Sandbox / Spider Man Tropes Merger

Franchise

• Adaptation Personality Change: Future retellings, across several mediums, of Peter’s days just short of becoming Spider-Man have made him a more pure-hearted person from the get-go, while also makeing him far more willing to forgive and work with his former enemies after becoming Spider-Man. However, in the original Stan Lee and Steve Ditko run, it was quite evident that Peter was more of an irritable teenager, a good guy yes, but not an ideal pure hero, which gave weight to Peter’s immediate decision of trying to make money as soon as he got super powers instead of trying to be a hero right away; it was only after much hard-earned experiences that Peter grew to be up a fantastically heroic person.
• The Adjectival Superhero: The Amazing/Spectacular/Sensational Spider-Man, although Spidey himself prefers to use "Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man" (which was eventually used as a book title itself). He may well have been the Trope Codifier for this, as his first appearance was in Amazing Fantasy, which was soon after canceled, and replaced on the newsstands with Amazing Spider-Man.
  • When improvising a costume out of a borrowed Fantastic Four costume and a mask out of a paper bag, he became the Amazing or the Bombastic Bag-Man.
  • He is also the Avenging Spider-Man while a member of the Avengers, and the Fantastic Spider-Man while a member of the Fantastic Four.
  • When Venom acted as him during Dark Reign as a member of the Dark Avengers, he was called the Sinister Spider-Man. Sinister has also been applied to Silk as she drifts towards a Face–Heel Turn.
  • The Superior Spider-Man is Doctor Octopus having hijacked Peter's body.
  • When Blade needed to hide his identity, with the help of a Bland-Name Product Spider-Man outfit from a costume shop, he became the Splendiferous Spider Hero. With "Spider Hero" written across his chest. The Superior Spider-Man was not amused.
  • Spider-Girl also eventually inherited Amazing and later Spectacular from her dad.
  • The Radioactive Spider-Gwen (That can't be good!).
  • Miles Morales is often referred to as the Ultimate Spider-Man, referring to his original book, to distinguish him from Parker.
• Animated Adaptation: This could take a while...
  • The 1967 adaptation, which introduced the famous "Does whatever a spider can" theme song.
  • Spider-Woman, courtesy of DePatie-Freleng Enterprises, aired from 1979-1980.
  • Spider-Man (1981), which was most famous for having him meet up with Doctor Doom repeatedly.
  • Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, which aired around the same time as the above series, saw the webhead team up with Iceman and Firestar, and is much better-known nowadays.
  • Spider-Man: The Animated Series was pretty much John Semper doing the best he could with horrible animation, censorship and Executive Meddling. Nonetheless, the series has remained the Spider-Man animated adaptation for many fans, with Christopher Daniel Barnes' portrayal of the character often considered one of the best.
  • Spider-Man Unlimited was a sequel-but-not-really to the above series, which sees Spider-Man hopping aboard a spaceship to Counter-Earth, fighting alongside new allies and running into high-tech, futuristic versions of his classic rogues gallery. Notable for ending on a Cliffhanger.
  • Spider-Man: The New Animated Series blended CGI and cel-shading to create a unique form of animation. The series itself is set immediately after the events of the first Sam Raimi film, though its sequels would later render it Canon Discontinuity.
  • The Spectacular Spider-Man is the first animated Spider-Man series to focus his time as a teenager in high school, as it was originally in the comics. The show is also widely considered an Adaptation Distillation as it stays true to the comics (through using a lot of elements from the original Spider-Man comics that were written by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko; the show brought in characters, storylines, and plot elements with a similar balance of action, drama and comedy as well as a high school setting) in addition to utilizing material from all eras of the comic's run and other sources such as the more recent the Ultimate Spider-Man comics and the Sam Raimi movies, making a Spider-Man cartoon that is very popular and recognizable to both older and younger fans.
  • Ultimate Spider-Man is very loosely adapted from the comic book with the same name while using some elements from the 616 and Marvel Cinematic Universe. Aiming for a more comedic tone than its predecessors, the series tries its best to put a different spin on all the old characters and try to bring in something new.
  • Marvel's Spider-Man, Disney's newest foray into adapting the Spider-Man mythos for younger audiences.
  • Spidey and His Amazing Friends Disney Junior's take on the web-slinger for the preschool crowd.
  • Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Spidey's first animated feature-length film.
• Bat People: In some appearance — like in an Exiles story arc and in animated series — Morbius was transformed into a half-man half-bat monster, seeing more like an anthropomorphic bat with wings.
• Bootstrapped Theme: The theme song for the 1967 cartoon is one for the franchise as a whole. Covers for it and variations appeared in Spider-Man Trilogy and a full orchestral symphonic opening for Spider-Man: Homecoming. It's also a popular standard covered by The Ramones and Aerosmith among others.
• Briefer Than They Think: Adaptations tend to emphasize the high school element to the degree that it has arguably become Lost in Imitation. Brian Michael Bendis took this to the logical extreme in the Ultimate Spider-Man comics, where 200+ issues were written and completed over a span of a decade without Peter or his class graduating from high school. Meanwhile, the recent Marvel Cinematic Universe films feature the webhead being played by Tom Holland, the youngest actor yet to play Spider-Man, and he's still in high school as of his seventh movie appearance (three of those being solo films) and 6 years of real-time.
• Capitalism Is Bad: The earliest instances of Peter Parker as an industrialist were in an alternate timeline in Spider-Man: The Animated Series and Spider-Man: Edge of Time and in both instances, the two wealthy Parkers were shown as jerks and bad guys
• Coming of Age Story: Adaptations tend to follow similar beats even when it is restricted to selected periods (his high school period and occasionally but rarely his college). Modern versions such as Ultimate Marvel and the MCU have Spider-Man trying to go from small steps hero to a bigger kind of hero working for the Ultimates or the Avengers.
• Friendless Background: In Adaptations, such as Ultimate Spider-Man, this is dialed down with Peter having Ultimate MJ as his friend from childhood and confiding in her his secret early in his run, which carried over in The Amazing Spider-Man Series and Spider-Man: Homecoming where Peter's no longer entirely alone.
• Lost in Imitation: On account of Spider-Man's adaptation into diverse movies, games, cartoons, and even newspaper strips, which take a Compressed Adaptation and Composite Character approach, many elements get lost in the process. Not helping is when elements from these adaptations became Canon Immigrant. This tends to polarize Spider-Man's fanbase and it's partially to correct this, that recent stories like Spider-Verse were put into effect. The end result is that depending on where you start from, you end up having a different Spider-Man in your head.
  • For many people, before Sam Raimi's films, especially internationally^note Marvel comics in its back issues weren't always published regularly and serially in The '80s and The '90s around the globe and even then the decades of continuity and ongoing stories made it hard for newcomers to get into, their main exposure to Spider-Man was Stan Lee's newspaper strip that was published and syndicated in many newspapers around the world. It was in this newspaper that Spider-Man first married Mary-Jane Watson. In this strip, which is Lighter and Softer than the regular continuity, Peter Parker is an Experienced Protagonist who is Happily Married and his dynamic with MJ is closer to Nick and Nora rather than the Wet Blanket Wife she was in the mainstream comics. Most of the action has Peter working for JJJ at the Daily Bugle as a photographer (when Peter had taken a variety of jobs in 616 continuity). Eventually, the marriage went from the newspaper strip to the main comics continuity, and for a long time, Peter became known for being the most famous superhero who was a married man, which explains the backlash with One More Day.
  • Until very recently, most audiences who knew of Spider-Man tended to see Mary Jane as his Lois Lane and never even knew about Gwen Stacy (or Betty Brant, or Liz Allan), except through the internet. The Spider-Girl comics likewise established the most famous Legacy Character of Peter's at the time to be his daughter with MJ. The reason is that most of the cartoon adaptations and Sam Raimi's movies had established her as Peter's true love and the fact that Gwen Stacy had died was something that censorship would not allow kid's cartoons to put across. Gwen Stacy's fame as a murder victim in regular continuity is further diluted with her appearance as a supporting character in The Spectacular Spider-Man and the success of Spider-Gwen and the upcoming animated series where she has spider-powers from the start.
  • Likewise, for most people who come to the character from the newspaper strip or follow the regular continuity, Spider-Man hasn't been a Kid Hero or high-school student since his early issues. He graduated from high school to college similar to Marvel Comics Early-Installment Weirdness where they averted Comic-Book Time and had characters age and progress. However, cartoons and movies by focusing on his origins tend to paint him as that. Brian Michael Bendis' popular Ultimate Spider-Man wrote 200 issues with Peter still not graduating high school and the series ended without him graduating.
• Progressively Prettier: Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley explicitly modeled Ultimate Peter on Romita's version, and their Peter is a fairly good-looking teenager. In the film versions, Andrew Garfield looks the most like the handsome Peter of the comics, while both Tobey Maguire's and Tom Holland's version of Peter, resembles the original version of Peter who could pass for nearly anyone on the street.
• Sidekick: Spider-Man's non-sidekick status gets diluted a little in Adaptations like Ultimate Marvel and Marvel Cinematic Universe, where Peter is designated as officially in "apprentice status" to either Nick Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D. or to Tony Stark. And in the case of the latter, Spidey has his suit and equipment handed to him by Tony Stark.
• Sneaking Out at Night: Many adaptations that use his younger iterations where he's still a teenager (e.g. Ultimate Spider-Man, or cartoons like The Spectacular Spider-Man and Ultimate Spider-Man (2012)) sometimes use this trope, partially to get some drama out of it. One common example is Spidey thinking that he needs to wrap up a fight quickly so he can be home before May discovers he's gone.

