- [Larry King] Spider-Man, how did it come about?
- Well, I had already done the Fantastic Four and the Hulk
and I got to Spider-Man.
It sounded mysterious and dramatic,
and lo, a legend was born.
- [Larry King] Was it a hit right away?
- Yes, I'll tell you something funny about that.
Nobody wanted me to do it.
My publisher, when I suggested the idea,
he said that's the worst thing I ever heard of.
- Why? - People hate spiders.
You can't call a hero Spider-Man.
So he wouldn't let me do it.
- How are you doing, you wonderful nerds?
Scott here, and when you think about it,
Stan's critics kind of had a point.
Spiders are a strange motif to base a superhero around.
They're often depicted as creatures of fear and disgust,
but I would imagine that most of us don't associate
Spider-Man with horror.
In fact, some of us would say that he
is a friendly neighborhood superhero.
But what if we've been thinking about Spidey all wrong?
What if the web head was secretly designed
since his first appearance in Amazing Fantasy 15
to be Marvel's perfect horror monster?
A comic book terror hidden under our noses this entire time?
Disguising a radioactive spider-human hybrid
as a superhero in bright red spandex
so Marvel could sneakily get around comic book
censorship guidelines that were killing off
horror comics in droves?
Face front, true believers.
This frightful origin of Spider-Man
is a web of intrigue in and of itself.
Now, I hear ya.
Spider-Man as a horror monster might sound
like a play out of left field,
but it's not unprecedented for Marvel
to take inspiration from the horror genre
to create their iconic superheroes.
Probably the best example is the Hulk,
who Stan Lee has often said was a mixture
of Jekyll and Hyde fused with Frankenstein's Monster.
In fact, in early Hulk stories,
Bruce Banner would transform into the green behemoth
not due to his anger issues, but rather
due to the light of a full moon, a classic horror trope
reminiscent of werewolves.
♪ I used to own this town ♪
- Sorry.
Of course, the revival of Marvel as we know them today
started earlier than the Hulk with the launch,
literally and figuratively, of the Fantastic Four,
a team of superheroes that didn't look like
any other costumed crime fighters
on store shelves at the time.
If you inspect the covers of the first few issues
of Fantastic Four, they don't really
look like superhero comics.
Notice how they don't wear costumes
and how the focus of the covers
were the vicious monsters.
The composition was reflective of large creature stories
that were rampant throughout comics at that time.
And you might not find them scary now, sure,
but horror was undoubtedly the intention
back in those days, with these titanic terrors.
The problem was, these giant creatures
were just about as frightening as comics could get
during this time thanks to the comics code.
Yes, the comics code authority, or CCA,
is something we've talked about a lot on this channel
and will be undoubtedly something I'll talk about
until the day I return to dust
because it's one of those significant things
that happened in the comic book industry
that we just, we can't get around.
In short, crime and horror comic books
were pretty much dominating sales
during the late '40s and early '50s.
Rising public fear that these lurid comics
were corrupting the minds and morals of children
led to publishers imposing stricter regulations
and guidelines for what comics were allowed to print.
These new rules slashed artists' and writers' abilities
to deliver the gruesome imagery readers wanted.
You couldn't even use the word horror or terror
in titles anymore, and we have an entire video
about the CCA up here if you want to learn more.
It's a wild time.
Anyway, as author Mike Benton explains
in the Illustrated History of Horror Comics ...
Anyway, as author Mike Benton explains
in the Illustrated History of Horror Comics,
these giant creature and fantasy stories
found in comics like Tales of Suspense,
Journey into Mystery, and Tales to Astonish
used big monsters to give their audience a feel of horror
since creatures like vampires, werewolves, and zombies
were off limits thanks to the comics code.
Same goes for the book featuring Spider-Man's debut,
Amazing Fantasy, which was called Amazing Adult Fantasy
for its first 14 issues.
Without fail, every other installment of the series
capitalized on some kind of monstrous threat,
and then there was Spider-Man in issue number 15.
That's interesting.
As you saw at the top of this video,
Marvel's then publisher Martin Goodman
was against the idea of Spider-Man for many reasons,
but eventually, he agreed to let Stan
introduce the prospective hero
in the 15th and final issue of Amazing Fantasy.
