Spider-Man

Spider-Man (Peter Parker) is a fictional Marvel Comics superhero created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko. First appearing in Amazing Fantasy #15 (Aug. 1962), he has become one of the world's most popular, enduring and recognizable superheroes. more...

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When Spider-Man first saw print in the 1960s, teenage characters in superhero comic books were usually sidekicks. The Spider-Man series broke ground by featuring a hero who himself was an adolescent, to whose "self-obsessions with rejection, inadequacy, and loneliness" young readers could relate. Spider-Man has since appeared in various media including several animated and live-action television series, syndicated newspaper comic strips and two highly successful films, with a third set to debut on May 4, 2007.

Marvel has published several Spider-Man comic book series, the first being The Amazing Spider-Man. Over the years, the Peter Parker character has developed from shy high school student to troubled college student to married professional.

Publication history

Creation of character

There have been conflicting accounts of Spider-Man's creation, with Stan Lee, Steve Ditko (the official creators), Jack Kirby, and Joe Simon claiming varying amounts of credit for the character.

Stan Lee said in the 1980s that the idea for Spider-Man arose from a surge in teenage demand for comic books, and the desire to create a character with which teens could identify. In his autobiography, Lee cites the non-superhuman pulp magazine crime fighter The Spider as an influence. In the documentary Stan Lee's Mutants, Monsters and Marvels and elsewhere, Lee says he was inspired by seeing a fly climb up a wall, although he adds that he has told the story of Spider-Man's origins so often he has become unsure of whether or not it is true. Lee approached Marvel publisher Martin Goodman to seek approval for the character. In a 1986 interview with the Detroit News, he described in detail his arguments to overcome Goodman's objections.

Jack Kirby, in a 1982 interview, claimed Lee had minimal involvement in the character's creation, and that it had originated with Kirby and Joe Simon, who in the 1950s had proposed a character called The Silver Spider for the Crestwood comic Black Magic until the publisher went out of business.

Simon, in his 1990 autobiography, disputes Kirby's account, asserting that the supernatural anthology Black Magic was not a factor, and that he (Simon) devised the name "Spiderman" (later changed to "The Silver Spider"), while Kirby outlined the character's story and powers.

Read more at Wikipedia.org