It’s hard to believe that it’s been four years since Marvel and Sony released “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” the wildly popular and critically acclaimed animated film that forever altered the way studios think about superhero movies. “Into the Spider-Verse” was a fan favorite and received rave reviews from critics. The movie was a wall-to-wall (crawling) spectacle with its mesmerizing visuals and whirlwind action sequences, and yet it also managed to tell a touching, human story about a kid who was struggling with his family (in the case of the Prowler, literally) and the responsibilities that threaten to pull that family apart. We fans of the movie are quite fortunate that information regarding the upcoming sequel, “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” has finally been released.
One very specific element has emerged despite the fact that the trailer, character confirmations, and narrative details have all been murky thus far: Miles Morales and his fellow Spider-People are going to fight head-to-head with the Marvel villain known as the Spot. It is important to take a moment to explain exactly who and what the Spot is in order to avoid any confusion. The mysterious comic book villain is not on par with Doctor Doom, Magneto, or Thanos. Is he able to identify foes from a great distance thanks to his enhanced vision? Is he a dog companion with an overused moniker? Continue reading to discover out as we disclose information that has never before been discussed on Marvel’s the Spot.
The Spot is the anti-Cloak
In 1984, in the pages of “Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man #97,” The Spot made his first appearance for the first time, or more accurately, his pre-superpowered incarnation did. Dr. Jonathan Ohnn made his first appearance when he was still just an average super-scientist working for the criminal mastermind Wilson Fisk, also known as the Kingpin of Crime. During this appearance, he was seen analyzing footage of the hero Cloak on a “video-radiation scan analyzer” and realizing the power that was inherent in the hero’s ability to teleport between different dimensions. Ohnn’s debut, on the other hand, was rather brief because this issue also featured the Hermit, who is a possible adversary for Spider-Man. Ohnn lucked out when the Hermit turned out to be a failure because the very following issue gave birth to the Spot.
Because Ohnn was experimenting with Cloak’s abilities, he ended up having to run through a fake portal just as it was closing and becoming unstable. The gateway whisked him away to a dimension filled with polka dots, each of which served as its own portal. When he returned to our world, the dots were still there waiting for him when he arrived. While Peter Parker and the Black Cat spent the majority of the issue engaging in their signature mix of brawling and flirting, Ohnn was coming to terms with the scope of his new power. He had a new body that was covered in spots, and each spot functioned as a teleportation portal. Ohnn had complete control over all of the spots on his new body. Although Cloak possesses the ability to build portals, the Spot himself is a portal, and he possesses several of them.
The Spot is the ultimate follower
Fans who have been following Spider-Man for a long time are likely familiar with the “Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man” book, which is a spin-off of the character’s primary comic, “The Amazing Spider-Man.” It was always the intention of the Spectacular book to capitalize on the success of the character and provide fans with twice the amount of web-slinging adventures, but the book never included the largest and most essential Spider-Man stories. The fact that the Spot made his initial appearance in the Spectacular series is the first indication that he will ultimately function as a supporting character. When taken in conjunction with the fact that his introduction in the same issue played a supporting role to the introduction of another villain, his fate appears to be destined to be unremarkable.
In the over 40 years that the Spot has been appearing in comic books, he has rarely faced off against his most formidable adversaries — mostly Daredevil and Spider-Man — on his alone. In spite of the off-the-charts potential of his skill set, the Spot has never completely capitalized on the opportunity and developed into a major player. Instead, he almost always appears as a part of a new supervillain group that has been put together for the current issue of the comic book series. A number of different teams, including HYDRA, many iterations of the Sinister Six, the Hood’s gang, the brief “Spider-Man Revenge Squad,” Kingpin’s crew, Tombstone’s crew, MODOK’s team, and others, have been known to have the Spot on their rosters at one time or another. We can only hope that his participation in “Across the Spider-Verse” will pave the way for further solo action for Spot or, if the Spider-Gods will have it, for him to lead his team.
