September 2023

Spider’s Stratagem: Spider-Man

This article was originally published in AC June 2002. Some images are additional or alternate.. Unit photography by Zade Rosenthal and Peter Iovino The brainchild of writer Stan Lee and illustrator Steve Ditko, Spider-Man (a.k.a. Peter Parker) swung out of the pages of an Amazing Fantasy comic book in 1962. He was a new kind of superhero, a teenager who struggled with the responsibility of his newfound powers but didn’t bother to hide from the limelight. Lee’s publisher had actually rejected the idea of Spider-Man as being too dark and scary for kids, so Lee slipped the web-slinging, wisecracking wonder into the last issue of Amazing Fantasy. Comic fans clamored for more, and a cultural icon was born. After years of entanglement in a...more