Highlights
- Spider-Man's black alien symbiote costume is one of the most impactful and memorable costumes in his rich catalog.
- The symbiote suits in Marvel's Spider-Man 2 and Marvel's Midnight Suns have distinct textures and designs that set them apart.
- Marvel's Spider-Man 2 introduces a symbiote suit with an evolving, padded look, reflecting the character's musculature and featuring unique powers.
Spider-Man’s rich catalog of costumes is one of his most notable features across a diverse history beginning in the early 60s. Some costumes have become far more iconic and familiar than others, while some are perfectly comedic and hold a special place in fans’ hearts. Each costume also represents at least one comic book storyline for Spider-Man that fans might appreciate, helping to punctuate their place in the wall-crawler’s lore. But none are likely more impactful or memorable than Spider-Man’s black alien symbiote costume, which has been featured recently in both Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 and Marvel’s Midnight Suns.
The symbiote ‘costume’ is special because it’s actually an alien organism that enhances the wearer—all while looking incredibly stylish and brooding in its full black aesthetic with white lenses, hand patches, and a giant spider insignia on the chest with legs that wrap around Peter’s sides and connect with the insignia on his back. This would then be the same look that a cloth iteration of Spider-Man’s symbiote suit made by Black Cat had, but this symbiote suit has been changed in iterations since, including two distinct appearances between Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 and Marvel’s Midnight Suns.
Marvel’s Midnight Suns’ Symbiote Suits are Slimy and Lifelike
Spider-Man’s symbiote featured a matte texture in the comics and in the 90s animated series likely as a result of coloring and inking where shading needed to be considered. However, since the suit is a living substance, it was wonderful that Marvel’s Midnight Suns’ symbiote suits featured a glossy, ribbed texture instead.
This gives Spider-Man’s alternate skin and the Hunter’s symbiote suit great depth and distinguishes them as an entirely different texture from other suits. The lighting on these suits is fantastic and shows a glistening effect with its tissue-like material, while Spider-Man’s lenses, spider insignia, and hand pads are still rendered similarly to that of the source material.
The Hunter’s symbiote suit is much more alien in its white-and-black design, featuring a mainly white palette with high black lenses and black tendrils thinly lining the body, shoulders, legs, and arms, as well as the dual weapons the Hunter wields. It’s uncertain if these symbiote designs influenced that of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, which probably already had its own symbiote designs in mind well before, but there are some interesting parallels now seen in Marvel’s Spider-Man’s sequel.
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2’s Symbiote Suit Has an Evolving, Padded Look
Marvel’s Spider-Man purposely withheld giving fans a symbiote suit until it could do it justice in the narrative, and while it’s yet to be seen how that storyline will play out with an emotionally compromised Peter, the symbiote suit itself looks terrific. Insomniac’s take on the symbiote suit Peter will wear also features the distinct gloss and texture of Marvel’s Midnight Suns’, but where it differs most is with a more padded look.
This makes the symbiote suit appear more like body armor than a representation of the character’s musculature, padding different parts of Peter’s body with a bulkier exterior while the slimy goo substance can still be seen underneath as it subtly writhes. This suit also allows the player to produce massive tendrils in many of its attacks, and trailer teases have also shown how the suit will reflect changes based on whether it is vulnerable or when Peter is lashing out with a rage-induced Symbiote Surge mode.
The insignia changes to better reflect the insignia seen on Venom’s character model, for example, alluding to the hulking monstrosity being the full evolution of the symbiote. Therefore, it’s likely there are evolutions to the suit that fans haven’t even seen yet in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, and that’s where it can become most unique apart from its symbiote costume counterparts.
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is out on October 20, exclusively for PS5.
