Spider Man / Tropes C to F

• 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.
• Card-Carrying Jerkass: In high school, Carl King was an even more vicious bully to Peter Parker than Flash Thompson; in the present, he revels in the memory of how much he made Peter's life miserable and freely admits he was a "rotten kid." As the Thousand, he's crossed the thin line into Card-Carrying Villain.
• Carnival of Killers: The Identity Crisis storyline is about Spider-Man being framed for murder with 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 Shotgun) to actual costumed villains (like Override and Aura).
• Cat Girl: Black Cat, the Cat-themed cat burglar/sometime love interest for Spider-Man.
• 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. It could be said that this theme applies to most, if not all superhero stories to some extent, but none more so than Spider-Man.
  • Being a hero even when there is no reward for being one; it won't get bills paid, it won't help your love life and it won't get you fame and respect. But you do it anyway, because it's the right thing to do.
  • 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 the people around him.
  • You have to work for everything in your life, whether it's your job, your superhero calling, your marriage, or your relationships. People are complicated, messy, and demanding, and you have to be there for them, make things work, and never take people for granted.
  • Spider-Man: Life Story takes the theme of responsibility and explores how to balance conflicting responsibilities, like those of a superhero with responsibilities towards one's family or country, what happens if we neglect some in favor of others and what that means has changed over the years.
  • Miles Morales takes the themes of Spider-Man and adds to it that all of this remains true regardless of who you are and what way of life you come from. Anyone can be a hero. Power and responsibility will not disappear from your life just because you think you don't have what it takes.
• The Chosen Many:
  • Spider-Man started out as a guy who got powers from a radioactive spider... until it was revealed he was connected to a supernatural force called the Web of Life, which also empowers every other arachnid-themed hero and villain.
  • Venom was originally a super suit that Spidey himself wore to augment his powers. However, it was later revealed to be a sentient alien symbiote... and even later revealed to be just one member of an entire race. It was also capable of self-replicating, and so far several symbiotes have appeared in the comics canon.
• The Chosen One: Peter Parker is not a very powerful character by comparison with the people around him, but he has an odd tendency to discover there are ancient prophecies about him. He was, for instance, destined to stop the "Bend Sinister" (alongside Doctor Strange), and no less a pair of personages than Lord Chaos and Master Order claimed to have guided his life to defeat Thanos.
  • According to The Amazing Spider-Man (J. Michael Straczynski), 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: Spider-Man's black costume was a living alien being, who got a little... too attached to him. Still, while it was attached to him, it considerably increased his strength and toughness, as well as granting him the ability to instantly shift into any costume he wanted and an infinite supply of webbing. After detaching from him, it retained enough of his genes to roughly mimic his power-set (Super-Strength, super-agility, Wall Crawling, webbing/Combat Tentacles), as well as being able to block out his spider-sense, whenever another wore it.
  • Oh and Spider-Man's Super-Strength is tripled when bonded with a Symbiote as he once Megaton Punch-ed Norman Osborn through two buildings when enraged.
  • Doubles as Clothes Make the Maniac: In most adaptations, it tried to take over Spidey's mind and body, and ever since Venom came into the comics, the symbiote has been portrayed as doing this to its hosts.
  • There has since been an entire race of symbiotes in Marvel, which have resulted in anti-heroes like Venom, villains like Carnage, and the world's best biological weapon that temporarily took over several heroes.
  • The 2013 Guardians of the Galaxy series ends up revealing the truth about the symbiotes: they were created to essentially be super suits to help turn people into the perfect heroes. Something went wrong, turning them into what they are now. Venom's current host, Flash Thompson, ended up returning it back to its homeworld, cured it of its problems, and, in gratitude, permanently chose Flash as a host.
  • One of the spinoffs for Secret Wars (2015), Deadpool's Secret Secret Wars suggested the possibility that the symbiote went nuts after briefly latching on to Deadpool.
• The short-lived team of Spider-Man fanboys known as the Slingers derived all their powers from demon-enhanced outfits, with one exception. Interestingly, the outfits were originally designed for Spidey's use and they just used Spidey's powers to "pretend" they had other powers.
  • This trope at least half-applies to Scorpion; the Super-Strength, Wall Crawling and Super-Reflexes are innate, part of his Evil Counterpart status, but the suit provides him with his deadly tail, which can be used to crush or bludgeon things and shoot Hollywood Acid, energy beams or blasts of electricity.
