Did You Know? The Most Astonishing Facts About Spider-Man

Behind the red and blue mask there is far more than a teenager bitten by a spider. Since 1962, Spider-Man has become one of the most popular superheroes on the planet. But behind the acrobatics lie accidents, lucky breaks and secrets that even seasoned fans sometimes miss. Brace yourself: here is a deep dive into the most astonishing, surprising and 100% true facts about the web-slinger. Some of them will make you see Spider-Man in a completely different light.

Spider-Man was born in a magazine that was already doomed

In August 1962, Spider-Man made his very first appearance in the pages of Amazing Fantasy #15. What people often forget is that this magazine was already destined to die: sales were collapsing and Marvel had decided to make it the final issue. It was precisely because the title was on its last legs that writer Stan Lee could afford to test something as risky as a teenage spider hero, with very little to lose. Backed by artist Steve Ditko, the web-slinger was a hit… and the issue meant to be a funeral became one of the publisher's best sellers. We tell the whole story in our article on the legendary comic that gave birth to Spider-Man.

His own publisher was convinced it would never work

According to Stan Lee's recollections, his publisher Martin Goodman hated the idea from the start, and he had plenty of arguments. First, a lot of people are frightened of spiders: building a hero around that animal risked scaring readers away. Next, at the time a teenager could only ever be a sidekick, tagging along behind an adult, never the lead. Finally, a character so weighed down by personal problems seemed anything but commercial. Stan Lee was convinced of the opposite: he wanted a hero young readers could identify with, with real worries about money, love and loneliness. History proved him spectacularly right.

The hero's most famous line was never spoken by Uncle Ben

'With great power comes great responsibility': this is THE Spider-Man maxim, the one that sums up his whole moral code. But brace yourself — in Amazing Fantasy #15, Uncle Ben never says it. Originally the line appears as a simple narration caption, tucked into the very last panel of the story, without being attributed to any particular character. It was only much later that the writers retroactively put it in Uncle Ben's mouth, until it became his final moral testament. Today it is impossible to imagine the web-slinger without it. We even devoted a whole breakdown to it: the line that defines Spider-Man.

The full-face mask was a small revolution

The costume designed by Steve Ditko hides a real stroke of genius: a mask that covers the entire face, eyes included. At a time when heroes proudly showed off their square jaws, that choice was bold. Above all, it allowed something magical: any reader, whatever their skin colour or background, could imagine themselves under that mask. Add the fine webbing drawn across the whole suit and the famous underarm webs, and you get one of the most recognisable outfits in all of pop culture. True fans hunt down a host of small details in it: we gathered a few of them in our article on the hidden costume details only true fans have spotted.

His web-shooters prove Peter is a genius… something the films forgot

Here is a detail that has divided fans for decades. In the comics, Peter Parker does not shoot web straight from his wrists: he personally invents mechanical web-shooters and an adhesive fluid of his own making. This point is essential, because it reminds us that Peter's real superpower, before his strength and his agility, is his extraordinary scientific intelligence. In Sam Raimi's trilogy (2002), the choice was made to render the webs 'organic', shooting straight out of his body, much to the purists' dismay. The later films, such as The Amazing Spider-Man (2012), went back to the original mechanical web-shooters. Fancy a tour of his arsenal? We have detailed what Spider-Man's powers really are.

His webbing dissolves on its own after an hour

A small stroke of genius from Stan Lee and Steve Ditko: Spider-Man's fluid dissolves by itself roughly an hour after being fired. Why such a detail? Quite simply to stop New York from being carpeted in sticky webbing after every fight. That concern for realism, rather rare for the period, does a great deal to make the character believable: even his gadgets obey a kind of logic. It is a perfect example of the rigour hiding behind the web-slinger's apparent lightness.

The black suit was dreamed up by an ordinary fan… paid 220 dollars

Brace yourself, this one is delicious: Spider-Man's legendary black suit did not come from the imagination of a star artist, but from that of an ordinary reader. In the early 1980s, a young fan named Randy Schueller sent his black costume concept to Marvel, which bought the idea from him for the modest sum of 220 dollars. Introduced during the Secret Wars saga (1984), the suit eventually turned out to be a living alien symbiote. When Peter managed to reject it, the creature took its revenge by bonding with another man to give birth to… Venom, one of his worst enemies. Not bad for a 220-dollar idea. Black is obviously among the web-slinger's most legendary outfits.

