Spider-Man Joins Forces With Japan’s Biggest Superhero
One of America’s biggest heroes and one of Japan’s biggest heroes are teaming up for a major crossover manga. At San Diego Comic-Con, Viz Media revealed Spider-Man and Ultraman will cross paths in the upcoming manga series Ultraman: Along Came a Spider-Man. The manga will see Viz Media partnering with Tsuburaya Productions and Marvel to make the crossover event happen.
A Massive Manga Event
The Spider-Man and Ultraman crossover manga will be drawn by Tomo Hirokawa, known for Sword Art Online: Alicization Lycoris and Sword Art Online: Hollow Realization, while Shingenobu Matsumoto, known for the Duel Masters franchise, writes. Tsuburaya Productions and Shinji Oishi are credited with coming up with the story for the crossover. This is definitely a major event, and the manga even gets to ride some of the recent wave of Doctor Doom news based on the description.
With Great Power Comes Doom
According to Tsuburaya Productions, the manga sees Spider-Man teaming up with the Avengers to fight Doctor Doom on Marvel’s version of Earth, only for several civilians to be killed during the battle. This leads Spider-Man to become demoralized, and he ends up on a spacecraft known as the Interdimensional Train that whisks him away to Tokyo and the Ultraman Universe.
Spidey sees the Tokyo hero battling a Kaiju, but unbeknownst to him, Doctor Doom stowed away on the ship and wants to steal the power of the Giant of Light with the help of Alien Mefilas and his Kaiju army.
Both Superheroes Are Gaining Popularity
Spider-Man and Ultraman have both enjoyed immense popularity in recent years, with the recent animated film Ultraman: Rising becoming a big hit on Netflix this year. 2023 was Spider-Man’s year with the release of the highly-acclaimed Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and Insomniac’s video game sequel Spider-Man 2. Now, we’ll get to see the two battling together on the pages of a manga series.
Ultraman x Avengers
In addition to the Spider-Man and Ultraman series, Marvel is also teaming up with Tsuburaya Productions to bring us a four-issue miniseries that sees Ultraman crossover with the Avengers. A previous announcement of this collaboration saw Ultraman pictured alongside Iron Man, Captain Marvel, and Spider-Man, so we can likely expect to see those heroes show up in the miniseries. That miniseries is set to launch on August 14.
More Marvel, More Manga, More Doom
Marvel and Ultraman fans will have a lot to read that week, as Viz Media is also simultaneously releasing the Spider-Man and Ultraman crossover the same day on the Viz Manga app, with the first two chapters hitting August 13 in US time and August 14 in Japan time. After that, new chapters will be released every Tuesday. If you’re a fan of printed editions of your manga, you can look forward to that being released in the summer of 2025.
Spider-Man and Ultraman teaming up is exciting enough, but Doctor Doom entering the Ultraman universe is plenty of reason for excitement, too. The villain arguably had the biggest Comic-Con out of any character, with Marvel revealing that Robert Downey Jr. would be returning to the MCU to play the character in the upcoming two Avengers movies. Maybe someday we’ll see Ultraman pop up in the MCU too.