  • Norman Osborn is a half-example as well. As the Green Goblin, he has innate Super-Strength, stamina, Super-Toughness, agility, Super-Reflexes, and Healing Factor from his Psycho Serum. However, he has plenty of weapons and gadgets related to his suit, like his signature Pumpkin Bombs, and of course, there's the Glider that enables him to fly.
  • Minor Spider-Man baddie The Shocker fits this trope; a Genius Bruiser, he cobbled together his trademark vibrosmasher gauntlets and costume singlehandedly. At its most basic, the costume prevents him from killing himself with the backlash from his own blasts of vibrations. In more recent iterations, the suit is crammed full of "contact plates" that deflect incoming strikes and make his own strikes more powerful due to triphammer vibration.
  • The Vulture, The Prowler, The Jury, Regent, Stilt-Man, freaking Frog-Man... Spidey's had to fight a lot of these guys.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Mary Jane was like this in her earlier appearances. Readers eventually find out there was some Stepford Smiling going on and in the modern era, her character is about 100 times more grounded (still a fun character, just not bat crap crazy). Earlier appearances of Aunt May also indicated that she lived in Cloud Cuckooland (the joke being she was senile). Like MJ, she's since mellowed out a lot, creating some Early-Installment Weirdness for readers who go back and read collections of the old trades.
  • As far as Spidey villains go there's White Rabbit. If the Alice in Wonderland theme weren't a tip off then the fact her first villainous plan was to rob fast food joints despite being incredibly wealthy and demanding her ransom on the city of New York be paid in quarters should send red flags. And no, unlike the above she never has mellowed (and never will).
  • Spider-Man himself is this. He acts as the silly one of every group he is in except with Johnny Storm, who is equally silly, and Deadpool, who for obvious reasons is even sillier. However, beware if you try to hurt his loved ones.
• 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.
• Coming of Age Story: In nearly all his incarnations. Spider-Man's origin story includes Peter Parker getting superpowers, using them for profit, and then failing to help stop a criminal who later kills his Uncle Ben. This causes Peter to realize that with great power comes great responsibility. Note that as a coming-of-age story, Spider-Man's origin story is lopsided. It includes the decision to be an adult, but not the learning to be an adult.
• The Commissioner Gordon: Spider-Man: 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 the role. He was friendly and tried to play down some of Peter's issues with authority. Then he died, and while on his deathbed he 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.
  • Post-BND is Captain Yuri Watanabe, who gives Spidey the benefit of the doubt when it looks like he's killed someone in an issue where several supposedly dead people are reappearing (naturally, Mysterio was behind it all). She later dons the identity of Wraith and becomes a vigilante in her own right.
  • His current police liaison is Carlie Cooper. This is odd because Carlie's discovering Spider-Man's secret identity is what ended her romantic relationship with Peter Parker!
  • Jean DeWolff approached Ultimate Spider-Man as one of these. Averted, as she's ultimately working for Kingpin.
• 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. Peter fights crime for the grand glorious cause of Responsibility: he has the power to do it, so he has to do it. (It does spin out of his Origin Story, but still.) This may mean that he was doomed to become a superhero no matter what: he was introduced as a young genius almost on par with the other super scientists of the time like Hank Pym, Reed Richards, and Tony Stark. Thus, he had great power, and thus, great responsibility.
• 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. The Amazing Spider-Man (2018) 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.
  • J. Michael Straczynski 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:
  • The symbiotes. First, the Venom suit was just an alien costume. Then it was retconned into being alive. Then, when the writers wanted to turn it into a villain, it was retconned that the suit made Spider-Man go insane and he had to get rid of it (originally, he was trying to destroy it just because it was attaching itself to him, which is a bit harsh for a guy like Spidey). It was later shown that the suits fed off strong hosts as a sort of Social Darwinist. Then it was revealed to feed off negative emotions such as hate and anger. Then they were shown to live in the Negative Zone... no wait, there was a separate planet full of them. Oh, and Toxin proved that not all of them are born evil after all. Oh, and Carnage has had about three symbiotes get destroyed but no one ever remembers those stories. And now the Venom symbiote itself wasn't evil until it latched onto Deadpool, who tried it before Spider-Man came by and ended up absorbing Deadpool's insanity (at least if you consider Deadpool's Secret Secret Wars canon).
