How Spider-Man 2 Refines The Comics

Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 has come and gone, with Insomniac’s sequel providing a whole new interpretation to the symbiote mythos and iconic Venom storyline. It also takes heavy inspiration from Kraven’s Last Hunt, one of the most beloved Spider-Man stories of all time, while still taking creative liberties, and in some cases, surpassing the original interpretation. However, by pulling from various media and adaptations of these characters and this world and mixing them into something greater, Spider-Man 2 also presents an incredibly diluted version of the original comics.

Let’s start with the Venom symbiote itself. In the comics, years upon years of retcons and lore have bogged down the Venom symbiote with the weight of expectations. Sometimes it’s a lone symbiote that controls you, sometimes it’s from a planet of symbiotes that all want to come here, sometimes that planet is actually a prison for a god who has existed since the very dawn of time itself. Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 dilutes that down to several basic elements: the symbiote crash-landed on Earth, it wants to be loved (as evidenced by the fact it so desperately clings to Peter) and it wants everybody on the entire planet to be alike, so it isn’t alone.

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By ignoring some of the wilder retcons in the comic mythos, Insomniac streamlines a lot of potential issues. There are references to Knull, the Symbiote god, in as far as the symbol he uses appears on the face of every symbiote that you fight other than Venom himself, but they introduce the complexity of an alien religion because it knows there isn’t enough time to do it justice.

There’s also the changing of what the symbiote actually does. Contrary to popular belief, the symbiote doesn’t actually affect your emotions, at least in the original run of comics. When the symbiote was first created, it was just a cool new suit for Spider-Man, and it wasn’t until much later that the writers decided that they could do something better with it. The symbiote actively affecting Peter’s mental state and his emotions was added in with various adaptations, with the 90s cartoon, the Sam Raimi movies and Spectacular Spider-Man all playing on the idea of the suit controlling Peter to a degree that made him far more dangerous and emotionally unstable.

Insomniac leans into these adaptations by making the symbiote into something that is actively leeching ontoPeter’s negative emotions, especially since the game presents us with a Peter Parker who is incredibly stressed and incredibly down on his luck (even for somebody with the notorious Parker Luck). He’s hostile to anybody who wants to help him, he’s a bad person to people who know him better than that, and it really feeds into the dramatic nature of the symbiote corrupting you.

Of course, this being an adaptation and a distillation of multiple different versions of every given character, there’s more than just the Symbiote that has changed. The Kraven story that Spider-Man 2 owes a lot to, Kraven’s Last Hunt, is heralded as one of the greatest comics of all time. It’s also the last important Kraven story as, bar some extremely ill-conceived later stories, Kraven is out of commission for good following the events of the book.

Last Hunt was written in 1992. Miles Morales was created in 2011. If you can’t tell, this means that Insomniac had to figure out an organic way to integrate the character into a world where Kraven hasn’t yet faced Spider-Man (and in which Peter Parker hasn’t had the Symbiote suit), and yet with all the challenges that come with this – does Kraven want to hunt one of the Spider-Men or both of them? How does Miles factor into a personal revenge narrative? – Insomniac found a great way of mixing the character and the story into a single, cohesive tale.

Insomniac does this by making Miles a foil to Kraven. Kraven is ultimately looking for somebody worth his time, somebody who can match up with him blow for blow in a self-destructive quest, while Miles desperately seeks revenge on Martin Li. Both paths lead them to opposite ends of the exact same scenario: Kraven finds peace in death, creating a terror far bigger than he could have ever imagined through his own self-destruction, while Miles finds peace with what happened to his father, realising that while he could never forgive Li, he could try and move on with his life.

Returning to the Symbiote, it was a brilliant idea to have Miles and Peter come to blows not only physically, but emotionally. Making Peter essentially terrified of becoming obsolete, of becoming an unnecessary factor in the face of Miles' existence of Spider-Man is great, while having it come down to Miles to rip the Symbiote off Peter and talk some sense into him, offering reassurance, really lends credence to Peter deciding to take some time off at the end of the game. It doesn’t feel like it came out of nowhere, it feels like it’s something desperately needed for him as a character.

While comic accuracy is something that Twitter and a largely-online crowd seem to put above all else, including quality, Insomniac taking its own liberties with the story was the right decision. Instead of adhering to the strict story guidelines of an archaic story, it has created something that will be remembered in the annals of great Spider-Man stories for years to come.

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