Marvel has been making some major waves in the manga world in recent years, bringing some of its biggest heroes and villains to the medium. Perhaps most famously, Marvel’s Merc With A Mouth, Wade Wilson, received his own manga thanks to Deadpool: Samurai. Unsurprisingly, New York City’s friendly neighborhood Spider-Man has had manga series of his own. While the most bizarre take on the wall-crawler ended in January of this year, Spider-Man: Octo-Girl is set to return for one more ride next month, once again placing Otto Octavius into the shoes of a little girl.
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Spider-Man: Octo-Girl released its final chapter on January 7th, earlier in 2025, but the series is planning to release its fourth and final manga volume on December 4th next month. The manga story puts a new spin on the comic book storyline, Superior Spider-Man, which saw Otto jumping into the body of the web slinger and bringing his own brand of justice to New York City. Of course, the manga sees a quite different path take place for the Spidey villain. If you haven’t had the chance to check this one out, here’s how Viz Media describes the series: “After a battle with Spider-Man, the evil genius scientist Doctor Octopus falls into a coma. When he wakes up, his consciousness is in the body of Otoha Okutamiya, a regular kid in Tokyo! Thus begins the strange new life of Spider-Man’s biggest rival…as a schoolgirl!”
Marvel’s Manga History
Spider-Man: Octo-Girl isn’t the only time that Spidey has had a manga series to call his own. Spider-Man: Fake Red is another recent series that sees Peter Parker struggling with a fight against the Venom symbiote as a new teenager, without any superpowers, takes up the mantle. All the way back in the year 1970, Spider-Man: The Manga arrived from creators Kosei Ono, Kazumasa Hirai, and Ryoichi Ikegami, creating a wildly different take on the webslinger. As for the anime world, things are slightly different for New York’s friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.
To date, Spider-Man has yet to have an anime series to call its own, which is made all the more surprising considering other Marvel heavy hitters have had anime shows. Iron Man, Wolverine, Blade, and the X-Men received anime series in the past, leaving many to wonder if the wallcrawler will ever have an anime of his own. Spidey did make an appearance in Marvel Disk Wars: Avengers, an anime series that brought together quite a few heroes from the Marvel Universe. While not the star of the series by any stretch of the imagination, it offered anime enthusiasts a new take on the wallcrawler, along with some of his classic villains. Fingers crossed that we might one day see either Spider-Man: Fake Red and/or Spider-Man: Octo-Girl given anime adaptations of their own.
Spider-Man: Octo Girl was actually created by some familiar artists, as writer Hideyuki Furuhashi and artist Betten Court helmed the project. Perhaps most well-known for My Hero Academia: Vigilantes, the duo just can’t seem to escape their love of superheroes.
What do you think of Spider-Man’s weirdest manga series returning for one last ride? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!
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Image Courtesy of WIT Studio/Enishiya