  • Who is the Hobgoblin really? The character was created by writer Roger Stern who strung along the mystery of his identity, dropping clues here and there. According to him, when he created the Hobgoblin he didn't have a set idea of who he was, and only shortly into it did he decide it was a character he had introduced in a smaller title called Roderick Kingsley. Then he left and told his plans to his successor Tom Defalco who didn't like the culprit and Stern told him that he had his consent to come up with someone else. Later writers and editors felt that the Hobgoblin mystery was itself compelling and so spun wheels and Red Herring to extend the story forward, until they and readers got bored and frustrated, and finally it was revealed that Hobgoblin was Peter Parker's friend Ned Leeds, who had already been Killed Off for Real when this reveal happened. It is no wonder years later Roger Stern was allowed to return to the subject in a miniseries which was essentially a Fix Fic in which Stern gave the identity to the person he'd intended all along, and established that Leeds had been brainwashed into acting as a stand-in who was later sacrificed so that the original could retire. It helped that Stern had, in fact, established Hobgoblin's use of impostors during his original run.
  • Post-One More Day, 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.
  • Spider-Man: Blue: The mini-series has several continuity errors that can be picked up on by avid readers. These include;
    • Robbie Robertson working at the Daily Bugle, despite not being introduced at that point in the original comics.
    • The circumstances of the Green Goblin losing his memory are different.
    • In this comic, Peter comes from a fight with the Rhino to meet Mary Jane Watson and take her to a fight with the Lizard. In the original comic, it was the Rhino he took MJ to meet.
    • The fight with Blackie Drago, the second Vulture, is completely different from its original incarnation, taking place in the wrong time and under the wrong circumstances.
    • Furthermore, Drago's fight with the original Vulture was supposed to be over before Spider-Man got there.
    • The original story featured a subplot with Peter spraining his arm, passing out from the pain, and getting captured by the police, which is entirely cut.
    • It was originally Kraven's intention to attack Harry Osborn; he was not confused in his search for Spider-Man by Harry wearing Peter's aftershave.
    • However, these could be theoretically explained by the series' format of Peter narrating the story on audiotape to himself. Perhaps his emotions got his head a little clouded.
• 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) printed as a backup Spidey Sunday Stories where Spider-Man goes to a psychologist Dr. Gray Madder (a pun on gray matter) and talks 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.
• The Daily Misinformer:
  • Zig-Zagged with The Daily Bugle. Under his tenure as Editor-in-Chief, J. Jonah Jameson generally prides himself on journalistic integrity and reporting the facts. However, he has a blind spot when it comes to superheroes, whom he views as vigilantes and constantly publishes negative stories about.
  • Jameson consistently paints Spider-Man as a vigilante menace operating outside of the law, making him kind of the web-slinger's Sitcom Arch-Nemesis. More than one story sees him issuing a retraction in Spidey's favor once the real culprits come out, but he's always been reluctant to do so. Since 2017, however, he's known about Spider-Man's secret identity and has cut back on the slander, with The Amazing Spider-Man (2018) having him hail Spidey as a hero.
  • Jameson doesn't like most other Marvel heroes much better, though ever since Jessica Jones saved his daughter's life in Alias he's had a fairly good relationship with her, and hires her in The Pulse as an expert consultant for a new, more neutral superhero-focused publication of the same title. It also comes out in the first Pulse Story Arc that he and Benjamin Urich once tried to expose Norman Osborn as the Green Goblin but were sued for libel and forced to retract the whole thing. After Spidey and Luke Cage go after Osborn in retaliation for attacking the pregnant Jessica (Cage's girlfriend) and force him to transform in broad daylight, Jameson promptly orders Urich's expose reprinted.
• Damsel in Distress:
  • In the early days, Betty Brant and Gwen Stacy would serve this role. Then it was notoriously subverted in the 1973 The Amazing Spider-Man (1963) story The Night Gwen Stacy Died, in which archvillain the Green Goblin kidnaps Spidey's girlfriend, Spidey goes to rescue her... and she dies, turning from Gwen Stacy into the Gwen Stacy.
  • Also subverted, in a different way, by Mary Jane Watson after her marriage to Peter. Whenever she's confronted by obsessive stalkers, she (almost) always manages to escape on her own, without any help from her super-powered husband. Even more subverted by the fact that, more often than not, Mary Jane is the one who bails out Spider-Man whenever one of his opponents has the upper hand in a fight. Even before their marriage, when Mary Jane was witness to a Spidey fight going poorly, she'd often brazenly distract or sabotage the bad guy, relying on her charm and wit to save her from the dangerous consequences.
