SPIDER-MAN NOIR: THE COMPLETE COLLECTION by David Hine (Author), Fabrice Sapolsky (Author), Roger Stern (Author), Carmine Di Giandomenico (Illustrator, Artist), Richard Isanove (Illustrator, Artist), Bob McLeod (Illustrator, Artist), Paco Diaz (Illustrator, Artist), Patch Zircher (Cover Art)

Published in 2019 by Marvel.

When people watched Sony's fantastic Spiderverse cartoon they were treated to the vision of multiple versions of Spider-Man teaming up to save the the world of Miles Morales. One of the most talked about versions of Spider-Man was Spider-Noir, a hard-bitten detective version of Spidey that was voiced by Nicholas Cage. Spider-Noir came with a trench coat and a fedora and lives in a black and white universe with dramatice lighting, much like a character in a Sam Spade movie. 

In the summer of 2026, Nicholas Cage played a live action version of that character in a popular streaming series and I was thrilled to discover that Spider-Noir wasn't just a character made up for the Spiderverse cartoons, but was actually part of an existing series of comics that reimagined multiple popular Marvel characters in the 1930s.

I got hold of Spider-Man Noir: The Complete Collection and eagerly jumped in - only to be disappointed.

I was not disappointed that the comic differs significantly from the streaming series - that kind of stuff is to be expected. For example, in the streaming series, there is no Peter Parker and everyone's superpowers are the result of a lab experiment gone awry. Marvel simply loves to imbue superpowers via bad science experiments.

The way Peter Parker receives his powers in the comic is much closer to how Madame Web receives her powers in the Madame Web movie. That was fine by me - it doesn't always have to be a lab accident.

What was not fine by me was the art in the original series was often unclear and extremely hard to follow. It is often too busy (see above.) Quite simply, it did not work in too many panels throughout the comic. The art was much better in the smaller follow up comics at the end of this collection.

Even worse, Peter Parker is not Peter Parker in this series. He isn't even like the Nicholas Cage version from Spiderverse movies and the streaming series. He is a humorless, angry character without much of a personality except that he wants to get the guys that killed his Uncle Ben and he wants the poor people of New York to get an even break during the Great Depression.

Those are both admirable goals, but one of the key features of Spider-Man in every comic, every movie series, and every TV show is that Peter Parker is funny and annoyingly enthusiastic. He runs his mouth non-stop and it irritates his opponents. If you remember in the Avengers: Civil War movie, Falcon even tells Spidey that he's talking too much while they're fighting each other.

In this comic, Spider-Man is dour, brooding, and definitely not funny. They're trying to really get into the "noir" vibe, but it would have been much more traditionally character appropriate to have everyone else be super serious while Spidey just runs his mouth and makes smart-aleck comments the whole time (this worked very well in Cage's streaming series adaptation.)

I rate this graphic novel 2 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Spider-Man Noir: The Complete Collection.