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: Spider-Man is a Marvel Comics character. For other uses see Spider-Man (disambiguation).

Spider-Man (Peter Benjamin Parker) is a fictional character, a Marvel Comics superhero created by writer Stan Lee and artist Steve Ditko. He first appeared in the comic book Amazing Fantasy #15 (August 1962), with a cover drawn by Jack Kirby and Ditko. He has since become one of the world's most popular characters.

Spider-Man expanded the dramatic potential of the fantasy and superhero subgenres by having a strong focus on a younger, more troubled character and his personal struggles. Since his creation, his popularity has led to many of the superheroes who predated him being reworked with more complex personas.

Spider-Man is one of the most recognizable of all superheroes. Through the years, he has appeared in many media, including several animated series, a daily and Sunday comic strip, and two very successful films, with a third one debuting in 2007.

Marvel has published multiple ongoing comic book series featuring the character, the flagship being The Amazing Spider-Man. Since his debut in the 1960s Silver Age of comic books, Peter Parker has grown from a shy high school student to a troubled college undergrad and graduate student, to a married man and a professional, but the core of the character has remained the same.

Publication history

Creation of character

Main article: Creation of Spider-Man

Various accounts of the character's creation have been given, with at times, Stan Lee, Steve Ditko (the official creators), Jack Kirby and Joe Simon claiming various degrees of credit for the character's concepts.

Milestone: Comics Code

In 1971, Spider-Man was the first comic to challenge the rigid Comics Code. Previously, it was forbidden to depict illegal drugs, even negatively. However, The Amazing Spider-Man #96–98 (May–July 1971) featured a story arc that showed the negative effects of drug abuse (a storyline conceived at the request of government drug-prevention authorities). Most notably, Harry Osborn started taking pills and became so ill that, when Spider-Man fought the Green Goblin (a.k.a. Norman Osborn), Spider-Man vanquished Norman by simply showing him his sick son. The three comics were sold without the Comics Code approval, but met with such critical acclaim that the industry's self-censorship was undercut.

Character history

Early life

Peter Benjamin Parker was born to Richard Parker and his wife Mary Fitzpatrick-Parker, both of whom were agents of the CIA and later of S.H.I.E.L.D. (a fictional secret agency). Their last assignment was the infiltration of the criminal organization of Albert Malik, the third Red Skull. Malik found out about their plans and arranged a plane-crash that resulted in their deaths, although this retconned backstory was not known at the time of the creation of Spider Man's character.

The infant Peter Parker was left in the care of his Uncle Ben and Aunt May (Richard's older brother Benjamin Parker and his wife May Reilly Parker), who lived in the Forest Hills neighborhood of Queens, New York. Though Peter was always loved by the aging couple, he was unpopular among those of his own age. Over time, he grew to be a lonely, timid teenager. The exceptionally bright Peter showed more interest in his studies, especially science, than in any kind of social life. He was often the target of jokes by more popular fellow students like Flash Thompson, the high school's star athlete, who ironically would later become Spider-Man's biggest fan and one of Peter's best friends. In addition, Aunt May made him wear non-prescription glasses to protect his eyes, since she was worried that his constant reading would have a negative effect on his eyesight. When these glasses were broken in a schoolyard fight with Flash Thompson, he didn't bother to get new ones, since they were never really needed in the first place and only made him look awkward. (Note: In virtually all retellings of his origin, Peter's eyesight really was poor and somehow got fixed by the spider bite, but this is not the case in the original comic book series.)

Origin

When he was 17 years old, Parker attended a science exhibition where he was bitten by a spider which had been irradiated. The spider bite gave Parker an array of spider-like powers. These powers included the ability to cling to walls and ceilings, super-human strength, and an extra-sensory "Spider Sense".

In addition to his physical powers, Peter Parker successfully designed and utilized mechanical "web-shooters" to spin webs in a variety of ways. In current Spider-Man continuity, he produces his webs from organic spinnerets in his wrists and no longer requires the mechanical web shooters, most likely to bring character recognition inline with fans who mainly know him from his movie incarnation.

His legal guardian and beloved Uncle Ben was later killed by a thug that Peter had allowed to escape. Realizing that stopping the thief when he had the chance would have prevented his uncle's murder, Spider-Man devoted himself to fighting injustice, driven by the realization that "with great power there must also come great responsibility." This phrase (usually in the modified form "with great power comes great responsibility") has subsequently achieved widespread notoriety.

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