VIRAL NEWS

Spider-Man Viral Kicks Off with Peter Parker's Backpack Clue Pickup

by Alex Billington
February 10, 2012
Source: MovieViral

Finally, the viral game we've been waiting for this year has kicked off! Earlier in the week, after the premiere of the new trailer for Marc Webb's The Amazing Spider-Man, we mentioned a new viral website for the Mark of the Spider-Man that launched. Since then, a twitter has launched @markofspiderman and has been spouting GPS locations all day. Where do they lead? Local pick-ups in six cities of a backpack, Peter Parker's backpack to be specific, containing a sketchbook and more school items. Hidden in there was a clue which pointed to a page on the viral site which then unlocked a countdown on the main website. It's time.

Looks like this Mark of the Spider-Man viral has finally kicked off and it looks like it's going to be awesome! MovieViral and @KenObryan on twitter were the first to pick up on this as it was happening throughout the day. The backpacks were picked up at locations after tweets stating "Property of Peter Parker… Lost" pointed to local comic book shops, including in Los Angeles, New York, Atlanta, Denver, Phoenix and Seattle. Inside the backpack was a full line-up of what would be inside high schooler Parker's backpack at school, including textbooks, shoes, sunglasses, keys, safety goggles, rolls of film, photographs, a sketchbook and more. SuperHeroHype has a full gallery of photos of one of the bags. Here's what they found inside:

From there, thanks to a tweet via @KenObryan, it was discovered from a clue hidden in those newspaper clippings that a new page on markofthespider-man.com could be found at /prepare. Ken says that "we found /prepare from the newspaper in the Parker bookbag. The first letter of each sentence on a page spelled out SLASHPREPARE" which lead to that page. There you can see a series of grids which if you scroll through them, and click them as ordered there on the main site, you'll unlock the official countdown clock for that page (see screenshot below). That brings us up to the current level (as of Friday) since we're now waiting for the countdown to end, which will be next Tuesday morning, February 14th, Valentine's Day.

This viral is awesome so far, with location pick-ups containing fantastic swag, and we haven't even reached the end of the first countdown yet! What the heck is coming next?! I'm excited to find out, and for now we're just going to have to wait until these clocks expire. Though there's definitely a lot of cool stuff to sort through in the backpacks, all kinds of different paraphernalia. What do all the photographs mean? What does the key unlock? Why sunglasses and shoes and goggles? Perhaps we'll find out soon, perhaps we won't.

To unlock the page to show the countdown clocks as seen above, follow the steps on /prepare like we outlined in the breakdown above. This new viral just launched this week for Marc Webb's The Amazing Spider-Man starring Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker, following a website clue hidden in the second official trailer. It sounds like the viral will be based around the "Mark of the Spider-Man" concept and website, so stick around there as your homebase for now, and follow the twitter for the latest updates, too. The Amazing Spider-Man arrives in theaters on July 3rd this summer, so we've got a good five months ahead of us of viral activities to come, can't wait. Stay tuned - we'll keep you updated on this as best we can!

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