Comics

In General

• Action Series: One of the most well-known bits of escapist fiction to date, and no doubt one of the most flagrant examples of the trope.
• Alliterative Name: Stan Lee, Spidey's creator, was the Trope Codifier for the trend because he found names easier to keep track of if he used alliteration as a mnemonic. Examples include Betty Brant, Curt Connors, Spencer Smythe, Glory Grant, J. Jonah Jameson, John Jameson, Otto Octavius, Peter Parker, and Randy Robertson. Randy's father Joe might also count since his nickname is "Robbie".
• Always Save the Girl: Subverted with Gwen Stacy in The Night Gwen Stacy Died.
• Alpha Bitch: Liz Allan started as one of these before she was Put on a Bus. Like her ex-boyfriend Flash (see above and below), she becomes much more mature when Peter runs into her several years later. Then there's Gwen Stacy in the Ditko era before rewrites changed her personality.
• Animal Motifs: Spidey and a good portion of his rogues gallery, to wit: the Vulture, the Chameleon, the Scorpion, the Rhino, the Beetle, the Jackal, Dr. Octopus. Likewise, Kraven the Hunter, while not having animal powers famously wears a jacket made out of lion fur. Sometimes lampshaded in stories such as The Amazing Spider-Man (J. Michael Straczynski), and other times deliberately invoked in-universe with Scorpion, who received his powers and codename so he could hunt Spider-Man: in real life, scorpions prey on spiders.
• Animal-Themed Fighting Style:
  • The hero's rogues gallery contains several enemies who follow this pattern to go with their animal motifs. In fact, for a time this was almost the only type of foe Spidey fought. Rhino, Vulture, Doctor Octopus, Kangaroo, Scorpion, Leap Frog, Puma, and Razorback are a very short list of villains who, through one method or another, tend to fight using the same kinds of attacks and tactics as the animals they're patterned after. How effective this is varies.
• Arachnid Appearance and Attire: Spider-Man is a notable example for being very colorful. Except when he's wearing his black costume. Notably, while Spider-Man is usually joking, laughing, and having a good time while fighting bad guys, when he stops quipping and gets serious, pissed, or seriously pissed, he becomes an absolutely terrifying opponent. When Peter's the "Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man," he defies this trope. When he drops the "friendly" part, he pretty much codifies it.
  • There's also Venom, Carnage, and Toxin as symbiotes that copy Spidey's powers, and the various Spider-Women.
  • Madame Web also counts.
  • Lesser-known Spider-Man foes include Tarantula and Black Tarantula.
  • The two Scarlet Spiders, both clones of the original Spider-Man.
  • Spider-Gwen and Silk as well.
• Arch-Enemy: Three villains contest for the role: Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus, and Venom. The reason for this is that the Green Goblin died in the '70s and spent a good 20-odd years dead before he came back to torment his foe, which is probably the record to beat for dead A-list villains. In the meantime, Doctor Octopus and Venom filled the roles in the '70s and '80s/'90s, respectively. However, in recent decades, Venom became more of an Anti-Hero figure with his hatred of Peter toned down. At the same time, both Osborn and Octavius really hurt the wall-crawler in their own nasty ways, so if there is a contest for a mantle of Spider-Man’s greatest enemy, it’s between these two. As Stan Lee put it himself: "The Green Goblin is Peter Parker's greatest enemy, while Doctor Octopus is Spider-Man's greatest enemy.”
  • To elaborate on the quote: Doctor Octopus is the archenemy of Spider-Man in a very classic sense. Otto and Peter have a lot in common, both being scientists, who were bullied in school, and later got caught up in freak accidents that dramatically changed them forever. Both received a lot of power and both decided to channel that power by adopting an alter-ego based on an eight-legged animal. The difference is that Peter chose to be a superhero and use his powers for good, while Otto chose to become a criminal, who tries to get back at the world. Doctor Octopus is the most recurring villain of the franchise, challenging the very idea of Spider-Man and being responsible for some of the most dramatic incidents in Peter’s career as a superhero: his first defeat, near death, death of Captain Stacey, the establishment of Sinister Six and outright identity theft. At the same time, Otto never really cared about the man behind the mask and kept his rivalry with Spider-Man on sort of “gentlemanly” level, actually making a point of trying not to hurt Peter’s loved ones.
  • Norman Osborn is a different story. For him, being a supervillain with a secret identity has never really carried any pragmatic benefits and has not served any goal aside from channeling his psychopathic and sadistic urges while maintaining a façade of respectful businessman. Since his very motivation as the Goblin (and later as Osborn himself) is to play out power fantasies, he was angry that someone stood up against him and swiftly decided to punish the person behind the mask. This dynamic between the characters eventually led to a lot of tragedy and pain in Peter’s life over the years as he saw numerous deaths and tortures of his loved ones, starting with Gwen Stacy, at the hands of Norman. Needless to say it’s a very personal conflict between the two and Peter hates no one as much as he hates Osborn. He even had to stop himself from killing the latter several times. If Otto challenges the idea of Spider-Man as a superhero, Norman Osborn challenges Peter’s morality itself.
• Art Evolution: Spidey is almost never depicted as the original "boy in a Lucha costume" after Todd McFarlane's run.
  • Ditko's work noticeably improved further into his run. When he was plotting his own stories, his work became more visual.
  • John Romita Sr's work started out as a close copy of Ditko's, featuring nine-panel pages and such. But as Romita grew more confident with his work and as Ditko's run was further back in the memories of readers, Romita began to space out his work a bit more, allowing for more visual panels, and eventually, Romita adopted his own style.
  • John Romita Jr.'s work noticeably improved in the interim between his first run with Roger Stern and his second run after the reboot (mostly with J. Michael Straczynski).
  • Todd McFarlane's work started out fairly standard until proportions and anatomy became more and more exaggerated, some would say for the worse. Erik Larsen followed a similar trajectory.
• The Artifact: On account of Marvel's decision to set Spider-Man in a Like Reality, Unless Noted New York (rather than DC's Fantasy Counterpart Culture approach) as well as its adoption of Comic-Book Time, some aspects of Spider-Man's lore have become a little anachronistic or dated (which only recently has started to change).
  • Spider-Man is fundamentally a street-level superhero like Daredevil and originally his adventures had a realism because The '60s to The '90s was The Big Rotten Apple era of New York City (where real events like the 1977 blackout occurred in the page), a time of high crime statistics where the idea of multiple street-level superheroes in a single city had a little verisimilitude. Since the era of Giuliani and gentrification, however, street crime level has dropped down while highly restrictive gun laws have been put into effect. Now of course the presence and activity of supervillains do not depend on that for explanations, but fundamentally the reduction of crime should mean that Spider-Man's status as a street-level hero being so important as to make demands on his personal and professional life needs more justification than "it's New York".
  • The issue of gentrification and high costs in New York, and the challenge to the print media by online and the rise of cellphones and the internet has also meant that Peter's old job as a photographer for a newspaper and being the guy who "takes pictures of Spider-Man" and making a sufficient living off of that (despite being paid low by JJJ) and still living in New York, makes it harder to accept. It was already dated in The Oughties that Sam Raimi's adoption of the same came off to more than a few observers as Anachronism Stew (and Raimi made it work by artificially mixing different aspects of New York history). Dan Slott's run had Jameson become the Mayor of New York which essentially updated their dynamic.
  • invokedLikewise, the idea of "Peter taking pictures of Spider-Man" which is a beloved trope and central to his dynamic of JJJ suffers because Technology Marches On. In The '60s through The '80s, when all photography was done on film and professional photographs were shot manually with analog controls (i.e. selecting f-stop, exposure, ISO with fingers and in-camera in the middle of a shot), it was believable that a superhero like Spider-Man would be too fast to capture and needed an insider as it were to provide the pictures, which made it possible for Peter to gain exclusive rights to Spider-Man's still photographs. But this made it harder with the digital revolution and impossible in the smartphone age, as such the trope started fading in comics in The '90s and The Oughties and has disappeared in The New '10s.
  • Ben and May Parker in the comics belonged to "the Greatest Generation" and Ben was several years older than Richard, his younger brother (who is Peter's father). This kind of background made sense at that time owing to the trials of the Depression, the war years (Ben was a serviceman), and the generation gap, but after adopting Comic-Book Time, both Ben and May became older as Peter grew younger, making it more of a stretch, leading to recent comics to try and write May into a younger person.
• Artifact Domination:
  • When Spider-Man first came into possession of his symbiotic costume he was unaware that it was a living entity. The symbiote, coming from a fairly violent species, slowly twisted Spidey into a more violent version of himself until he realized what was going on and got rid of it. Several other symbiotes exist in the Marvel Universe and the symbiote is a danger to take over its host. However, most of these symbiotes have found sympathetic hosts, so it's not known how much influence they exert or how much is the host's own appetite for destruction.
  • After leaving Spider-Man the first symbiote found Eddie Brock whose own hatred of Spider-Man and violent temper were a better fit.
  • Another symbiote found violent serial killer Cletus Kasady and became Carnage, a mass-murdering supervillain.
  • After Eddie Brock rejected the symbiote, he auctioned it off to Don Fortunato who gives it to his under-achieving son Angelo, hoping the power of the symbiote will finally make him into something. However, when Angelo becomes frightened of his newfound power and refuses to kill a weakened Spider-Man, the symbiote abandons him.
  • Agent Venom (Flash Thompson) is only allowed to wear the suit for 48 hours at a time precisely so it cannot take control of his mind.
• Author Avatar:
  • Stan Lee has said that Spider-Man was something of this for him. He also created J. Jonah Jameson based on other peoples' view of him, and as the EIC, Lee had a similar job as Jonah at Marvel. Both he and Ditko were children during the Depression and grew up with memories of poverty and having a hard luck life, which fed into the portrayal of poor working-class Peter, and the portrayal of Aunt May and Uncle Ben as Greatest Generation parental figures based on their memories of their families.
  • Since Ditko drew and designed the comics as per the Marvel Method, some argue that Peter is more reflective of Ditko himself. The original Peter Parker◊ in the comics bears a startling resemblance to Steve Ditko in his high school picture. Like Peter, Ditko was a loner, an outsider, a little aloof though also described as friendly and affable in one-on-one meetings, which mirrored the early Peter Parker to a great degree.
• Ax-Crazy: Carnage, Venom to an extent. And Green Goblin who should never be left out.
• Bad Butt: Venom and Carnage in the '90s cartoon, so so much...
  Cletus Kassidy: I'd eat you for breakfast.
  Eddie Brock: Oh yeah, well, I'd give you indigestion... man.
• Back from the Dead: Between Carnage and The Green Goblin, it would seem that death is more of an inconvenience than anything. Though the Goblin is notable for lasting twenty-odd years, which seeing as he is an Arch-Enemy is probably a record. Aside from a few cases of impostors and hauntings, Uncle Ben has, however, remained the only Marvel character who hasn't come back.
  • Gwen Stacy hasn't come back either. Except as a clone. Probably. And no, alternate universe version doesn't count.
• Backstab Backfire: After the Green Goblin killed Gwen Stacy, Spidey tracked him down and beat him nearly to death. Spidey was so angry that he wanted to kill the Goblin, but at the last minute stopped himself. He thought that Osborn was no longer a threat, but Osborn, who was still able to remotely control his goblin glider, positioned it behind Spider-Man and hit the gas, hoping to impale him. Spidey dodged the glider and it hit Osborn instead, killing him. At least, that's how the story originally went.
• Bat People:
  • Batwing is a young boy who was exposed to toxic waste in Carlsbad Caverns, causing him to become bat-like. Despite his monstrous appearance, he's still just a child, and Spider-Man tries to protect him from those who hate and fear him.
  • Morbius is an Anti-Villain who became a genetically modified vampire, with bat genes and an Orlok-like appearance.
• Big Applesauce: While New York City is home to a lot of Marvel superheroes, this is his Neighborhood where he does his Friendly stuff. While he can battle the cosmic fights like Fantastic Four, the global fights like The Avengers, and the mystic fights like Doctor Strange, Spidey will always be seen webslinging across the Manhattan skyline.
• Big Brother Mentor: Daredevil has been this to Spider-Man from time to time. Overlaps with Heterosexual Life-Partners. Likewise originally Johnny Storm.
• Body Horror: The Tarantula is subjected to an attempt to give him spider powers. It gradually turns him into a monstrous mutated tarantula and he commits Suicide by Cop.
• Bragging Theme Tune: Sing along, kids! Spider-Man, Spider-Man, does whatever a spider can. Spins a web, any size. Catches thieves, just like flies. Look out! Here comes the Spider-Man.
• Briefer Than They Think:
  • Spider-Man's origins as a Kid Hero in high school are given a huge amount of emphasis in the character's portrayal in various media, including recent movies and animated series. Considering this was one of the things that originally made him so unique and relatable, it makes sense to a degree. However, Peter actually graduated from high school and went to college (the fictitious Empire State University) in Amazing Spider-Man #28 — only two and a half years after his first appearance. The classic period of Spider-Man as Wake Up, Go to School & Save the World lasted a very short time indeed, and most of his comic exploits from then on were as an early 20s young man, with it taking thirteen years for him to graduate college.
  • The Betty and Veronica Love Triangle between Peter Parker, Gwen Stacy, and Mary Jane Watson that everyone remembers was actually very short, only lasting a few issues (The Amazing Spider-Man #44-#52) before Peter settled on Gwen and Mary Jane became Beta Couple with Harry Osborn, though she would still flirt with Peter and make passes at him later on, which Gwen usually replied with cutting barbs. Her teasing and flirting dialed down when she realized his commitment to Gwen was serious and then MJ was Put on a Bus returning semi-regularly starting in The Amazing Spider-Man #87 where her dynamic with Gwen was closer to Vitriolic Best Buds or "frenemies".
  • The alien costume period. Spider-Man started wearing the black costume in 1984 and wore it until 1988 and it is immortalized in notable stories like "The Death of Jean DeWolff" and "Kraven's Last Hunt," cementing it in fans' minds as a long-term thing. But in all of those stories, the costume was actually cloth. The actual alien costume was first worn in #252 and was removed in #258 before making a one-issue return in Web of Spider-Man #1. In fact, by the time Secret Wars #8 was published, which showed how he got the costume, he had already ditched the costume and was using the cloth copy.
• Butt-Monkey:
  • Some writers seem to think that the biggest appeal of Spider-Man is that things constantly go wrong for him. As a result, we get countless stories of Peter suffering humiliation, lack of money, sickly aunt, girl trouble, and just all around unpleasantness, to the point that reading the stories can actually get a little depressing. Note that after John Romita Sr. started working on the title with Stan Lee, the book became much Lighter and Softer than it had been recently, a move which led most fans to label it as the golden age of Spider-Man.
  • J. Jonah Jameson, the Shocker, the Jason Macendale Hobgoblin, and others have all shared this role at different times over the years.
• Call It Karma: J. Jonah Jameson's attempts to capture and destroy Spider-Man have given him no end of grief over the years.
• Capitalism Is Bad: While not an Aesop that Stan Lee^note Creator of Iron Man as specifically a good-guy capitalist after seeing Marvel's general anti-establishment trend and seeking to balance it and certainly not Steve Ditko^note An Objectivist with right-wing views though Ditko's tracts often wax more on the self-righteous idealism rather than Rand's economic ideas intended, the overall subtext of Spider-Man as a working-class aspiring scholarship boy does tend to highlight how important a role class plays in his life, and the stories by later writers also play this up:
