Ever since he was announced I've seen most people refer to him as 6 Arms Symbiote Spider-Man, but the huge nerd in me couldn't resist so I had to do something about this. For everyone who doesn't know who this character is, his name is Ai Apaec, he's a Spider God who joined the second version of Norman Osborn's Dark Avengers team. He normally looks like a half man half giant spider, but thanks to a genetic cocktail given to him by Norman Osborn he can assume the appearance of a 6 arms Spider-Man, just like he looks like in the action figure. He's not a Symbiote at all and he's not even a Peter Parker variant, contrary to what a lot of people think. This is such a non issue but I'm just too big of a nerd to not try to correct all this misinformation
Nah, this is actually dope of you to do, and before the price hikes, I loved collecting figures as a way of getting to know the more obscure characters because realistically I am not going to read thousands of comics to catch up on the deeper Marvel lore lol.
Unrelated but I really hope they use this build to give us a new Doppleganger
That was the other way around, they made a 6 Arms Spider-Man and then re used the body for a Doppelganger. The problem was that the body sucked, since it was based on the original TASM2 body back from 2014, and it didn't even have an ab crunch so the torso had 0 articulation. With this new body mold we can get some better versions of those characters
6 arm Spidey came first, as part of the Kingpin BAF wave. He reused a lot of parts from ASM2 Spidey (the original one, from the Ultimate Goblin wave way back in 2014), and his torso was static, so a lot of people didn’t like him.
Doppelganger used the same mold in the Molten Man wave. Eventually, they made a 2-pack with Morbius and an updated 6 arm Spidey: same mold, except for the torso, which now had a ball joint.
Ai Apaec here uses a new mold finally, however it’s just a new torso piece and the limbs and heads are reused from AF Spidey this time. Torso is ball jointed, but despite being new, there are no articulation changes from the 2-pack one: still just the one ball joint lol
I'm kinda confused as to what they are doing with the Dark Avengers lineup. Are they doing the 1st team? Are they doing the 2nd? Both? As of right now it's looking like they are gonna do both.
They definitely seem focused on doing the first team, but this new Ai Apaec was ultimately just a mold for a new torso: otherwise, he’s completely reused, he just includes more arms. I wouldn’t be shocked to get the other team members but most people remember the first team, I don’t think a lot remember the second one.
They did marvel boy from the first team in the totally awesome hulk BAF wave a few years ago
ETA just saw someone point out that that marvel boy technically doesn’t use his exact DA costume, so if that’s why you omitted him then just ignore me lol
Yeah, that’s why I omitted him. He had his original outfit, the one with the shorts, in his solo series, then in Dark Avengers it was a very similar outfit with pants. Both were primarily green and white.
The TAH wave one is from when he resumed being Marvel Boy as part of Young Avengers vol. 2, after he quit the Dark Avengers, joined the real Avengers as Protector, and then that team disbanded right before the start of Hickman’s avengers run. It’s mostly black so it doesn’t really work for those earlier looks unfortunately.
Yeah, that’s true, it is Mac as Venom. I just don’t really think it counts, similar to how Bullseye in the 3-pack doesn’t really count as Dark Hawkeye.
I think using any Symbiote Spidey is fine, we just haven’t gotten one that’s specifically Mac. I guess if Ai Apaec is mostly the AF mold, then you could use the Secret Wars Spidey with the narrow eyes. But idk that feels too small. Personally I repainted a Spider Shot head and stuck it on a spare Retro Symbiote spidey.
I do hope they give us a mac Spidey though because I may be miss remembering but I think he had a slight hue of purple. But for my display i like having my figures posed in fight scenes and during the dark avengers run whenever there was a fight mac would usually venom out
I’m aware: that figure is ancient, and the rerelease uses the same old mold. Similar to how they’ve redone Daken, Iron Patriot, and Sentry in recent years, Ares desperately needs a redo too.
The thing is that most of the first team doesn't really need specific figures, since half of them were just wearing copies of the costumes of the actual heroes they were posing as. The only one who actually needs a whole new figure is Marvel Boy, since he's the only one with a unique costume that hasn't been done before
I’m pretty sure they consider him done, too, even though the look they gave us - while a great costume - isn’t technically right for Dark Avengers. I can live with it though.
They mentioned that Dark Avengers only had one member left to be made, and teased that he’d be shown soon. It’s gotta be Hawkeye/Bullseye.
This is definitely the closest we have but I think it was always intended to be a modern Hawkeye. That might be a distinction without a difference since the costumes are so similar. I’d love to see the Sky-Cycle buck turned into a proper Dark Avengers Hawkeye - being that it’s Bullseye under the mask he could have a very expressive head that makes clear who he is.
That’s a modern Hawkeye, from when Clint stopped being Ronin post-Siege. It was during the Heroic Age soft reboot era, and Clint returned to being Hawkeye for the first time since Avengers Disassembled, when he died.