  • Even Aunt flippin' May has taken out bad guys. When (fairly) recently the Chameleon had assembled a group of Spider-Bad guys to go after Peter Parker (this is just before Civil War, natch) the Chameleon himself disguised himself as Peter to go and kidnap Aunt May. Aunt May opens the door, and lets her nephew in, and gives him some tea and biscuits while she has to finish her knitting before revealing that she drugged the fucking tea cause she'd recognize her beloved nephew anywhere and Chameleon obviously was an impostor, holding up "GOTCHA" written across the sweater she just made in a knitted moment of awesome.
• Damsel out of Distress: Mary Jane Watson. She's not kidnapped very often (even if some adaptations might make you think otherwise), but when she is, she never stays put. There are even more than a few examples where she saves herself with no help from Spidey whatsoever. Or even better, she ends up saving him instead.
• 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:
  • Spider-Man, to the point of deserving to have the trope named after him. Though really, he spends a lot of time in incredibly-energetic-snarker mode too. His snarkiness is well known even in-universe. In an issue of Excalibur, the members of the Wrecking Crew briefly mentioned Spider-Man's name, eliciting a "I hate Spider-Man" from one of the members. The response: "Everyone hates Spider-Man." In the Secret War miniseries, Spidey met Black Widow out of costume and made a quick joke. Widow suddenly realized who she was speaking with.
    Black Widow: Oh God, I recognize that voice.
  • The Green Goblin is usually able to verbally hold his own with Spider-Man during their battles in the comics and most versions.
  • Played with by Spider-Man 2099, who's terse and straightforward in costume, but a killer snarker in his civvies. When he has to deal with a particularly talkative foe at one point, he wonders if people find his civilian personality annoying.
  • Spider-Girl over on Earth-982 inherited this trait from her father. So did the resident Snark Knight, her "cousin" Darkdevil.
  • Really, it's just easier to assume that most Spider-Heroes in the multiverse carry this trait, if not as civilians, then as soon as they enter battle. It can get to the point where they're capable of annoying each other with the constant snarking when it comes time for a Bat Family Crossover.
• Death by Origin Story:
  • Spider-Man's defining tragedy was the very preventable death of his Uncle Ben, who died at the hands of a man whom Peter purposefully refused to help the police stop earlier that day.
  • To a much lesser extent, Peter Parker's biological parents, as he was introduced as an orphan being raised by his aunt and uncle. Most comic writers and adaptations tend to treat them as a non-factor in Peter's life, with readers knowing nothing about Richard and Mary until a 1968 annual during the Lee/Romita run. Later, there was a story arc in which the two were "brought back", but unsurprisingly, the "returned" parents were revealed to be robots.
  • In the alternate universe of Spider-Gwen, Gwen Stacy got spider powers instead of her best friend and neighbor Peter Parker, becoming Spider-Woman. Like the main universe Peter Parker, she initially begins her career by fooling around with her powers. Meanwhile, Peter, finally fed up with being bullied and admiring Spider-Woman, ends up turning himself into the Lizard and goes on an uncontrollable rampage. Gwen, not knowing that her best friend was the monster, not only fought the beast but purposely prolonged the fight for fun, only for Peter to revert to normal and die in her arms from the injuries. This causes her to take her role as a superhero more seriously.
  • Supporting character Toxin plays around with this a little: Toxin's already an established hero when Razorfist kills his father, and by the end of the series Toxin sees Razorfist put behind bars.
• Deceased Parents Are the Best: Peter Parker is three times an orphan, with his biological parents already dead at the beginning of Amazing Fantasy #15 and his surrogate father, Uncle Ben, killed in that story. It was later revealed that his parents were badass secret agents for S.H.I.E.L.D. who once saved Wolverine. Oh, and Uncle Ben apparently saw Captain America first-hand. Other examples from the Silver Age:
  • Betty Brant was an orphan, to begin with, and then also lost her brother Bennett in a shoot-out. Harry Osborn's mother was also dead from the beginning, in The Amazing Spider-Man #122 he also lost his father, the original Green Goblin (he got better, though). When Mary Jane finally got an origin in the mid-1980s, it was revealed that her mother also is dead. J. Jonah Jameson was introduced as a widower, which of course made his son John a half-orphan. The trope is inverted with Joe Robertson, who once mentioned he had another son, Patrick, who died.