  • In the Lee-Ditko era, wealthy characters are shown as being jerks of some kind or other (Harry Osborn, Gwen Stacy, J. Jonah Jameson, Norman Osborn) with the only exceptions being academics and professionals (such as the doctor who operates Aunt May in If This Be My Destiny who makes it clear that he sees Peter as a real hero compared to Spider-Man). This got played down in the Lee-Romita era where Peter has friendly relations with the Osborns, romances Gwen and befriends her father George Stacy, but even then, and especially when Gerry Conway came on board, Peter is presented as a foil for Harry, the poor up-and-coming kid as opposed to the rich kid who is nothing without his father's name and inheritance, which leads him to turn to drugs to cope with his insecurity.
  • A number of Spider-Man's villains over the years tend to be wealthy types, such as the Kingpin, Norman Osborn, and Roderick Kingsley.
  • An interesting example of this trope is how writers tackle the idea of a successful Peter Parker. Dan Slott had Otto Octavius hack Peter's body and develop Parker Industries as an Anti-Hero Substitute which the revived Peter Parker ended up running as a Honest Corporate Executive albeit one so honest that he ended up dismantling his company when a virus threatened the world. Nick Spencer who followed Slott, has Peter ruminate about the ethics of grappling with a position of unearned wealth and the consequences of Peter accepting Ock's status quo on a silver platter, cementing the idea that the richer Peter gets, the less pure he becomes.
• Carnival of Killers: "Identity Crisis" is about Spider-Man being framed for murder and a $5,000,000 bounty on his head, dead or alive. Eventually, he assumes several different costumed identities so he can keep up the superhero game without being harassed, but before he thought of that he was fighting off dozens of bounty hunters every day. The guys after the 5 mil ranged from mundane gun nuts and thrill seekers (like the Hunters) to professionals (like the Dealy Boys) to actual costumed villains (like Override and Aura).
• Cat Girl: Western costumed variant in the Black Cat.
• Central Theme:
  • "With great power, there must also come —great responsibility". What it means to have power and to use it in a socially and morally responsible way.
  • Your actions and choices have consequences, including the ones you didn't intend or expect, and you have to live with them whether you like it or not, and whether it was your fault or not.
  • Everyone has some kind of secret, either a big one or a small one, and there's always more to people than you assume. Just as the world assumes little of Peter Parker and Spider-Man, Peter himself often underestimates or misjudges people around him.
  • You have to work for everything in your life, whether it's your job, your superhero calling, your marriage, your relationships. People are complicated, messy, and demanding, and you have to be there for them and make things work and never take people for granted.
• The Chosen Many: According to Araña's series and the The Other, Grim Hunt, Spider Island, and Spider-Verse arcs, Peter is one of a group of arachnid-themed super-powered individuals empowered by a mystical force called the Web of Life, and is the Champion of the totemic spider deity behind the Web of Life, succeeding Ezekiel Sims and to be succeeded by Anya Corizon in the event he turns evil.
• Clothes Make the Superman: The Vulture, Shocker, The Rhino, Mysterio, technically Doctor Octopus. Subsequently, Venom and the other symbiotes.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Mary Jane, in her earliest appearances, and her ridiculous lingo. It was the 1960's, but nobody ever talked like that, ever. Nobody outside a straitjacket, anyways...
  • White Rabbit is another example of this trope.
• Comic-Book Fantasy Casting: A few of the characters had their looks patterned on Hollywood icons:
  • The Kingpin was conceived as a homage to Sydney Greenstreet, a character actor in many Humphrey Bogart films where he often played heavy-set bad guys and gangsters. The Greenstreet resemblances were dialed down after Frank Miller got to him, however.
  • Gwen Stacy's original appearance on Steve Ditko's page was based on Veronica Lake. After her character evolution, later writers modeled her design on blonde actresses in Alfred Hitchcock films especially Kim Novak in Vertigo (who as Madeleine wears a similar beige coat akin to what she wore in her final comic).
  • Norman Osborn and his son Harry are dead ringers for Joseph Cotten, down to a similar facial structure and of course the corn-rows wavy hairstyle. Cotten played a number of character parts in Orson Welles movies but a major hit of his was Shadow of a Doubt where he plays a businessman who is secretly a psychopathic murderer, much like Norman.
  • John Romita Sr. admitted that he modeled Mary Jane Watson on Ann-Margret who had appeared in a number of Elvis Presley movies. When Mike Deodato was drawing her, he based her on Liv Tyler.
• The Commissioner Gordon: One of the things that set Spider-Man apart was the fact that he never really had a Friend on the Force unlike Batman did or the support of the press that Superman did, which made his superhero/civilian life balance literal murder many times over. That said there were figures who did play this role for Spider-Man but they never lasted long:
  • Captain George Stacy was the first character who really played this role for Spider-Man in the comics. He was friendly and tried to play down some of Peter's issues with authority. Then he dies and while George Stacy in his deathbed revealed he was Peter's Secret Secret-Keeper and approved of him, his death ended up making Spider-Man look bad within the police force and in the eyes of Gwen (who blamed him for her father's death).
  • Captain Jean DeWolff was the other major character who tried to be this for Spider-Man. But then her death left another vacuum in his eyes.
  • Most recently, there's Captain Yuri Watanabe, who dons the identity of Wraith and becomes a vigilante in her own right.
• Concepts Are Cheap: In lesser stories, "With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility" becomes this. It was never really Peter's Badass Creed as later comics made it out to be. It was just a caption voiced by the narrator in Amazing Fantasy #15 in classic Stan Lee dated Purple Prose. But the attempt to make this Spider-Man's ethos often leads to much fuzziness about what powers and responsibilities mean, leading to much Informed Attribute.
• Continuity Reboot: One More Day is essentially the COIE of Spider-Man dividing the history of 616 Spider-Man into two distinct eras (Pre and Post-OMD). Of course, EIC Quesada and others at Marvel disagree (since it's part of their brand identity they do not Continuity Reboot like DC and they are sure not to call it reboots when they do it). According to Quesada every story Pre-OMD still happened the same way but Peter and MJ weren't married but rather lived together. But as JMS and others note, the post-OMD retcon fundamentally altered and changed the characters and moments of multiple stories for more than twenty years.
  • For instance a flashback to Kraven's Last Hunt from Post-OMD issues implies that it was Uncle Ben's memory that gave him the Heroic Resolve to come out of the grave when in the comic it was MJ and her role as his newlywed wife that gave him his strength. Likewise, Quesada also claims that Baby May never happened when that was a major part of the entire The Clone Saga. Nick Spencer's Spider-Man which opens with a Shout-Out to Matt Fraction's "To Have and to Hold" (an annual that celebrates Peter and MJ's marriage and is fundamentally about it) alludes to it being a dream Peter had about how things should be, which alludes to the fact that the marriage was crucially relevant to several stories that no longer work with a substitute.
  • JMS pointed out in interviews that as far as he was concerned, his entire run on Spider-Man is erased, since the stories he wrote and the consequences it had no longer make any sense after the reboot. The Other a story where Peter tussled with Morlun and ended up with organic webbing at the end, now exists Post-OMD in an altered version where apparently Peter still battled with Morlun but did not die, and still had mechanical shooters, as described in Spider-Verse.
• Continuity Snarl:
  • Post-OMD, Harry Osborn somehow still being alive all this time but Out of Focus is something that Marvel writers never fully explained since doing so would have to get them to explain what happened in Revenge of the Green Goblin a story arc where Norman tries to torture and gaslight Peter into becoming the Goblin after his revival, an action that was inspired by Harry's death during his exile to Europe and simply doesn't make sense in tone and motivation with Harry somehow still being alive through it all. Writers have simply not alluded to this elephant in the room and merely bypassed it.
  • Part of Mephisto's deal had Peter's identity becoming secret again, but OMD and the follow-up One Moment in Time (which is essentially a reboot and retelling of OMD) created a Continuity Snarl where according to the story, Doctor Strange who erased everyone's memories of Peter Parker being Spider-Man did so for those who didn't know the identity before Civil War, but this doesn't explain how Norman Osborn and Black Cat forgot his identity despite knowing his identity well before that.
• Corporate Conspiracy: The Life Foundation was basically a corporate Crazy Survivalist group, prepared for the worst-case scenario of the Cold War, and willing to do anything to survive said cataclysm.
• Crapsack World: This has been a hallmark of Peter Parker's life for a very long time, although it's perhaps a little more realistic than most depictions when Peter occasionally catches a break every now and again. Character Development would later show that life was no picnic for many of Peter's supporting cast members and even some of his villains. In general, whenever a new writing team takes over there's always some shakeup to the status quo or other, and then another that follows when the next one takes over, and so on.
• Critical Psychoanalysis Failure: Stan Lee and Marcos Martin's non-canon story "Identity Crisis" (not to be confused with the in-canon 616 story of the same name), has Spider-Man going to a psychologist Dr. Gray Madder (a pun on gray matter) and talking to him about his identity issues, which involve the constant changes and endless retcons to his supporting cast and rogues, such as his Aunt May being alive and dead, his marriage to MJ being retconned in and out, her being pregnant and not, Green Goblin dying and coming back, lampshading the bizarre changes to Spider-Man continuity that actually drives Dr. Gray Madder nuts and has him going to a shrink.
• Crossover: With Peanuts. And it is glorious.
• Cut Lex Luthor a Check: Doctor Octopus, the Green Goblin, the Shocker, and Mysterio all invent remarkable inventions that could have earned them large fortunes if they'd used them legitimately. Later subverted by the Sandman, who becomes sick of crime and tries to go straight. He eventually wound up using his powers to work for the government of Symkaria under Silver Sable. Spider-Man himself would also end up working for Sable for a little while after she offered him $1,000 a day to do so. Also subverted when Spider-Man actually tries to sell his web formula to a chemical company, only for the executives to reject the offer. Further subverted when Spider-Man saves a banker/stock-broker who cuts Spider-Man a check — only for a bank-teller to deny the check since Spider-Man has no identification.
  • Osborn is a very good example of this trope, as it is often lampshaded—most notably by the Hobgoblin—that he could be several magnitudes wealthier if he just marketed his stuff, which would give him a lot of the power he is after anyway. It's explained and justified by the fact that Osborn is crazy.
• Da Editor: J. Jonah Jameson, who is probably the most famous example of this trope by far — even serving as its page image.
• Damsel in Distress: All of Spider-Man's girlfriends and love interests at some point or another. Gwen Stacy is most famous for the fact that Spider-Man didn't save her. MJ, on the other hand, often fights like a wildcat when someone non-superpowered tries to grab her.
• Damsel out of Distress: Go ahead and try to kidnap Mary Jane...call us when you stop hurting from the smackdown she'll give you.
• A Day in the Limelight: Different characters related to Spider-Man, such as supporting cast members, villains, and second-tier heroes who first appeared in spider-books have all been developed over the years via subplots and main storylines or even spin-off mini-series.
  • Matt Fraction's "To Have and to Hold" is entirely about Mary Jane Watson and it's considered one of the great Spider-Man stories.
• Deadpan Snarker:
  • Our dashing hero normally makes You Fight Like a Cow remarks, which never fails to piss off his enemies — and he very well knows this.
  • Venom too, though he's much more of a Large Ham spewing out Black Comedy.
• Death by Origin Story: Uncle Ben. His murder is what makes Spider-Man decide to become a crime fighter.
• Deceased Parents Are the Best: Peter's parents were agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and once saved Wolverine's life. Likewise, Uncle Ben was a World War II veteran and a great Dad.
• Distaff Counterpart: At last count, Spider-Man has had no less than five of them, including his own daughter. Unlike most versions, none of them had any major connections to Peter and stood on their own. In fact, in an odd inversion, when the second Spider-Woman was introduced in Secret Wars (1984), the Marvel EIC at the time wanted him to have a black costume similar to hers. Thus, the black costume was made, leading to the creation of Venom years later. Some of the villains would get this too, including Sandman and the Scorpion.
• Divergent Character Evolution:
  • Venom is currently undergoing this in recent titles since much of the role that he originally occupied, as a scary murderous villain, Shadow Archetype and Evil Counterpart to Spider-Man and Anti-Hero Substitute were later given to Carnage, Kaine, Superior Spider-Man, and Ben Reilly alongside a slew of other new characters who have Spider powers like Miles Morales and Silk in the mainline canon. As such Venom is reinterpreted into a new mythos and identity separate by itself.
  • The Hobgoblin was invented by Roger Stern as a variant of Norman Osborn's Green Goblin, a popular villain with many Legacy Character after him taking on the identity but all seen as pretenders to his crown. Stern saw Hobgoblin as a master criminal without insanity and as a new kind of goblin that could be Norman's long-term replacement after he had been killed off. However, by the time of The '90s, Norman had come Back from the Dead, and the new Norman while still insane was also a high-functioning sociopath and master plotter and planner. Not only was the Green Goblin back but the advantages that the Hobgoblin supposedly had over Norman had been erased, and as such Roderick Kingsley is reinterpreted in recent comics as a master-criminal networking fixer who creates identities to loan/borrow/buy for other criminals while Norman has bought out Kingsley's company and established himself as top goblin.
• Don't Tell Mama: The original Green Goblin uses his last words to beg Parker not to tell his son about who he was. Sandman keeps his mother in the dark about his criminal activities, and Spider-Man goes to some lengths to keep Aunt May ignorant of his identity as well.
• Driven to Villainy: Several, most notably Lizard and most strongly Hobgoblin 2112.
• Egomaniac Hunter: Kraven the Hunter is able to hunt down and kill everything and anything up until he gets to Spider-Man; this sole failure is what ends up having him obsessively spend lifetimes hunting after Spidey as a result.
• Electric Slide: Electro does this constantly as a Fast as Lightning means to get around. Sometimes he may end up being electricity in the wires he slides down.
• Elemental Shapeshifter:
  • The villain Hydro-Man can transform all or part of his body into water.
  • Similarly, Sandman has the ability to change his body into sand.
  • At one point the two got mushed together into a monster called Mud Man.
• Entitled Bastard: J. Jonah Jameson manages to constantly paint Spider-Man in a negative light, create Scorpion, gets into fights and kidnappings with other villains — and Spidey still covers for him every time.
• Failed a Spot Check: Some common criminals have done this to Spidey. Particularly, doing things like robbing a restaurant he is eating at because they thought the guy in the spidey costume at the corner table was just some guy eating in his pajamas and could not possibly be the real deal.
• Faith in the Foe: Spidey has been framed for murder, again. And Abe Jenkins, formerly The Beetle, now MACH-1, is certain of his innocence because he knows who Spidey is as a hero.
• A Family Affair: Norman Osborn had an affair with his son's fiancée Lily Hollister. This isn't even the worst thing he's done to Harry.
• Fanservice Characters: Mary Jane Watson and Felicia Hardy/Black Cat both provide Fanservice in the majority of their appearances in the franchise. Given that MJ is a model and actress and Felicia's choice of clothing as well as being a sexy cat thief and a seductress, it's not surprising.
• Fat and Skinny: Styx and Stone have it all but stated in their names — Styx is horribly lanky and tall, while Stone isn't necessarily fat, but monstrous and burly.
