amazing Spider-Man #9, has promised to include "Every Spider-Man Ever," and while we expected this to include standard variants like Spider-Man 2099 and Ultimate Spider-Man, this one comes as a surprise. Marvel has very rarely acknowledged the existence of Peter Parker's Japanese counterpart, which makes sense. I mean, he is the best possible Spider-Man.

Originally created for Japanese television by Toei in 1978, Takuya Yamashiro was a dirtbike racer who was granted incredible power by Garia, an alien from Planet Spider, and tasked with stopping the evil plans of Professor Monster and his nefarious Iron Cross Army. In addition to strength, agility, webs and the occasional machine gun, Takuya, alias Spider-Man (or Spiderman, or Supaidaman, opinions vary), had a bull-themed car called the GP-7 and a giant lion-themed robot called Leopardon. This is actually pretty important -- it introduced (or at least highly reinforced) the idea of a hero piloting a giant robot to the tokusatsu genre, paving the way for the sentai shows to become Super Sentai, and thus giving us Power Rangers.

Really though, the point is that Supaidaman has a giant robot and a dirtbike, and Peter Parker has neither. Advantage: Toei.

He doesn't appear to be present in Gabriele Dell'Otto's Spider-Verse promo image. There's plenty of external webshooters to go around, but none of them quite match the chunky Spider-Bracelet. With any luck, he'll turn up in official art soon, perhaps along with Toei's latest take on Spidey from the Marvel Disk Wars: The Avengers anime.

Hopefully, this will mark the return of Takuya Yamashiro to the Marvel Universe proper, and if they need anyone to chronicle that guy's adventures, well, Caleb and I are available.