The Spot and Polka-Dot Man: kindred spirits
When James Gunn decided to breathe new life into the stale “Suicide Squad” franchise that had been running in the DC Extended Universe (DCEU), he set about putting together a cast of characters for the new team that was characteristically “Gunn-esque.” These characters were eccentric, snarky, underused, and overlooked. One of these deep-cut misfits was the Polka-Dot Man, and the decision to include him in 2021’s “The Suicide Squad,” where he was played by the always-excellent David Dastmalchian, was a prudent and deserving one. And in the Polka-Dot Man, fans of Marvel may recognize a kindred spirit to the Spot, primarily due to the fact that they are essentially the same character in many aspects.
To begin, both foes are associated with the most infamous rogues’ galleries in DC and Marvel’s respective canons, namely Batman’s and Spider- Man’s, yet neither is a major antagonist in their respective rogues’ galleries. Another similarity between the two is that in order to obtain their superpowers, both wore suits of spots, which was the result of their decision to exploit their sophisticated technological expertise. Or dots. Both also utilize their’spots’ and ‘dots’ to create portable portals, the primary purpose of which is to cause their respective heroes frustration. One of them is rainbow-colored, while the other is monochromatic, and one of them loves the term dot, while the other prefers the term spot. These are the two main distinctions between the two villains, but they are merely preferences in terms of appearance. Despite the fact that this distinction is quite little, it is important to note that when Ohnn first entered the dimension that bestowed his Spot powers upon him, he thought to himself, “It’s… polka-dotted?!!”
Spider-Man’s savior, the Spot
Just like so many other Marvel characters, the Spot exists in numerous realities, each of which contains its own version of himself. Earth-616 is the setting for the majority of Marvel’s “main” characters, including the principal version of Spot, who lives there. However, there are other Spots in the world, and not all of them are as evil as their 616 counterparts. We meet an other version of Ohn (yep, this time with only one “n”) during the events of the 2015 event titled “Secret Wars.” This version of Ohn chose not to become the Spot and instead continued his life as a scientist. This other Ohn began working for SHIELD, putting his genius-level intelligence to use for the service of justice. This action hinted at a more favorable future than what may have been the case if the 616 Ohnn hadn’t become supercharged.
Not only is this Ohn a member of SHIELD, but he also holds a profound regard and admiration for Spider-Man and Peter Parker, in addition to Peter Parker’s super-powered daughter Annie, a character who is exclusive to this reality, which was eventually given the name the “Renew Your Vows” universe. This Ohn is such a brave and selfless Arachnophilia that he offers himself up as a sacrifice in order to save the lives of the Parker family. Ohn, who is hurt and is being engulfed by his portals, uses his last remaining place to teleport MJ and Annie to the location of the currently-captive Spider-Man, which eventually leads to the hero’s release.
The Spot and Marvel cosmology
The Marvel comics multiverse is already enormous and complicated, and it will likely continue to expand as more time passes. Wait till you try your first tour of the original comic book version of “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” before you decide whether or not the convoluted conflux of realities presented in “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” is confusing. The majority of universes are (relatively) straightforward parallel realities, such as the world of Earth-26615, which appears to be the same as the other 616 worlds, with the exception that Venom was responsible for Spider-death Man’s in this one. However, the multiverse also has worlds, if they can be called that, that exist as completely foreign states of reality. These universes are governed by undiscovered physical rules (if there are any at all), and they are not even necessarily discretely contained within their own universe. (If you think it sounds complicated, try to picture yourself as being made of inter-dimensional portals like the Spot and residing in one of those universes.)
One of these weird realms is referred to as the Darkforce Dimension, and it is from this location that The Spot obtains his abilities. Because the Spot’s powers originated from an attempt to imitate those of the Cloak, and the Cloak does, in fact, receive his powers from the Darkforce Dimension, this might be interpreted as a win for the Spot in and of itself. This dimension appears to be primarily desolate, yet it is riddled with Darkforce, an unexplained form of energy that seems to make its way into several other realities, empowering beings such as the Spot, Cloak, Mister Negative, Darkhawk, and many others. Additionally, it has been suggested that it is the origin of all teleportation powers; however, at least in the instance of Nightcrawler, this does not appear to be the case.
