Superheroes team up and cross over all the time these days. As culture chases the multiversal high, it’s now more likely and easier than ever to slam big names together. But it’s still rare to see a cross-cultural exchange like Marvel’s latest Ultraman crossovers happen on the same day—and offer very different approaches to the form and function of the genre.
Today Marvel Comics and Viz Media both launched two distinct mashups between Tsuburaya’s legendary tokusatsu hero Ultraman and Marvel’s world of comic book superheroes. On the manga front, there’s Ultraman: Along Came a Spider-Man by Shigenobu Matsumoto and Tomo Hirakawa (translated by Joe Yamazaki); on the western comics side of things there’s Ultraman x Avengers #1, the first in a three-issue miniseries by Kyle Higgins, Mat Groom, Francesco Manna, Matt Milla, and Ariana Maher.
On the surface both offer a similar premise: during a round of typical superheroic day-saving, mysterious circumstances catapult a Spider-Man into the world of Ultraman. Which Spider differs—in the manga, it’s Peter Parker; in the comic, it’s Miles Morales—but that’s far from the only divergent path these two books take with the idea.
In Ultraman x Avengers, the crossover circumstances are, of course, inherently tied into the multiversal concept. The reason Miles is pulled into Ultraman’s world is because of his now-inherent connection to the multiverse concept, between his former time in the Ultimate Marvel universe and years of Spider-Verse shenanigans, shunted sideways when a plan to delay the arrival of Galactus on Earth sees Reed Richards simply punt him to a different Earth in the multiverse (dick move, Reed!). In Along Came a Spider-Man, it leans on the more conventional tropes of what we’ve come to expect from isekai-type stories. Here, Peter is mortally wounded in a battle against Doctor Doom, only for both hero and villain to be, metaphorically speaking, hit by a train that takes them off across the boundaries of realities and into Ultraman’s Japan.
What is interesting about both crossovers is their approaches to continuity, and the understanding of the heroes they’re dealing with. Along Came a Spider-Man gives us a Peter Parker that is kind of an amalgam between his film and comics counterparts—in his world he fights alongside Avengers who certainly look a lot like their MCU selves, and he’s still a relatively young man, having only lost Uncle Ben and become Spider-Man three years prior. It’s a vague approximation of Spider-Man, drawn loosely: he’s a superhero, he shoots webs, he wants to save people, and that’s basically all the kind of characterization you need to know. He’s Spider-Man! That’s it, you’re ready for him to bump into Ultraman by the end of the second chapter and presumably have Shin Hayata say “I want to save people too!” at some point. Ultraman x Avengers, meanwhile, is wrapped in layers of intriguing context and understanding that, while not burdensome, speak to the different ways it wants to find common ground between the worlds of Ultraman and Marvel.
Specifically, Ultraman x Avengers is rooted in the context of Marvel’s prior Ultraman comics from the past few years—original stories that took the general premise of classic ’60s Ultraman and transposed it into modern, original continuity. The circumstances in which we’re introduced to its versions of Shin and his allies in the United Science Patrol lean on the circumstances that arose from those myriad comic series, which eventually saw Shin and a few close allies split from the USP after it was revealed that its leader, Director Morheim, was an alien in disguise. The aftermath of those series is crucial to setting the stage when Miles shows up, creating the initial distrust Shin and his friends feel toward him. It goes on to establish the initial hurdles our united heroes face in dealing with Galactus when the rest of the Avengers eventually arrive. Even diving into smaller details like a gag between Miles and Peter—where they nod that the giant mecha Ultraman Jack that Shin’s allies have built is not all that dissimilar to that of their Japanese spider-friend Takuya Yamashiro‘s Leopardon, as he’s appeared in various Spider-Verse comics—is wrapped in layers of understanding and continuity.
Like I said, it’s not burdensome—Ultraman x Avengers‘ debut issue does a good job of filling you in on the Ultraman side of things if you’re not caught up with those comics. The way it uses continuity is fannish, but not in a detrimental way: you get more out of the book if you’ve read that prior material, but you’re still going to have a decent time if you haven’t. It’s largely just an interesting contrast to the approach of Along Came a Spider-Man, where its broadness invites common ground between its heroes, rather than more so connecting the dots between the ways in which they’re different to each other.
Just how much that will continue to play out as Along Came a Spider-Man and Ultraman x Avengers continue over the coming weeks and months remains to be seen, but having them sit alongside each other in the release schedule gives us an interesting opportunity to see these two forms expound on what makes this kind of crossover compelling in the first place.
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