• Depraved Bisexual: The minor villains Scorpia (the Distaff Counterpart of Scorpion, himself Ambiguously Bi) and Joystick.
• Dirty Coward:
  • Subverted by Roderick Kingsley, a.k.a. the Hobgoblin. While his twin brother Daniel really was a spineless wimp who lived up to this trope, Roderick merely made himself look like this to get people to underestimate him. Having his cowardly brother act as his stand-in helped a good deal. This usually led to him sabotaging his competitors' companies and destroying their reputations before buying them up cheap, or to keep anyone from thinking that he could be a cold-blooded Magnificent Bastard like the Hobgoblin.
  • Played straight with Angelo Fortunato, the oft-forgotten second Venom. After he got ahold of the symbiote, he brags about how it puts in the same league of supervillain as Magneto or Doctor Doom and kills a random civilian to prove it. But once Spider-Man gains the upper hand in their one and only battle, he immediately turns tail and runs, disgusting the symbiote, who declares Angelo to be an unworthy host, and it ditches him just as he's leaping between two buildings.
  • Kaine falls into this during the Grim Hunt arc. He's so terrified of the Kravinoffs that after they capture Araña and Arachne, he insists to Peter that they can't win and their best option is to "run and screw the rest." Spidey responds by decking Kaine in the face and giving him a "The Reason You Suck" Speech, absolutely disgusted that Kaine shares his DNA and memories yet acts like a selfish coward. This actually reaches Kaine, who subsequently knocks Peter out, dons his costume, and dies fighting the Kravinoff family in his place.
• Disposable Woman:
  • A male example from the 1960s: Bennett Brant, Betty's lawyer brother, was introduced and killed in The Amazing Spider-Man (Lee & Ditko) #11 so that Betty could blame Spider-Man for his death and thus throw a spanner in the works of her romance with Spidey's alter ego Peter Parker. Bennett practically never was mentioned or made an appearance again after that subplot ended, and if it was it was to work out the Continuity Snarl that developed when Marvel decided that Betty must be around Peter's age. If Bennett behaved as if he was Betty's younger brother, how could he be an attorney when Peter was still in high school?
  • NYPD police captain Jean DeWolff is killed by Stan Carter.
  • Charlemagne, an intel agent and friend of Wolverine, is introduced in Spider-Man Versus Wolverine #1. Spider-Man accidentally kills her, leaving him deeply upset.
  • Mary Jane Watson appeared to die in an exploding airplane in The Amazing Spider Man J Michael Straczynski vol 2 #13. She got better pretty quick.
  • Kamala Khan dies in The Amazing Spider-Man (2022) #26 and is used in a way to motivate Peter AND a Heel–Face Turn Norman Osborn.
• Distaff Counterpart: Spider-Man has had five different Spider-Women (Jessica Drew, Julia Carpenter, Mattie Franklin, Charlotte Witter, and an Alternate Universe Gwen Stacy), two different Spider-Girls (May Parker and Anya Corazon), and the heroine Silk (Cindy Moon), who has the same powers as Peter but chose her own codename. Interestingly, the first two Spider-Women, Jessica and Julia, have origins completely unrelated to Spider-Man and had never even met him until after they were already established, their connection to him being purely thematic. Marvel EIC at the time even wanted Peter to have a black costume similar to Julia's, thus, the black costume was made, leading to the creation of Venom years later.
  "All the ladies just want to be me, I guess."
  — Spider-Man, The Incredible Hercules #139
• 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.
• Doomed by Canon: Uncle Ben is the poster boy of "Death by Origin Story". His death, an unexpected consequence of Peter being selfish and using his powers for personal gain, made him learn that "With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility". That means that any adaptation of Spider-Man where Ben appears from the start (such as Ultimate Spider-Man or the first Sam Raimi's film) will have him die very soon.
• Driven to Villainy: The series is loaded with these: The Lizard is another example, as long as you don't count that time where they implied that Conners was in control the whole time (neither the fandom or writers do, however). Norman Osborn has gone so far as to feign that this is the cause for all his crimes.
  • The Hobgoblin from the year 2211 is revealed to be this. She's the daughter of that year's traveling Spider-Man, who is forced to arrest her due to crimes that she would commit in the future, and placed in a virtual reality prison, which is programmed into her brain to keep her in a fantasy world. Her boyfriend tries to free her with a computer virus, which adversely affects the fantasy, warps her mind, and drives her completely insane. True to form, her imprisonment is what caused her insane criminal spree in the first place. She uses her knowledge as an inter-dimensional researcher to create time-traveling equipment and goes on a history-erasing rampage through time.
