Captain America gained his extraordinary strength and speed after ingesting a top-secret “Super Soldier Serum” created by Doctor Abraham Erskine. How exactly Doctor Erskine was able to come up with this serum remains a mystery – but according to one storyline, Erskine was able to develop his formula by studying a blood sample from none other than Spider-Man!
Wait, wasn’t Spider-Man born decades after Captain America was frozen in ice? Yes, he was – but thanks to some complicated time travel shenanigans, Steve Rogers may still owe his superhuman abilities to Peter Parker.
In Neil Gaiman’s classic Marvel 1602 miniseries, it’s revealed that the Steve Rogers from the mainstream Marvel Universe was sent back in time to the late sixteenth century. Confused and disoriented – but still physically young thanks to the Super Soldier Serum in his blood – Steve was adopted into the Native American tribes of the still-uncolonized Americas and renamed “Rojhaz.” As a side effect of his arrival, the heroes of the twentieth century began appearing 400 years earlier as Elizabethan era-versions of themselves.
These heroes include Matthew Murdoch (a blind bard with superhuman senses), Sir Nicholas Fury (an intelligence officer for the Queen), Doctor Stephen Strange (a magician and the Queen’s physician), and the Four from the Fantastick (a band of explorers who gained superhuman powers from an energy vortex). In addition, David Banner (an advisor to King James) and Peter Parquagh (Sir Nicholas’ apprentice) also appear in this world, although neither develops superpowers until the end of the story.
Captain America’s arrival also causes a reality-disrupting rift that, if not sealed, will cause the destruction of all universes. To save itself, the universe caused the heroes to emerge prematurely. The heroes locate the rift and Nicholas Fury actually drags Captain America through the rift, destroying their timeline but saving all of reality. In the aftermath, a “pocket universe” of the 1602 timeline is created and the characters continue living their lives – including Peter Parquagh who finally gets bitten by a spider and acquires spider-powers.
Although Captain America/Rojhaz would not appear in the 1602 universe again, Peter Parquagh’s story continued in the miniseries 1602: New World and Spider-Man: 1602, which saw him adopt the masked identity of the “Spider” and fall in love with Virginia Dare, the first English child to be born in the Americas. The historical version of Virginia disappeared with the rest of her Roanoke Colony, but in Marvel 1602, her people were saved thanks to Captain America's interference. Together, Peter and Virginia (who had shapeshifting powers of her own thanks to the rift) fought against injustice in the New World and helped maintain an uneasy peace between the settlers and the Native Americans.
When Virginia is killed by Peter’s enemy Norman Osborne, however, Peter decides to leave the New World and sail back to Europe. There, he meets and falls in love with “Marion Jane Watsonne,” a young actress who travels with her performing family. Using his powers and wit, Peter performs on stage as a more theatrical “Spider.” However, Peter’s arrival earns him the attention of “Baron Octavius” who recruits the natural philosopher “Henri Le Pym” to capture Peter and drain his blood with leeches.
Pym’s experiments with Peter’s blood, 1602’s “Witchbreed” mutants, and dinosaur eggs from the New World allow him to mutate ordinary humans and grant them superhuman abilities – including Norman Osborne who transforms into a bat-like version of the Green Goblin. Osborne isn’t the only villain the Spider needs to fight, however, as Europe is also plagued by the assassin called “The Bull’s Eye” and Connors, a natural philosopher who transformed into a giant lizard.
Although Octavius intended to use Peter’s blood to cure himself of a disease that caused him to mutate into a giant octopus, he later goes crazy and embraces his monstrous form. Meanwhile, Henri ingests some of Peter’s doctored blood and grows into a massive giant who squashes Octavius with his foot. In the aftermath, Peter and Marion Jane swing off together to live happily ever after… but the story isn’t done yet.
Turns out that although much of Peter’s blood was destroyed in the fight, some of the samples survived for centuries in a Venice dungeon that was once Pym’s laboratory. Recovered by American scientists, the blood, although greatly diluted over the centuries, was still able to provide the scientists with the key to synthesize the serum that turned frail Steve Rogers into the mighty Captain America. As Cap would later travel back in time to start the 1602 universe that allowed Peter to acquire his own powers, Captain America and Spider-Man are actually more connected than it originally seemed.
Related: Why Spider-Man Is Technically Marvel’s Oldest Superhero
But are they connected that way in the mainstream Marvel Universe? Here’s where it gets tricky. Gaiman originally claimed his 1602 story was set in the mainstream Marvel Universe and that the changes to the timeline were a result of Steve Rogers being sent back to the late sixteenth century. When Steve returned to his own time, those changes were undone but a copy of the universe itself was shunted into an alternate world designated Earth-311.
So, from this perspective, it would seem that the closed time loop connecting Steve Rogers and Peter Parquagh only exists in the alternate Earth-311, not the mainstream Marvel Universe. Fans even learned that Peter died tragically when a multiverse-hopping Inheritor killed him during the original Spider-Verse event, indicating that Peter’s later adventures took place in a parallel universe.
Nevertheless, it is remarkable that Peter’s enhanced DNA provided the key to synthesizing the Super Soldier serum in at least one alternate reality. Considering how many of Spider-Man’s abilities – such as his strength, speed, agility, reflexes, and healing factor – are shared by Captain America, albeit to a lesser extent, it’s not impossible to theorize that a diluted sample of Spider-Man’s blood could be used to create a new Super Soldier Serum for the next generation of warriors.
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