Orwellianson

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Well he has and he hasn’t

There has never been a story arc like the 1994 cartoon wherein Spider-Man was gradually mutating into Man-Spider and where his Six arm stage was a half-way point towards that transformation. That was all in the cartoon.

BUT he has mutated into Man-Spider creatures in canon on at least 2 occassions I can recall.

The first time was in ASM #437 where Plant-Man mutated him and the Generation X member Synch

I suspect this issue may have on some level been influenced by the relative popularity of the Man-Spider arc from the 1994 cartoon given how recent the show was at the time (it ended the same year this issue came out and Man-Spider returned briefly in the last 2 episodes).

As…questionable as this issue was it was nevertheless a much better story than the second time Peter mutated into a Man-Spider. This happened in an arc spanning Spec vol 2 #15-20. In it the Queen (she of Spider-Island fame) makes her debut, kisses Spidey and thus begins a slow mutation within him conveyed through the covers of issues #17-20.

Not only was this transformation more gradual than in ASM #437 and his half spider form look different, but it went as far as to turn him into a literal giant spider. Eventually said spider dies and gives birth to Peter who now has the ability to talk to spiders and have organic webbing, abilities he later lost and Kaine obtained as Scarlet Spider.

The arc is relatively infamous for various reasons. Among them the fact that, like ASM #437 possibly, it was clearly done as a tie into popular Spidey media this time the Raimi movies and their organic webbing. However it was also a baffling tie-in to Avengers: Disassembled because it had the trade dress of the storyline and Cap appears in it but otherwise had absolutely no connection to it whatsoever. 

Some more food for thought, the 1994 cartoon’s Man-Spider arc was probably influenced half by the Six Arm Saga (obviously) but also by a Roger Stern arc in which La Tarantula (a Gerry Conway villain) gets mutated into a man-spider monster (which later got turned into a transforming toy by Toy Biz).

Comparing the designs of these 3 Man-Spiders you can clearly see that they differ noticably from the cartoon’s look for Man-Spider. Ironically the closest the comics ever came to emulating that look was in FNSM #9 where an alternate reality Peter Parker is shown having become Man-Spider