Because the anthology was on its last issue,
it made the perfect testing grounds for the web head.
If the character flopped, it wouldn't really matter
because the book was gonna end anyway.
- We had a book we were gonna drop,
and when you do the last issue of a book,
nobody cares what you put into it,
so I featured Spider-Man on the cover.
- [Announcer] To illustrate the comic,
Lee famously approached legendary artist Jack Kirby
as he did for most comics, but wasn't really impressed
with Kirby's design of Spider-Man,
and while I would give anything to see
what his initial sketch of Spider-Man was,
the story goes that his version was too heroic
for Stan's tastes, so the project was passed along
to Steve Ditko, who gave us the iconic red and blue beauty
known across the world.
This collaboration with Ditko extended
beyond the initial character design
with the artist drawing the wall crawler's debut story
along with the first few years of Spider-Man comics.
But when you think about it,
Ditko was an unusual choice to work on Spider-Man,
because during that time, Steve Ditko was known
for his richly atmospheric work
on horror and suspense comics, especially at Charlton Comics
with Tales Of The Mysterious Traveler
and not to mention nearly every single
suspense anthology at Marvel Comics.
As Benton writes, "Ditko created a world of dark shadows,
lit with moonlight from nowhere,
and filled with people whose faces
had been tortuously elongated
and then filled with sweat.
Ditko's abnormal characters clawed their way
through stories filled with spider webs,
registering fear, shock, and surprise
at even the barest hint of horror.
His stories we're scary regardless of what he drew."
And if you've ever read through
Spider-Man's early adventures,
you might agree with that statement.
Ditko drew Spider-Man in creepily
contorted poses with a slender, elongated frame
that differed from Marvel's other broad, muscular heroes.
Spider-Man hunting down Uncle Ben's killer
is depicted as genuinely terrifying,
which has been emphasized in later recolorings of the tale.
Just look at how he looms over his enemy,
clinging to a wall.
- Everything worked, and visually,
the story was great. - Very striking character too.
- [Stan Lee] Because the way Steve would have him
crawling on walls and swinging on webs,
it just, everything came together perfectly.
- [Scott] Which brings up another point.
Spidey's ability to scale buildings
might seem neat, or heck, you might not even
make note of it at all a lot of the time,
but it was the inspiration for the creation of Spider-Man
according to Stan Lee.
- I was sitting, and I saw a fly crawling on the wall
and I said wow, suppose a person had the power
to stick to a wall like an insect.
- And that's a little odd, when you think about it,
because a person skittering across a wall
or ceiling is so innately unsettling
that countless supernatural horror films
use this trope to intentionally provoke horror,
and that's not just me saying this.
You can actually witness it all the way back
in Spider-Man's first issue.
Just one panel after Peter learns of this new power,
a young boy witnesses the spectacle and informs his mom
of a man walking on the side of a building,
to which his mom replies, "That's the last
horror movie I take you to, young man."
Yeah, even the characters in the comics themselves
knew that the notion of a person crawling on walls
is inherently scary.
And that's not nothing.
The horror genre is built around character response
just like this to inform us as the audience on how to feel,
and that is actually a pretty unique thing
about the horror genre.
As author Noel Carroll points out in his seminal work,
the Philosophy of Horror, our responses
are meant ideally to parallel those of the characters
in the story, which is not always the case
for other genres.
I mean, think about it, right?
In a comedy someone might get hurt,
but it's played for laughs.
The character probably doesn't find it funny,
but we as the audience are not meant to feel bad for him,
but, as Carroll writes, "With horror,
the situation is different.
For in horror, the emotions of the characters
and those in the audience are synchronized
in certain pertinent respects."
In other words, you're scared, the characters are scared,
everybody's scared.
So when the first reaction to Spider-Man's
wall crawling power is a character
effectively calling it horrific,
that's meant to tell us as the readers
that we should interpret it similarly.
A human being skittering across the wall is creepy.
But, and I warn you, this will sound very pretentious,
why?
I mean, look, clearly all of us know when
something scares us, but what actually makes that thing
scary?