This isn’t Spot’s first multiverse
Because of his abilities, you probably already anticipated that the Spot would take part in a number of different universe-hopping adventures, and this prediction was correct. But the more shocking fact is that his future appearance in “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” will be an animated Spider-Man series, just like his previous role in “Spider-Man: Homecoming.” This could be his largest and most multiversal incident that has ever occurred. The “Spider-Man” animated series from the 1990s is in question here. Along with the “X-Men” cartoon from the same decade, “Spider-Man” was primarily responsible for defining the concept of Marvel heroes for a whole generation. In particular, the Spot played an important part in the “Spider Wars” event that took place during Season 5 of the show.
The “Spider Wars” saga, which took place 20 years before “Into the Spider-Verse,” brought together a team of six alternate versions of Spider-Man and/or Peter Parker — unofficially dubbed the Spider-Men — to stop a multiversal threat that no one spider could stop alone. This was very similar to what happened in “Into the Spider-Verse.” In contrast to the previous episode, “Into the Spider-Verse,” in which the antagonist, the Kingpin, recklessly used a particle collider as a weapon, the antagonist in “Spider Wars” was another Spider-person, a Parker clone by the name of Spider-Carnage who was controlled by a symbiote. It was Ohn’s experiments that were responsible for the creation of Spider-Carnage in the first place, and he did not become a menace to several universes until he obtained access to Ohn’s reality-warping technologies. Excellent work, Spot!
The Spot is Jason Schwartzman
If you’re a comic book aficionado, you might recognize Jason Schwartzman as the voice of the Spot in “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” who was just announced as the main enemy by Sony on their official Twitter page. Comic fans may recognize Schwartzman best as Gideon Graves, the slimy Evil Ex of Ramona Flowers and last boss in 2010’s “Scott Pilgrim vs. The World,” despite his remarkable career outside of comics, including appearances in practically every Wes Anderson film to date and the newest season of “Fargo.”
Schwartzman, who played Graves in “Funny People” in 2009, nailed the character’s sluggishness, elitism, and capacity to take a punch. Schwartzman proved he has what it takes to play a villain with his performance as Graves. Some of the behind-the-scenes footage from “Scott Pilgrim” shows just how dedicated the actor was to the role, going so far as to study swordplay and do his own stunts for the film’s thrilling ending. Because we’ve all seen what can go wrong when a villain’s actor only half-commits, web-heads should look forward to Schwartzman’s performance as the Spot.
Carnage is the new Spot
We discussed how the Spot usually appears as a minor component of a larger villainous squad, but in his most recent comic book outing, he acts almost entirely alone, which could prove to be his undoing. On June 1, 2022, The Spot was featured in a major Marvel comic (Carnage #3) for the first time in almost a year. Before this issue, Carnage had a taste of being a god (see “Absolute Carnage”) during the current Symbiote renaissance begun by writer Donny Cates in 2018’s “Venom,” only to have those powers taken away and his old host Cletus Kasady forsake him.
Since being abandoned, the Carnage symbiote has become enraged and determined to exact vengeance on those who have mistreated him. This is your one and only chance for vengeance. increased deity-like abilities, such as the ability to open any number of interdimensional gateways. Step inside the Spot. Carnage launches an attack in an attempt to kill the Spot and drain his power at the start of this issue. Following his usual pattern, The Spot urges Carnage to simply join forces with him, to which the symbiote replies, “where’s the carnage in that?” Carnage then snatches the Spot from his hands and rips him to shreds, losing his ability to travel between dimensions in the process. However, as the Spot’s severed head floats away through the final portal, it screams out, “I’m sorry.” “I… shall be back. It’s the Spotted… Dimension that I possess.”
