On Friday, July 31st, the New York Mets celebrated Spider-Man Night at CitiField. The night featured people dressed as Spider-Man, J.K. Simmons doing a hilarious bit as J. Jonah Jameson, celebrities meeting Mr and Mrs Met, and the scoreboard showing the opposing Marlins as supervillains (doubtless AI, but here we are.)
“He’s a menace … I WANT SPIDER-MAN!”
J.K. Simmons is at the Mets game tonight and ran into a familiar face pic.twitter.com/rbxjd1Zm5e
Yes, that was Adam Driver posing with Mr. and Mrs. Met during the Mets Spider-Man night at Citi Field. https://t.co/LU1pAcx2v0
— Marc Malkin (@marcmalkin) August 3, 2026
The Citi Field scoreboard shows Marlins-themed renderings of Spider-Man villains when Miami is at the plate pic.twitter.com/ihSS2diHGW
— SNY Mets (@SNY_Mets) July 31, 2026
There was also a cool t-shirt giveaway – honestly if I’d remembered this I probably would have gone to the game just for the T-shirt. (Currently going for $50 on ebay, but bootlegs are $7.)
It was a fun celebration for a team that has absolutely nothing to celebrate and a reminder that the Mets and Spidey have quite a relationship – after all he got married on the mound in Shea Stadium with Stan Lee officiating!
It was also a reminder that movie marketing tie-ins are still a vital part of promotion – although this undoubtedly did more for the Mets than Spider-Man Brand New Day, which is officially the biggest opening for a movie ever.
But Spider-Man has been celebrated just about everywhere for the last few months. Yes, I still play Marvel Strike Force, and Spider-Man got a HUGE power upgrade over the summer, and there are currently several Spider-Man-focused challenges going on in the game. Marvel Rivals and other video games have similar promotions. Spidey even met Lionel Messi.
And why not. Spider-Man is a beloved character who slips effortlessly into almost any kind of situation as a humorous everyman who just happens to be able to spin a web of any size.
All of the Spider-Man hoopla got me wondering: what was Marvel Comics doing to tie in to the movie release? It’s one of the biggest movies of all times, surely there must be a way for Marvel Comics to get a little of that mojo.
It sounds easy but….it isn’t. Marvel Comics long ago gave up on aggressively tying in to any MCU releases, but they have slipped in a program here and there. As we’ve noted many many times, when a comic has a direct connection to a movie/TV series (Watchmen, Infinity Gauntlet, Umbrella Academy) it does well. Vaguer tie-ins don’t, and MCU films are mostly cobbled together from bits and bobs of dozens of comics. Brand New Day even references a John Romita Tarantula cover.
Still, every week on Reddit I see someone writing “I decided to read comic books, where should I start?” Brand New Day is mostly playing to the (very large) crowd that loves the Holland-Zendaya-Batalon crew, but surely there are a few who want to read the comics as a follow-up?
Rummaging around my inbox, I found only a few Spider-Man specific emails that weren’t about Spider-Man #1000 which we’ve written about quite a bit here. There was the new Spider-Man webtoon in USA today,which was an obvious tie-in timed to the Summer of Spider-Man, but nothing else that seemed extra.
This is kind of understandable – comics shops already have a full array of Spider-man books and comics and know how to sell them. But what about the bookstore market? Over on the PRH Comics Website, there’s a blog post from February promoting a line-up of books. It’s not an official program or anything, but it’s a nice cross section starting with the only thing that’s kind of a tie-in:
This is a “compact” sized 300+ page compendium of the original comics “Brand New Day’ storyline that started in 2008, including work by Dan Slott, Mark Waid, and Zeb Wells, with art by Mike McKone, Chris Bachalo and others. Brand New Day was kind of an entire era for Spider-Man (post One More Day) and even as a hefty tome, this is selected stories from that era not every issue, as there were more than 100. At $9.99 in the attractive compact format, this seems like a pretty decent entry point for people who want to read some prime era Spidey stuff. And it’s doing pretty well on Amazon, at least!
What is Marvel’s #1 seller? We’ll Return to that.
What else did PRH promote back in February?
Spider-Man: Brand New School Day an all-ages tale for beginning Spider-fans.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day – The Art Of The Movie – Novelizations may have died, but “art of” books survive!
