My Hero Academia’s one of the most popular anime and manga series out today, and it’s made a huge impression on fans in the United States. Thanks to its spin on superheroes, the My Hero Academia franchise has made great strides for anime and manga’s greater recognition in American pop culture. Series creator Kohei Horikoshi has often tapped into this vein himself with several small references and Easter Eggs to Western superheroes over the course of the series. But one of his favorite heroes to reference is Spider-Man.
Now fans have taken it upon themselves to connect these threads together. Artist Oddmakesart shared a slick Izuku Midoriya and Spider-Man mash-up which sees Midoriya take on a pivotal moment from the Spider-Man comics that was most recently showcased in a new way in Spider-Man: Homecoming.
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The art sees an older Deku lifting some steel beams off of himself much in the same way as Spider-Man once did during the “If This Be My Destiny” arc. In The Amazing Spider-Man #33, Spider-Man is trapped under a mountain of fallen steel and needs to retrieve a special antidote for Aunt May that Doctor Octopus was hiding in his base. But after struggling for a while, Spider-Man nearly gave up on moving on.
But managing to pick himself up, and constantly re-affirming his strength along the way, Spider-Man famously lifts the steel off of himself and escapes. It’s one of the most famous moments in the lore, and was recreated in Spider-Man: Homecoming as a weakened Peter Parker lifted steel beams off of himself. Deku has had his own physically demanding trials, especially when it comes to using his quirk at all, so it’s not hard to imagine that he’d be able to pick himself up from doom much like Spider-Man did.
My Hero Academia was created by Kohei Horikoshi and has been running in Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump since July 2014. The story follows Izuku Midoriya, who lives in a world where everyone has powers, even though he was born without them. Dreaming to become a superhero anyway, he’s eventually scouted by the world’s best hero All Might and enrolls in a school for professional heroes. The series has been licensed by Viz Media for an English language release since 2015. My Hero Academia will also be launching its second big movie, Heroes Rising, in Japan this December.
