Dan Slott has put his mark on the Spider-Man mythos in a big way since the "Brand New Day" era began in 2008. As well as co-creating characters like Mister Negative and Anti-Venom, he essentially came up with the Spider-Verse concept and penned several stories that are considered modern classics.
However, there's also been some controversy. Superior Spider-Man was loved and reviled in equal measure, while his take on characters like Silk, Ben Reilly, and a billionaire Peter Parker were similarly divisive. His impact on the character is massive, regardless.
Taking to Threads to reflect on writing Spider-Verse in 2014 (which, as the name suggests, was ultimately the basis for 2018's Oscar-winning Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse), Slott revealed the challenges he faced when it came to the potential inclusion of Spider-Man Variants seen in live-action projects.
"Writing comics [with] licensed properties means you don't always get to do what you want," the writer started. "That's the trade-off for getting the opportunity to tell stories [with] characters you love."
"Case in point: I couldn't use the Sony movie [Spider-Men] in my [first] Spider-Verse story, or its follow-up, End of the Spider-Verse," Slott explained. "However, we came up [with] a workaround for [one] of them, because we did get permission to use Spidey from the Web-Slingers Ride at Disney's Avengers Campus. And technically, he's a Tom Holland Spidey."
"But we did NOT have permission to take off his mask and show a face with Tom Holland's likeness. So in an early draft, I wrote a sequence where that Spider-Man would be saving people near the entrance to the Holland Tunnel. And you'd get a panel where you'd cut to a close-up of Spidey with the sign right behind him, but cropped so that it read 'Holland T' with Spider-Man's head blocking the letters in 'unnel.'"
"And Marvel Editorial quickly let me know that there was no way in Hell that I could do that. Ever," the Superman scribe concluded.
You might think it bizarre that Marvel Comics couldn't use whichever version of Spider-Man it wanted, but the wall-crawler's rights are caught in a tangled web. Sony Pictures owns the live-action film and television rights, while Disney/Marvel is in charge of the animated Spidey—on the small screen, at least—and the character's merchandise license.
That's why every time there's a new Marvel Studios-produced Spider-Man movie, Peter Parker gets multiple costumes. What Disney loses in box office revenue, it more than makes up for in toy sales.
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