WARNING: The following contains spoilers for W.E.B. of Spider-Man #4, available now from Marvel.
Marvel's superheroes have explored the farthest reaches of the universe, but a team of its youngest heroes has been transported to the new frontier of a digital world. W.E.B of Spider-Man #4 by Alberto Alberquerque pits the adolescent members of its titular superhero team against a familiar threat who turns their computers against them, leaving them with no other option than to enter the system and solve the problem from the inside.
W.E.B of Spider-Man is an alternate reality series that sees Peter Parker as the latest member of the Worldwide Engineering Brigade, a team of young geniuses sponsored by Tony Stark. The story is a loose tie-in to the setting of the same name at Disneyland's Avengers Campus though it is not beholden to the continuity of the movies, which allows it far greater freedom in which elements of the Marvel Universe it is able to adapt.
The title's previous issues have introduced the threat of the Green Goblin, most recently having him attack a plane flying the W.E.B team to their Paris base where they were eventually able to meet with Amadeus Cho. This latest issue begins with Peter Parker expressing that he doesn't believe Norman Osborn is really behind these events, an idea that is seconded by a hologram of Tony Stark before being hacked by an external force, beginning the issue's action.
The W.E.B base is attacked by the Green Goblin from outside as an unclear threat mounts an assault on their computer systems as well, forcing the team to split their focus in order to not get overwhelmed on any front. A team made up of Harley Keener, Onome and Lunella Lafayette uses a machine invented by Amadeus Cho to enter the system as Amadeus, while Spider-Man and Squirrel Girl deal with the Green Goblin in the real world.
This story takes its characters to a kind of digital world that is a mainstay in the genre of science-fiction, most famously explored in 1982's Tron. In this new setting, the young heroes fight back against the physical form of the threatening computer program. Part of what makes this setting so interesting is that it allows people without powers to do things they couldn't in the real world. With their digital abilities, Marvel's heroes area ultimately able to take down the virus as the Goblin reveals himself to be scientist Mendel Stromm in the real world.
Though there has never been a direct story connection, Marvel's characters have crossed paths with the world of Tron before. In 2010, Marvel released a series of Tron-themed variant covers as a tie-in with the 2010 sequel Tron Legacy that saw redesigned versions of their most popular heroes in costumes like those worn in the movie's digital world. Around that same time, the Amazing Spider-Man storyline "Big Time" also saw Peter Parker don a Tron-inspired costume, this time designed to protect him from the Hobgoblin's sonic attacks.
The ideas and aesthetics of Tron have had an enormous influence on pop culture and the visual language it created for the idea of a digital world has become a cultural touchstone in its own right. With this in mind, it seems inevitable that those ideas would bleed into Marvel comics even if their stories do not cross paths. Stories like W.E.B of Spider-Man #4 are not only a reminder of why the ideas explored in that movie are so iconic, they are also an example of how the concept itself can be used to reveal something new about familiar characters.