Spider-Punk

OneTwoThreeFour! Spider-Punk causes major rifts in an alternate universe ruled by the corrupt President Osborne. Osborn. Osborn Osborn Osborn. For pete's sake, his name is spelt OSBORN. No E! Somebody needs to break into Hasbro, and enter the right damn spelling in their spellchecker program so this stops happening. Also, I think they mean major "riffs," because he uses 15,000 watts of punk rock from an army of amps set to 11 to create sonic waves and fight Oscorp's Variable Engagement Neuro-Sensitive Organic Mesh. This is, of course, the design that began life as Olivier Coipel's take on Spider-UK - very much a London punk, but not quite what a member of the Captain Britain Corps would be wearing. So after turning in all the pages, Coipel had to redraw Spider-UK and paste him into place. Oh man! Luckily for him, the original design was so good that Dan Slott created a new character to inhabit it. As the comic put it, "When teenage squatter Hobie Brown is bitten by a radioactive spider created by illegal waste dumping, he becomes the Anarchic Spider-Man." So yes, the Spidey of Earth-138 is an alternate version of The Prowler, meaning there are two versions of him in one series, when there haven't been two versions of him in anything before, ever. The figure uses the skinniest body, of course, but gets some new parts: he wears a denim vest with pins and buttons on the front and a modified New York Hardcore logo (that appears to say "F'n Spider-Man") on the back, plus a few small metal spikes on the shoulders. His feet are in sneakers, which you might think would make it hard for him to stick to walls, but apparently it works for him. Also, that mohawk of metal spikes on his mask would probably hurt him as much as anybody he headbutts. Spider-Punk has four hands, but only one of them was an existing mold: the right fist. He has a left hand that looks like a thwip, but the thumb is tucked over the middle two fingers, making it clear that this is a rock sign. Then, there's a pair of hands for playing the included guitar: the right is molded holding a pick, while the left is posed to perform one of the three chords he knows how to play. The guitar accessory is decent, but is almost entirely unpainted. Having a white body makes sense, but a white neck? White strings? How's this little punk keeping his guitar so clean? You could claim it's the way the instrument was depicted in Spider-Verse #2 - his first appearance - but that issue also made it quite clear that he was playing it left-handed, which this toy is not. Also, he can't swing it like an axe to kill President Osborn, because none of his hands will allow him to hold it that way. Still, you gotta admit, the blank white does make a nice contrast against the traditional red-and-blue Spidey suit (traditional colors, at least - the specific pattern is unique to Hobie). And the standard articulation means he's flexible enough to get into a good Dee Dee Ramone stance, even before you consider the new swivels at the top of the shoes. Spider-Punk also comes with the right arm of The Lizard, the Series 6 Build-A-Figure. The only reason Spider-Punk exists at all is because his design is so strong. You look at him, and you instantly grok what he is: Spider-Man suit + punk rock accoutrements? He's the radioactive Spider-Punk! It's no surprise he was swiftly adapted into videogames, cartoons and, obviously, action figures. -- 12/31/18

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