When Earth-138’s friendly neighborhood Spider-Punk hits the stage, he uses his ax, anarchic attitude, and abilities to change the state of affairs. For his foes, it’s time to face the music because this wall-crawler is off the charts!
Ready to Rock
The music-obsessed Earth-138 suffers from big business, fascist government, and rampant consumerism. For foul-mouthed teenager Hobie Brown, punk rock expresses his bottomless rage at seeing the world bought and sold by corrupt corporations thanks to an apathetic public. Brown feels the power structure wants people to believe there was no hope, but he refuses to accept either gods or masters, preferring to die on his feet like his rock idol Gwen Stacy than live on his knees.
While living as a squatter, Brown gains arachnid powers after being bitten by a spider rendered radioactive by illegal waste dumping. Pronouncing himself a radioactive suicide machine, he becomes the costumed Spider-Man to fight for freedom.
Dubbed both The “anarchic Spider-Man” and the “Spider-Punk,” the latter a tag he rejects, Brown opposes oppressive United States President Norman Osborn and his Thunderbolt Department, corrupt “law enforcers” empowered by Oscorp’s Variable Engagement Neuro-Sensitive Organic Mesh (V.E.N.O.M.) technology.
Anarchic and Arachnid Abilities
Spider-Punk has superhuman strength (lifting at least one ton), speed, reflexes, endurance and equilibrium. He possesses a precognitive spider-sense warning of impending danger like his extradimensional counterparts.
Able to stick to and scale walls, he can produce webbing to entangle opponents or swing between buildings; whether this is an innate ability or mechanically produced is unrevealed.
He uses his spiked mask as a weapon, head-butting opponents, and also deploys his guitars as impromptu clubs. He is an excellent guitarist, capable drummer, and terrible singer, though he claims this last one is intentional and “punk.”
Battle of the Bands
Hobie’s enemies include the fascist leaders of Earth-138, including President Osborn, Nazi punk Kraven and the Hunters, Wilson Fisk, AKA Kingpin, and many Super Villains under Osborn’s employ.
When the terrifying Inheritors traverse the Multiverse eating the lifeforce energy of Spider-Totems, Spider-Punk and his fellow Spiders band together to battle them.
Music to the Ears
Robbie Banner, AKA Hulk, becomes Hobie’s frequent ally against the terrorist Hydra organization. Brown joins Hulk and Karl Morningdew, AKA Captain Anarchy, in trashing the U-Foes at the Hellfire Club, and then aides Hulk and M.C. Strange in driving the Universal Church out of Queens.
Hobie as Spider-Punk creates his own Spider Army to oppose U.S. President Osborn and his Thunderbolts, and later joins the Multiversal Spider-Army against the ravenous Inheritors to stop them from feasting on all Spider-People.
Forming the Spider-Band with Riri Williams, AKA RiotHeart, Captain Anarchy, Hulk, and a few other allies along the way, Hobie goes on tour across the U.S. to take out the villains cropping up in the wake of Osborn’s defeat.
Punk Rock History
When Brown assembled a ragtag Spider Army composed of the downtrodden, a confident Osborn personally led the Thunderbolts to confront them, but Brown, aware of V.E.N.O.M.’s sonic vulnerability, awaited atop a wall of massive speakers and hit the Thunderbolts with 15,000 volts of punk rock. While the Spider Army demolished the reeling Thunderbolts, Brown smashed Osborn’s skull in with his guitar.
Covertly observed by Earth-616’s Superior Spider-Man (Dr. Otto Octavius, AKA Doctor Octopus, possessing Peter Parker’s body), the brutal victory convinced Otto to recruit Brown for his own interdimensional Spider-army being gathered to stop the Inheritors, a powerful family seeking to feed from the lifeforce of every Spider-Totem across the Multiverse. Otto’s team eventually merged with another, larger Spider-Army assembled by Earth-833’s Billy Braddock, AKA Spider-UK.
Under the leadership of Spider-UK, Hobie teams up with Ashley Barton, Pavitr Prabhakar, AKA Spider-Man, and Anya Corazon to Earth-3123, where they found the renegade Inheritor Karn confronting the elderly May Parker, AKA Spider-Ma’am. They convinced Karn to rebel against his family and join them.
They journeyed to Loomworld for a final showdown with the Inheritors. The Spiders gradually overwhelmed their enemies, leaving them stranded on a poisonous radioactive planet of Earth-3145, and the totems returned to their homeworlds, while Karn took over the Web of Life and Destiny.
While some of the victors remained together as the Web-Warriors to protect the Multiverse, Brown returned home and belatedly celebrated Osborn’s defeat performing with his band, the Spider-Slayers, at a concert held for his world’s Spider Army. During the concert, a battle erupted with forces of Toomestone Records over Toomes’ attempts to seize control of the Free Medianet. The unexpected arrival of Earth-93726’s Piguel O’Malley, AKA Spider-Ham 2099, disrupted the melee, heralding a growing disruption to the interdimensional web unwittingly triggered by the Web-Warriors. Brown alerted his former allies to the situation, and after discovering one of the Web-Warriors was Gwen Stacy, AKA Ghost-Spider (Earth-65), joined them to resolve the problem.
