It's official: Magic: The Gathering has made its way to our plane. New York, to be precise.

Magic: the Gathering/Marvel's Spider-Man includes a standard-legal set to release on September 26, 2025. The Set Code for the Standard-legal set is SPM and includes a set symbol of Spidey's face. Two additional sets are included, both of which are Eternal-legal (and therefore okay in Vintage, Legacy, and Commander); SPE and MAR, respectively, with a classic spider symbol for the former and the "Marvel" symbol for the latter.

The set will be available in Play Boosters, Collector Boosters, a Bundle, and a Scene Box. There will not be any Commander decks attached to this set.

A Play Booster is meant for drafting and contains one guaranteed Rare or Mythic, one wildcard (which can be anything), a few uncommons and commons, plus one foil of any rarity - so a Play Booster could contain three rares! Collector Boosters are much more expensive but most of the cards are foil, including a guaranteed foil Rare. There is an additional foil Rare or Mythic called "Booster Fun," plus two more non-foil Rare or Mythic "Booster Fun" cards.

The Bundle is what some of us used to call a Fat Pack - nine Play Boosters, a Land pack, an alternate-art promo, plus a die and a box. The Scene Box includes six cards we'll talk about in a minute, plus three Play Boosters, six art cards you can piece together to tell a story, plus an easel to display them.

The set is a ways off, but we've got six cards to look at: let's get to it!

Let's not bury the lead. This Eternal-legal version of Spider-Man is clearly pointed at Commander, providing built-in interaction and card draw. Building around Stun counters (Fear of Immobility, Impede Momentum), Proliferate (Contagion Clasp, Tezzeret's Gambit), and tapping things down (and maybe keeping them tapped like Bitter Chill or Frost Lynx) is a definite possibility. There's also at least one Bracket 1 deck in a "stopping crime" theme where you run Counterspells and other ways to get people to not mess with each other!

I was never a comic reader, but even I fell in love with Venom when I heard about him. The concept is so wild and so goofy, plus he looks super cool as this twisted version of Spider-Man. Here we have another clear Commander card, aimed at traditional Golgari () tactics of filling the Graveyard and using it to its advantage. In this case, we can discard or destroy Creatures, then Exile them to make Venom even stronger, leaning into a Voltron strategy. Alternately, there could be a Symbiote strategy - assuming we get some Symbiotes between now and then. Right now, we'd be limited to Moonglove Changeling, Realmwalker, and the other Shapeshifters with the "Changeling" keyword.

This Rakdos () version of Green Goblin (accurately placed in the color pie, I feel, despite the obvious desire to make him Green) feels like the leader of a Goblin Kindred deck - it's the right colors, and he benefits Goblins other than himself if we want. We're also in the right colors to fill our 'yard with plenty of goodies (Faithless Looting, Epiphany Storm) and get some payoffs (Glint-Horn Buccaneer, Feast of Sanity). I don't see this as wildly powerful, but it could be a great deal of fun.

Pumpkin Bombs has just enough of an effect at just a low-enough cost that this might squeeze its way into a Legacy decklist. Drawing three cards is always powerful, and doing it for two mana is very strong. Discarding two cards is also often something decks want to do in those Eternal formats, so the right list could probably figure out a way to generate a win from such a massive card swing. (I'll leave figuring out how to the Legacy experts out there!) In Commander this could see some use in a deck like Zedruu the Greathearted or in a Group Hug/Thug strategy, and it pairs very nicely with Green Goblin, of course.

Dimir () Artifacts? Now we're talking. A seven-mana anything is unlikely to make a splash in Vintage, but in Commander we don't mind at all - we can just use Mana Rocks to power out the good Doctor early. Then we can turn those rocks (and any other artifacts we decide to play, like Mask of Riddles or Time Sieve) into 8/8s. Combine the board-control power of these colors and there is a powerhouse deck in this Creature.

The Sorcery version of Doc Ock's superpower, this ability is surprisingly strong. It's probably too expensive for Legacy (three mana is a lot in that format) but a Commander deck interested in milling other players would certainly want this effect. Grabbing an Artifact is potentially game-breaking, and is at least nasty if you grab someone's Sol Ring or whatever. In a Doc Ock deck, there's something perfect about stealing someone's stuff then attacking them with it!

That's all the cards we've seen for now, but it looks like they're bringing us some good times. The very name "Sensational Spider-Man" suggests to me they'll do several different versions like with Lord of the Rings; Spidey's had so many different names and titles over the years, there are lots of options, and certainly there are different color combinations which can define him.

Thanks for reading.