• Fix Fic: One More Day and the follow-up One More In Time were intended as this by the editorial thing though fans questioned if there was anything broken that needed fixing to begin with. Roger Stern's "Hobgoblin Lives" was likewise one which fixed the tangled mess left when he couldn't complete the story he had planned.
• Formula with a Twist: Spider-Man was the first attempt to create a prominent superhero who was also a flawed, but developing Kid Hero. Stan Lee wanted to avoid the practice of making a Kid Hero into a Kid Sidekick, and also wanted the character to naturally grow older and wiser. While heroic to a fault, Peter Parker was very much still a teenager with selfish concerns, personal insecurities, and life lessons yet to be learned.
• Freudian Excuse: Several villains were revealed to have these in their backstories. The trope is applied literally in the cases of Doctor Octopus and Electro, who had coddling and stifling mothers, respectively.
• From a Single Cell: Sandman and Hydro-Man have this ability — so long as one grain of sand or one drip of water is left in their mass, they can reform like nothing; as long as there's more sand or water nearby.
• From Bad to Worse: Cletus Kasady was an Ax-Crazy Serial Killer serving 12 consecutive life sentences for the roughly 10% of his crimes they could prove. Then his blood got infected with a stronger evolved version of the Venom symbiote. Then it got switched out for a cannibalistic cosmic parasite. Then got robot legs.
• Genetic Engineering Is the New Nuke: Modern versions of the story typically have the spider that bites Peter be genetically engineered rather than radioactive.
• Genre-Busting: Spider-Man as a whole is a superhero story that is also a classic Coming of Age Story, a high school drama, romance story of all kinds (from teen romance all the way to epic melodramatic Star-Crossed Lovers stuff), kitchen sink working-class drama, a Screwball Comedy, science-fiction, and horror.
• Girl Next Door: Gwen Stacy, originally. Mary Jane, in all versions but the original. Amusingly Mary Jane was literally a girl next door in the original, as the niece of Aunt May's next-door neighbor. Gwen came from a totally different social background: her father was a respected elder citizen of New York who belonged to the same gentlemen's club as millionaires J. Jonah Jameson and Norman Osborn. Her boyfriend before Peter was Harry Osborn, the prospective heir of Norman, while MJ came from the same working-class Queens background that Peter did.
• Hand Wave: A rather famous excuse whenever people ask where Spider-Man could be swinging from with no building in sight is that his web line is attached to an off-panel/offscreen helicopter.
• Hates My Secret Identity: It is a staple of any version of that franchise that Flash Thompson will bully Peter Parker while admiring Spider-Man. Also the case for Gwen Stacy who liked Peter but hated Spider-Man.
• Heel–Face Turn:
  • The Sandman eventually decided to try and go straight. It worked for a while, until John Byrne decided to have him declare he was faking reformation (which pissed off fans so much, that Marvel had to rush out a back-up story declaring that Wizard had brainwashed Sandman back to being evil/claiming he faked redemption.
  • Eddie Brock did this, first as Venom and later as Anti-Venom. Eddie could almost qualify as a Heel–Face Revolving Door.
• Iconic Sequel Character: Depending on your definition of "sequel" is:
  • Many characters iconic to the Spider-Man franchise don't actually appear until much later in the comic's run even if they were mentioned early. For instance, Mary Jane Watson was mentioned as early as Issue #15 and appeared (with her face obscured) in Issue #25 and another appearance in the Annual but she didn't have her first full appearance until Issue 42. Harry Osborn, Peter's best friend, and Gwen Stacy don't appear until Peter goes to college in Issue #28 but adaptations make them into high school students anyway.
  • The Green Goblin, Spider-Man's Arch-Enemy appeared in Issue 13 after the likes of Vulture, Mysterio, and the rest. The Kingpin comes more than 50 issues later. Black Cat appeared more than 190 issues in. Venom didn't make his first real appearance until issue 299 in 1988, over 25 years of publication later.
• Irrational Hatred: Jameson for Spider-Man, and in fact most villains for Spider-Man, such as Harry "Green Goblin II" Osborn who resented Peter for being his Always Someone Better.
• I Reject Your Reality: Jameson refuses to accept the opinions of others, including his own son, that Spider-Man is a hero, trying to make his confronters second guess themselves.
• It Began with a Twist of Fate: It varies based on universe and continuity, but Spider-Man generally gets bitten by a certain spider and gains his superpowers through a genuine twist of fate—by simply being in the right place at the right time. A character in a later story claimed that the spider chose Peter as it was dying. It saw Peter's suffering as a benefit, as someone like that once given power would never allow themselves to be a victim again.
• It's All About Me: Peter Parker had this attitude after he got bitten by a spider, saying that all he cares about is himself and Uncle Ben and Aunt May, and the rest can go to hell. An attitude that has its logical and tragic consequence when it leads directly to the death of his father figure. This attitude of selfishness is also something shared by many of Peter's supporting cast and on some level, all his villains. Jameson in particular, though he also navigates it somewhat.
• Jerk Jock: Flash Thompson. Later subverted in that he smartened up and returned from his overseas military service a much better man. However, Green Goblin put him in a coma and he developed amnesia and lost all memories from the point that he entered the service. Luckily, he reverted back when he rejoined up and lost his legs.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Sometimes, J. Jonah Jameson.
• Keep the Home Fires Burning: Mary Jane gets this plot a lot, notably in the Kraven's Last Hunt storyline.
• Knight of Cerebus: Most of Spidey's villains are silly and corny — even Venom can pull off a great few laughs. Carnage is 9 times out of 10 not that villain — resorting to Dead Baby Humor and just wanting to kill everyone on the entire planet for his own twisted excitement.
• Knockout Gas: Enemies of Spider-Man have used it from time to time. Mysterio, Kraven, the Chameleon, the Hobgoblins, and Green Goblins are all culprits.
• Laser-Guided Karma: J. Jonah Jameson's poor treatment of Peter Parker and his financing attempts to capture/kill Spider-Man have repeatedly come back to haunt him.
• Life Drinker: Morlun belongs to a race, the Ancients, that maintain their immortality by draining life energy from people, especially people who are an animalistic totem.
• Lizard Folk: Well, The Lizard.
• Magic Meteor: The Looter's whole shtick was stealing meteorites for their power-granting ability.
• Magnetism Manipulation: The villain Electro once had this as his main power. He was able to negate his weakness to water by making it evaporate with electromagnetism before it touched him. he was also able to paralyze people by overcharging their synapses with it. Otherwise, his normal Shock and Awe powers had basic electromagnetic capabilities which he used for things like Wall Crawl and fast travel on metal objects.
• Make Some Noise: Clayton Cole, aka Clash, is a self-proclaimed "Superstar of Sound", allowing him to torture Spidey with painful sound waves without causing damage to their surroundings. But he can still demolish walls and even bring down buildings with his sonic pulse generators.
• Make Them Rot: Carrion, a minor enemy, has the ability to cause organic matter to rot with a touch.
• Master of Disguise: Chameleon. He wears exquisitely made latex masks, is a skilled mimic, and his own mask is equipped with voice changer software.
• Master of Illusion: Mysterio. It's his specialty, and he is even often referred to by this exact title. Though his illusions are all based on his previous employment in the special effects industry.
• Meta Origin: The spider that bit Peter was revealed to have given powers to two others, Silk (who was also bitten) and the Thousand (who ate it in a bid to become superhuman, explaining what happened to it).
• Monster Modesty: Spidey has had several monstrous villains over the years. While some employ Nonhumans Lack Attributes, we do get characters like The Lizard and Vermin, two monster characters who have varying degrees of intelligence and enjoy running around in torn-up pants (and a lab coat in the Lizard's case).
• Motive Decay: None of Spider-Man's villains ever started out with stable motives:
  • Doctor Octopus tends to jump around from being the strongest around, to destroying New York / The World, to ruling New York / The World, proving he's the smartest, or being a crime lord. Justified when you take his brain damage into account. Not quite Motive Decay when you consider his original Evil Plan was to... hold some hospital staff hostage, followed by some odd scheme to take over a nuclear power plant and rebuild it in his own image, for a purpose whose details were never specified. He then started committing crimes solely to lure Spider-Man into a fight in order to avenge his past defeats.
  • Green Goblin's early motives were to become New York's crime lord, humiliating Spider-Man, and then after being hit with Easy Amnesia, he goes dormant, resurfaces to murder Gwen Stacy, goes underground in Europe, and plots The Clone Saga for, profit? and then since returning, he has become even more erratic than usual.
• Ms. Fanservice: Any of Spider-Man's girlfriends qualify as this with examples like Betty Brant, Gwen Stacy, or Carlie Cooper, but Mary Jane Watson and Black Cat pretty much rank #1 on the list.
• Multi-Armed and Dangerous:
  • Doppelganger has multiple clawed arms.
  • Doctor Octopus famously sports four additional mechanical limbs, as do derivatives from Doc Ock's mold like Lady Octopus and the Squid.
• Mutual Envy: The Spider-Man/Human Torch Trade Paperback "I'm With Stupid" shows their relationship through the years, with the last story, "I'm With Stupid" pointing out the good things they have: Spidey gets to be near all the hot women and also be able to follow Reed without needing a translation into "normal," Johnny gets to have the trappings of fame and go to various universes Spidey would do anything to go to. Or the perks of power "with NONE of the responsibility."
• Narcissist: A trait that nearly all Spider-Man characters to some level have shown at different times:
  • Peter after being bitten by a spider, decides to court celebrity and fame as a performer rather than use his newfound superpowers and changes for scientific analysis and research. While Uncle Ben's death teaches him why this isn't good, he still retained a narcissistic streak well into his later years such as Roger Stern's "The Daydreamers" where he dreams about winning the Pulitzer, the Nobel, joining the Avengers and the Fantastic Four at the same time with both of them fighting each other over him, and of course Jameson kisses his boots and grovels at his feet. This changes after his marriage with Mary Jane when both of them realize their Hidden Depths and he becomes more genuinely selfless. Post-OMD, he retains some sense of it, such as insisting to Mary Jane that it's okay for him to lie to Carlie Cooper for his double life because he wants her to love him for "plain ol' Pete" only for her to dump him, as MJ more or less predicted she would when she finds out that he lied to her. And as Peter Lampshades in Nick Spencer's run, he rather liked the fame and adulation that came with being a CEO of a company with unearned wealth and degree.
  • Even his work as Spider-Man has an element to it. Peter's main angst as Spider-Man is primarily how his guilt affects him and him personally, how it screws up his life, and how his attempts to help others cause problems for him because he's misunderstood or he's unlucky. His reaction to Goblin killing Gwen is how Norman killed "his woman". In Slott's "No One Dies", his excessive concern and grief over losing loved ones leads him to add a new Heroic Vow which Mary Jane points out is excessive and grandiose since he's a superhero and not god and that his great sensitivity tends to make him lose sight of what he is actually capable of and what his actual responsibilities are.
  • Narcissism is also a trait and flaw for many of Peter's supporting cast one which they overcome. Flash Thompson goes from a selfish jock to a dedicated serviceman inspired by Spider-Man to serve something bigger than himself. Gwen Stacy in Ditko's run started out as a self-absorbed Ice Queen before mellowing out to an overly sensitive girl in Lee-Romita's run. J. Jonah Jameson is of course almost supremely self-absorbed and self-centered even when he is doing good, acting noble, and serving something bigger than himself, with his narcissistic side co-existing with his heroic side.
  • Mary Jane is interesting for someone whom others see as this, and who also tells herself that she is one many times, but actually proves to be more consistently selfless than most. After walking out of her broken home and abandoning her sister to make something of her life, she became devoted to her Aunt Anna and even her neighbor May Parker, notably being friendly and visiting them even when Peter was too busy. Her decision to stick by Peter in The Night Gwen Stacy Died even after she lashes out at him. Her support and encouragement of Peter being Spider-Man during one of his "Spider-Man no more" phases when they were friends (thinking out how she, the most irresponsible person she knows, prefers Peter continuing to remain the most responsible man person she has ever met), and ultimately becoming a very devoted, faithful, and loving wife to Peter. Post-OMD, MJ lapses into her pre-character development narcissism but her selfless streak returns from time to time (such as encouraging Peter to find love and happiness even if she is still in love with him herself), helping her boss Tony Stark, and flirting with superheroics even when she doesn't want to.
• No Ontological Inertia: The Lizard always regrows his right arm when in monster mode, and it just dissolves when he reverts to human.
• Not Me This Time: This happens to Spider-Man a lot, apparently. In Fallen Son: The Death of Captain America, Peter visits Uncle Ben's grave and sees Rhino walking through the cemetery. He attacks, thinking he's up to something (despite Rhino pleading that he isn't here to fight), and their fight breaks a gravestone belonging to Rhino's mother... which was the only reason he was there in the first place. When he realizes this, Spider-Man attempts to apologize, but Rhino is, understandably, far too angry to listen.
  • In the Spider-Man spin-off Jackpot, the heroine, later accompanied by Spidey himself, beats up a minor villainess who was smuggling but really hadn't anything to do with what Jackpot wanted to know about. The snippy answer of the villainess was something along the lines of: "What? Do you think every villain in New York gets a daily update about every crime?!"
• Not Quite Flight: Spider-Man sometimes uses his webbing to create glider-wings, parachutes, bungee cords, and other means to send himself through the air when there are no convenient tall buildings or trees to swing from.
• The Notable Numeral: The Sinister Six.
• Not Me This Time: Subverted in that even though Norman Osborn will often deny involvement in a scheme hurting Spider-Man, lazy writing will often retcon him as being the mastermind.
• Official Couple Ordeal Syndrome: Pretty much all of Spidey's love interests, but Mary Jane will be the stand out example, since she's not only the target of the villains, but also of Marvel editors.
• The One Who Made It Out: Some of the stories (at least before the Dan Slott era^note Where Peter is a CEO businessman) deal with Peter's Angst about the fact that being Spider-Man is delaying or hurting his ambitions and plans for his career or attempts to live up to his potential. This is also part of the arc of his supporting characters.
  • Norman Osborn in his revival often taunted Peter for being an underachiever who more or less still lives in the same way he did as a young man, was still poor, and came off as an underachiever. Doctor Octopus in the Superior Spider Man initially expressed the same views.
• Outdated Outfit: The early Steve Ditko-drawn issues are especially bad for this. Seeing almost all the adult men wearing fedoras, teenage boys wearing bow ties, and girls wearing long skirts are especially jarring by today's standards.
• Outside-Genre Foe: While Peter does live in the Fantasy Kitchen Sink that is the Marvel Universe, he largely sticks to traditional supervillains. However, he has encountered a few villains who fall into either more grounded or fantastical genres:
  • Shathra and Morlun are more on the magical side of things, the former being the avatar of spider wasps while the latter is a type of vampire that feeds on the life essense of people from across the multiverse who are connected to the web of life and destiny.
  • While they haven't lasted long, he has encountered ordinary people who for whatever reason have come into conflict with him as Peter Parker with many of them belonging to more dramatic and realistic genres. A notable example is Jonathan Caesar, a stalker who kidnapped Mary Jane and threatened to kill her if they don't get married.
• Painted-On Pants: Mary Jane usually wears these. So does the Black Cat, both in and out of costume.
• Pair the Spares: It's fairly common for supporting cast members to get bounced around like this. Harry Osborne used to date Mary Jane, but ended up marrying Peter's high school love interest Liz Allen after she hooked up with Peter. Similarly, Flash Thompson has dated Mary Jane, Gwen Stacy, Black Cat, Liz Allen, and Betty Brant, though only Betty and the Black Cat were exes at the time.