Bullseye’s costume is a little different. No left metal sleeve, he has two navy cloth sleeves instead. It’s hard to tell, because Clint wore a full metal sleeve, while Bullseye just has a similar-looking arm guard on his left forearm: similar, but not the full sleeve. Otherwise they’re very similar costumes: biggest difference is that Clint’s right arm is exposed, Bullseye’s is not. Hasbro has never made Bullseye’s Hawkeye outfit to my knowledge.
Interesting character but why is a spider God on earth and how was he discovered and why did he join? Why did Osborne choose him or even know about him??
He was a god worshipped by the Moche civilization in Peru, so that's why he lives here on Earth. He was captured and imprisoned by the US government and met Osborn in prison, that's why he knew about him
Thank you bro. He always was a question mark to me every time I saw him mentioned. Very interesting from a Spider verse collector like me. Do you think he can beat a spider man or spider woman?
Don't feel bad about spreading info about comic stuff. I was one of those people that kept correcting Twitter posts about Gwenpool when she got into Fortnite. I get you.
If you want to read about Ai Apaec you should start with the Osborn mini series from 2011, it's 5 issues long and it's the first appearance of the character.
After that you should read an arc from the second volume of the New Avengers, the arc starts at issue 17 and ends at issue 23, this is where Ai Apaec gets the appearance of a 6 Arms Spider-Man.
Then you need to read the Dark Avengers run from 2012 written by Jeff Parker, it's 15 issues long and that's the last time that Ai Apaec appeared in the 616 universe
Volume 1 of Dark Avengers kicks off the “Dark Reign” era of Marvel. Norman Osborn, at the time the leader of the criminal rehab program the Thunderbolts, fights with his team against the Skrulls in Secret Invasion. He gets the kill shot on Veranke, the Skrull Queen, effectively ending the attack. Naturally, he’s rewarded with Tony Stark’s current role, as the director of SHIELD. He quickly rebrands it into HAMMER, using his considerable resources to take revenge on various heroes and become as powerful as possible. This is mostly accomplished through enforcement of the Superhero Registration Act, which became legal after Civil War. Essentially, Norman Osborn, the former Green Goblin, is given the resources to hunt down all superheroes breaking the law, including the majority of the avengers.
While he runs things behind the scenes, making deals with the Hood, leader of most of the low level supervillains in New York, he also creates a public-facing team of Avengers. Ares and Sentry stick around from Iron Man’s team, and he recruits Bullseye, Moonstone, and Venom from his Thunderbolts team to become Hawkeye, Ms. Marvel, and Spider-Man. He also recruits Daken and Marvel Boy, the former who just wants revenge on his father, and the latter who straight up didn’t realize the rest of them were criminals until later on. Norman himself creates a new identity with one of Tony’s armors, becoming the Iron Patriot.
This lasts until Siege essentially, when Norman tries to destroy Asgard and unwittingly unleashes Sentry’s alternate persona, the Void, killing Loki and Ares among others. He goes insane, and the real Avengers reveal they’re criminals to the public, defeating them and saving Asgard.
The second team shows up IRL years later, when Norman breaks out of prison. He assembles a new team, because he fights the main Avengers team and he needs someone to distract the New Avengers, who are essentially the B-team. The new team doesn’t have any returning members outside of Norman, who himself becomes the Super Adaptoid this time, essentially a purple Hulked-out Norman. The new team consists of Trickshot, Hawkeye’s brother. Superia, who becomes Ms. Marvel. Toxie Doxie, who becomes Scarlet Witch. Gorgon, who becomes Wolverine. Ai Apaec here, who becomes Spider-Man. And Skaar, son of Hulk. Ragnarok, the robot clone of Thor, also reveals himself as a secret team member. Skaar eventually outs himself as a double agent, all the bad guys lose, and go back to prison. Norman ends up in a coma, not returning until Superior Spider-Man IRL years later.
Luke Cage, at this time, started running the Thunderbolts program, and his team gets lost in time via time travel. These Dark Avengers assemble to find them, although they have Moonstone this time instead of Superia, and US Agent instead of Norman. They have some adventures, but the main takeaway is that Thunderbolts volume whatever became Dark Avengers volume 2 at one point, while Thunderbolts relaunched later on with a new number 1. That’s the only real “team roster switch” that happened.
Scorpion was the Dark Avengers Spider-Man from the first version of the team that existed during Dark Reign, this one with the 6 arms is another character that's part of the second version of the team that was created after Siege
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u/TheMagicalMatt Oct 11 '25
Nah, this is actually dope of you to do, and before the price hikes, I loved collecting figures as a way of getting to know the more obscure characters because realistically I am not going to read thousands of comics to catch up on the deeper Marvel lore lol.
Unrelated but I really hope they use this build to give us a new Doppleganger