Who are the Spider-Army
The Spider-Army is what it sounds like: every spider-hero the writers could reach, from every reality, drafted into one force. It came together in the Spider-Verse event, which opened in The Amazing Spider-Man (Vol. 3) #9, cover-dated November 2014, by Dan Slott and Olivier Coipel.
The threat was built for the gimmick. The Inheritors, a family of immortals, feed on spider-totems across the multiverse, so the only defense was to gather the spiders together. Spider-Verse turned that into a crossover that pulled in alternate Spider-Men and Spider-Women by the dozen, from Spider-Man 2099 to Spider-Man Noir to a Gwen Stacy who had been bitten instead of Peter.
That last one mattered most. Spider-Gwen walked out of the event a breakout character with her own series, and Spider-Verse became the engine Marvel used to launch and revive alternate spiders, on the page and later on screen.
Notable issues
- The Amazing Spider-Man (Vol. 3) #9 (2014): the start of Spider-Verse and the Spider-Army.
- Edge of Spider-Verse #2 (2014): first appearance of Spider-Gwen, the event’s breakout.
For collectors
The Spider-Army is an event rather than a single key, so collector value sits with the debuts it produced, above all Edge of Spider-Verse #2 (2014), the first Spider-Gwen, which became one of the most sought modern keys.
