Spider-Man is a fictional Marvel Comics superhero. The character was created by writer-editor Stan Lee and writer-artist Steve Ditko. He first appeared in Amazing Fantasy #15 (Aug. 1962). Lee and Ditko conceived of the character as an orphan being raised by his Aunt May and Uncle Ben, and as a teenager, having to deal with the normal struggles of youth in addition to those of a costumed crime fighter. Spider-Man’s creators gave him super strength and agility, the ability to cling to most surfaces, shoot spider-webs using devices of his own invention which he called “web-shooters,” and react to danger quickly with his “spider-sense”, enabling him to combat his foes.
When Spider-Man first appeared in the early 1960s, teenagers in superhero comic books were usually relegated to the role of sidekick to the protagonist. The Spider-Man series broke ground by featuring Peter Parker, a teenage high school student to whose “self-obsessions with rejection, inadequacy, and loneliness” young readers could relate.
Unlike previous teen heroes such as James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes and Robin, Spider-Man did not benefit from being
the protegé of any adult mentors like Captain America and Batman, and thus had to learn for himself that “with great power comes great responsibility” — a line included in a text box in the final panel of the first Spider-Man story, but later retroactively attributed to his guardian, the late Uncle Ben.
Marvel has featured Spider-Man in several comic book series, the first and longest-lasting of which is titled The Amazing Spider-Man. Over the years, the Peter Parker character has developed from shy, high school student to troubled but outgoing college student, to married high school teacher to, in the late 2000s, a single freelance photographer, his most typical adult role. He is now a member of an unofficial splinter group of the Avengers, one of Marvel’s flagship superhero teams. In the comics, Spider-Man is often referred to as “Spidey,” “web-slinger,” “wall-crawler,” or “web-head.”
Spider-Man is one of the most popular and commercially successful superheroes. As Marvel’s flagship character and company mascot, he has appeared in many forms of media, including several animated and live-action television shows, syndicated newspaper comic strips, and a successful series of films starring actor Tobey Maguire as the “friendly neighborhood” hero in the first three, and Andrew Garfield in a planned reboot of the films.
Creation and development
In 1962, with the success of the Fantastic Four, Marvel Comics editor and head writer Stan Lee was casting about for a new superhero idea. He said that the idea for Spider-Man arose from a surge in teenage demand for comic books, and the desire to create a character with whom teens could identify. In his autobiography, Lee cites the non-superhuman pulp magazine crime fighter The Spider as a great influence, and in a multitude of print and video interviews, Lee stated he was further 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. Looking back on the creation of Spider-Man, 1990s Marvel editor-in-chief Tom DeFalco stated he did not believe that Spider-Man would have been given a chance in today’s comics world, where new characters are vetted with test audiences and marketers. At that time, however, Lee had to get only the consent of Marvel publisher Martin Goodman for the character’s approval. In a 1986 interview, Lee described in detail his arguments to overcome Goodman’s objections. Goodman eventually agreed to let Lee try out Spider-Man in the upcoming final issue of the canceled science-fiction and supernatural anthology series Amazing Adult Fantasy, which was renamed Amazing Fantasy for that single issue, #15 (Aug. 1962).
Comics historian Greg Theakston says that Lee, after receiving Goodman’s approval for the name Spider-Man and the “ordinary teen” concept, approached artist Jack Kirby. Kirby told Lee about an unpublished character on which he 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” 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 a visual style Lee found satisfactory. Ditko recalled:
One of the first things I did was to work up a costume. A vital, visual part of the character. I had to know how he looked … before I did any breakdowns. For example: A clinging power so he wouldn’t have hard shoes or boots, a hidden wrist-shooter versus a web gun and holster, etc. … I wasn’t sure Stan would like the idea of covering the character’s face but I did it because it hid an obviously boyish face. It would also add mystery to the character….
Amazing Fantasy #15 (Aug. 1962). Cover art by Jack Kirby (penciller) & Steve Ditko (inker).
In an early recollection of the character’s creation, Ditko described his and Lee’s contributions in a mail interview with Gary Martin published in Comic Fan #2 (Summer 1965): “Stan Lee thought the name up. I did costume, web gimmick on wrist & spider signal.” At the time, 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 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 comic Black Magic, who was subsequently not used.
Simon, in his 1990 autobiography, disputed Kirby’s account, asserting that Black Magic was not a factor, and that he (Simon) devised the name “Spider-Man” (later changed to “The Silver Spider”), 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. The hyphen was included in the character’s name to avoid confusion with DC Comics’ Superman.
