Ever since Sony's Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse allowed multiple Spider-People to join forces in one universe, fans have dreamed of seeing Tobey Maguire, Andrew Garfield, and Tom Holland’s cinematic versions of Spider-Man to cross over. Little do these fans realize, however, that Maguire and Garfield’s Spider-Men have already teamed up... in the comics.
During Marvel Comics’ original Spider-Verse event, writer Dan Slott managed to bring practically every alternate version of Spider-Man into the same story – from Spider-Man 2099 to Spider-Man 1602, to cult favorite Supaidāman, Japan’s Power Ranger-like version of Spidey. Unfortunately due to legal issues, Slott couldn’t include Sony Pictures' movie versions of Spider-Man. But that only meant he had to include them in a much sneakier way.
In Spider-Verse #2 (2015), Slott includes a short story entitled “It’s The Little Things.” During the three-page interlude, two alternate universe Spider-Men (including the one from Renew Your Vows) take a break from fighting the Spider-Totem eating Inheritors to refill their web shooters. As they chat about the amazing variety of Spider-People they’ve seen, one Spider-Man comments how one of the Spider-Men “would not stop singing show tunes” – a not-so-subtle shout out to the critically panned Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark musical. The other Spidey counters by saying he ran into a Spider-Man who kept trying to teach him English – indicating that the Spider-Man from the PBS show The Electric Company also fought in Spider-Verse.
Really getting into it now, the first Spider-Man quips how he saw an unmasked Spidey who “looked just like the guy from Seabiscuit,” referencing the 2003 racehorse movie starring Tobey Maguire. Not to be outdone, his dimensional twin claims, “I think I saw the guy from The Social Network over there,” a reference to Andrew Garfield’s character in the Facebook drama. Thanks to such indirect observations, Slott managed to assure fans that Maguire and Garfield were not left out of the spectacular Spider-palooza – even if fans never got to see the two movie Spider-Men in action.
With a new Into the Spider-Verse movie sequel in the works, however, and strong hints that the Morbius Sony film is set in the MCU, the possibility for Maguire, Garfield, and possibly even Holland to appear together in a crossover seems… somewhat plausible. Certainly, the WB’s recent CRISIS crossover revealed DC is willing to include multiple cameos from films such as Superman Returns to the 1960s Batman TV show. One scene even allowed Ezra Miller’s DCEU Flash meet Grant Gustin’s!
With such glorious displays of fanservice from Marvel’s Distinguished Competition, could a real Spider-Man crossover be far behind?