Editorials
[Editorial] My Ongoing Fear of Video Game Spiders
Hello. I’m Daryl Baxter, and I’ve had a fear of spiders in video games since I was six years old.
There’s many out there who have a phobia, whether it’s snakes, cockroaches, or even a type of sponge if you look hard enough on YouTube. Fear and phobias can be found in many forms. For me, it’s in the medium of video-games, and the animation of arachnids, where it spurs paranoia, discomfort, and panic in any game I play that they feature in.
Since I was asked to write this, I’ve been trying to think of the point in time of where it all began.
I then realized it wasn’t exactly a spider that started it. It was a Facehugger in Alien Trilogy for the PlayStation. We were lucky back then, where small CRT TV Screens were the norm for most of us. We only had to experience that Facehugger crawling up, and covering the screen in fuzzy-vision. Still, the stuff of nightmares seeing this.
This was only the first level. But for a game whose atmosphere is dark, dim, and quiet, seeing something small crawl across in the distance, disappearing from view, then suddenly seeing it cover your whole field of vision, it was a nasty surprise for my six-year-old self. If that wasn’t bad enough, there was also a level towards the end where it was the Queen’s lair, and many, many eggs, ready to hatch.
After that, there are two other games that sealed it.
Tomb Raider II was a great game in 1997 and still is. But there’s a section towards the end of the game, at the Temple of Xian level, where you would face a cave. This cave would feature huge white spiders, alongside some crawling out of cocoons, and as an added treat, the section would be pitch black. Alongside composer Nathan McCree’s sudden stabs of music, just to add to the terror, you’d only see these creepy-crawlies as the lights of 1996 shaders would flicker and flash as you’d fire the twin pistols, or as you lit up a flare. Delightful. I had other people complete that section for me so I could finish the game.
This fear then blossomed with Resident Evil, the second entry particularly.
I would look for the cursed word of ‘spider’ in magazine guides before I’d play the game itself. Then once I’d spotted it, I’d try to forget what I’d previously read so I wouldn’t spoil myself with what else was to come in the game.
I’d then try to prepare myself as I was close to the fabled sewers section. As soon as I reached them with Leon, I closed my eyes and just, ran. I could hear the thudding steps of those eight legs throughout, and randomly holding down the R1 + Square to fire off the shotgun.
It really didn’t help that if one was killed, smaller spiders would then appear, with the sound ongoing. What also was a treat were the fabled camera angles of what was a staple of the first generation of the games. They were always at a fixed angle, so if one crawled into a particular place, you’d have a full view of one covering the screen, harking back to the nightmares of Alien Trilogy.
This would repeat in my favorite of the Resident Evil games, Resident Evil 3: Nemesis, where you would come across giant spiders in a clock tower during the second half of the game. Even though I’d later replay this on a PSP, a much smaller screen, I’d still be incredibly uncomfortable at the site (and sound) of those jittering legs.
The Resident Evil series is a great time, and the games fulfill their job of being ‘Survival Horror’. It’s not necessarily the jump-scares that people are scared by, it can be just the look of the enemies themselves and how they move, and that’s how it’s been for me for the last twenty years with its depiction of arachnids.
But there have been other times where eight-legged freaks creeped me out. Even on a 2D side-scroller such as Spider-Man on the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis, there was a hidden side-boss of a spider-slayer; a robotic large spider which you’d have to destroy with blue and yellow bombs. You may be thinking that as this was a cartoony, 2D Platformer, surely it wouldn’t be that much of an issue, but unfortunately, it was!
Again, it harkens back to the movements. This made it so creepy to me, I made sure not to approach the floor where it presided as much as possible after that.
It sounds somewhat tragic reading it back, and perhaps it appears so to you as well reader, but I think it’s unique. Unique in the fact that a medium such as video-games can bring this feeling to me, and how the efforts to mimic a real-life arachnid, more by its animations than its look, is telling, even for the original PlayStation generation.
With the remake of Resident Evil 2, all I’m currently thinking about is how those sewer-dwelling spiders will look on a 4K television, while forgetting all the other incredible moments such as the start of the game, the police station, and fighting Birkin.
Comics
‘Spider-Noir’ Comic Changes Explained: How the TV Series Reinvents Marvel’s Darkest Spider-Man
A little while back, I wrote an article chronicling the Hellraiser franchise’s affinity for Film Noir and touched on how that genre has, historically, always been connected to horror.
This connection can be observed in everything from the cannibalistic serial killers of Frank Miller’s Sin City to the disturbing criminal plots fueling neo-noir thrillers like Stuart Gordon’s underrated King of the Ants. That’s why it came as no surprise when I finally sat down to watch all eight episodes of Prime Video’s recently released Spider-Noir series and was confronted with plenty of classic horror tropes.
What did come as a surprise, however, was how showrunners Oren Uziel and Steve Lightfoot approached these horror elements when compared to the 2009 comic book that the show is based on. From the heavily altered rogue’s gallery to an equally terrifying yet completely different origin story for Nicolas Cage’s take on the webslinger, there are plenty of changes here that I feel might be of interest to genre fans.
