AMAZING SPIDER-MAN "Round Robin"- The Spider Tracer Problem

[starwolf_oakley]

Amazing Spider-Man #353-358 was a bi-weekly story called "Round Robin." Spider-Man finds himself stuck between the Secret Empire, their agent Midngiht, and Moon Knight. But a few panels shows the Spider-Tracer provlem. Written by Al Milgrom. Art by Mark Bagley





"Round Robin" was about Moon Knight's sidekick, Jeff Wilde, aka Midnight. Midnight (thought dead) has returned as part of the Secret Empire and eager to murder his old mentor.



None of the Spider-Man movies have used the spider-tracers. And I doubt they will. No matter how smart Peter Parker is, developing small electronic devices he can TRACK WITH HIS BRAIN FOR MILES is a bit much. I'm not even sure any of the animated series used the spider-tracers.

Comments

[lonewolf23k]

The 1960s series used them, and they were always found as easily as here. Maybe he should make them smaller and less identifiable.

[quatoria]

If you want to secretly track somebody, it's probably a good idea not to plaster your logo on the devices, yes.

[daningram.insanejournal.com]

To be fair, it's highly doubtful anyone's going to keep a tracker on them regardless of design, so why not go with branding? ;)

[balbanes]

I dunno, how does Peter's Spider-Sense work anyway? Suppose the tracer had no electronics at all-- just a small amount of poison, or explosive, or anything else that would trigger his sense. Wouldn't he be able to track the tracer just by the way that dangerous item "pings" his spider-sense?

Now add electronics to "boost" whatever metaphysical quantity the item has that triggers Peter's spider-sense. Like how a microphone boosts sound, or a projector boosts images. The power required to get a reasonable "boost" would probably require a size-prohibitive battery, but we're in a universe where Iron Man can fly around in a human-sized suit. The power-to-volume ratio is apparently a lot larger in Marvel-land.

So agree this is unrealistic in real life, but it doesn't seem too far afield for Comic Logic.

[strangerdan]

Sometime within the first few of years of the original Spider-Man run Doctor Doom guest starred and contacted Spider-Man with a special radio tuned to the frequency of his spider sense. I figured after that he could have just played around with a radio transmitter until he "heard" it through his spider-sense. I don't know when exactly they were introduced but I feel like they've fluctuated in size depending on the artist between big enough to fit a plausible battery to small enough to be plausibly hidden on someone without them noticing. I think in the 90s cartoon he sometimes used a GPS style device to track down his tracers.

[starwolf_oakley]

The tracers originally worked through a mini GPS style device Peter built. Because science. Then he could track the tracers with his spider sense because comic book science.

[blueprintstyles]

I think the Spectacular Spiderman used them too

[lbd_nytetrayn]

Pretty sure the Fox Kids series used them. I think they even used his little Spider Signal thing from his belt, too.

[commodus]

I'm laughing at that exasperated sigh - trying to interrupt a villainous monologue is clearly harder than it looks!