Comic-Con Museum Celebrates 60 Years Of Spider-Man With New Exhibit

Marvel Entertainment’s Spider-Man has been foiling supervillains and captivating audiences for six decades. Now the webcrawling hero is the subject of an extensive multimedia exhibition at the new Comic-Con Museum in San Diego’s Balboa Park, opening July 1, 2022, just in time for San Diego Comic-Con later in the month.

Spider-Man: Beyond Amazing — The Exhibition was developed by Semmel Exhibitions and Marvel Entertainment, presented by special arrangement with the Comic-Con Museum and Comic-Con International. The show features thousands of one-of-a-kind artifacts from Spider-Man comics, movies, animation, toys, videogames and merchandise from the 1960s to the present day, as well as cutting edge digital and immersive experiences. Many of the pieces are on loan from private collections, and are cumulatively valued in the tens of millions of dollars, especially in today’s booming market for comics art and collectibles.

The exhibit was co-curated by Dr. Ben Saunders, Director of Comics Studies at the University of Oregon, and Patrick A. Reed, a pop culture historian and events and exhibitions professional. Saunders, who is also the editor for the just-launched Marvel Penguin Classics, had previously curated the Marvel: Universe of Super Heroes exhibition that launched in 2018 and is still on tour.

Reed says the exhibition strives to create a “walkthrough celebration of 60 years of arguably the most iconic and recognizable superhero in the world across all media.” The show takes a chronological approach to the story, with each room dedicated to a decade’s worth of artwork, animation cels, artifacts and information.

Saunders says the team paid special attention to reproducing the artwork, both digitally and mechanically, to create the original ambiance of material, down to the Ben Day dots used to create color effects in the cheaply printed comics of the 60s and 70s. “We want people to be able to experience that piece of culture as it was experienced at the time of release,” he said.

According to Reed and Saunders, the exhibit takes a three-level approach to the character. First is the cultural history, exploring Spider-Man’s ongoing interaction with American society from the 60s to the present day, including the incorporation of real-world social issues and the geography of New York City. Second is the character’s publishing history, recognizing the pioneers like visual storyteller Steve Ditko and editor/dialogue writer Stan Lee (who are credited with co-creating the character) down to the creators in comics and other media who have reinvented Spidey and his mythos for succeeding generations. The third aspect covers the internal history of the character, including the evolution of everyman Peter Parker and his expanding cast, including all the various Spider-folk who now inhabit his multiverse.

“We track that movement of guys working at a typewriter and pencil and Bristol board, just starting out with the simplest tools, that ends up being this globe spanning franchise with dozens of legacy characters,” said Saunders. “It’s a narrative that is told with objects and artifacts including original art, costumes and props, and a huge range of digital canvases.”

Reed says the extended team of designers and professionals took advantage of the expansive new Comic-Con Museum space to create massive immersive experiences that combine physical objects and high-resolution digital imagery, “selfie moments” featuring life-sized foam sculptures produced by Gentle Giant, and other cutting-edge features.

The self-guided exhibit can be enjoyed in 45-60 minutes, according to Saunders, but highly engaged visitors could spend hours consuming the voluminous notes and unpacking dense montages of images assembled from every stage of Spider-Man’s career.

The exhibit is one of the highest-profile events to date for the Comic-Con Museum, which officially opened its doors last November. The museum is owned and managed by the same organization that puts on San Diego Comic-Con, which will make its full-scale return July 20 after a two-year hiatus. The organizers expect at least some of the 160,000-plus Comic-Con attendees to make the trek to Balboa Park to check out the new show plus some of the other exhibits running at the Museum, including a history of Pac-Man and a spotlight on Rocketeer creator Dave Stevens.

The Comic-Con Museum is open daily from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., with the last entry at 5 p.m. Standard admission, including “Spider-Man: Beyond Amazing – The Exhibition,” (adults ages 18+) is $30; children (ages 4-12) are $18; seniors (65+), students (13-17) and military are $24; and group bundles for 10 or more are $25 per ticket. Tickets can be purchased in advance through Fever: beyondamazingexhibition.com.