Disney and Marvel recently revived X-Men: The Animated Series with the all-new Disney Plus series X-Men ’97. The new animated series starts where the original run left off. And, in the spirit of its X-Men series predecessor, it does seem to contain some references to Spider-Man: The Animated Series – though with major errors.
The original X-Men: The Animated Series television program did feature Spider-Man from Spider-Man: The Animated Series on several occasions. Now X-Men ’97 is once again acknowledging that Spider-Man exists within the canon of the new series with its latest episode titled “To Me, My X-Men.”
As mentioned, however, there is a major error involved with the reference. Interestingly, both the reference and its error were previously teased in the X-Men ’97 trailer. It’s a brief clip of a Daily Bugle newspaper. Of course, fans know that Spider-Man – aka Peter Parker – works for the Daily Bugle.
The other employee that fans will recognize is Eddie Brock. The newspaper does reference both Spider-Man and Eddie Brock, though this is where the errors begin. As you can see below, Spider-Man is spelled like “Spiderman,” and Eddie Brock is spelled “Eddie Block.”
It’s unknown if this is an actual error of some kind, or a way to legally use the names of the characters without hoping anyone would notice the difference. Some viewers even expected that, when the newspaper was first teased in the trailer, that the errors would have been corrected by the time the series was released. Now that the episode has officially premiered, however, it’s clear that won’t be the case.
Here’s a screenshot of the Daily Bugle newspaper showcasing the errors:
Spider-man has been referenced in the new X-men 97 trailer pic.twitter.com/G3x011XxJ8
— Spider-Man News (@SpiderMan_Newz) February 15, 2024
It’s certainly an interesting reference to another beloved series, misspellings and all. Perhaps we’ll have some better crafted Spider-Man references in X-Men ’97 later on. Stay tuned to ScreenGeek for any additional updates as we have them.