• Phlegmings: Just about every time Venom or some other symbiote-based character appears.
• Pick on Someone Your Own Size: Most of the villains Spider-Man met when he was a teenager only developed a hatred for him after he kept getting in their way. One notable exception was the Green Goblin, who intended to make an impression on the New York mobs by capturing Spider-Man, who he thought would be an easy target. It all went downhill from there.
• Portable Hole: The Spot's main gimmick (due to a Freak Lab Accident, of course).
• Power Perversion Potential: The Chameleon, a shapeshifter and Master of Disguise, provides a very creepy example. On one occasion when he discovers Spidey's secret identity, he disguises himself as Peter with the intention of committing a Bed Trick on Mary Jane. It doesn't get further than kissing, however, as she is immediately able to tell that he's not Peter (it helps that she deliberately slips him some misinformation that the real Peter would have known to be wrong, just to make sure). When MJ calls him out on it, Chameleon then turns into a stereotypical muscular hunk, and then a sophisticated-looking older man, to show that he can take any physical visage she might fantasize about, before shifting back to his normal form with the intention of taking her by force anyway. Unfortunately for him, though, this is the moment when MJ beats the ever-loving crap out of him with a baseball bat.
• Progressively Prettier:
  • This hit all the cast after Ditko stepped down and Romita Sr. took over. Peter went from looking like this◊ to looking like this◊ with a much stronger jawline. Likewise Gwen Stacy◊ under Ditko was a Perpetual Frowner with a Malfoy-esque sneer transformed into this angelic◊ beauty. Averted with Mary-Jane Watson who was The Faceless and The Ghost for most of Ditko's run albeit it was implied that she was quite gorgeous (based on the reactions of Liz Allan and Betty Brant who saw her before Peter did), but it's a Riddle for the Ages how Ditko's version of Mary-Jane would have looked like. Romita had a background in romance comics and naturally tended to make the cast attractive, and this transformed Peter from a regular Stereotypical Nerd to someone considered by the many women he ends up dating throughout the series as Endearingly Dorky. This coincides with his physical appearance getting upgraded, going from looking like Sal Mineo to looking like James Dean. Romita's version has actually become Peter's default look in the comics.
• Psycho Electro: It's a guy named Electro. Of course he's an insane bastard.
• Put on a Bus: This happened to several characters over the years, ranging from Liz Allan to Flash Thompson to Debra Whitman to Harry Osborn to even Mary Jane herself. It turned out to be a round trip, since subsequent writers would bring them all back at one point or another.
• Real-Place Background: The Marvel Universe was renowned for being set in New York as opposed to the fictional cities of DC heroes, but even then Spider-Man still stood out originally for being the most tied to the city since the Fantastic Four had global and cosmic adventures while Doctor Strange likewise was an esoteric figure:
  • A number of famous stories and plots use real-life places and monuments. Most notably, Gwen Stacy died at the George Washington Bridge (though confusingly Romita Sr. modeled it on the Brooklyn Bridge) and it's not uncommon for real-life tourists and visitors to treat the real bridge as a memorial to her fictional death. Likewise, Peter and MJ's famous Make-Out Point is at the top of the Empire State Building, celebrated as their spot since "The Wedding" annual, and revisited in Matt Fraction's "To Have and to Hold" as well as Spider-Island.
• Reptiles Are Abhorrent: Apparently turning into a reptile is what turns Curt Connors into a humanity-hating villain. Blame it on that "lizard brain" thing, supposedly.
• Rogues Gallery: The Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus, Electro, the Shocker, the Rhino, Mysterio, etc. It's probably the second most famous rogues gallery in comics, with only Batman outdoing it.
• Rogues Gallery Showcase: The original "Sinister Six" story was this more than anything, as the story featured Spider-Man fighting each of his enemies one on one rather in a group.
• Rogues' Gallery Transplant: A regular import-export trade exists in the rogues gallery between Spider-Man and other Marvel heroes:
  • One example that is practically the Trope Codifier for this effect: Wilson Fisk, the Kingpin of Crime. He began as a Spider-Man villain, and a generic villain mob-boss at that. Frank Miller revived and reinterpreted him as a major threat (modeled on The Octopus from Will Eisner's The Spirit) during his run on Daredevil, making him Matt Murdoch's archenemy and playing a relatively smaller role in Spider-Man stories after that. Miller's Fisk became an iconic and influential supervillain of The '80s inspiring the Post-Crisis take on Lex Luthor which in a case of Lost in Imitation later inspired the Post-Clone Saga Norman Osborn.
  • It almost happened with The Sandman. After the first two battles he had with Spidey, he became an almost exclusive Fantastic Four villain for the next 10 years. And later on he had a Heel–Face Turn and temporarily joined The Avengers. A similar situation happened with the Rhino, who for a while clocked more time as a villain in The Incredible Hulk.
  • Mysterio did this once on purpose because the real Spidey wasn't available, and made enough of an impression (notably, he indirectly caused the death of Karen Page) that he arguably still has a place among Dardevil's foes. He is still mostly a Spidey villain but when he shows up, there is a higher than normal chance that Daredevil will too. Likewise in Old Man Logan he became a villain for Wolverine.
  • Boomerang, a standard Spidey foe, was initially a villain to the Hulk. He was moved to Spidey when it became clear that a monster like the Hulk was a little out of the weight class of a Badass Normal with trick boomerangs.
  • Spider-Man has also tussled with a few of Fantastic Four's villains (since historically he has had the closest bond with them). Most notably Doctor Doom has appeared in some major stories, being the first Marvel Wide villain Spider-Man fought in the Lee-Ditko era, when he accidentally kidnapped Flash thinking he was Spider-Man (of course, Doom has fought pretty much every hero in the Marvel Universe at one point or another). Their paths also crossed a number of times, most notably in recent times being in the 50th issue of JMS' run where Spider-Man saves his life from a terrorist attack when Peter, MJ, Captain America and Doom were all stranded at the Denver Airport on account of a storm.
  • One of Spider-Man's all-time greatest battles with any villain was with the Juggernaut, an X-Men villain, in The Amazing Spider-Man #229–230. This battle got a sequel during the Grim Hunt arc. Then later, Spider-Man fought Firelord, a former Herald of Galactus, who was a villain of The Avengers in ASM #269-270. Both villains were intended to establish Spider-Man as the ultimate underdog, battling enemies beyond his wheelhouse, and defeating them on his own when usually they gave both the X-Men and the Avengers problems and needed a super-team to take them down.
  • Shriek started off fighting Cloak and Dagger but more commonly fights Spidey since, due to their relative obscurity compared to Spidey. She's also well-known as Carnage's girlfriend.
  • As of Dark Reign, Norman Osborn has become an archenemy of the entire Earth-based Marvel universe, second only to Doctor Doom before being downgraded and returning to Spider-Man's titles in Dan Slott's run.
  • Beetle IV, or Lady Beetle, started out fighting Captain America before quickly being moved to Spidey's corner.
  • Shocker has been a consistent Spidey villain, outside of his stints with the Masters of Evil and the Thunderbolts. As of 2018, however, he's moved to New Jersey and started tangling with Kamala Khan.
  • Interestingly, Arcade debuted in Marvel Team-Up, a series about Spidey teaming up with different heroes, but quickly became an X-Men villain before antagonizing the Avengers Academy without ever crossing paths with Spider-Man. In The Amazing Spider-Man (2018), he's resurfaced as a Spidey foe once more.
• Rousseau Was Right: Depending on the Writer. A running theme in Spider-Man stories, at least after Ditko left (since his run of stories generally had one-dimensional villains and his later objectivist turn was explicitly anti-Rousseauian). Spider-Man often believes that even his enemies are capable of being good or reforming, since as an imperfect man with the blood of his Uncle on his hands, he is himself trying to be a better person.
  • Notably both Norman and Goblin, and Harry Osborn became sympathetic and still from time to time affect some sympathetic traits (albeit in the case of Norman since The '90s he's been shown as pure unadulterated scum). Recent examples include Eddie Brock and Doctor Octopus somewhat. Even The Sandman has done a turn or two as a hero.
  • This is also the case of Spider-Man's supporting cast. Most obviously Flash Thompson, Peter's high school bully who via Character Development becomes a better person, apologizes to Peter and later dies a hero. Then there's J. Jonah Jameson who Peter respects for his good qualities and Hidden Heart of Gold but begrudges for his dislike of Spider-Man and his smear tactics. Even JJJ has turned around now after Peter revealed his identity to him.
• Run the Gauntlet: Spidey's first battle with the Sinister Six was one of these, where he was forced to battle the Vulture, Electro, Kraven, Sandman, Mysterio, and Doctor Octopus one after another to save Aunt May and Betty Brant.
• Sanctuary of Solitude: Venom's origin story: Eddie Brock, down-on-his-luck reporter, is contemplating suicide in a church◊ while Spider-Man is trying to escape from the Symbiote. After he successfully drives it off, it bonds with Eddie, and Venom is born.
• Save the Villain: Shortly before the Gathering of Five arc, Spidey actually had to rescue Norman Osborn, and this Trope can be combined with What You Are in the Dark for that occasion. The Kingpin sent Nitro the Living Bomb to assassinate Osborn, which resulted in him, Spidey (in his civilian identity as Peter Parker) and Norman's little grandson Normie trapped in an elevator that was about to collapse, both of them pinned. Norman, being the Magnificent Bastard he is, actually took this time to gloat a little, telling Peter that he had no idea whether or not the security cameras were still working, and telling him that any displays of Super-Strength by Peter could possibly give him away to anyone who was watching. Of course, Norman was just as strong, but claimed he was unwilling for that very reason. (Or maybe he was waiting until the last second, or was actually unable to free himself, just too proud to ask for help. We may never know.) Eventually, Peter had to take the chance to save Normie (and found out quickly that the security cameras had been quite broken by the explosion) and might have considered leaving his enemy to fall. But when Normie begged him to save his grandfather, he relented, and helped get Norman out. Even then, Norman couldn't help but goad him a little, telling him that if he had done nothing he would have been victorious in their feud. (And this would be a very large turning point in it; Norman would perform the Gathering of Five to gain more power to prevent things like this again, would be driven far more insane, his identity of the Goblin would be revealed, and his enmity with Spider-Man would become much deadlier than before.)
• Schoolyard Bully All Grown Up: Subverted in that Flash Thompson matured and became a much nicer guy after he graduated from high school and enlisted in the army. His tour of duty made him a much more intelligent and introspective character.
• Screens Are Cameras: The earliest versions of the Spider-Slayer robots worked this way. The robots, piloted remotely by J. Jonah Jameson, would seem to have no technological need to project JJJ's face onto a TV screen mounted on the robot's "head," but that's exactly what they do.
• Second-Face Smoke: J. Jonah Jameson does this a lot; Spidey has found ways of reversing it on him once in a while.
• Seduction-Proof Marriage: In "To Have and To Hold", a SHIELD agent who was formerly MJ's bodyguard in Los Angeles where they were friendly in a period where she and Peter were briefly separated tries to signal an interest in her, which she rebukes:
  Mary Jane: "Is that what you think we were? You work my security detail for a few months and now — now you’re Mr. S.H.I.E.L.D. man here to rescue me from my big, bad life? He’s my husband. You’re just some dude."
• Seductive Spider: The Queen is a villainess with mystical control over spiders, and is an extremely sexy woman who uses both her beauty and mental powers to seduce and control others. She once chose Spider-Man as her "mate"; unfortunate for him, as he was both married at the time and "mating" meant that he would be the one impregnated, not the other way around.
• Shout-Out: Probably the most of any Marvel character outside of Deadpool, as Spider-Man's quippy nature and slight geekiness makes these easy. It goes far enough that at one point when he shows up in Runaways, and the characters begin to say "Look! It's—" he interrupts with "That's right... I'm Batman."
• Sick Episode: Quite a few over the years, invariably right before a major opponent shows up. Kraven the Hunter is a good example. The most famous is probably Spider-Man having a cold The Night Gwen Stacy Died.
• Sky Surfing: The Green Goblin and Hobgoblin can do this with their respective Goblin Gliders.
• Spider Limbs: A lot of instances of this trope have cropped up over the comic's history.
  • Firstly, there's arch enemy Doctor Octopus and his four back-mounted mechanical tentacles.
  • Then there is the Iron Spider armor Tony Stark gives Spider-Man in the Civil War has three retractable arms.
  • There's also Midnight Sons rogue Spider-X, who has bony spider-limbs.
  • Pre-dating the Civil War Iron Spider armor, a possible future Spider-Man was shown to be a genius with Powered Armor using a similar system to Doc Ock's. Interestingly, the future Goblin serving as his nemesis had equivalent technology on her armor as well.
  • Spider-Man once had a teenage fanboy named Ollie Osnick who built himself a set of mechanical spider legs and tried to become Spidey's sidekick. Since he was a clumsy, out-of-shape teenager with no combat experience, it was a good thing that Spider-Man was able to talk him out of it before he hurt himself. A few years later, he reemerged as the Steel Spider, having gotten into shape and learned some hand-to-hand fighting ability in the interim. After beating up some guys who'd attacked his girlfriend, he decided to hang up the costume but then reemerged during the Civil War on the anti-registration side. His super-hero career apparently ended when he fought the Thunderbolts and Venom bit off and ate one of his arms and he was imprisoned in the Negative Zone.
  • The Superior Spider Man adds similar waldoes to his second costume. Makes sense, since he's actually Doctor Octopus after stealing Spidey's body and life. They are destroyed during the "Goblin Nation" arc.
  • The third and fourth Spider-Woman both possessed these at different points. Originally they were a power of Charlotte Witter (Spider-Woman IV), as a result of genetic manipulation by Doc Ock. After a lot of back-and-forth power-stealing, the limbs — along with the other powers of all three other "Spider-Women" — ended up with Mattie Franklin (Spider-Woman III).
  • This has happened to Spidey before, but he managed to cure his condition thanks to the help of Dr. Curt Connors (a.k.a. the Lizard).
• Statuesque Stunner: Stunner, who's over seven feet tall and looks like a bodybuilder in a skintight leotard. True to her name, she is described as breathtakingly beautiful, and in her first appearances, brags about how beautiful she is to some patrons at a bar, who judging by the smiles on their faces, don't disagree. It's later revealed that the reason why she's so beautiful is because she's actually a virtual reality construct (tangible hologram) controlled by Angelina Brancale. Angelina is an obese woman who wants to be thin and beautiful, so Doctor Octopus, another Spider-Man villain and her lover at the time, gives her a machine that allows her to be a Stunner.
• Status Quo Is God:
  • Until approximately The Amazing Spider-Man #38, Spider-Man had organic real-time Character Development going from 15-year-old teenager to high school student, to freshman at college similar to other Marvel characters at the time which averted Comic-Book Time. When this Early-Installment Weirdness ended (mostly because it became clear that Stan Lee's trope-playing and trope-defying approach which he saw as best a temporary fad, had led to a lasting series of IP), Marvel adopted a new approach called "the illusion of change" as a result of which Peter Parker's aging and situation has frozen into more or less what it was since he was in college. He's at best in his mid-twenties and has been so since the late-60s.
  • The only major status-quo change since Peter graduated high school was when he married, an event that happened mostly by accident mostly because it was unexpectedly popular as an idea among the regular public. It lasted for 20 years in real-time where multiple generations of readers saw Spider-Man as the married superhero. Marvel editors and executives spent most of their time since then backpedaling and reversing Peter to single status. They succeeded after Civil War in the regular continuity at least.
