WARNING: The following article contains mild spoilers for the two most recent issues of Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man.


Since it first hit shops last summer, the current volume of Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man has been a blast to read. Writer Chip Zdarsky (who just signed a Marvel-exclusive deal) brings his considerable comedy chops to bear while still delivering the same sort of thrills and action that Spidey's been giving readers for over 50 years. Zdarsky and his various collaborators are known for sneaking in all sorts of background jokes and details, and the one that popped up in this week's Peter Parker calls back to a deep, yet important cut, in Marvel and television history.

The climax of Spectacular Spider-Man #300 saw Dr. Doom use his vaunted but modified time platform to send Spidey, his pseudo-sister Teresa, and J. Jonah Jameson (who, as of Peter Parker #6, has learned Spidey's true identity) back in time two weeks to stop the invasion of the cyborg alien race the Vomdi that the Tinkerer set in motion.

In the next issue, titled "Amazing Fantasy, Part 1," the reader learns that Doom's platform malfunctioned and sent them way too far back in time. All the way back to Spider-Man's teenage years, in fact! But the most surprising thing about the issue is a little background detail that might've slipped past you.

In a panel from a scene (pictured above) where the trio is trying to convince Teen Spidey that they are who they say they are, a toy robot can be seen on young Peter's desk. But a closer look reveals that that's not a random robot drawn by current series artist Joe Quinones and colorist Jordan Gibson.

That robot is none other than...Leopardon!

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If you're not caught up on your more obscure Spidey history or on your tokusatsu shows (essentially any show dealing with guys in creature suits or superhero costumes, like Kamen Rider), you've probably never heard of Leopardon. Which is a shame, because he's pretty cool in his own right, and actually a bit of a pioneer.

Leopardon was the giant robot piloted by your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man in the 1979 Japanese television series Spider-Man (commonly romanized in the West as "Supaidaman" after the way the hero's name is pronounced). The series aired on TV Tokyo and was produced by Toei -- yes, the same Toei that gave you Dragon Ball Z.

The idea came about because Toei had made a three-year licensing agreement with Marvel for both companies to cross-promote one another's properties in any way they wanted. While Marvel would go on to adapt the giant robots from some Toei-produced anime into their tie-in comic to Mattel's Shogun Warriors toyline (a line consisting of nothing but imported Japanese toys from several unrelated toylines, a few years before Transformers hit the scene), Toei came up with Spider-Man.

As detailed in an extensive 2010 article in Back Issue magazine, Spidey was originally intended to be identical to the comics, as well as a supporting character in a show about the legendary Japanese prince and warrior Yamato Takeru being brought to the present. But plans changed, and the show was reconfigured to be about Ol' Webhead himself... sort of.

To appeal to Japanese children, the show's mechanical designer, Katsushi Murakami, jettisoned practically everything about Spider-Man except for his costume and some of his powers and gadgets. In this show, Spidey was a hothead motorcycle racer named Takuya Yamashiro, who, while practicing for a race, sees a UFO land. His father, a famous scientist, goes to investigate it and winds up being killed by the troops of the evil Iron Cross Army.

Discovering his dad's body and wracked with grief, Takuya discovers that the ship's crash opened a cave. HInside, he encounters a dying old man named Garia, who explains that he'd pursued the Iron Cross Army and their ruthless leader, Professor Monster, to Earth hundreds of years ago as revenge for his destroyed home world, Planet Spider. No longer capable of fighting, and having summoned his spaceship, the Marveller (the UFO) to Earth, he gifts Takuya the Spider Protector costume and injects him with some of his own blood, saying the combination of the two will transform him into someone who can take down Professor Monster and his plans for universal domination.

That someone is, as Takuya explains at just about the start of every fight he gets involved in, "an emissary from Hell...SPIDER-MAN!"

So where does Leopardon come in? Well, he's actually the robot form of the Marveller, which transforms when Spidey flies his car, the Spider-Machine GP-7, into it to defeat the Monster of the Week. Added merely as a gimmick -- and later actually released in the US as part of a Bandai toyline, and later as a collector's item -- Leopardon became so popular that the idea of masked heroes piloting giant transforming robots to battle equally giant monsters would be carried over by Toei into their own Super Sentai franchise. This, of course, reached its global pop culture high point in 1993 when it wound up as the foundation for Power Rangers.

While Stan Lee and the Marvel Bullpen loved Spider-Man/"Supaidaman," sadly, the show is in a bit of a legal limbo. While a DVD boxset exists in Japan, the show was previously released on Marvel.com in 2009 and again on YouTube in 2015, but has since been removed from both.

Regardless, paying a small tribute to such a quietly iconic part of Spidey history proves that Quinones and Gibson -- the latter of whom is a noted fan of the Japanese series -- are helping to make Peter Parker a joy to read month after month.