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Saturday, 6 October 2012

Spider-Man was studying Computer Science in 1981!

Posted on 02:26 by Unknown
Category: Techtoday

In a non-canon free Spider-Man issue included with a bubble gum brand, Peter is seen visiting a company called WCC (a fictional company called World Computer Communications) to do research for an "advanced computer science" exam. It's easy to conjecture that WCC is loosely based on Tim Berners-Lee's World Wide Web Consortium which is a great place to visit if you were a student of computer science or taking a course on the subject (Peter was taking up Physics after high school but those computer courses probably helped him take on enemies like Doctor Octopus and Doctor Doom).



However, this Bubble Funnies issue was published in 1981 which meant that Peter was WAY, WAY ahead of his time. To put this into perspective, the W3C wasn't formally founded until 1994 so Peter was probably studying some version of ARPANET. MS-DOS was a good two years away and Linux wouldn't be around until almost a decade later. If Peter was dabbling in programming, Spidey was probably working with IBM computers and learning an early form of networking, BASIC, COBOL, and PASCAL (and hopefully Unix). This scarily prescient 7-page insert gives credence to Peter as a futurist dilettante and could've easily matched Tony Stark if he had continued with engineering and computer science (rather than shelving his studies to save the world and visit thousands of planets and dimensions).

The Bubble Funnies story ends with Peter sleepily taking an exam after spending hours fixing the "W.C.C. Computer," which Doctor Octopus had almost destroyed. Now that's computer engineering for you!



Spidey has used his tech and science skills to beat hundreds of Marvel opponents, but surprisingly admits he's somewhat behind as evidenced by this panel from Web of Spider-Man #80 (1991) where he struggles to figure out Silvermane's computer system:


Spidey struggles with a computer as Black Cat looks on in Web of Spider-Man #80. Art by Alex Saviuk.
 
So realistically, how DOES Peter keep up with all the changes in computer science and technology over the years? Well, he was hobnobbing and exchanging tech notes with a guy called Reed Richards, who developed nano-computing as early as the 70s!


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