With his teenage neuroses and gawky vulnerability, Spidey isn’t your ordinary superhero, but despite the dodgy wrist action he still resonates with armies of fans
![‘Comic-book crack for generations’: why Spider-Man still has us all in his web](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/1f4394e34d276b5247f7ab98d0eb770cd03b2c06/0_126_3072_1844/master/3072.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctZGVmYXVsdC5wbmc&enable=upscale&s=b6f9d0994aaf682bcb6179946b6d9a3a)
Not a spider – and not a man – but the most powerful teenage kid in pop-culture history. Spider-Man is the lonely, sensitive, adolescent underdog whose high-school miseries and humiliations, combined with his secret superheroic triumphs, have been comic-book crack for generations of fascinated fans and a gateway drug to the Marvel world itself.
He first appeared in Marvel Comics almost 60 years ago: the orphaned young science prodigy, Peter Parker, bitten by a radioactive spider at an educational exhibit. (Like Godzilla, Spider-Man is a product of the nuclear age.) He acquires the proportionate strength of a spider, a tingly “spider sense” for danger, and the ability to climb up walls. He designs his own body-hugging web-motif costume and web-shooting wrist modules and becomes a superhero, battling people such as the Green Goblin and Doctor Octopus. But he is somehow unable to reveal his secret to his high-school crush Mary Jane Watson and, as humble Parker, gets bullied by the high-school jock Flash Thompson who – ironically – fan-worships Spider-Man. So Spider-Man’s victories coexist with despair and depression: he fails to save his Uncle Ben, killed by a street criminal, and his entire superhero career is driven by that primal scene of failure and guilt – a Rosebud of wretchedness.