  • Spider-Man is the street hero, and he's still struggling, a bit of a Butt-Monkey and a loner hero among the superhero continuity. The situation changed briefly in the run-up to the Civil War and stayed in place until Superior Spider Man alienated him from the superhero community again.
  • Mary-Jane Watson remains Peter's on-off Love Interest and no matter how many girlfriends and dates Peter and she have, they almost always return and start dating again sooner or later.
• Story Arc: Whenever single writers work on an extended run, they tend to create a particular serialized plot and story either dealing with a particular story or villain, or on a character and thematic level, this allows them the satisfaction of providing their readers a conclusion of some sort even if the serialized nature continues. The Amazing Spider-Man (Lee & Ditko), The Amazing Spider-Man (J. Michael Straczynski) and The Amazing Spider-Man (Dan Slott) have their own pages dealing with stories in their runs. For other writers:
  • Lee-Romita's arc was more episodic but the overall theme was to give Peter a social circle and a series of friends, and try and have Peter get some direction for the future. Peter also struggles in this arc with his duties as a superhero and as friend and boyfriend (to both Harry Osborn and Gwen Stacy), getting neurotic because he keeps lying to them. This story arc gets resolved three times. The first is when Captain George Stacy, his second father figure after Ben's death and Spider-Man's first friendly authority figure dies, which also throws a wrench in his relationship with Gwen. Harry Osborn's drug issues create problems in his friendship with him, and then after Stan Lee left, it ends conclusively in Conway's The Night Gwen Stacy Died.
  • Gerry Conway's story arc which began with the death of Gwen Stacy and concluded in Issue #149 was essentially ending Peter's college era, and moving on from Gwen and falling in love with Mary Jane. Their growing friendship, love, and relationship which includes their First Kiss and ends with Their First Time (and probably Peter's first) was intended by Conway to signal Peter finding and overcoming tragedy and suffering, and experiencing a more adult romance than before. It also marked the end of Peter's Coming of Age Story from teenager to man.
  • Roger Stern who came over more than fifty issues after Conway left during which Spider-Man was run by Len Wein and Marv Wolfman who tended to avoid big story arcs, dealt with Peter at the midpoint of his youth. Where after leaving college he goes to graduate school and is considering becoming a serious scientist. He also introduced the Felicia and Peter romance and towards the end the love triangle between them and MJ. Likewise, Stern introduced the Hobgoblin mystery and the overall thematic arc is what people think of and expect of Spider-Man such as Felicia imagining Spider-Man as being a more sophisticated man than her, and Spider-Man as an object of wish fulfillment and heroism. The theme of masks and social roles is also dealt with deeply.
• Stranger Behind the Mask:
  • There was an early storyline, where the masked Crime Master, built up as a major threat similar to his predecessor Big Man (who had been Daily Bugle reporter Frederick Foswell). However, unlike Big Man, when Crime Master is shot and killed by police during the story climax, it's revealed that the man is completely unknown to both Spider-Man and the reader, though the police identify him as a fugitive. Spidey lampshades it by thinking "Sometimes, the culprit isn't always the butler."
• Stranger Behind the Mask: When Peter unmasks Electro, he has no connection to Electro's civilian identity Max Dillon and so has no idea who it is.
  • Despite lots of foreshadowing that he may be Harry Osborn (among others) when the fifth Green Goblin was unmasked, he turned out to be... nobody. Literally, it was some kind of Artificial Human created by Norman Osborn.
  • It's easy to forget this, but Venom was originally done like this. During Venom's introductory story arc, Spidey was being stalked by this maniac in the black symbiote suit he'd discarded who seemed to know his identity and monologued angrily to himself about how Spider-Man had ruined his life. He was seen unmasked early in the story, but the readers were unable to identify him, leaving them puzzled about who this mystery man actually is. Then when he finally captures Spider-Man and unmasks himself before him... he's a completely original character, whose backstory was Retconned into an existing Spider-Man story (the infamous Sin-Eater arc). Even worse, Peter knows who Brock is (although not to the extent that they knew each other in Spider-Man 3), making this a Stranger Behind The Mask for the readers only, verging on Remember the New Guy?.
  • Happened again during The Clone Saga, thanks to an editorial screwup. In an attempt to clean up the out of control storyline, Marvel retconned everything into being the work of a mystery man named Gaunt. He was intended to be Norman Osborn, the only villain with the credibility to pull off such a wide-ranging plot, but one writer didn't get the memo and dropped hints that Gaunt was serving a more powerful villain. They did an Author's Saving Throw by making Osborn this more powerful villain, and Gaunt was eventually unmasked as... Mendel Stromm, Osborn's business partner in his pre-supervillain days and a D-list villain called "The Robot Master" who'd had all of two previous appearances: the first in 1966 and the second in 1986, a full ten years before The Clone Saga.
  • Subverted at the end of Superior Spider Man. For over a dozen issues, the Goblin King has been dropping increasingly broad hints that he's Norman Osborn but always refuses to take the mask off. At the climax, Spider-Man rips off his mask, only to discover it's... some redheaded guy with a mustache he's never seen before. It turns out it really is Norman Osborn — he'd gotten plastic surgery since his original face had gotten too well-known.
  • Flipped on Spidey himself during the Mark Millar run in Marvel Knights: Spider-Man #4, in which an injured Spider-Man is abducted from his hospital bed by the Vulture, who angrily tears off the bandages covering his face and is completely deflated by the realization that he and his criminal buddies have been losing to a "nobody" for all this time.
• Teeth Flying: Venom's teeth often go flying when Spider-Man gives him a beating. Not that it matters much, since they grow back in seconds.
• Thinks of Something Smart, Says Something Stupid: In the Marvel Comics Omega Event crossover, Spider-Man meets up with The Punisher. When he sees that Frank Castle has a female sidekick, Spidey thinks to himself◊ that cracking a joke about it will just piss Frank off—but he can't stop himself from saying it.
  Spider-Man's internal monologue: Of course... The Punisher... and he's brought a friend. Who's a girl. Don't say it resist the urge he'll kill you don't don't—
  Spider-Man: So I see you've started dating again.
  Spider-Man's internal monologue: Stupid mouth!
• Took a Level in Badass:
  • Kraven's Last Hunt made Kraven a badass after several decades of being a loser villain.
  • MJ, during her character development and switch from friend to romantic interest. She started packing heat, took fighting lessons, and became far more practical and pragmatic in danger. Notable in the Newspaper comics, when Stan Lee got criticized for always making her a Damsel in Distress, so instead he turned her into a badass who often saves Peter's behind, which may or may not be the reason for her becoming a badass in comics too.
• The Topic of Cancer:
  • Used as Fate Worse than Death in one version - It turns out Eddie Brock has cancer which, through hormonal imbalance, causes fits of rage, ruining his life. The symptoms also attract the symbiote to him. The symbiote wants to take over Peter but ends up attached to Brock and unable to switch hosts again. It has the power to stop the cancer from spreading but can't afford to cure it as it relies on it for food - this leaves Brock superpowered, angry, and in constant pain - for the rest of his life.
  • A minor but very creepy villain Styx was at one point called "living cancer" - he was a victim of Playing with Syringes trying to find a cancer cure by way of Acquired Poison Immunity - by exposing him to mutagens. Instead, it gave him the power to make anything he touched wither and rot. The experience also twisted his mind - if his ability wasn't limited to reach, he would be an Omnicidal Maniac.
• True Love Is Boring: Outright stated by Word of God as the reason behind the Retconning of Peter and Mary Jane's divorce. And even before One More Day, writers and editors tried to break up, kill off, or otherwise end Peter and MJ's relationship time and time again. Also one of the reasons Gwen Stacy was killed. Nobody at Marvel was ready for a married Spider-Man yet, though in the case of Gwen, her being boring was also a reason (since MJ isn't, it's a lot harder to keep her out of Spider-Man's life).
• Unbuilt Trope: While obviously later writers didn't get the memo, the original Clone Saga by Gerry Conway was a Deconstruction of characters coming Back from the Dead, being fixated on The Lost Lenore, and not dealing with grief in a mature way. In that story, Prof. Miles Warren who became the Jackal (and who was intended as a one-time villain who died at the end of the story) is a stand-in for fans of Gwen Stacy who hounded Conway and others for killing off the character, and who likewise blamed Peter Parker and not the Green Goblin for her death. While the Gwen who came back is revealed later to be a clone, initially Peter and everyone assumed she was real, and Peter's still conflicted about Gwen's return because he's not the same person who loved her anymore, he has moved on and his feelings for MJ are stronger than his grief for Gwen, because unlike Miles Warren, who had a lecherous and creepy obsessive fixation for Gwen (putting her on a pedestal and fixating on her looks), Peter's at heart a normal and optimistic guy and indeed he overcomes his Clone Angst when he realizes that since he's now in love with Mary Jane, he's the real deal since the clones are all fixated on his past with Gwen. In other words, Conway's story is a proto-deconstruction to a number of comic tropes that came afterwards (i.e. Death Is Cheap, Status Quo Is God, Doppelgänger Replacement Love Interest especially as it came to be seen in the wake of The Dark Phoenix Saga) and why even should Gwen return, his feelings he once had for her would not be enough to renew a relationship which contrasts heavily with Cyclops dumping Madelyne Pryor for the revived Jean Grey even when he had married and had a child with her. It also contrasts completely against the spirit and intent of the second and more notorious Clone Saga which was a stunt intended to return Peter "back to basics" and reverse his Character Development.
• Useless Spleen: In the novel The Venom Factor, Venom states that when he finds whoever is responsible for the murders (that Venom is being wrongly accused of) he will eat his spleen. Spider-Man comments that this is an odd choice of organ to target and that Venom likely doesn't even know where someone's spleen is.
• Very Special Episode: Spider-Man has been a very popular character for very special episodes. Select narm-filled issues show our hero:
  • Saving a young boy from being molested by his female babysitter by telling the tale about how he was molested as a kid by an adult friend named "Skip", who had an uncanny resemblance to Uncle Ben◊. Marvel has stated, however, that the story is not canon.
  • Foiling a plot to inflict the youth of America with teen pregnancy by giving advice about sexuality.
  • Saving a stoner from jumping off a building. This mess was actually paid for with tax dollars, mind you.
  • Teamed up with Storm and Luke Cage to combat Smokescreen. Guess what this one is about
  • Teaming up with the Rangers and a paraplegic superheroine to teach the Calgary Stampede a lesson about road safety.
  • Spider-Man is also known for one of the better Very Special Episodes. Stan Lee was asked to write a very special episode about drugs by the government, and, instead of creating a Long-Lost Uncle Aesop to focus the story on, he chose to use an existing character, with bonus points for being a rich white male with known emotional issues. The Comics Code then refused to approve the comic, which was the beginning of the end for the CCA.
  • All these various issues would later be collected in a TPB "Spider-Man Vs. Substance Abuse".
• Vile Vulture: Adrian "The Vulture" Toomes is a villain who stylizes himself as a vulture to rob banks and kill Spider-Man.
• Villain Over for Dinner: Aunt May and Mary Jane have a tendency to be visited by Spidey's foes in civilian garb.
  • Venom visited them both, although Mary Jane knew who and what he was and spent a long time terrified of him. He visited Aunt May as "a friend of Pete's". However, it has to be noted that due to Venom's twisted sense of fair play, neither Mary Jane nor May were ever in any danger. Venom never made any threatening moves toward either of them, and Eddie Brock even chatted with May in a very friendly manner and helped her with household chores. Brock even gave Peter his word that he would never harm Aunt May. Later MJ took out the Chameleon when she realized that he wasn't Peter.
  • Norman Osborn did this a lot, obviously since he was one of the first villains to learn of Peter's secret identity. Though, a few of these times, even he wasn't aware he was the Goblin. Norman's son Harry did the same. Once again, Mary Jane was aware of what Harry had become and almost had a Heroic BSoD because of it. Remember, Mary Jane was friends with Harry and even dated him at one point.
• Villain Takes an Interest: The Green Goblin, especially since he's disappointed in the offspring.
• Walking Wasteland: Carrion and Styx.
• Wife-Basher Basher: Cardiac usually doesn't concern himself with this kind of criminal (as a vigilante, his goal is to punish people who hurt others and do horrendous things but use legal loopholes and technicalities to escape justice). However, in one issue, while he is staking out a place, he sees a man assault his wife in a nearby apartment, and decides he can't "in clear conscience", let it happen. (Unfortunately, while he is teaching the wife-beater a lesson, it gave his true target more of a head start than he'd have liked.)
• Will-o'-the-Wisp: There's a villain named Will o'the Wisp, who most often fights Spider-Man. He can control his density and hypnotize targets.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Green Goblin's origin. Though he was a piece of work for a long time before the formula made him worse.
• Wolverine Publicity:
  • As Marvel's Breakout Character, Spider-Man became the company mascot and in the early issues often appeared in multiple titles, predating Wolverine by more than a decade having passed even Wolverine and Deadpool in over-saturation as he is now either a member or guest-starring with the three big teams in the Marvel Universe—including the X-Men, the Avengers (both teams), and the new Fantastic Four (known as the FF); plus his own book is released twice a month.
  • Interestingly in Spider-Man's early issues, the Fantastic Four made appearances to boost the newcoming Spider-Man's popularity. The Human Torch made campus speeches in Peter's school, and Dr. Doom became the first Marvel-wide villain Spider-Man tussled with.
  • Recent comics have seen Spider-Man fall into Iron Man's orbit around the time he was getting his big push in the movies. He, Aunt May, and MJ moved into Stark Tower, Peter wore a suit designed by Tony Stark (Iron Spider), joined his side during the Civil War (before switching over to Team Cap midway), and in recent comics, Peter has even become Iron Man-lite in that he runs his own business and claims to be Spider-Man's employer and backer, while MJ actually transitioned from his supporting cast into Tony's for a while.
• Womanliness as Pathos: Gwen Stacy is a constant source of angst and turmoil for Peter, resulting in the circumstances of her death being retreaded several times throughout publication, as well as many stories that resulted directly from her death or the events immediately leading up to them. For example, The Clone Saga started when Stalker with a Crush Miles Warren cloned both her and Peter Parker as revenge for Peter letting the object of his affection die. The story Sins Past revealed more details about her past, including that she cheated on him with his archenemy Norman Osborn and bore two children.
• Wring Every Last Drop Out Of Her: Aunt May has been on the verge of death for four decades.
• X Called; They Want Their Y Back: In one story, Peter is going undercover at a club for Vampire Vannabes. He dresses in what he thinks is appropriate goth gear, only for an Edward Cullen lookalike to taunt "The nineties called, they want their vampire back!"
• Yandere: The Venom Symbiote for Spider-Man.
• Yin-Yang Bomb: Mister Negative. By day, Martin Li is the kindly, charitable owner of a soup kitchen whose visitors seem to be miraculously cured of their various ailments. By night the color-inverted Mister Negative is a ruthless gangster who warps Li's charitable works to his own criminal aim (unless it's Li who's covertly redirecting Mister Negative's efforts towards good).
• Zorro Mark: Kaine uses his wall-sticking powers on your face and pulls his hand away, resulting in the disfiguring "Mark of Kaine." Yeeowch. Fortunately (or unfortunately) the person he's doing this to is typically already dead.