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 the first issues of Spider-Man. Likewise, Kirby’s given reason that he was “too busy” to also draw Spider-Man in addition to his other duties seems false, as Kirby was, in Evanier’s words, “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 “[d]ays later, Stan told me I would be penciling the story panel breakdowns from Stan’s synopsis”. It was at this point that the nature of the strip changed. “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, a premise 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 states, “I still don’t know whose idea was Spider-Man”. 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, has acknowledged Ditko’s role, stating, “If Steve wants to be called co-creator, I think he deserves [it]“. Writer Al Nickerson believes “that Stan Lee and Steve Ditko created the Spider-Man that we are familiar with today [but that] ultimately, Spider-Man came into existence, and prospered, through the efforts of not just one or two, but many, comic book creators”.
In 2008, an anonymous donor bequeathed the Library of Congress the original 24 pages of Ditko art of Amazing Fantasy #15, including Spider-Man’s debut and the stories “The Bell-Ringer”, “Man in the Mummy Case”, and “There Are Martians Among Us”.
Powers and equipment
A bite from a radioactive spider on a school field trip causes a variety of changes in the body of Peter Parker and gives him superpowers. In the original Lee-Ditko stories, Spider-Man has the ability to cling to walls, superhuman strength, a sixth sense (“spider-sense”) that alerts him to danger, perfect balance and equilibrium, as well as superhuman speed and agility. Some of his comic series have him shooting webs from his wrists. Brilliant, Parker excels in applied science, chemistry, and physics. The character was originally conceived by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko as intellectually gifted, but not a genius. However, later writers have depicted the character as a genius. With his talents, he sews his own costume to conceal his identity, and constructs many devices that complement his powers, most notably mechanical web-shooters. This mechanism ejects an advanced adhesive, releasing web-fluid in a variety of configurations, including a single rope-like strand to swing from, a net to bind enemies, a single strand for yanking opponents into objects, strands for whipping foreign objects at enemies, and a simple glob to foul machinery or blind an opponent. He can also weave the web material into simple forms like a shield, a spherical protection or hemispherical barrier, a club, or a hang-glider wing. Other equipment include spider-tracers (spider-shaped adhesive homing beacons keyed to his own spider-sense), a light beacon which can either be used as a flashlight or project a “Spider-Signal” design, and a specially modified camera that can take pictures automatically.
Non-Marvel versions and parodies
Marvel made its own parodies of Spider-Man in such comics as Not Brand Echh, which was published in the late 1960s
and featured such characters as Peter Pooper alias Spidey-Man. There was also Peter Porker, the Spectacular Spider-Ham, who appeared in the 1980s.
Japanese artist Ryoichi Ikegami drew a manga version of Spider-Man for the Japanese market between 1970 and late 1971. Peter Parker was renamed Yu Komori and various other Marvel characters, such as Electro and the Lizard, also featured but with different backgrounds.
Another Japanese manga was Hideshi Hino‘s The Bug Boy, which has been cited as inspired by Spider-Man. Like Peter Parker, Sanpei Hiromoto is bitten by a strange and tiny creature which turns him into a being with powers — in this case, a huge, poisonous bug. Unlike Parker, the bullying Sanpei experienced at school has not been balanced by a loving family home, and thus he becomes a supervillain rather than a hero.
The French comic Télé-Junior published strips based on popular TV series. In the late 1970s, the publisher also produced original Spider-Man adventures. Artists included Gérald Forton, who later moved to America and worked for Marvel. These strips were short stories with little or no continuity between them. Télé-Junior’s version included regular characters from the comics like J. Jonah Jameson, Robbie Robertson, and Flash Thompson, who is at the friendly stage of his relationship with Parker. Villains including the Vulture and Electro also appeared.
In the 1973 Turkish film 3 Dev Adam (known in English as Three Mighty Men or Turkish Spider-Man vs. Captain Turkish America) Spider-Man is portrayed as the villain of the film, confronted by Captain America and Santo (a Mexican wrestler character). He has no spider powers in the film, however.
The Indian version of Spider-Man, Spider-Man: India was created by Sharad Devarajan, Suresh Seetharaman, and Jeevan J. Kang along with Marvel Comics.
The Arachnid (formerly The Adventures of Lil’ Spidey) is an unofficial continuation of the Spider-Man series, following Spider-Man’s first son Tom Parker.
Source: wikipedia
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Tags: Captain America, Comics, Fantastic Four, Marvel, Marvel Comics, Shattered Dimensions, Spider-Man, spiderman, Stan Lee, Steve Ditko, Uncle Ben, Wolverinept
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Written by Wolverinept
Great post! Really great history lesson! This is must know history for and and all Spidey fans!! In my studies I did a timeline highlighting notable events in Parker’s life http://www.timetoast.com/timelines/1928
Also love the part of alternate Spider-Men. Spider-Man has becoe so much more than jsut a comic book hero. More a part of literature. Even in his other incarnations he retains his unique “heroness”. Except for some of the way out there versions. Here is another project I started awhile ago along the same lines of the around the world section. https://docs.google.com/present/view?id=dc2rq9cj_127gmqwjbf6