How Spider-Man PS4 Recreates One Of Marvel's Greatest Experiments

Reimagining a mythos isn't as easy as it looks.

by Ewan Paterson
Spider-Man PS4 Ultimates Thumbnail
Marvel Comics/Insomniac

Spider-Man PS4 (or Marvel's Spider-Man, to use its official, albeit equally uninspired name), has proven to be a veritable triumph of the gaming medium. Its story, gameplay and look are all equally immaculate, but one thing worth focusing on in particular is its reimagining of Spider-Man's lore, something creators have found themselves doing for decades now.

Adapting the modern myths of Marvel and DC to different mediums big and small has yielded mixed results, and none, truly, know this better than Marvel's wall-crawler. TV shows, films and of course games have all featured everyone's favourite web-slinger, and all have had to readapt the mythos pioneered by Stan Lee, Steve Ditko, Jack Kirby and John Romita - plus countless others - to fit changing moods and times; even the comics themselves have done this before.

There's no one way to adapt a comic, but taking into account as many different interpretations as possible is a surefire way of making sure it retains a broad appeal. That's the approach Insomniac have taken this time around, much the same way Marvel Studios did with 2008's Iron Man, but the success of their reimagining has more in common with a comic book experiment than with Disney's cinematic one.

The Ultimate Universe, created at the turn of the century to galvanise Marvel's declining brand, was that very experiment. But while the lasting image of that mythos today might be Mark Millar's Ultimates, it was Brian Bendis' Ultimate Spider-Man that set it all in motion, and the one whose influence can best be felt today, in cinema, TV, comics, and in Insomniac's revolutionary superhero title.

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Content Producer/Presenter

WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.