Various runs

The Amazing Spider-Man

In General

• Coming of Age Story: Comics scholars generally see Amazing Fantasy #15 to The Amazing Spider-Man #149 (the Lee-Ditko, Lee-Romita, and Conway-Romita era) as an extended coming-of-age saga where Peter Parker gets superpowers at age 15, briefly use them for profit, then after failing to help stop a criminal who later kills his Uncle Ben, making him commit so becoming a Superhero and learn responsibility by becoming the caretaker and provider for his Aunt May, working for a living, and going to high school at the same time. The "Master Planner" arc was the period in which Peter ended his youth and became a college-going young adult, he would later form a serious relationship with Gwen Stacy before additional tragedy ends up leading to a loss of innocence, where his adult social circle is marked by tragedy and broken friendships (Gwen and Harry respectively). Most notably, Conway's final issue in his run, Issue 149, has Peter finally passing his rite of passage when it ends with what is strongly implied to be him and MJ having sex together, finally losing his virginity and becoming a man.
• Darker and Edgier: The tone of the Spider-Man comics in the original 100 issues run of The Amazing Spider-Man was generally light-hearted and grounded but it could vary within issues to something comedic to dark, angsty, and violent stories. Gerry Conway's run on Spider-Man was significantly darker than Lee and Romita's (featuring major character death, psychological breakdowns, and breaking up of friendships), and writers after him also balanced extremes in Peter's life.
• Good Colors, Evil Colors: In the first 25 issues of The Amazing Spider-Man, almost all of the many classic villains debuted incorporate the color green. Chameleon, Vulture, Tinkerer, Doctor Octopus, the Sandman, the Lizard, Living Brain, Electro, the Big Man, Mysterio, The Green Goblin, and the Scorpion all had green as a part of their overall look (Kraven the Hunter was the most notable exception). Even villains Spidey fought from other comics like Doctor Doom, the Ringmaster and the Beetle all prominently sported green. The creators may have realized this eventually, as many of the classic villains who debuted in the next 25 issues (Crime-Master, Molten Man, the Looter, the Rhino, the Shocker, Kingpin) started to subvert the trend.
• I Approved This Message: In The Amazing Spider-Man #611, Deadpool claims to have Blackest Night symbols on his toenails ("My feet are a rainbow of power!") with a footnote reading "I'm Geoff Johns and I approve this message — Geoff Johns, former Avengers writer".
• Lighter and Softer: When John Romita replaced Steve Ditko, Peter Parker's existence became less of a Crapsack World as a result.
• Took a Level in Badass: Electro was given a major power increase in The Amazing Spider-Man #425 to allow him Magneto-esque control over electromagnetic energies.
• Token Motivational Nemesis: The nameless thief who took Uncle Ben's life isn't mentioned for over a decade until he returns and dies in The Amazing Spider-Man #200. His only identified name is 'Carradine', and, thanks to the film, most fans have taken to calling him Dennis Caradine.

Lee & Ditko's run (Issues 1-38)

See The Amazing Spider-Man (Lee & Ditko)

Lee & Romita Sr.'s run (#39-109)

• Hypocritical Humor: In The Amazing Spider-Man #66, Spider-Man, of all people, tells Mysterio to Skip The Sarcasm.
• Knockout Gas: Lampshaded in "The Amazing Spider-Man #46", Just as Spider-Man is wondering where to start looking for The Shocker (A vibration based villain) He spots a cop in a police call box reporting strange tremors, causing Peter to say.

  Spider-Man: "Boy! if it had happened that easy in a movie, I'd say it was too phony!"

• Multi-Armed and Dangerous: In The Six Arm Saga, Spider-Man attempted to get rid of his superpowers... but the attempt failed rather spectacularly, giving him six arms.
• Rogues Gallery Showcase: The Amazing Spider-Man #100 features Spidey briefly battling various enemies, who call him out on his various insecurities, usually one that they share, finally culminating in his speaking with the recently deceased Captain George Stacy.

Gerry Conway's Spider-Man (#110-149)

• Real-Place Background: Marvel actually got into trouble for this in The Amazing Spider-Man #138. Ross Andru, Gerry Conway's collaborator, was fond of taking photographs and inserting real architecture into his backgrounds. However, for one issue he used a real house in Queens and made it into the location of the Mindworm. Readers in that area however recognized the house and immediately went over and pestered the owners about its unintended celebrity as the lair of the Mindworm which led the owners to sue Marvel and settle, and after that Marvel saw fit to disguise their use of locations better.
• Unexpected Inheritance: In The Amazing Spider-Man #131, Aunt May inherited a nuclear power plant.
• Villain Over for Dinner: In The Amazing Spider-Man #131, Aunt May almost marries Doctor Octapus.

Wein and Wolfman's run (#151–180)

• Can't Default to Murder: In The Amazing Spider-Man #161-162, Spider-Man was forced to team up with The Punisher, Spidey enforced his No-Killing rule by making Frank use rubber bullets. Frank complied, both because they didn't have any time for arguing and because this was very early in Frank's history, before he became the Garth Ennis-molded Blood Knight he is now. Of course, a rubber bullet to the head or throat is just as lethal, and an experienced Marine like Frank could have swapped out magazines holding real bullets without Spidey ever noticing. Other heroes, such as Captain America or Daredevil, have also tried to make Frank refrain from killing when teaming up with him. He doesn't always comply.
• Furnace Body Disposal: In The Amazing Spider-Man #151, Spider-Man disposes of the body of the first clone of Peter Parker (created by the Jackal) by dumping it down a smokestack into an industrial incinerator.
• Skyscraper Messages: In The Amazing Spider-Man #151'', Shocker does this by blacking out various electrical grids to spell out his name as part of a scheme to extort one million dollars from New York City.

Dennis O'Neill's run (#207-223)

• Sibling Fusion: The Amazing Spider-Man #208 introduces twin brothers Hubert and Pinky Fusser. Both worked at the same company but in different professions; Hubert was a scientist while Pinky was a janitor. An accident occurs during one of Hubert's experiments causing the two brothers to merge together into a being known as Fusion the Twin Terror.

Roger Stern's run (#224-251)

• Her Code Name Was "Mary Sue": Roger Stern's The Amazing Spider-Man #246 shows Felicia Hardy, Jameson, Mary Jane, and Peter Parker having a series of fantasies about their ideal world, in each of them they are larger-than-life, special, important, and come up on top.

Tom DeFalco's run (#252-285)

• Big Damn Heroes: In The Amazing Spider-Man #261, Spider-Man appears just in time to save Harry Osborn from a fight with the Hobgoblin.
• A Day in the Limelight:
  • Tom DeFalco wrote The Amazing Spider-Man #259, focusing on Mary-Jane's backstory which had been hinted at earlier but never elaborated.
  • The Amazing Spider-Man #248 focuses on Tim Harrison, a terminally ill child who was a huge fan of Spider-Man.
• From Bad to Worse: Played for laughs in The Amazing Spider-Man #266, when after a few incidents, both the Toad and Frog-Man decide they want to be his sidekick. Just when Spidey tempts fate by saying things can't get worse, the Spectacular Spider-Kid shows up. Spidey concedes things are worse. It's left open as to whether their new super-team of The Misfits is yet worse.

David Michelinie's run (#290-388)

• Art Evolution: Mark Bagley's issue as guest penciller, The Amazing Spider-Man #345, was rather rough and the proportions were off and Bagley didn't quite have the character design right. But by the time he'd grown into his role as a regular penciller, his work was so iconic that it was featured on just about every piece of Spider-Man merchandise.
• Cover Identity Anomaly: When Peter Parker's parents return from the dead, May realizes they're imposters when they refer to the wrong date for their anniversary, indicating that they somehow don't know about their secret wedding several months prior.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Doctor Doom delivers an incredibly one-sided one to Spider-Man in The Amazing Spider-Man #350, where the Latverian tyrant wipes the floor with him, reduces him to a pulp, and basically forces him to bargain for his life or face certain death.
• Post-Mortem Comeback: The entire robot-disguised-as-parents plan was set in motion by Harry Osborn (Green Goblin II) sometime before his death. It gets even better because while Harry eventually forgave Spider-Man and moved on, the last time he was seen (prior to One More Day) was here, on a videotape he'd made, gloating over an enraged Spider-Man.

J. M. DeMatteis' run (#389-406)

• 10-Minute Retirement: Inverted in the mid-90s story "Peter Parker No More", in which Spider-Man suffers a mental breakdown after one emotional hit too many, and decides to all but give up his civilian identity, spending all his time in costume.

