Spider-Man
Spider-Man is a superhero in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. Created by writer-editor Stan Lee and artist Steve Ditko, he first appeared in the anthology comic book Amazing Fantasy #15 in the Silver Age of Comic Books. Considered one of the most popular and commercially successful superheroes, he has been featured in comic books, television shows, films, video games, novels, and plays.
Spider-Man is the secret identity of Peter Benjamin Parker, who was raised by his Aunt May and Uncle Ben in Queens, New York City, after the death of his parents. Lee, Ditko, and later writers had the character deal with the struggles of adolescence and young adulthood. Readers identified with his self-doubt and loneliness. Unlike previous teen heroes, Spider-Man was not a sidekick nor did he have a mentor. He would be given many supporting characters, such as his Daily Bugle boss J. Jonah Jameson; friends like Harry Osborn and Flash Thompson; romantic interests like Gwen Stacy, Mary Jane Watson, and the Black Cat; and enemies such as Doctor Octopus, the Green Goblin, and Venom. In his origin story, Peter gets his superhuman spider-powers and abilities after he was bitten by a radioactive spider. These powers include superhuman strength, speed, agility, reflexes and durability; clinging to surfaces and ceilings; and detecting danger with his precognitive "spider-sense". He sews a spider-web patterned spandex costume that fully covers his body and builds wrist-mounted "web-shooter" devices that shoot artificial spider-webs of his own design, which he uses for both fighting and "web swinging" across the city. Peter initially used his powers for personal gain, but after his Uncle Ben was killed by a burglar that he could have stopped but did not, he learned that "with great power comes great responsibility", and began to use his powers to fight crime as Spider-Man.
Marvel has featured Spider-Man in several comic book series, the first and longest-lasting of which is The Amazing Spider-Man. Since his introduction, the main-continuity version of Peter has gone from a high school student to attending college to currently being somewhere in his late 20s. Peter has been a member of numerous superhero teams, most notably the Avengers and Fantastic Four. Doctor Octopus also took on the identity for a story arc spanning 2012–2014 following the "Dying Wish" storyline, where Peter appears to die after Doctor Octopus orchestrates a body swap with him and becomes the Superior Spider-Man. Marvel has also published comic books featuring alternate versions of Spider-Man, including Spider-Man 2099, which features the adventures of Miguel O'Hara, the Spider-Man of the future; Ultimate Spider-Man, which features the adventures of a teenage Peter Parker in the alternate universe; and Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man, which depicts a teenager named Miles Morales who takes up the mantle of Spider-Man after Ultimate Peter Parker's apparent death. Miles later became a superhero in his own right and was brought into mainstream continuity during the Secret Wars event, where he sometimes works alongside the mainline version of Peter.
Spider-Man has appeared in countless forms of media, including several animated TV series, a live-action television series, syndicated newspaper comic strips, and multiple series of films. In live-action films, Spider-Man has been portrayed by Tobey Maguire in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy, Andrew Garfield in The Amazing Spider-Man duology directed by Marc Webb, and Tom Holland in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The Peter Parker version of Spider-Man was also voiced by Jake Johnson and Chris Pine in the animated film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, with the former reprising his role in the sequel, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.
Publication history
Creation and development
In 1962, with the success of the Fantastic Four, Marvel Comics editor and head writer Stan Lee was looking for a new superhero idea. He said the teenage demand for comic books and a character with whom they could identify led to the creation of Spider-Man. As with Fantastic Four, Lee saw Spider-Man as an opportunity to "get out of his system" what he felt was missing in comic books.There are many conflicting stories about the inspiration and precise authorship of the various aspects of Spider-Man's appearance and character. In his autobiography, Lee cites the non-superhuman pulp magazine crime fighter the Spider as a great influence. Besides the name, the Spider was wanted by both the law and the criminal underworld and had through years of ceaseless struggle developed a "sixth sense", which warns him of danger, the inspiration for Spider-Man's "spider-sense". In a multitude of print and video interviews, Lee also says he was inspired by seeing a spider climb up a wall—adding in his autobiography that he has told that story so often he has become unsure of whether or not this is true.
Although at the time teenage superheroes were usually given names ending with "boy", Lee says he chose "Spider-Man" because he wanted the character to age as the series progressed, and felt the name "Spider-Boy" would have made the character sound inferior to other superheroes. Comics scholar Ben Saunders points out that this emphasis on adolescence was an important innovation for superhero comics.
Lee required Marvel publisher Martin Goodman's approval for the character. In a 1986 interview, Lee gives his arguments against Goodman's objections. Goodman eventually agreed to a Spider-Man tryout in what Lee, in numerous interviews, recalled as what would be the final issue of the science-fiction and supernatural anthology series Amazing Adult Fantasy, which was renamed Amazing Fantasy for issue #15. In particular, Lee states that the decision that Amazing Fantasy would be canceled after issue #15 was the only reason Goodman allowed him to present Spider-Man. While this was the final issue, its editorial page anticipated the continuing appearances of Spider-Man in future issues.
