Dark Avengers Spider-Man

Eventually one of these Wallcrawler Wednesdays will not be a black Spider-Man, we promise! After Ai Apaec helped Norman Osborn escape from the Special Containment Center Osborn recruited him to become Spider-Man on his Dark Avengers team. That's his second Dark Avengers team, not his first. After the Siege crossover, Norman was arrested and placed in yet another of Marvel's high-security prisons, where he met a bunch of new psychopaths, including Ai Apaec the Decapitator, a pre-Incan Peruvian god. Ai Apaec's natural form is far from human: he was like a centaur, with a spider body instead of a horse, and his hair was made of snakes. When Osborn went to recruit him, he fed the god a... something. Some kind of block that genetically modified him, giving him a more human shape... but with six arms instead of two. We've had a Six-Armed Spider-Man before, but that figure was heavily textured and wearing his original costume, so the torso here had to be new. It'll be interesting to see what else they decide to use it for in the future, because you know how much they hate one-time-use bodies. The figure includes two heads, with eyes of different sizes: one set gigantic, like the black suit typically has, the other smaller and squintier. If they'd really wanted to do something special, they could have traded one of those for a version that has the mouth open to reveal his large, sharp fangs, but maybe they thought we'd all just confuse him for Venom at that point? Dark Avengers Spider-Man is solid black, with a stylized white spider emblem on the chest and back. It does look a bit like Spider-Woman/Venom's symbol, but the legs are more like the first Amazing Spider-Man movie suit's, long and thin, rather than wrapping around the sides. The eyes are white, but there are no squares on the backs of the hands. It's worth noting that this isn't a costume Ai Apaec is wearing: when Norman Osborn gave him the magical stick of chewing gum, this is just what he ended up looking like; you're not seeing cloth or a symbiote, that's his skin, it just looks like that. The first Six-Armed Spidey mold Hasbro made lacked a chest joint, because how would you include that when you have six shoulders to deal with? Well, like this, apparently. In addition to all the normal joints in the arms and arms and arms and legs, Ai gets a balljointed chest, tucked right between the second and third pair of arms. It's not the greatest range of motion ever, but it is motion, and that's an advancement. Even a so-so joint is better than a solid piece, right? When Norman reshaped him, the reveal page used the Secret Wars #8 cover pose as inspiration, with the new Spider-Man standing there, arms akimbo and his fingers spread wide. Only one pair of arms on this figure has hands like that (the rest are fists), and while the set does include alternate splayed hands, it's only one set - no matter what, two of his arms will always be stuck with fists. Series 15 of Marvel Legends features a Build-A-Figure. It's Skurge, and this set includes the right leg. I wasn't reading Dark Avengers during this storyarc, but I still knew there was a six-armed black Spider-Man on the team (along with a blonde Scarlet Witch and a black-haired Ms. Marvel, for some reason). I certainly never expected Ai Apaec would get a Marvel Legend, but now here stands the official version. He may not be part of the same Dark Avengers team as the other figures we've gotten recently, but he's still something unique and will look great in their ranks. -- 01/14/26 Whioh Dark Avengers team would win in a fight? Tell us on our message board, the Loafing Lounge.