• Easily Condemned: As probably the biggest Hero with Bad Publicity, this happens to Spider-Man all the time. No matter how many times he saves the city it only takes one smear campaign or mistaken action seen by the public to turn New York (and a lot of his friends and loved ones) against him and declare he's a criminal.
  • The Superior Spider Man zig-zags with this trope so hard it's not even funny. On one hand, Peter explaining that his mind was taken over by Doctor Octopus provides him with Easy Forgiveness from The Avengers... and that's about the only people who forgive him, or wish to stay on speaking terms with him/be within a hundred miles of him (or don't do a Face–Heel Turn and want him dead/humiliated) in the aftermath.
• Egomaniac Hunter: This is basically the driving motif of Kraven the Hunter. He's a legendary hunter of dangerous animals who decided to come to New York and hunt Spidey down to challenge himself. 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 as a Fast as Lightning way of getting around. As he is a walking power plant, he doesn't have to worry about being electrocuted. Occasionally, he'll be the electricity in the wires.
• 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: Spidey's greatest and best-hidden foe does this quite often. Who is he? J. Jonah Jameson. He manages to publicly badmouth and ridicule him on a daily basis, has created two supervillains (the infamous Scorpion as well as C-lister The Human Fly) and a few evil robots in his quest to kill Spidey, gets into all sorts of fights and kidnappings by Spidey's other foes (who are jealous of him), and Spider-Man always, always pulls his bacon out of the fire... though he does put him in his place with purposely embarrassing rescues. He even gets to become the Mayor of New York, despite how often he's printed complete garbage about Spider-Man that he's later had to retract when it turned out that, yes, it really was Mysterio or Chameleon, and despite the fact he's known to have sponsored the creation of Scorpion, the Human Fly, and the Spider-Slayers.
• 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.
• Familial Chiding: Peter Parker's Aunt May has a habit of doing this to him. No matter the incarnation or universe, she's one of the few people who can get away with telling Spider-Man to behave. Even though she's usually lecturing a teenager (or even a grown man), her chiding always comes across as a gentle reminder rather than scolding.
• 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.
• Fair Cop: Flash Thompson's dad was one; Flash's mom often remarked how handsome he looked in-uniform. Sadly, it was clearly "only skin deep" as he was also an alcoholic who abused both his wife and son.
• Fanservice Model: Mary Jane Watson is this while also being a model and an actress.
• Fanservice Pack: Betty Brant started out as J. Jonah Jameson's mousy, timid secretary, with a tight, short, curly hairstyle, high necklines, and loose skirts. However, as the series went on, she became more outgoing and more aggressive, grew her hair out into a long, sleek bob, and eventually became a tough reporter who wore skimpy necklines and skintight dresses with high-heeled boots.
• 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.
• Femme Fatale: Black Cat, being the Marvel Universe’s answer to Catwoman, is a pretty classic Femme Fatale, but while very obviously seductive and manipulative her love for Spidey is actually quite genuine and marked her turn from villainess to Anti-Hero. Although, her infatuation for the Wall Crawler managed to bring out the worst in her as well as poor MJ learned first hand.
• Fix Fic:
  • One of the popular stories during the early '80s dealt with the identity of the Hobgoblin. The writer for the storyline, Roger Stern, left the series before revealing the identity. The storyline was passed around between several writers, before being resolved controversially and in a way that left a gaping Plot Hole. Eventually, Roger Stern was brought back to write the miniseries Hobgoblin Lives after editors were made aware of said Plot Hole, which undid the previous resolution and told the story as Stern originally intended.
  • Marvel launched a Fix Fic aimed at one of comics' greatest Audience-Alienating Eras, The Clone Saga, a six-part series named, appropriately, Spider-Man: The REAL Clone Saga. It's written by Tom DeFalco, who was one of the editors of the original disaster and purports to "explore the story as it was originally conceived". The mini-series took several liberties and pot-shots at the Saga and later developments in Spider-Man books, climaxing with the message that Peter Parker should be a proud father by this point in his life.
  • 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.