After helping defeat an army of interdimensional Electros, Gwen and Brown jammed together on drums and guitar boosted by the Electros’ energies through Earth-50810’s Spider-Man’s Mega-Morph technology and vibrated the interdimensional web back into place. Brown and other interdimensional Spider-Men were later captured by Peter Parker, AKA Wolf-Spider (Earth-16827), who intended to drain their life force, until Spider-Man from Earth-12041 rallied the captives to thwart him. Brown also joined his fellow Spider-Men in forming a baseball team, the Amazing Arachnids, and pitched against the Multiversal Wolverines’ Seething Snikters.
Later, back on Earth-138, Brown was confronted by Kang the Conglomerator, who horrified him by revealing that by 2099 Kangco owned Brown’s image rights and “Spider-Punk” had become a marketing-friendly merchandising phenomenon. Hoping to generate massive profits by securing the genuine article, Kang tried to abduct Brown. He was stopped with Captain Anarchy and Hulk’s assistance, but before escaping back to his own era Kang disclosed that Brown’s bankability was because he was destined to die young.
While still trying to digest this disquieting news, Brown was approached by May Parker, AKA Spider-Woman, from Earth-982 seeking his assistance against the returned Inheritors. Figuring he had never expected to live forever, Brown agreed.
Brown reunited with Web-Warriors Spider-UK and Ghost-Spider and joining their effort was Peter B. Parker, AKA Spider-Man Noir (Earth-90214), Peter Porker, AKA Spider-Ham (Earth-8311), and Octavia Otto, a heroic Dr. Octopus (Earth-1104). Their first stop was to recruit Miles Morales, AKA Spider-Man, currently displaced to Earth-616 where the team detected Inheritor technology. Traveling to the source in San Francisco, they discovered a lab containing the Inheritor’s cloning tubes. Hobie, Spider-Ham, and Spider-Woman were attacked from behind with black-binding goo by Doc Ock, who was now going by moniker The Superior Octopus. Superior refused to destroy the tubes and the remaining Spiders fought him, hoping to destroy the tubes themselves and prevent the Inheritors from returning. Spider-Man Noir made it to the tubes first but Morlun punched his way through the glass and inhaled his lifeforce. The remaining Inheritors broke free from their cloning tubes and Verna killed Spider-UK, leaving the rest of the Spiders with no choice but to run, taking Superior with them. Together and joining a larger Spider-Army, Hobie helped defeat the vampiric family.
Back in his home reality, Earth-138, Spider-Punk joined Captain Anarchy against Kraven and his Hunters who were packing some heavy artillery. Defeating them and letting Kraven go, Hobie snagged one of their abandoned weapons and brought it back to his Spider-Base, headquartered in the Brooklyn Community Center.
At the Spider-Base, Hobie gave the weapon to his close friend and ally RiotHeart, who recognized that it well-funded military-grade tech. They were interrupted by news that Kraven and his gang were stirring up trouble again. Spider-Punk, RiotHeart, and Captain Anarchy arrived at the chaos. Spider-Punk dubbed the trio the Spider-Band and in fighting their opponents, captured Kraven. He admitted he was a mercenary working for someone unknown who wanted him to cause a living hell in Brooklyn, preventing anyone from wanting to live in the neighborhood. In exchange, he’d be given the weapons to fight Spider-Punk. But they were soon all blinded by a flash grenade courtesy of Tony Masters, AKA Taskmaster, who also released Kraven. The ensuing fight looked bad for the newly minted Spider-Band but thanks to the timely yet late arrival of their ally, the super-stretchy hero Kamala Khan, she battled Taskmaster, while the others regrouped and had the villains at a stalemate. Taskmaster took off, leaving a bomb in his wake, but Riri was prepared with a force field that protected the Spider-Band.
The resulting hole left from the explosion led them to one of Osborn’s old bunkers, which revealed that the villain’s totalitarian operations were still up and running across the nation. So the four of them hopped in their Spider-Van and went on tour to take down these bunkers and any affiliated fascists.
In Philadelphia, they found a bunker of weapons controlled by the Kingpin. They faced his Marauders and with the assistance of Mattea Murdock, AKA the Daredevil Drummer of Philly, defeated them. Daredevil stayed behind but the Spider-Band kept their tour going, with the next and final stop in Washington D.C.
The Spider-Band’s investigations culminated in a public execution in D.C., led by a returned Norman Osborn with his Super Villain lackeys Taskmaster, Flash Thompson, AKA Officer Venom, and Bob Reynolds, AKA War Sentry. Hulk and Daredevil joined the ensuing fray and together, they battled their authoritarian antagonists. When things looked dire, Riri hooked up Spider-Punk’s guitar to her heart’s power source and with one stroke of his strings, Spider-Punk blew Norman and his minions away with his mind-blowing sound.
