Bad news for fans of both Japanese comics andMarvel’s Spider-Man. As they may have known, a manga adaptation of thewall-crawler’s popular PS4 gamehas been around since last year, but unfortunately, that’s no longer the case, because that adaptation has been cancelled.
The manga in question,Marvel’s Spider-Man: Fake Red, was originally launched on the specialty app Manga Pocket to coincide with the Japanese release of the movieSpider-Man: Far From Home. A collaboration between Marvel and leading manga publisher Kodansha, it served as an official extension of Insomniac Games’ take on Spidey’s world, with a story supervised by Marvel itself.
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Outside of the cameos in the mainline comics and thetie-in miniseriesSpider-Man: Velocity, this was the most substantial appearance of the PS4 Spidey in the printed medium. Unfortunately, the series only managed to last a year before being discontinued, according to the manga’s writer and illustrator Yusuke Osawa, who broke the news on Twitter.
Expressing his disappointment over the cancellation, he explained that while initial sales ofFake Red’s first compilation volume were good, subsequent printings failed to meet Kodansha and Marvel’s expectations. Also not helping was the fact that the manga, despite being a prominently digital title, failed to sell well digitally.
It also sounds like the poor sales have, for the time being, killedFake Red’s chances of being released outside of Japan. According to Osawa, there’re currently no plans for an official English translation, so it’s not likely that fans ofMarvel’s Spider Manwill have much to look forward to outside the realm of video games for now.
Luckily for them, they have plenty to look forward to on that front, as Insomniac will be diving back into the world of Spidey later this year with the PS5 expansionMarvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales. That might not be great news for those who prefer reading the adventures of Spider-Man in comic book form, but the game not only has the potential to capitalize on what makes the comics great, but improve on them andsucceed where theSpider-Mancomics fail.
