10) Peter Parker Isn’t The First Spider-Man
You might know that Stan Lee was inspired to create Spider-Man after spotting a fly (or maybe an actual spider, Lee tells it in different ways) crawling up a wall. What you might not know, though, is that Lee’s Peter Parker was not the first “Spider-Man.” He wasn’t even the first one in the Marvel universe.
Just one month before Spider-Man made his debut in Amazing Fantasy #15, Journey Into Mystery #73 included a story from Stan Lee and Jack Kirby which also saw a spider doused with radiation. But this one didn’t bite a nerdy high school student on the hand. Instead, it grew to an enormous size and gained a human-like intelligence. This Man-Spider, if you will, died at the end of his single adventure and has never been brought back to face Peter Parker.
That still wasn’t the first Spider/Man hybrid in popular culture, however. Back in the 1930s and 1940s, there was a pulp fiction hero known as The Spider. In the style of fellow pulp vigilantes like The Shadow, The Spider was really a millionaire playboy – in this case, Richard Wentworth – and did not have any super-powers to speak of. Nevertheless, Lee has stated that The Spider was a great influence on his creation.
