‘The Punisher’ Showrunner Applauds ‘Into The Spider-Verse’

The Punisher showrunner Steve Lightfoot has high praise for another unique form of Marvel storytelling.

ComicBook.com recently got a chance to speak to Lightfoot about The Punisher‘s sophomore season, as well as other corners of the Marvel universe that he’s a fan of. In addition to expressing interest in writing something for Vincent D’onofrio’s Kingpin, as well as Marvel’s Blade, he revealed that he would love to bring some sort of iteration of Spider-Man to life — but he has a different outlook on that task after seeing Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.

“Right from when I was a kid, I was always a Spider-Man guy.” Lightfoot revealed. “And if the chance ever came to write anything Spider-Man related, my twelve year old self would never be happier. Though I have to say, having just seen Into the Spider-Verse, that’s a big bar to jump because I thought that movie was good. I thought it was a different level.”

The Sony animated film follows Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) throughout his origins as Spider-Man — as well as the realization that he isn’t the only web-slinger in a massive multiverse. In the month since Spider-Verse was first released, it seems like audiences have shared Lightfoot’s sentiment, with the film earning a slew of awards (including a recent Oscar nomination).

“We were working so hard, we were very late in delivering the film so we didn’t really have a moment of pause before the reactions started pouring in,” co-director Bob Perisichetti explained in a recent interview. “So it was kind of shocking to immediately go from the mix stage to a premiere and a release, but the positivity has been so incredible. There’s one really good story that [co-director] Rodney [Rothman] has, but I’ve got one that I shared with you from a father of a really good friend of my son who saw this movie and sent a really incredible DM to me about how he grew up in Brooklyn, how he was this sort of really nerdy somewhat cool kid who loved Peter Parker and saw this film with his son and was just talking about how if he had this when he was a kid how much this would’ve meant to him. And he was so happy to share it with his son. So for me, it’s those moments that just make you go, ‘Oh, this is wonderful.’”

“It’s just great that after three years of work, people are embracing it with the spirit that we hoped they would, and the spirit that we put into it,” co-director Peter Ramsey added. “Because we really cared about this story. I mean we’ve got a crew of, what, 800 people, something like that. And everyone really so deeply cared about telling this story the way that we told it and with the heart that we feel it has. So it’s great that people are actually picking up on that and it means something to them.”

The Punisher‘s second season is available to stream on Netflix. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is in theaters now.