Tangled Webs: Untranslated Spider-Man the Manga

I’ve been tempted to save this entry for April Fools, with a meta joke that the descriptions of the untranslated Spider-Man the Manga stories are actually completely real. In the last few entries I covered the material that was published in the late 90s, and can be found in back issue bins. One story was never completed, and four stories were never published, which sets up two questions: Why did Marvel never finish translating this series in the United States? And what happened in those stories? Yu Komori was briefly mentioned during Spider-Verse, which could have been an opportunity to reintroduce the material to an American audience.

I do want to give a content warning here, because there are going to be topics and themes you wouldn’t expect in an article on a Spider-Man website. If you think Quentin Tarantino’s films are too intense, and would be uncomfortable reading about the gonzo foreign cinema that influenced him, this may not be an article for you.

The American translations covered the entire run of initial writer Kōsei Ono, which included the traditional villains, and the first two of writer Kazumasa Hirai’s stories, as the material was more adult. The sexual assault story in Issues 16-18 had some different art in the original. This was a storyline that Stan Lee was deeply uncomfortable with. In an introduction to the manga, translated in The Comics Journal as “Memories of Supaidaman,” Kōsei Ono recalled Stan Lee’s response.

Finally, I got a letter back from Stan Lee. I thought he would be so happy to hold in his hands the Japanese Spider-Man. “The pictures are utterly fantastic. But I have to tell you, the scene where the teenage girl is about to be raped by those young men, well, that kind of thing wouldn’t happen in our comics. I feel like this is something that makes your Spider-Man different from ours. If you asked me what I think of it, from my point of view, it seems like we have different standards than you do there [in Japan], so I don’t think I know how to judge your version.” That was what he essentially wrote.

It was an important project as one of the first international efforts to tell new stories with a major American superhero.

The next story might show how these books get into sensitive topics. The hostage story from Issues 19-21 was published in Japan in the early 1970s, translated in the United States in the late 1990s and takes a very different meaning after September 11. Marvel may not want to do anything that brings attention to a story in which a nihilistic maniac hijacks a plane and decides to crash it.

The translations jumped around. It made sense that they would skip ahead to a storyline in which Spider-Man faces someone who has his abilities, as that’s a relatively commercial hook for a storyline. But they never translated an important storyline with the death of Yu Komori’s love interest (which seems to have predated the Death of Gwen Stacy.) A summary of that arc starts about 8 1/2 minutes in, and you want to be careful where you’re playing it, because it is not safe for work. I want to repeat that a video about an official Spider-Man project (even one intended for a Japanese audience) is not safe for work.

This may get to another reason Marvel wouldn’t want to publish the comics. They’ve gotten a bit more conservative after the Disney purchase, no longer publishing Mature Readers material like the MAX line. I did wonder why this series just disappeared. Sales were bad, and the translation was a project made just before Joe Quesada became Editor in Chief. However, they already had the translations, so it would’ve been easy to reprint these a few years later when manga became even more popular in the United States and when Marvel tried to capitalize on it. This is now an easy explanation about why Marvel doesn’t want to even want to talk about this. They do not want to raise awareness of an official product in which a version of Spider-Man masturbates to a rape fantasy.

This was “What Is My Destination,” the third storyline in writer Kazumasa Hirai’s new direction. Komori is still branded a sex predator after he was incorrectly accused of assault in a previous story. He doesn’t necessarily mind too much since he figures his real secret is just as terrifying, and that he’s a terrible human being anyway due to his fantasies. Local scumbag Inumaru think he’s more interesting than when he was a straight-A student. While going around the sketchy parts of Tokyo, Komori finds Rumi working in a go-go club, getting into a car with a strange older man. Komori accidentally smokes some weed in a party at Inumaru’s place, and worries more about himself when a young woman is taken to a bed against her will by several strangers. Komori eventually does the right thing and saves her, beating up a few of Inumaru’s associates in the process.

Inumaru takes him on as a partner. A woman tries to warn him off, revealing that Inumaru is a drug dealer. They’re attacked by some rival criminals, although Komori makes short work of them. Komori becomes Spider-Man again to save Inumaru from other attackers, but by the time he gets there, Inumaru killed someone in self defense. Inumaru tries to flee. Spidey tries to talk him out of it, but he’s killed in a car accident. Komori wonders if he could’ve made a difference.

It’s pretty clear why Marvel skipped this story. It was also six issues without any supervillains, so the only people who would pick it up would probably be people looking to get outraged.

The next arc “Strangers” was set up in the final issue of the American translation, which just included the first third. In the rest of the storyline, Komori and a strange girl are kidnapped by guerillas because they’re witnesses to an effort to take a major police figure hostage. It features the most prominent black character in the series, although the guy’s a deaf-mute henchman so it’s not exactly a shining example of diverse representation.

Komori, an Assistant Superintendent-General and the girl are kept for several days. She starts developing pneumonia, which might have something to do with scumbags ripping off her clothes. Komori eventually beats up the bad guys, although he discovers their leader was influenced by Spider-Man.

This was a story Marvel was willing to publish in America. I’m guessing there were going to be some changes to the R-rated artwork, although I can also see why they’d hesitate to publish it given the low rewards and high risk.

Things will get more messed up. I suppose Marvel’s just happy that the manga never introduced their version of Doctor Octopus.