Gwen Stacy's death tipped a whole era of comics

In June 1973, one issue landed like a bomb: the Green Goblin threw Gwen Stacy, the love of Peter's life, from the top of a bridge. Spider-Man tried to catch her at the last second with his web… but a small 'SNAP!' drawn near her neck suggests that the shock of the sudden stop was what proved fatal. For the first time, the hero failed to save the person he loved, and nothing could ever put it right. Comics historians often see this episode as the end of the Silver Age and the start of a far darker, more adult era. Rarely has a single panel left such a mark on the medium.

In Japan, Spider-Man piloted a giant robot

In 1978, the Japanese studio Toei launched its own live-action series devoted to Spider-Man, and it has almost nothing to do with the original. Here the hero is called Takuya Yamashiro and, as well as climbing walls, he pilots a gigantic battle robot named Leopardon to bring down giant monsters. That improbable mix of superhero and mecha had a colossal influence: it directly inspired the Super Sentai genre, in other words the ancestor of the famous Power Rangers. Long overlooked in the West, this completely bonkers version has ended up being officially folded into the spider multiverse.

The 'Spider-Man pointing at Spider-Man' meme dates back to 1967

You have definitely come across the image: two identical Spider-Men pointing at each other, now one of the most used memes on the internet for illustrating two interchangeable things. Its origin? An episode of the 1967 animated series called 'Double Identity', in which Spidey comes face to face with an impostor dressed as him. More than half a century later, that kitsch scene is enjoying a second life worldwide on social media. The same series also gave us the cult theme tune 'Spider-Man, Spider-Man, does whatever a spider can', which nobody has ever forgotten.

Miles Morales changed everything in 2011

In 2011, Marvel took an enormous risk: what if, in a parallel universe, Peter Parker died and left the mask to someone else? That is how Miles Morales was born, an Afro-Latino teenager from Brooklyn, written by Brian Michael Bendis and drawn by Sara Pichelli. Greeted with suspicion at first by part of the fanbase, within a few years Miles became one of the best-loved characters in the whole franchise, a video game star and the hero of the Oscar-winning animated film Into the Spider-Verse. He embodies the character's founding idea perfectly: anyone can be behind the mask. We tell you everything about who Miles Morales is, the new Spider-Man fans adore.

There is an almost infinite number of Spider-Men

Spider-Ham, Spider-Man 2099, Spider-Gwen, 1930s Spider-Man Noir… did you know there are dozens of different versions of Spider-Man scattered across the multiverse? This dizzying concept exploded with the comics event 'Spider-Verse' (2014), which brought all these web-slingers from parallel dimensions together for the first time. Taken to the big screen in 2018, Into the Spider-Verse went on to win the Oscar for Best Animated Feature, a first for Sony. The idea is as simple as it is brilliant: every world has ITS spider. Dive into the Spider-Verse, the event arc that redefined the web-slinger's universe.

The 'spider-sense', a sixth sense that warns him before danger strikes

Among his whole arsenal there is one power Spider-Man owes neither to his strength nor to his agility: the famous spider-sense. It is a kind of sixth sense that alerts him to imminent danger, often described as a tingling at the back of his skull, sometimes even before the threat has really appeared. This internal radar is what lets him dodge bullets, sense an ambush behind him or spot a trap. Without it, even with all his agility, the web-slinger would be far more vulnerable than you might think. We devoted a full breakdown to this spider-sense, Spider-Man's invisible weapon.

Spider-Man smashed box office records

The web-slinger did not only conquer the page, he also sent the cinema tills into overdrive. In 2002, Sam Raimi's first film became the very first feature in history to pass 100 million dollars in takings over a single weekend in the United States. Almost twenty years later, Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) crossed the 1.9 billion dollars mark worldwide, settling in among the biggest successes of all time, an achievement all the more astonishing for a film released in the middle of a pandemic. The secret of that triumph? The unprecedented on-screen reunion of the three actors who have played Spider-Man in the cinema: Tobey Maguire, Andrew Garfield and Tom Holland.