J. Michael Straczynski's run (#500–545)

See The Amazing Spider-Man (J. Michael Straczynski)

Dan Slott's run (#546-801)

See The Amazing Spider-Man (Dan Slott)

The Spectacular Spider-Man

• Absurdly High-Stakes Game: The Spectacular Spider-Man #21 had a somewhat lighter-hearted version of this. The New York superheroes have a yearly poker game with twenty-dollar stakes with the winner donating their winnings to charity. Then along comes the Kingpin with a ridiculous amount of money. There's nothing really at stake more than pride and a good cause, but that doesn't mean it's any less entertaining to watch Spider-Man and Kingpin play out the final round with ludicrous piles of chips each. (Spidey won- his Spider-Sense means that he always knows whether or not someone's bluffing.)
• Alas, Poor Villain: Harry Osborn, the second Green Goblin in the later-retconned but still well-remembered story "Best of Enemies" in The Spectacular Spider-Man #200.
• Art-Style Dissonance: Spectacular Spider-Man #86 was published during Assistant Editor's Month, so the gimmick of that issue was that Bob DeNatale threw out Al Milgrom's artwork in favor of that of Fred Hembeck, whose style is far from realistic. The issue's storyline was that the Fly realised he was losing his humanity and sought revenge upon J. Jonah Jameson and Spider-Man, and the humor is limited to Spidey's usual wisecracks (apart from the humor stemming from Hembeck's art, like the Fly having Xs for eyes when Spider-Man punches him). After the Fly is defeated, Danny Fingeroth (the actual editor of the comic) returns and puts an end to the cartoonish artwork. You can see images from this issue here.
• Aside Comment: The cover of The Spectacular Spider-Man #246 has 4 bizarre-looking villains called the Legion of Losers. It also has Spider-Man turning to look at the reader and saying "You've gotta be kidding!". See it here◊.
• Covers Always Lie: The cover of The Spectacular Spider-Man #256 shows the White Rabbit riding a mechanical rabbit that is firing Gatling guns. In the story, there is a mechanical rabbit with a different design that is only used for transportation.
• Dating Catwoman: Subverted with The Queen. Despite her beautiful appearance and her flirting, Spider-Man is not attracted to her at all and finds her disgusting, but that doesn't stop her from forcing herself on him. However, all of New York thought this trope was being played straight when the News captured the first kiss between them and assumed it was Spider-Man who initiated the kiss with his new adversary.
• A Day in the Limelight: Gerry Conway's late 1980s, early 1990s Spectacular Spider-Man run was built upon the concept of "A Day In the Limelight", as far as his run centering around Joe Robertson, a longtime supporting cast member of Spider-Man. Similarly, the only Spider-Man stories by loathed writer Howard Mackie that are liked by fans are the ones that had Howard focusing on the supporting cast members.
• A Foggy Day in London Town: Knight and Fogg were two British super-powered contract killers who appeared in The Spectacular Spider-Man #165-167 back in 1990. The latter saw himself as the personification of the London fog and could transform his body into a gaseous form that obscured his opponents' sight; his favorite method of attack was to strangle his targets from afar with his partially solidified hands.
• If I Had a Nickel...: Spidey responding to a threat made by the Green Goblin during the "Goblins at the Gate" arc.
  Spider-Man: Goblin, if I had a nickel for every time I heard a threat like that... well, I'd be one very rich friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.
• It's Cuban: For fun, mob boss Kingpin invites himself to a superhero poker game bearing a Briefcase Full of Money to sweeten the pot. If the heroes win, they can donate it to a charity. If Kingpin wins, he'll buy a boat to rub their loss in their faces, as well as a Cuban cigar:
  Kingpin: Which I shall obtain illegally.
• Mistaken for Cheating: When Spider-Man first fought The Queen, she easily defeated him before forcibly kissing him while he was unconscious. This public makeout was captured on the News, but all of New York assumed that Spider-Man was the one who kissed Queen. Aunt May accidentally revealed the kiss to Mary Jane before she found out herself and Mary Jane gave Peter a hard time for awhile because of the kiss.
• Patience Plot: In Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man #4, a character called the Hitman was given a contract to kill Spidey. The Vulture gets involved, and the Hitman tags both Spider-Man and the Vulture with a tracer so he can track them down. Later, looking at a tracking screen in his hideout:
  Hitman: Both Spidey and Vulture's blibs are stationary. Looks like they've both settled in for the night. Only thing to do now is wait. [sits at a table and starts cleaning his guns] Waiting. That's something I could never teach them back in the old days. Either they were naturals who knew it instinctively, or they never learned... and died because of it. So simple. You wait. And then, you strike.
• Seduction-Proof Marriage:
  • During the Changes arc in The Spectacular Spider-Man, Spider-Man is kidnapped and is being looked after by a sultry villainess called the Queen, who offers him "anything he wants". He requested a solid cage thingy so she'll leave him alone as he was Happily Married to MJ at the time.
  • In The Spectacular Spider-Man #166-172, when MJ was starring in the soap opera Secret Hospital, her male co-star attempted to seduce her. At one point, she gave the impression of being interested, but at the end of the story, she spelled out in no uncertain terms that she had no intention of leaving Peter.

Web of Spider-Man

• Blow Gun: In Web of Spider-Man, the Vulturions (four criminals who learned to copy Vulture's wings) use those. The curare is fatal for humans — Spider-Man is too tough to die, but gets stiffer with every dart and actually comes close to succumbing.
• Retool: Web of Spider-Man was originally just another Spider-Man book. Writer David Michelinie and artist Marc Silvestri eventually came onto the book and gave it a new premise starting with issue #16, in which Peter Parker travels around the world with Joy Mercado on assignment from NOW Magazine. This premise didn't last long, because a two-issue storyline involving the Provisional Irish Republican Army resulted in a bomb threat in the building Marvel's offices were located in at the time. The second part was hastily edited to replace the IRA with generic terrorists wearing black hoods, and the creative team subsequently disbanded by issue #22.
• Saved by the Church Bell: Famously, Spider-Man used church bells to remove the corrupting Venom symbiote from himself in Web of Spider-Man #1. The process nearly killed him and he could only go through with it by reminding himself of the people he needed to make up to, like Aunt May, Mary-Jane, and Harry Osborn.
• Save the Villain: In Web of Spider-Man, Spider-Man has to save the lives of the Vulturions when the real Vulture comes to town.

[[folder:Amazing Fantasy Vol 2]]

• How Much Did You Hear?: In Amazing Fantasy Vol. 2 #15, Spider-Man realizes that in the famous cover of Amazing Fantasy #15, he pretty much declared his real name in the presence of the guy in his armpit. Fortunately for him, the guy was screaming too loudly to hear it.
  Spider-Man: Um...you didn't hear that thing I just said, right? You know? About how the world may mock... yadda yadda yadda?
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Retroactively done with the Amazing Fantasy Starring Spider-Man mini-series, which bridged the gap between Amazing Fantasy #15 and The Amazing Spider-Man #1. In the second issue of the series, Peter meets Joey Pulaski, a teenage superheroine who he became friends with. She ends up being sent to jail after Spider-Man turns her in for committing a number of crimes, and for the rest of the mini-series, Spider-Man is devastated by the memory of her. Of course, since she was created in the mid-nineties, and her story set between those published in the early 60s, her existence begs the question "why haven't we heard of her until now?". The only time she ever appears is in the one story, and her existence is never explored again.
  • This happens a lot with these retroactive issues. The other villains in the same mini-series (a man named Undertaker and a supervillain named Supercharger), despite being Spider-Man's first supervillains, never get any mention (indeed, the Chameleon is still toted as Spider-Man's first supervillain in the comics), and the original villains for Untold Tales of Spider-Man generally have never reappeared. The exception to this is The Scorcher, (Spider-Man's first black villain), who died within the series.

The Avenging Spider-Man

• "The Breakfast Club" Poster Homage: In The Avenging Spider-Man #12, Peter and Deadpool explores Peter's dreams to find out who is trying to infiltrate his brain. At one point, Peter dreams characters into The Breakfast Club, which is introduced with a shout-out to the original poster. Peter is Brian, redheaded love interest Mary Jane is Claire, jock frenemy Flash is Andrew, Deadpool himself is Bender...and he doesn't know who Allison is, so the person impersonating her must be the villain. It turns out to be Hypno-Master.
  Deadpool: What a weirdo. You couldn't be dreaming of Mean Girls?

Peter Parker: Spider-Man

• Enlightened Antagonist: Enigma aka Tara Virango from Peter Parker: Spider-Man #48-#49, is a woman from Bangladesh who gained supernatural powers and a mystical connection to the Buddhist goddess Tara after being infected with a nano-virus (she is a survivor of an environmental disaster during which her native village was exposed to the viral outbreak). She starts out as a semi-antagonist to Spider-Man, having stolen the precious Star of Persia diamond and even physically attacking Peter on one occasion. However, he soon learns that her motives are noble: she seeks to prove that the outbreak was not an accident, but a deliberate release of a biological agent ordered by the Corrupt Corporate Executives of the company that developed the virus (and the reason why she stole the diamond was that she wanted to demand a large compensation to the survivors to be paid as ransom for it). Once Spider-Man realizes the truth, he joins Enigma's side and helps her defeat the corporate executives.

Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man

• Artistic License – Law: In Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man Annual #1, Floyd Baker, the father of Spider-Man's foe Sandman, is framed for the murder of an alternate reality Ben Parker, and given a quick death sentence. When the governor (or maybe NYC's mayor) learns that Sandman's going to break out his father, he orders the immediate execution of the man, something that violates a wide range of laws and civil rights protections, and nobody involved in law enforcement bothers to say 'you can't do that; it's illegal'.
• Ironic Nickname: Tom Taylor's first issue in Volume 2 of Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man Lampshades the fact that Spider-Man is a Spider-themed hero, when after Spidey saves a little girl and her father, the small child slaps his spider emblem on his chest out of her dislike for spiders:
  Spider-Man: It's all good to be fair, I don't exactly have the most kid-friendly costume. It literally has a spider on it.
• Wrestling Monster: In Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man #6, this is played straight with Masked Luchador El Muerto. This is played with when wrestling god El Dorado shows up. He never appears in the ring of any promotions and fights with swords.

The Sensational Spider-Man

• Earn Your Happy Ending: In The Sensational Spider-Man vol. 2 29#, Eddie Brock is dying of cancer. Alone, and forgotten except as a remorseless monster to the public at large, and the remnants of his old "pal" are floating around in his head telling him that he still has one chance at revenge by killing a comatose May Parker or just disappearing off the world with nothing to show for it. Or he can just sit in his bed waiting to die with Venom tormenting him until the end of his wasted life. Instead,◊ he cuts himself trying to remove the remnants of Venom from his blood and it works. After Spider-Man saves him, he tells the remnants of the symbiote to shut up. After being exonerated for the crimes he committed as Venom, he met Matin Li/Mr. Negative, who offered him a job. Eddie accepted, and when Martin touched him, the remnants of The Symbiote were fused to his immune system, turning him into Anti-Venom.
• Villain Over for Dinner: In The Sensational Spider-Man #31, Aunt May takes out the Chameleon disguised as Peter Parker with poisoned cookies because she knew he wasn't the real Peter.

Marvel Knights Spider-Man

• Big Damn Heroes: The Avengers are this when they show up right when the Sinister Twelve are about to kill Spider-Man.
• Capitalism Is Bad: In Marvel Knights Spider-Man, Norman Osborn mocks Peter with classist insults, for being a loser who works as a high-school teacher despite his great talent, which Spider-Man retorts by pointing out that Norman could well have cured cancer with all his wealth and connections if he actually cares about improving lives. Norman then replies that he only said it to hurt Peter by his values, because he on the other hand as he puts it, "I don't give a rat's ass".
• History Repeats: The Green Goblin invokes this by bringing Mary Jane to the same bridge where Gwen Stacy died.
• Not Me This Time: The series kicks off with a story in which Aunt May is kidnapped. Spider-Man immediately confronts Norman Osborn, who's in prison, demanding he return her. Osborn says he had nothing to do with it, because he's in prison. Of course, being imprisoned (or even dead) has not stopped Osborn on other occasions. And it turns out that he really was responsible.
• Powerful, but Incompetent: This is highlighted when Scorpion becomes the new Venom, as even with the symbiote at his command he's still less effective than Eddie.
• Power Perversion Potential: In one Marvel Knights storyline, Electro is seen frequenting a brothel with a mutant prostitute who can assume any form a customer desires. She seems to specialize in super-heroines, but mentioned that some customers with fetishes had requested rather unusual ones, even Fin Fang Foom. Her conversation with Electro is cut off by Spidey breaking into the place before he can tell her what he wants, so there's no way to tell.

Spider-Man's Tangled Web

• Genius Serum: In the story, "Flowers for Rhino", the dim-witted Rhino is tired of being treated like a joke and undergoes a dangerous surgical procedure to greatly increase his intelligence. He eventually becomes so smart that he thoroughly trounces Spidey in a fight and uses an algorithm to determine his Secret Identity. But he soon begins experiencing Intelligence Equals Isolation as he simply grows bored of everything and can only see the numbers and science behind the world around him instead of enjoying it for what it is. As a result, he ends up getting another surgery to revert his intelligence and make him dumber than he already was.
• Kayfabe: The comics treated the fight between Peter and the wrestler as real, though it was explained in issue #14 of Spider-Man's Tangled Web that Crusher Hogan was actually a "shoot" wrestler—in which the outcome of the match is not scripted.

Spider-Man

• Power Perversion Potential: Todd McFarlane wrote an implicitly explicit (consensual) bondage foreplay scene◊ (between Peter and his wife Mary Jane Watson) into an issue during his short run on the explicitly-created-for-him Spider-Man (no adjective) series from the early 1990s.

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