Spider-Man: The Other –This is a Marvel Knights era (!) story from 2006 by JMS, Peter David, Reggie Hudlin and more about Spider-Man feeling ill and going to see his friends, but it turns out there was someone else behind it. This is kinda similar to the plot of the Brand New Day movie, so perhaps elements crossed over, suggesting a reprint. Although I don’t hear many people talking about this story line, having something from the back catalog to put out there is always a good idea. And it is in a new edition.
Hulk: Smash Everything The catalog describes this as “Hulk rampages across the Marvel Universe like never before.” Sold! This is a collection of the mini from 2025 and it’s by Ryan North so seems like a good jumping on point.
Punisher: Welcome Back, Frank [Marvel Premier Collection]by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon. This is the “not quite as compact premier” edition of the classic story – if you’re going to buy one Punisher book, this is it.
Ultimate Spider-Man By Jonathan Hickman Vol. 1: Married With ChildrenThis is a relist of the 2024 collection and another good jumping on point even though the series ended.
Once again, this was just a suggestions of some good comics, and Marvel has a lot of them! But what about the May/June offerings in the catalog? Looking at Marvel’s Maysolicits, Spectacular Spider-Man Brand New Day is probably the closest thing to a new tie in, a mini by Dan Slott, Marcus Martin and Marcus To. It features the Kingpin, Mr. Negative and The Punisher, so a stew of sturdy regulars there. And looking at June’s Marvel catalog,there’s tons of Spider-stuff, enough to satisfy any webcrawler.
Anyway this is just what I’m seeing on public facing promotions – there could have been retailer only things I’m not seeing or missed. And there’s nothing wrong with any of this – the movie draws on 60 years of Spider-Man stories, and doesn’t have a strong comics tie-in. Putting out a new Brand New Day mini by Slott, one of the key creators of the modern Spider-mythos, is probably as good an idea as any in this case.
It does contrast strongly with what DC did for Supergirl, however. As Gregg Katzman noted, that movie “raised the bar for Hollywood supporting comics” with numerous mentions and tie-ins to the Supergirl comic it was based on. James Gunn has always been more connected to the fanbase than the more remote Kevin Feige, so I doubt we’ll see Feige tweeting about his favorite comics, as Gunn often does. But DC has been doing a lot of things like movie posters that promote comics, and even (gasp) credits in the movies saying you can buy DC Comics.
Marvel’s move to the West Coast suggests that there will be more “synergy” between the studio and the publishing – something DC has been doing very successfully. And they have the mother of all chances to synergize coming up in a few months.
Getting back to Amazon, the bestselling Marvel comics there at this moment in time are an interesting bunch.
At #1 we have the Hickman Secret Wars, certainly something that people might be interested in come Doomsday time. With Avengers Secret Wars coming out in a year, it seems likely that Avengers Doomsday will have some kind of Infinity War-esque cliffhanger, and people are gonna want to know more about those secret wars! The rest of the top 15 suggests that is true.
#2 Spider-Man: Brand New Day
#3 Amazing Spider-Man Masterworks Vol. 1 (Marvel Masterworks) (Kindle Edition)
#4 Spider-Man: Kraven’s Last Hunt
#5 Secret Wars – Shooter original
#6 Avengers: Secret Wars [Marvel Premier Collection]
#7 Ultimate Spider-Man By Jonathan Hickman Vol. 4: One Last Day
#8 Avengers: Time Runs Out [Marvel Premier Collection]
#9 Doctor Doom: Books Of Doom
#10 House Of X/Powers Of X
#11 Ultimate Spider-Man By Jonathan Hickman Vol. 1: Married With Children
#12 One World Under Doom
#13 Spider-Man Vol. 1: Brand New Day (Kindle edition)
#14 Ultimate Spider-Man Vol. 1: Power & Responsibility (Ultimate Spider-Man (2000-2009))
#15 Jeph Loeb & Tim Sale: Spider-Man
If nothing else, i hope Jonathan Hickman is making a ton of money in royalties, because he is ruling the roost for Amazon sales!
Properly promoting Marvel’s spectacular backlist has to be one of the major tasks for the new regime there, and aligning it with MCU releases would seem like one way to do that. Supergirl the movie flopped hard, but the Tom King/Bilquis Evely mini series Woman of Tomorrow, was a bestseller for DC.Granted that was a very specific case, but it worked.
It is still striking to me that Marvel’s VP of sales, David Gabriel hasn’t been replaced, but Gabriel wasn’t a big believer in doing movie tie-ins because he hadn’t seen much success with them over the years. I have a feeling we might see that change. Maybe it will be a brand new day for marketing Marvel’s backlist in the future.
