Why Spider-Man matters

Before 1962, teenagers in superhero comics were sidekicks: Robin, Bucky, Speedy, there to be rescued. Stan Lee and Steve Ditko made a teenager the star, and gave him a teenager's problems. Peter Parker was bullied at school, short on money, worried about his aunt and unlucky in love, and being a hero made all of it worse, not better. Readers recognized themselves in him.

The story that introduced him, in Amazing Fantasy #15, ends with a lesson that has followed the character ever since: that great power brings great responsibility. In the 1962 comic it appears as a closing caption from the narrator, not a line spoken by Uncle Ben. The 2002 film gave it to Ben, which is how most people remember it now. In a 2015 Supreme Court case about a Spider-Man toy patent, Kimble v. Marvel, Justice Elena Kagan's majority opinion cited Amazing Fantasy #15 and invoked the same idea.

In 1970 the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare asked Stan Lee to write a story warning readers about drug abuse. The result, Amazing Spider-Man #96–98 (1971), showed Harry Osborn's addiction. The Comics Code Authority, the industry's self-censorship body, refused to approve it because its rules banned any depiction of drugs, even a negative one. Marvel published the issues without the Code's seal, the first major publisher to do so since the Code began in 1954, and The New York Times covered the decision. The Code relaxed its rules on drugs later that year.

Most superheroes live in invented cities. Spider-Man lives in New York, in the real neighborhood of Forest Hills, Queens, and swings past real landmarks. That made him the city's hero in a way no other character is. After the September 11 attacks, Amazing Spider-Man vol. 2 #36 (December 2001), by J. Michael Straczynski and John Romita Jr., with an all-black cover, was Marvel's response.

He is also part of a New York tradition: Spider-Man first appeared in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in 1981 and became Marvel's first giant balloon in 1987. A new balloon based on John Romita Sr.'s art debuted in 2024.

In 2011, writer Brian Michael Bendis and artist Sara Pichelli introduced Miles Morales, a Black and Puerto Rican teenager from Brooklyn, as the Ultimate Universe's new Spider-Man. Miles went on to star in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, which won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, and its sequel set a record for Sony Animation. His success made the idea at the heart of the Spider-Verse films explicit: that anyone could be Spider-Man.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day (2026) grossed about $2.51 billion worldwide, the third-highest total of any film ever. Sony, which holds the character's film rights, says Peter Parker is now the highest-grossing film character in history, at a cumulative $17.5 billion across his films. That is Sony's own figure, but no one has seriously disputed it.

In 2008 an anonymous donor gave the Library of Congress Steve Ditko's original artwork for Amazing Fantasy #15, including all eleven pages of the Spider-Man origin. The pages were part of the opening exhibit of the Library's Treasures Gallery in 2024. A story drawn for a canceled anthology now sits in the national collection among the Library's treasures.

Library of Congress; Library of Congress, 2008 announcement; CBR on the Comics Code; Screen Rant on Sony's box-office figures; Popverse on the parade balloon.