Spider-Man With a Wrench

Submission 28,711

Part of a series on Toei Spider-Man / Spy Darma. [View Related Entries]

About

Spider-Man With a Wrench, also known as Spider-Man Hammering, refers to a memorable scene from 1970s Japanese TV series Spider-Man in which Spider-Man hammers the ground with a wrench. Online, a still image and a GIF based on the scene have been used as reactions and exploitables.

Origin

Between May 17th, 1978 and March 14th, 1979, an unknown episode of Japanese tokusatsu TV series Spider-Man, loosely based on the comics of the same name, featured a scene in which Spider-Man crawls around and hammers the ground with a wrench (GIF version of the scene shown below).^[1]

Spread

Starting in April 2007 the scene, along with other memorable scenes from the series, gained popularity in MAD videos on the Japanese video-sharing site Nico Nico Douga. ^[2]

On July 2nd, 2014, Tumblr user tvcm posted a GIF based on the scene to the website, with the post gaining over 31,600 notes in five years.^[3] On August 3rd, 2015, Tumblr user ostentatious-gentleman posted the GIF to the website with a caption "Spiderman Vs. Antman",^[4] with user perlockholmes commenting "The final battle for the right to be in the next Avengers movie." (exchange shown below).^[5] The post gained over 131,200 notes in three years.

Between 2015 and 2019, the "Spiderman vs. Antman" joke has been reposted multiple times on Reddit and other sites, with notable posts appearing in /r/funny,^[6] /r/dankmemes^[7] and /r/marvelmemes.^[8] On May 9th, 2016, an anonymous 4chan user posted the edited GIF as a reference to Dark Souls 3. ^[9]

On May 19th, 2019, Reddit user Divaura used a still image from the scene in a post to /r/dankmemes subreddit which gained over 49,100 upvotes in three days (shown below).^[10]

In the following days, the image gained significant popularity on Reddit, primarily in /r/dankmemes community.