The Amazing Spider-Man has officially reached 1,000 numbered issues, and to celebrate, Marvel’s best artists are whipping up awe-inspiring variant covers for the seminal title. And thanks to one of them, New York’s resident Web-Swinger has, in a roundabout way, stepped into the wild world of One Piece.
Okay, so it’s not an official crossover. Like, at all. But it’s still an amazing example of one media juggernaut inspiring another. And it’s far from the first time Marvel or American comics have paid homage to anime.
The “crossover” cover, drawn by veteran Marvel artist, depicts an unmasked Spider-Man striking a fist-to-ground stance as billowing steam rolls off his body. To the uninitiated, this might look like a fairly generic superhero pose. But to One Piece fans (and anyone even a little familiar with anime and manga), the pose is an obvious reference.
Like all the best anime protagonists, One Piece‘s Monkey D. Luffy has a few transformations, or “Gears,” up his non-existent sleeves, and each one amps up his innate rubber-based powers a few notches. While Luffy has reached Gear 5 as of the most recent manga chapters, his Gear 2 form might be the fan favorite, largely thanks to the pose he strikes when he first unlocks it.
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The moment when Luffy first unleashes Gear 2 is one of the most memorable in all of One Piece. Facing off against a world-class assassin to rescue a captured friend from the totalitarian government that rules his world, Luffy defies both the law and the limits of his own body, reaching a new tier of power while striking an objectively cool pose.
This pose, widely known as the “Gear 2” pose, is a stance nearly every manga and anime can spot from miles away, and it’s made its way into other forms of media, including DC’s Absolute Batman.
Honestly, the Gear 2 pose is a perfect fit for a hero like Spider-Man. If there’s one thing everyone knows about Peter Parker, it’s that the guy is just too damn cool. No matter how hard the world (aka Marvel’s ever-shifting team of writers) knocks him down, Spider-Man always gets back up, usually with a cold quip and an even colder counter-blow.
While we’ll probably never see an official Spider-Man x One Piece crossover, this variant cover is a fun look at what can happen when one form of media is allowed to reference another without the Sword of Damocles of copyright hanging over their head.