With that in mind, I’d like to invite readers to take a closer look at all the adjustments that Spider-Noir made to the story in order to bring this incarnation of Spider-Man to life in all of its monochromatic glory (unless you watched the True-Hue color version of the show, in which case you’ll be treated to a surprisingly comic-booky palette that you don’t usually see on television).
The Dark Origins of Marvel’s Spider-Man Noir
Our first order of business should be to examine the origins of the Noir comics themselves. Originally published as part of the Marvel Noir alternate universe that reimagined several characters as hard-boiled crime-fighters, Spider-Man Noir became the most successful book in the entire run. This highly politicized story about Peter Parker coming to terms with the capitalist evils of the Great Depression seemed to have struck a nerve with audiences looking for a darker take on the wall-crawler, which is likely why we’d soon see several sequel stories as well as a video game adaptation of the character in 2010’s underrated Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions.
Of course, it wasn’t just Spider-Man’s darker disposition that made this version of the character a hit, as 1930s New York City was depicted as being much more hostile than what we generally see in the standard Marvel Universe. From Peter’s powers coming from an Eldritch Spider God that spawns man-eating arachnids to Vulture being an ex-Freak-Show Gimp with a taste for human flesh, you can definitely understand why this Web-Head isn’t pulling his punches.
Unfortunately, this alternate universe was a little too popular for its own good, with each subsequent sequel/adaptation further diluting the political anger and classic horror influences that fueled the original comic-book run in order to appeal to a wider audience. Spider-Man Noir was nearly unrecognizable once we got to the Spider-Verse crossover that turned the character into a household name, though this would at least lead to an interesting adaptation in 2018.
The Classic Horror Influences Hidden Throughout Spider-Noir
Jack Huston as Sandman in ‘Spider-Noir’
When Phil Lord and Chris Miller finally translated Spider-Man Noir to the big screen, with Nicolas Cage bringing the character to life in an unexpected case of pitch-perfect casting, he was still mostly relegated to comic relief as his nazi-punching antics and over-the-top edginess were played for laughs. However, while this version of the character had little to do with the comics that spawned him, Spider-Noir’s newfound popularity eventually resulted in the announcement of a darker live-action spin-off – a spin-off that I was cautiously optimistic about.
While the showrunners ultimately decided to go in a completely different direction than the 2009 comic, the new team of writers appeared to understand Noir as a genre in ways that even the folks at Marvel Noir couldn’t quite grasp. That’s likely why 2026’s Spider-Noir boasts plenty of horror elements, just not in ways we’ve seen them before.
The series is obviously borrowing tropes and aesthetics from period-accurate monster movies, with Universal’s 1930s output being a particularly big influence. From the re-imagining of Sandman and Tombstone as tragic figures to The Spider even being operated on by a mad scientist with hilariously antiquated techniques, this bizarre collection of super-powered freaks could have easily shown up in a classic creature feature.
The scares aren’t all retro, however, as the showrunners also injected plenty of body-horror into the mix during their attempt at unifying the origin stories for all these larger-than-life characters. Hell, the Spider himself is now revealed to have gained his powers after being bitten by a half-mutated Man-Spider during World War I, and the aforementioned mad scientist keeps a disturbing collection of failed experiments in her basement, proving that not all of her patients were lucky enough to simply gain superpowers after being experimented on.
Nicolas Cage Reinvents Spider-Man Noir for Television
Ben Reilly/Spiderman (Nicolas Cage) in SPIDER-NOIR
Photo: Aaron Epstein/Prime
© Amazon Content Services LLC
I also really appreciate how Cage insists on depicting Ben Reilly as an arachnid trapped inside of a human body, with his uncanny physical performance and classic Hollywood impressions keeping your eyes glued to the screen while also providing some of the show’s funniest moments.
I still think it’s a shame that the character is no longer politically motivated, and I miss the detail about Uncle Ben having been cannibalized by Vulture after his social activism ruffled too many feathers, but at least this time our protagonist actually feels like someone who could have been written by Raymond Chandler if he were a fan of Superheroes.
In fact, the writers nailed the snappy back-and-forth that Noir authors like Dashiel Hammett used to refer to as the “riposte”, and it’s fun to see supervillains being depicted as horrific movie monsters instead of specialized henchmen – with The Spider feeling like just as much of a Freak Show attraction as the rest of them. Purists might be put off by the lack of reverence for the source material, but I think that’s a small price to pay when even the show’s most clichéd moments intentionally harken back to the golden age of Hollywood.
That’s why I’d argue that Amazon’s Spider-Noir isn’t really an adaptation, but rather an equally valid take on the same premise that inspired Marvel back in 2009. And in a world filled with recycled storylines that only serve to advertise future releases, I’d rather have two completely different visions of the same character than a straight-up retelling of the same handful of ideas.
At the end of the day, there’s enough space inside this comic fan’s heart for both man-eating Vultures and a Cronenberg-inspired Man-Spider. And if you’re also a fan of nostalgic creature features with comic book flair, I’d highly recommend this street-level superhero story with a spooky twist.
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