  • The Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows is the official (alternate universe) version of this to One More Day, giving Spidey and Mary Jane the family life that fans wanted with many wishing it was canon. Especially after the events of the miniseries gives MJ technology allowing her to share Pete's powers and fight crime alongside their super-powered daughter Annie as a Badass Family.
  • The Amazing Spider-Man (2018): Nick Spencer took over as the title's head writer in 2018, ending Dan Slott's ten year run. The very first issue ends with Peter and Mary Jane getting back together, after Slott spent his entire run repeatedly baiting and sinking the ship. Additionally, subsequent issues deconstruct and refute Slott's reasoning for keeping them apart.
    • The first issue also sees Peter being found guilty of plagiarism and stripped of his doctorate that was earned while Doc Ock was in control of his body. Peter even admits to himself that it was wrong for him to take credit for work he didn't earn.
• Formula with a Twist: Peter Parker/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: This has been used at times to explain the motives of various villains, and to possibly contrast them with Spidey himself, who did not exactly have the best childhood. The worst example was when Venom was given a cliched tragic backstory (complete with the drunk, abusive father) as part of a bad idea to turn the character into a hero. Some other examples:
  • Dr. Octopus: Bullied as a child, with an overprotective mother who forbade him from pursuing a relationship with the woman he loved, but selfishly tried to pursue one of her own, then died of a heart attack when he confronted her about it. In many ways, his guilt from this caused his carelessness that created the accident that made him a villain. It's also established in Superior Spider Man that he had an abusive father who used to regularly beat the shit out of him, which is one of the reasons why Ock Wouldn't Hurt a Child.
  • Electro: Abusive father who left him and his mother, followed by his mother being overprotective and discouraging him from pursuing his goals. To make this worse, after she died, a marriage that went sour and ended in divorce only made him more bitter.
  • Tombstone was an albino born to black parents in Harlem, making him a black kid in a white kid's body; as one might expect, his childhood wasn't very pleasant, abused by both his family and his peers. To cope, he bullied the other students in school, and only got worse as an adult, becoming a hitman by trade.
  • The Green Goblin: While some say Norman had very little of an excuse, he didn't become evil on his own. His father was an abusive alcoholic, which made Norman resolve to become a breadwinner for his family. Then things got worse. His wife died shortly after Harry was born, driving him to work harder and neglect his son. Eventually, he framed his business partner Mendel Stromm for embezzlement, used Stromm's research equipment to develop a new line of chemicals, and it all led to the Goblin Formula, and the birth of a nightmare.
  • Flash Thompson wasn't truly a villain, but this was the reason he was such a jerk in high school. His dad was an angry alcoholic who abused both him and his mom. Indeed, a story arc in the 1990s involves Flash succumbing to alcoholism himself.
  • As a child, J. Jonah Jameson's father (later retconned to be his stepfather) was a celebrated war hero — but in private, he would routinely abuse a young Jonah and his mother. Because of this, JJJ was left soured on the very concept of heroes and frequently tears down Spider-Man (and sometimes other superheroes) in the belief that they must be hiding some darker nature.
• 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.
• Fully-Embraced Fiend: Cletus Kasady as Carnage is a foil in this way to Eddie Brock and Venom. At least Venom usually remains lucid enough to be an Anti-Hero, or have his own agenda that sometimes sees him on the side of the good guys, even if it's just to preserve himself or the symbiote. Cletus and the Carnage symbiote, meanwhile, are both Ax-Crazy who lean into how much damage, destruction, and death the two of them can cause together. When Venom and Carnage grapple (which has happened more than once, most notably in Maximum Carnage), it's a case of self-serving evil versus pure annihilation.
• The Fundamentalist: J. Jonah Jameson cannot admit that Spider-Man is anything other than a menace even though he has saved Jameson's life dozens of times. Various reasons have been given over the years as to why this belief is stuck in an otherwise good journalist's head, who caught flak several times in-universe for being in favor of mutant rights, among other things: The anti-Spiderman rant sells papers; if Spiderman were to be captured, tried, and imprisoned, the Daily Bugle would fold as soon as the judge sentenced him; Jameson is a muckraker; he's only doing it to boost circulation.
  • Eddie Brock was raised Catholic, and in the 2000s became increasingly fanatical in his beliefs — especially as Anti-Venom, when he believed that God had given him a shot at redemption by choosing him to purge the symbiotes from the Earth. This led to him murdering Hybrid and Scream in cold blood, despite admitting that they were doing good using their symbiotes and that he could have non-lethally separated them.