Lee received Goodman's approval for the name Spider-Man and the "ordinary teen" concept and approached artist Jack Kirby. As comics historian Greg Theakston recounts, Kirby told Lee about an unpublished character on which he had collaborated with Joe Simon in the 1950s, in which an orphaned boy living with an old couple finds a magic ring that granted him superhuman powers. Lee and Kirby "immediately sat down for a story conference", Theakston writes, and Lee afterward directed Kirby to flesh out the character and draw some pages. Steve Ditko would be the inker. When Kirby showed Lee the first six pages, Lee recalled, "I hated the way he was doing it! Not that he did it badly—it just wasn't the character I wanted; it was too heroic". Lee turned to Ditko, who developed an art style Lee found satisfactory. Ditko recalled:
Although the interior artwork was by Ditko alone, Lee rejected Ditko's cover art and commissioned Kirby to pencil a cover that Ditko inked. As Lee explained in 2010, "I think I had Jack sketch out a cover for it because I always had a lot of confidence in Jack's covers."File:Amazing Fantasy 15.jpg|thumb|left|Amazing Fantasy #15 first introduced the character. It was a gateway to commercial success for the superhero and inspired the launch of The Amazing Spider-Man comic book. – Cover art by penciller Jack Kirby and inker Steve Ditko|alt=Cover art of Spider-Man, with big yellow letters "Amazing Fantasy".|343x343px
Kirby disputed Lee's version of the story and claimed Lee had minimal involvement in the character's creation. According to Kirby, the idea for Spider-Man had originated with Kirby and Joe Simon, who in the 1950s had developed a character called the Silver Spider for the Crestwood Publications comic Black Magic, but the character was left unused. Simon, in his 1990 autobiography, disputed Kirby's account, asserting that Black Magic was not a factor and that Simon devised the name "Spider-Man", while Kirby outlined the character's story and powers. Simon later elaborated that his and Kirby's character conception became the basis for Simon's Archie Comics superhero, the Fly. Artist Steve Ditko stated that Lee liked the name Hawkman from DC Comics, and that "Spider-Man" was an outgrowth of that interest.
Simon concurred that Kirby had shown the original Spider-Man version to Lee, who liked the idea and assigned Kirby to draw sample pages of the new character, but disliked the results—in Simon's description, "Captain America with cobwebs". Writer Mark Evanier notes that Lee's reasoning that Kirby's character was too heroic seems unlikely—Kirby still drew the covers for Amazing Fantasy #15 and the first issue of The Amazing Spider-Man. Evanier also disputes Kirby's given reason that he was "too busy" to draw Spider-Man in addition to his other duties, since Kirby was, said Evanier, "always busy". Neither Lee's nor Kirby's explanation explains why key story elements like the magic ring were dropped; Evanier states that the most plausible explanation for the sudden change was that Goodman, or one of his assistants, decided that Spider-Man, as drawn and envisioned by Kirby, was too similar to the Fly.
Author and Ditko scholar Blake Bell writes that it was Ditko who noted the similarities to the Fly. Ditko recalled that "Stan called Jack about the Fly", adding that "ays later, Stan told me I would be penciling the story panel breakdowns from Stan's synopsis." It was at this point that the entire concept of the strip went through a major overhaul. "Out went the magic ring, adult Spider-Man and whatever legend ideas that Spider-Man story would have contained." Lee gave Ditko the premise of a teenager bitten by a spider and developing powers, where Ditko would expand upon to the point he became what Bell describes as "the first work for hire artist of his generation to create and control the narrative arc of his series". On the issue of the initial creation, Ditko stated, "I still don't know whose idea was Spider-Man". Ditko did, however, view the published version of Spider-Man as a separate creation to the one he saw in the five pencilled pages that Kirby had completed. To support this, Ditko used the analogy of the Kirby/Marvel Thor, which was based on a name or idea of a character in Norse mythology: "If Marvel's Thor is a valid created work by Jack, his creation, then why isn't Spider-Man by Stan and me valid created work, our creation?"
At the time of Spider-Man's creation, Ditko shared a Manhattan studio with noted fetish artist Eric Stanton, an art-school classmate who, in a 1988 interview with Theakston, recalled that although his contribution to Spider-Man was "almost nil", he and Ditko had "worked on storyboards together and I added a few ideas. But the whole thing was created by Steve on his own ... I think I added the business about the webs coming out of his hands."
Kirby noted in a 1971 interview that it was Ditko who "got Spider-Man to roll, and the thing caught on because of what he did". Lee, while claiming credit for the initial idea, had acknowledged Ditko's role, stating, "If Steve wants to be called co-creator, I think he deserves ". He has further commented that Ditko's costume design was key to the character's success; since the costume completely covers Spider-Man's body, people of all races could visualize themselves inside the costume and thus easily identify with the character.
As depicted in Amazing Fantasy #15, Peter Parker is bitten by a radioactive spider at a science exhibit and "acquires the agility and proportionate strength of an arachnid". When "e blithely ignores the chance to stop a fleeing thief, his indifference ironically catches up with him when the same criminal later robs and kills his Uncle Ben." Spider-Man tracks and subdues the killer and learns, in the story's next-to-last caption, "With great power there must also come—great responsibility!" Ben Saunders points out that this conclusion makes problematic the usual conceptions of heroism in the genre; Ben's death does not fully validate Peter Parker's new mission, and the protagonist is continually portrayed as a conflicted, imperfect person, in uncertain circumstances.