Stan Lee appears in almost every Marvel film

It is impossible to talk about Spider-Man without mentioning his spiritual father, Stan Lee. The web-slinger's co-creator made a habit of appearing for a brief wink in almost every Marvel film: a passer-by, a delivery man, a wedding guest, a bus driver… These cameos became a real treasure hunt for fans, who look out for them with every new release. In the films devoted to the spider, he was seen several times slipping in an amusing line before disappearing. His appearance in Into the Spider-Verse, at the end of 2018, took on a very particular flavour: it is among his very last, as the author passed away in November of that same year.

Peter Parker owes his name to Stan Lee's poor memory

Peter Parker, Reed Richards, Bruce Banner, Matt Murdock… have you spotted what they have in common? Stan Lee loved names whose first name and surname begin with the same letter. The reason is surprisingly down to earth: the writer admitted to having a faulty memory, and those repeated sounds helped him remember his many characters far more easily. So the sweet name Peter Parker is not the fruit of mystical inspiration, but of a small memory trick. A piece of behind-the-scenes craft as ordinary as it is endearing, and one that says a lot about how comics were made at the time.

A 75-million-dollar musical… and stunts that went wrong

Few people know it, but Spider-Man got his own Broadway musical: 'Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark'. With songs written by Bono and The Edge of U2, and a budget of around 75 million dollars, it remains one of the most expensive productions in Broadway history. But the show is mostly remembered for its troubles: during performances, several stunt performers suspended on wires were injured, causing a genuine media scandal. Flying like Spider-Man, even on a theatre stage, clearly cannot be improvised.

A copy of his first appearance sold for 3.6 million dollars

What can Spider-Man's very first appearance be worth? In 2021, a near-perfect copy of Amazing Fantasy #15 went under the hammer for the staggering sum of 3.6 million dollars, a record for a comic book at the time. A good reminder that these old magazines, originally sold for a few cents, have become genuine heritage treasures. Not everyone can treat themselves to such a piece, of course, but you can celebrate the web-slinger in other ways, for example with our Spider-Man figures standing proudly on a shelf.

'Pizza time': the meme born from a video game

If you spend any time on the internet, you have surely come across the phrase 'pizza time'. It comes from the pizza delivery missions in the video game Spider-Man 2, released in 2004 and adapted from Sam Raimi's film. Timed and set to a stressful little tune that became a cult classic, these missions had you crossing the city in record time to deliver pizzas while they were still hot. Hated by some players, adored by others, over the years they have become a genuinely nostalgic meme. Which just goes to show that even as a pizza delivery boy, Peter Parker leaves an impression.

That should be enough to shine at the next gathering of fans, or to drop an unbeatable piece of trivia into a conversation. Behind every web he fires, Spider-Man carries sixty years of stories, happy accidents and strokes of genius. So which of these facts surprised you most?

Frequently asked questions about Spider-Man

Who created Spider-Man, and in what year?

Spider-Man was created by writer Stan Lee and artist Steve Ditko. The character first appeared in the comic Amazing Fantasy #15, published in 1962 in the United States. It follows Peter Parker, a shy, brilliant secondary school pupil who gains his powers after being bitten by a radioactive spider.

Why does Spider-Man sometimes wear a black suit?

The black suit appeared in the 1980s, during the Secret Wars saga. It turns out to be a living alien symbiote that gradually tries to take control of Peter. Rejected by the hero, this symbiote then gave birth to Venom, one of his most iconic enemies.

Who is Miles Morales?

Miles Morales is a second Spider-Man, created in 2011. An Afro-Latino teenager living in Brooklyn, he takes up the mantle in a parallel universe after his Peter Parker dies. He is notably the hero of the animated films Into the Spider-Verse and Across the Spider-Verse, which made him known to the wider public.

Who really said 'With great power comes great responsibility'?

Contrary to a very widespread belief, this line is not spoken by Uncle Ben in the very first story: it appears there as a simple narration caption, in 1962. It was only afterwards that it was attributed to Uncle Ben, until it became his moral testament. Today it is one of the iconic lines that have marked the history of cinema and comics.

Why are there so many different Spider-Men?

Because the Marvel universe rests on the concept of the multiverse: a multitude of parallel worlds, each with its own version of Spider-Man. Peter Parker, Miles Morales, Spider-Gwen and Spider-Man 2099 coexist across the dimensions. That is precisely the whole subject of the Spider-Verse event, which brought them together in one place for the first time.