The official name is Spider-Man, but in the comic titles sold in Spain it appears as Spiderman. What is the reason for this?
Amazing, spectacular, superior… There are many adjectives to describe Spiderman, one of the best known and most popular superheroes of all time. You can ask people of all ages and many will tell you that the wall-crawler is among their superheroes of Marvel favourites, and it is that the story of the young Peter Parker it’s something any generation can empathize with.
The character created by Stan Lee y Steve Ditko was released to the world on August 10, 1962, at the Amazing Fantasy #15 and its popularity has not stopped growing since then. Spiderman It has crossed over from the original medium and today everyone has a favorite version of the wall-crawler, be it in comics, animated series, movies or video games. With these last two media, it will see a lot of movement this year, since it has been released in theaters Spider-Man: Crossing the Multiverse (here you have our review) and Marvel ‘s Spider-Man 2 in PlayStation 5.
Today we want to talk about a detail about the Spiderman which many of you may not have realized. Stan Lee In his day he said that the name of the arachnid superhero had a hyphen, that is, that his official name is Spider-Man. But If you take any comic of the character that has been published in Spain, you will see that the name that appears is Spiderman, without a hyphen. If you think it is a mistake, it is not, there is a rather curious story behind this name change.
History of the publication of Spiderman in Spain
We have to go until the mid-60s. Many of you will remember Vertexthe historic publishing house that popularized the comics of Marvel in spain. Before Peter Parker’s character arrived on the peninsula, Editorial Vértice already published a series of comics with the title of Spiderman in 1967, but the stories had nothing to do with a boy from Queens.
The comic in question is The Spider of Ted Cowan, Jerry Seal y Reg Bunn, but in Spain he was known at that time as Spiderman. This character trapped his rivals with cobwebs, was very intelligent and used multiple gadgets. What other character does he remind us of? The difference of this character with that of Marvelis that this is a British criminal genius, also his appearance is quite different from the “Public threat number one”.
As we say, this British thief was known in Spain as Spiderman. This must have caused problems Marvel Comicswhich a few years later began an expansion movement across Europe. It must have been a surprise for the North American publisher to see that comics were published in Spain with the name of one of its heroes. Yes, his character had a hyphen in his name, but the public could get confused with two names so similar.
It’s not clear if the two publishers reached any kind of agreement or what exactly happened to them, but Vertex took over the rights to the character from Marvel to publish his comics in spain. EThe name of the British thief was changed to Spider (later he would have a third name, Flierman), so that the new character from America would keep his own. But What Vértice did was take advantage of the old header of the British comic Spiderman, so that it became the new header of the Marvel character. That is the reason why Spider-Man comics are published without a script in the Spanish editions.
Taking advantage of the old header was also the reason why the character’s name was not translated into Spanish. Vertex also published the adventures of other Marvel characters such as Daredevil, Hulk o Silver Surferbut its headers were translated in the peninsula as Dan Defender, At the table y silver wake. Some of these characters recovered their original names, while others have continued to maintain the translation. But the name of Spiderman, without a hyphen, has been maintained in all the publications and publishers through which it has passed, from Vértice, through Forum and even Panini Comics.
In short, the name of Marvel’s wall-climbing appears without a hyphen in Spain because they wanted to take advantage of an existing header. A change that has been respected to this day, either by tradition or by not wanting to use another new header.
The pronunciation of Spiderman in Spain
Perhaps the lack of a script and the fact that there were no translations into Spanish was one of the reasons why the arachnid character was called “Espiderman”. This name had penetrated so deeply into Spanish society, that in Sam Raimi’s Spiderman trilogy, the dubbing respected the home translation. Although this has been changing unfortunately for many, because in the UCM and in Sony animated films, the correct pronunciation is used in dubbing.
