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Keen sets up in his answer Is The Amazing Spider-Man part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe? that the new movie is a Sony, and as such does not have to fit into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which ostensibly follows the Ultimate Comics line.

Is there any particular comics line that this movie aims to follow? We know Parker has mechanical webshooters, Doc Connors is the Lizard, he starts (shall we say) with Gwen Stacy, and his parents 'leave him' at a young age (which is information I thought was absent from the comics - correct me if I'm wrong).

I've not been able to glean any more details from interviews or trailers but I'm sure there should be enough information out there to pick up a few pieces, and if not we only have to wait a few more weeks....

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  • The whole "parents" theme makes me think this may be a complete rehash. Commented Jun 21, 2012 at 12:01
  • @GorchestopherH Entirely possible. If so it might be in a whole new universe...
    – AncientSwordRage
    Commented Jun 22, 2012 at 8:15
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    I realise this is a nine year old question, but I disagree with the notion that the MCU is following the Ultimate Comics line. It's certainly borrowed elements from that continuity, but it's borrowed plenty from the Earth-616 continuity as well, and invented a bunch of new stuff as well. As such, I wouldn't say it's primarily based on any previous continuity. It's a new continuity selectively drawing inspiration from multiple sources. Commented Oct 14, 2021 at 18:27

2 Answers 2

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This reboot of the Spider-Man franchise (The Amazing Spider-Man, 2012) resembles the stories told on Marvel Earth #616, mostly in the comics of the namesake series "The Amazing Spider-Man." Curiously enough, the first Spider-Man movies had more in common with the Ultimate Spider-Man from Earth-1610 than the canon Peter Parker from Earth-616.

  • Peter Parker's parents WERE spies. Richard and Mary Parker (Amazing Spider-Man #365)
  • Peter Parker did create his first artificial mechanical webshooters. (Amazing Fantasy #15)
  • The Lizard was both a friend and mentor to Parker, Doctor Curtis Conners, before he used a serum designed to regenerate limbs (made from lizard DNA) and became the Lizard. (Amazing Spider-Man #6)
  • Beautiful Gwen Stacey was indeed Parker's first girlfriend and she dies falling from a bridge, thrown by the Green Goblin. (first appearance Amazing Spider-Man #31)
  • Gwen Stacy dies in the seminal issue Amazing Spider-Man #121

Cover from the Amazing Spider-Man 121

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    One slight correction here: in the Earth-616 continuity, Curt Connors wasn't a mentor to Peter before he became the Lizard. Peter didn't meet Connors until after he became the Lizard, and even then he only met him as Spider-Man. Connors did become a mentor of sorts to Spidey after that, advising him on scientific matters, but for a long time, he only knew Spidey, not Peter. He didn't meet regular old Peter Parker until he became one of Peter's professors during his post-graduate studies in the early '80s, almost twenty years after the Lizard's first appearance. Commented Oct 14, 2021 at 18:18
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Marc Webb's Amazing Spider-Man films weren't based on any single comicbook line.

Webb said as much himself in an interview with Collider, conducted in 2012:

MATT GOLDBERG: Spider-Man has been around for almost 50 years, so there’s really no singular Spider-Man. From what comics did you take inspiration for your version of the character?

MARC WEBB: That’s a good question. There are different comics and different storylines, and you’re exactly right, there is 50 years worth of canon to choose from. I felt like what Sam Rami did, they started off with the Stan Lee/Steve Ditko stylized world and they were really great and generating that is kind of a genius way I think. But when I thought of Peter Parker, the questions I first asked myself were, this happened on the other movie I did and just how I read scripts in general, I want to build the character from the ground up. Who is this person, what happened to him when he was a kid, what does he like, what does he dislike. I kept on returning to this idea; this kid was left behind by his parents when he was 5 or 6 years old, that would have a huge emotional impact on anybody, that gap, that void in your life. And I kept on thinking about, well that will create a character, at least the way I interpreted it, that has a little bit of a chip on his shoulder, of this missing piece. That will define you in a very real way, so I wanted to tell a story about this kid who goes out looking for his father and finds himself, that was my access point. And in terms of finding things from the comics, obviously there’s some references to his parents and different versions of that, and I studied that a little bit. And then I liked some of the attitude in The Ultimates, and I had a conversation with Brian Bendis early on, a short one, and we talked about the relationship with Gwen and even though Gwen in my movie is a little bit more from the Amazings, I like the attitude and the physical components of Spider-Man from some of the Ultimates. So it’s an amalgam of different characters that felt interesting to me.

Director Marc Webb Talks THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN, the Comics He Studied, Adapting Spider-Man for a Modern Context, and More

Also, in the commentary track for the The Amazing Spider-Man (2012), Webb specified a couple of things which were drawn from or inspired by the Ultimate Spider-Man comics.

Firstly, he noted that the double zeros symbol we see a few times in the movie -- in Richard Parker's notes, and in the Oscorp building -- was pulled from the Ultimate Spider-Man comics.

There's the double zeros. The double zeros are gonna play a big, important role in the movie. The double zeros were-- I think, we pulled that from some of the Ultimate Spider-Mans. Jamie Vanderbilt had seen that early on.

Marc Webb ~ The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) commentary track

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Presumably it was a reference to the "00" specimen spider that bit Peter Parker in Ultimate Spider-Man Vol. 1 #1. Note that this spider was created by Oscorp, just like the spider that bit Peter in Webb's movie.

enter image description here

Secondly, Webb also indicated that the fight between Spider-Man and the Lizard in Peter's high school was partially inspired by a fight between Spidey and the Green Goblin in Ultimate Spider-Man.

This movie was set in high school and I wanted to create an action sequence at some point inside the high school. There was a reference to it in the Ultimates. I think the Green Goblin comes in and really terrorizes Midtown Science in one of the earlier Ultimate Spider-Mans.

Marc Webb ~ The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) commentary track

Presumably, he meant the fight that began in Ultimate Spider-Man Vol. 1 #6, concluding in the following issue.

Finally, since the previous answer draws parallels between The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) and the Earth-616 canon, I'd like to highlight some of the many ways in which Webb's films deviate from that canon:

That's not to say Webb's films didn't use anything from the Earth-616 canon; they absolutely did, Peter's mechanical web-shooters and Gwen Stacy's death being the two most prominent examples.

But I think the deviations from the Earth-616 canon are too numerous, and too great in some cases, to say that the films genuinely followed that specific canon.

They don't appear to follow any pre-existing canon particular, instead cherry picking elements from multiple continuities, and combining those with ideas the filmmakers came up with themselves.

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