The highly-anticipated Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse just keeps getting anticipated more and more highly.
And why wouldn’t it? It’s the follow-up to a pair of movies with over 50 major filmmaking awards between them, promising a reality-bending conclusion to the Empire Strikes Back-ian ending of Across the Spider-Verse. Old favorites like Spider-Ham and Spider-Man Noir make their returns. Donald Glover, if there’s any justice in this world, finally gets to be a Spider-Man.
And maybe we’ll tie a bow on the story of The Spot, the C-tier villain brought into Across the Spider-Verse with unexpected results. Last we saw him, the monochrome multiverse-hopper was ratcheting his abilities up to a new level, promising terrible things to come.
Then along came Twitter user @CanWeGetSomeToast, who posted purported concept art for Beyond the Spider-Verse featuring The Spot, tall as a skyscraper and doing that thing with his hands that villains do when they say stuff like “behold my unfathomable power.”
According to the post, The Spot is set to use his newfound abilities to transform into a villain called The Abyss. So who is “The Abyss?” Depends! Could be a couple of people. Let’s run down the list.
Abyss (the space demon)
The smart money says that the Spot’s new Abyss persona comes to us by way of Death Metal, a very extreme 1993 miniseries featuring more Alpha Flight than you’re probably imagining. It was a point in Marvel history when everyone was trying to be Todd McFarlane or Rob Liefeld — all the muscles were huge, all the teeth were uncountable, and every square inch of space on a body that didn’t have a pouch attached to it got docked from the artists’ pay.
The Abyss introduced in the story is an interdimensional demon creature with a bad habit of destroying the realities that he traipses through, which has The Spot’s brand of clueless power drunkenness written all over it. Big on consuming energy and mass into his insatiable glowy chest bits, he’s even in the same aesthetic ballpark as the even spottier Spot we saw at the end of Across the Spider-Verse.
Abyss (the mutant)
Recall the 1990s. The options for new comic book characters were many but less than unique: Anabolic Nightmare (Cable, Savage Dragon), furious warrior woman with an 11-inch waistline (Domino, every female character Liefeld ever drew), and Freaky Weirdo.
The mutant who went by the name Abyss was a Freaky Weirdo. He had a cell-shaded face and arms and legs made out of springy ribbons and he transported people to the Brimstone Dimension through a portal in his Teletubby gut. In a world populated by people who could move stuff with their brains and shoot transdimensional kinetic energy out of their eye sockets, Abyss really strained the credibility of the whole “next natural step in the evolutionary process” gimmick. Today, he’s mostly remembered for that time when he showed up as a miniboss in X-Men Legends II.
Abyss (the elder god mind control thing)
First appearing in the pages of Nova, this Abyss is as powerful and cool-looking as he is uncomplicated. He’s a mean elder god thing from space, and he loves doing evil mind control — the kind that turns people’s eyes black and makes them fight their buddies. Also, he might destroy the universe.
Abyss (the Marvel vs Capcom 2 villain)
You know how sometimes a great and terrible wind will sweep across the world, destroying all plant life as it goes? And you know how the natural response to that is generally to get a whole bunch of characters together to beat each other up until the problem resolves itself? Furthermore, have you experienced how the story modes in fighting games tend to make you feel like you’re reading your dream journal from that week when you had a concussion from falling off a roof?
This is the tale of Abyss, the final boss in Marvel vs Capcom 2. Ill-defined, unknowable, and able to take as many as three separate forms, he’d be a gutsy addition to Spider-Verse continuity.
Abyss (the way-too-high-concept Jonathan Hickman character)
This one’s a long-odds bet, but who knows? Fans of writer Jonathan Hickman know that he can generally be counted on to do one of two things: Write compelling new characters or confuse every single reader.
In 2012, he did both, introducing Abyss. One of a matching set of avatars of creation, she was sort of a living Star Trek Genesis Device, hell-bent on creating new worlds by upcycling old ones. Her abilities caught a few eyes on Earth when she tried to give the planet a facelift, and she was invited to join the Avengers as sort of a Captain Universe-invoked cosmic parole agreement. Bonus: This Abyss comes with an extra Abyss, as a character with the same name and look but completely different powers showed up in the Disney series Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur.