The Untold Truth Of Spider-Man

In 1954, legendary Halloween costume manufacturer Ben Cooper Inc. began selling a "Spider Man" outfit. The kid-sized duds were little more than a yellow ensemble covered with drawings of webs, and the words "Spider Man" written across the forehead, giving the overall impression of a poorly-dressed idiot who'd recently escaped from a basement or something.

Years later, a more familiar Spider-Man made his debut in 1962's Amazing Fantasy #15, the final issue of a doomed Marvel Comics anthology series. While Cooper's earlier Spider Man may seem like a huge coincidence, the case is complicated by rumors that Jack Kirby, the original artist for Spider-Man (before Steve Ditko took over) was working for Ben Cooper at the time, as both Cooper and Marvel were located in Manhattan, and Kirby's work was pretty diverse. Newsarama explored the case and got a terse reply from Ditko and silence from Marvel, which definitely sets our spider-senses tingling.

Over the course of 1989's Amazing Spider-Man #316 and 317, readers were shown two halves of a change-of-address form filled out by Peter Parker, and only curious readers who assembled them saw that the Parkers were now living at 20 Ingram Street in Forest Hills, NY. Whether or not this was an Easter egg planted by writer David Michelinie or artist Todd McFarlane is unknown, but as of 1974, there really was a family named Parker at that address, who soon began receiving mail addressed to the fictional Peter. When the New York Times explored the story in 2002, they also discovered that 19 Ingram Street was home to a family named Osborne—just one letter off from Spider-Man's arch-nemesis, Norman Osborn.

Comics fans might not think about it much, but Spider-Man is the absolute center of the Marvel multiverse. Even though heroes like Captain America and Iron Man get top billing, there are more versions of Spider-Man across the multiverse than any other hero, and any time we visit another reality, Spider-Man is so iconic and consistent that he's always there, and generally used as a compass to differentiate the different planes of existence. While the main Marvel continuity, Earth-616, has its own fair share of Spideys, there are literally hundreds of alternates, including Spider-Ham of Earth-8311, the flaming skull-headed Ghost Spider of Earth-11638... and a whole lot of dead Spider-Men, since Peter seems to get caught in the ol' bug zapper of life pretty often.

Spider-Man has probably had the roughest life of any superhero; he doesn't have Batman's wealth, and he doesn't have Superman's strength, but he accomplishes pretty much the same heroic stuff. But the very worst thing that ever happened to Spider-Man was being cheated on by his girlfriend, Gwen Stacy, with his arch-nemesis, Norman Osborn, a.k.a. the Green Goblin. While this was never spoken of during Gwen's life, the 1999 storyline Sins Past revealed the ultimate betrayal: Gwen had kept her terrible goblin babies secret, and because of their unique DNA, they aged rapidly and came after Peter Parker, 'cause that's what goblins do. Everyone, Peter Parker and comic readers included, hated the whole thing.

The apex of weird Spider-Man storylines is Peter Parker's deal with the devil, Mephisto. In exchange for the survival of his dear, decrepit, nearly-deceased-anyway Aunt May, Spidey would give up his marriage and future kids with Mary Jane, forcing him straight back into the friend zone. Spidey's reason for taking this deal? Peter's Aunt May was hovering between life and death because she'd been put in danger after he revealed his secret identity during Civil War, and he'd come to the sensible conclusion that taking off his mask in front of the world had been a big mistake. In return for Peter sacrificing his life with Mary Jane, Mephisto made the world forget he was Spider-Man, thus protecting his loved ones from the line of supervillain fire.

At one point in Marvel's history, Spider-Man was so popular that he starred in four books at once, making it nearly impossible to keep track of his adventures (or even take a nap). All of it came to a head when Norman Osborn framed Spider-Man for murder, forcing Parker to drop his heroic persona and take on a different heroic mantle...or four. As Hornet and Prodigy, Peter continued his heroics, and as Dusk and Ricochet, he was able to infiltrate New York's criminal underworld to find the real murderer. Spidey was able to drop his alternate identities, but they were later taken up by a group called the Slingers, who were quickly beaten by the New Warriors in a game of basketball and pretty much never seen again.

Speaking of the original 2002 Spider-Man, the film's original theatrical trailer had to be completely pulled and scrapped after the events of 9/11, due to the fact that the entire thing hinged upon a helicopter being caught on a web between the Twin Towers. Since the terrorist attacks happened after much of filming was completed, but before the film's theatrical release, the Towers were cut from a handful of scenes. The replacement trailer featured Spider-Man perching on an American flag instead.

Spider-Man's many portrayers have all had very different reactions to the tights. Newest actor Tom Holland's duds were designed for his stunt double, so when he put them on, they were a bit too baggy, bumming out Holland during his first time in the suit, according to Comic Book Movie. Tobey Maguire was pretty uncomfortable until the costume designers put in a bathroom portal, and despite bathroom breaks being a known problem for Spider-actors, the costume department again forgot to include a vital flap for Andrew Garfield, who only had the addition put in during his second outing as the character. Still, according to Geek Tyrant, Garfield was so taken by the fact that he got to play the iconic hero that he cried when he first put on the suit.

Broadway wasn't the only place to suffer from a misguided live-action Spider-Man. In 1978, Japanese production company Toei took note of Spidey's tight costume and likened him to their own skin-tight Tokusatsu heroes, like Kamen Rider. Japan's Spider-Man was given an origin not unlike DC's Green Lantern, when he's given a fancy device and powers by an alien from the planet Spider, who he finds in a crashed UFO called "Marveller." In true Japan form, Spidey also gets a transforming robot, which he uses to fight against Professor Monster. The show ran for 41 episodes, all with Marvel's approval, and amazing episode titles like "Becoming Splendid: To the Murderous Machine of Transformation," and "The Onion Silver Mask and the Boys' Detective Group."

This wasn't the first time an animated Spidey ran into trouble, however. Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, a cartoon from 1981, only aired their Nazi-themed "Quest of the Red Skull" episode once before it was never shown in regular rotation again. Much of the episode was a pretty important history lesson for kids, but prominent display of swastikas was a bit too extreme for sensitive 1981 viewers. According to Comic Book Resources, the episode showed up at least two more times on TV, many years later, but was completely dropped from all rotations once Disney took over, leaving history to outdated public school textbooks.

Spidey's strangest foray into educational materials was definitely "The Pull of the Prodigy," a 1976 story written by Ann Robinson for Planned Parenthood. In an amazingly surreal plot, the alien villain called Prodigy (no relation to Spider-Man's previously mentioned alter-alter-ego) uses the powers of alien persuasion to try to convince teenagers to make babies so that he'll have tons of minions to do his bidding. Part of the Prodigy's propaganda was to straight up say that diseases weren't possible and doin' it didn't really cause pregnancies. Of course, Spidey laments how tough his life is even without a rugrat, and defeats the Prodigy before it's too late. If anyone was poised to lecture kids about celibacy, it was nerdy Peter Parker.

A decade after his debut, Spider-Man's popularity had gotten to the point where it had gone well beyond the comics page. He'd starred in a TV cartoon in 1967 that would eventually supply the internet with an endless source of memes, and in 1975, he'd even be the subject of a weird and completely official concept album called Spider-Man: Rock Reflections of a Super-Hero. In 1974, though, Spidey was introduced to a whole new audience thanks to The Electric Company, an educational TV series for kids that ran on PBS.

In addition to segments like "Easy Reader," in which a young Morgan Freeman expressed a love of simple books, the show featured a recurring segment called "Spidey Super Stories," where Danny Seagren appeared in full costume as Marvel's favorite wall-crawler. Rather than the usual supervillains, the Electric Company's Spider-Man took on goofy criminals who committed "crimes" like ruining birthday parties or swapping out someone's lunchtime sandwich with a rubber glove between two slices of bread. He also never spoke, instead communicating with the viewers (and with other characters) via word balloons and thought bubbles as another tactic for encouraging the young viewers to read.

To tie into the show, though, Marvel also produced a Spidey Super Stories comic book that ran for 57 issues — outlasting the original run of the show that inspired it by four years. Running with Easy Reader's seal of approval, it was a lighthearted take on Marvel stories that worked in the show's goofball villains along with Marvel standards for some truly bizarre stories. The stories would often parody the pop culture of the time, like the one where Dr. Doom built a Death Star that ate planets called "Star Jaws." There's even an appearance by Thanos, who, rather than acquiring the Infinity Stones and killing half the universe, mostly commits petty larceny and escapes in a helicopter with his name on it. If you've ever seen the Thanoscopter, this is where it comes from.

For most Spider-Fans, Amazing Spider-Man #361 is remembered for the first full appearance of Carnage, the spree-killing symbiote super-villain who tore his way through comic books and the Super Nintendo in the '90s. If you were paying attention, though, you may have also noticed the start of a saga that pit Mary Jane Watson against her own deadly foe: cigarettes!

Spider-Man has been featured in plenty of PSA-style comics, but MJ's struggle with smoking was about as thrilling as that episode of Saved By the Bell where Jessie got hooked on caffeine pills. Over the next 24 issues, Mary Jane went from picking up smoking to dealing with the stress of being married to a superhero to having cover blurbs telling fans that they needed to pick up the latest issue if they'd "been worried about Mary Jane's addiction?!"

Don't get us wrong: smoking's definitely bad for you and if Spider-Man's sad sack reaction to Mary Jane slowly "killing herself" with cigarettes helped to balance out all those years of Wolverine making cigars look really cool, it was probably worth it. That said, 25 issues worth of high-octane melodrama is a whole lot of real estate to devote to Spider-Man telling kids that cigarettes are bad.

Spider-Man is easily one of the most influential comic book characters of all time. He perfected the Marvel idea of a superhero with flaws and relatable problems, and like Superman and Batman, virtually every superhero created after him would be influenced by his adventures in one way or another. He was so influential, in fact, and so successful, that Marvel would try to recreate that success by going back to the same formula and updating it about once a decade.

Spidey himself, of course, was the version that became Marvel's flagship character in the '60s. In 1976, Nova #1 hit newsstands to tell the story of Rich Rider, a New York City high schooler who got cosmic powers and cosmic responsibilities when he inherited the powers of a Nova Centurion from a dying alien, basically combining Spider-Man with Green Lantern's origin. In 1988, Tom DeFalco and Spider-Man co-creator Steve Ditko introduced Speedball, a high school student who got powers in a science lab accident. In 1991, it was Darkhawk, a high school student who discovered his father was a crooked cop and then found a mysterious amulet that turned him into an armored warrior.

The 21st century is where it gets a little interersting. Rather than creating a new character with a new tweak on the Spider-Man formula, 2000 saw Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley launch Ultimate Spider-Man, a series about a young Peter Parker's first few years as a teenage superhero that would eventually grow to launch its own universe. Then, in 2011, Bendis and Sara Pichelli would tweak the formula yet again by introducing an all-new Ultimate Spider-Man, Miles Morales.

He might not have the name recognition of the Green Goblin or Doc Ock, but before Spider-Man could face off against them, he had to take on his very first opponent: Crusher Hogan. Appearing for only two pages back in Amazing Fantasy #15, Hogan was a pro wrestler who offered a cash prize to anyone who could last three minutes in the ring against him, and made a perfect foil for Peter Parker to test out his brand new powers. If you've been wondering what happened to him after, though, well... it's not great for him.

In Amazing Spider-Man #271, a story called, fittingly enough, "Whatever Happened to Crusher Hogan?" recast him as a broken down janitor at a boxing gym who told all the rookies that he'd helped train Spider-Man. Unfortunately, he was on the wrong side of Manslaughter Marsdale, a massive, super-strong gangster who was extorting him. When Spider-Man showed up to deal with the supervillain, he also pulled off the babyface move of telling all the other boxers that Hogan actually was the guy who helped him get his start.

A much darker take, however, came in "The Last Shoot," from Spider-Man's Tangled Web #14. Co-written by Brian Azzarello and pro wrestler Scott Levy — better known to wrestling fans by his in-ring name, Raven — this story showed Crusher as the struggling star of an independent wrestling company on the verge of bankruptcy. In a last-ditch effort to make money, Crusher, a "shooter" (a wrestler actually skilled in non-scripted shoot fights), riled up the fans and offered a cash prize to anyone who could beat him. The gimmick worked, and just when things started to look like they were turning around, a masked Peter Parker showed up to try his luck and walk away with the prize. To make matters even worse? It was revealed that Crusher borrowed the money from Hammerhead, a mobster who told him that he'd crush his hand in the trunk of a car if he wasn't able to pay it back. Great responsibility indeed.

One of the weirdest moments in Spider-Man's history didn't happen in an issue of Spider-Man at all — at least not technically. Instead, it happened in the pages of 1998's Deadpool #11. In this extra-sized issue, Joe Kelly and Pete Woods sent Deadpool back to a moment in Marvel's distant past — namely 1967's Amazing Spider-Man #47.

After landing in the Parkers' Forest Hills home, Deadpool had to preserve the timeline by disguising himself as Peter Parker, with Blind Al standing in for Aunt May. Since they were actually back in an older issue, that meant that Deadpool was the one who went dancing with Mary Jane and Gwen Stacy, and who stepped up to fight Kraven the Hunter with some very un-Spidey-like gunplay.

Now here's the really cool part: Woods and inkers Al Milgrom and Joe Sinnott didn't just give the flashback sections of the story a retro look. In addition to drawing new pages in an older style, they also added Deadpool into John Romita Sr.'s pages from the original issue, in some cases just drawing him on top of existing art of Spider-Man for the fight scenes. The resulting comic not only saved Marvel's timeline from collapsing on itself, it provided readers with one of the most fun Deadpool comics of all time — and a weird moment of realizing that once it was published, Spider-Man never actually fought Kraven in that original story.