And how does Spider-Man qualify?
Continuing in the philosophy of horror,
Carroll attempts to break down precisely
what it is that makes something horrific.
As you would imagine, the subject is a little complex,
but to put it simply, objects of horror
tend to be things that we deem impure,
and sure, while that can mean things that are
dirty or slimy, what impure really means
in the context of horror monsters
is more about our inability to categorize
what is is that we're looking at.
Some creatures are contradictory,
like ghosts and zombies, being both
alive and dead.
Zombies are also incomplete, rotting away
and often missing entire limbs.
Some spooky beasts are formless, like shape shifters
or other unseen threats that cling to the shadows,
and then there are interstitial monsters
that mix what would ordinarily be distinct and separate
sources to form one single identity,
like Frankenstein's Monster,
constructed from different parts of humans and animals
to create one iconic monstrosity.
Or, a werewolf, being both man and wolf.
♪ I used to own this town ♪
- The basic idea is that these horror creatures
don't fit neatly into a preconceived idea box
that the rest of the world might have.
They're uncategorical, they threaten common knowledge
and expose holes in our understanding of the world.
Like, imagine that you see a human kid
who can do whatever a spider can.
♪ Spider man spider man ♪
♪ Does whatever a spider can ♪
♪ Spins a web any size ♪
♪ Catches thieves just like guys ♪
♪ Look out ♪
♪ Here comes the spider man ♪
- Yeah, that doesn't really fit my understanding of reality,
but obviously the difference between a spider man
and say, a wolf man, is that Peter Parker
wasn't outwardly changed into a monster.
I mean occasionally, some stories will play up that gimmick,
but his origin didn't showcase any physical deformities
of his transformation.
Spider-Man didn't look like a spider ... man,
so how could that story be scary, right?
In horror tales, the monsters are frequently
physically terrifying in some capacity.
Maybe there's massive beasts, or perhaps swarms
of unyielding threats, or maybe they're
gross hybrid Cronenberg creatures,
but Carroll suggests there's another monster category
that isn't tied to a creatures biology; horrific metonymy.
This describes a type of horror antagonist
whose spookiness isn't something
that can be outwardly perceived by looking at the monster.
Think of serial killers or other slasher flick antagonists,
who may look like ordinary humans to the naked eye,
but are scary because they associate themselves
with horrifying, disgusting things like
murder, cannibalism, torture, vermin, et cetera.
As Carroll writes, "Frequently, in such cases,
the horrific being is surrounded by objects
that we antecedently take to be objects
of disgust and or phobia."
And we've been kind of dancing around it
for this entire video, but Spider-Man does
have a motif that's built around two things
that are often perceived as objects of fear and disgust;
spiders and radiation.
How're we doing?
I don't know.
Obviously Arachnophobia is one of the most
common fears amongst humans.
In fact, one study found that a simple silhouette
of a spider, much like the one found on Spider-Man's chest,
is iconic enough to grab our attention.
"Spiders may be one of a very few
evolutionary-persistent threats
that are inherently specified for visual detection
and uniquely prepared to capture attention and awareness."
So you know, probably wasn't much of a leap from there
to include spiders in a few horror movies at the time,
but a far more common trope, was the use of radiation.
♪ Is he strong listen bud ♪
♪ He's got radioactive blood ♪
- You see, during the years leading up
to Spider-Man's creation, horror was a thriving genre
in other media, especially movies,
which often featured nuclear monsters like Godzilla.
Heck, the highest grossing film of 1954
was about irradiated ants!
Boy, that Ant-Man and Wasp trailer looks real strange gang.
I'm still gonna go see it.
As you might imagine, the reason that atomic monsters
were a constant threat in fiction
is that the real world was dealing with
the anxieties of different atomic monsters.
Gamma--
Sorry, nuclear ... nukes.
Also gamma, probably also gamma ray.
Real threats brought real horrors to homes and schools,
teaching kids that the white hot blast
of nuclear annihilation can happen at any moment,
so make sure you get under that picnic blanket there sport.
It's really gonna help you out there, slugger.
- [Announcer] They know that even
a thin cloth helps protect them.
- As author Darren Hudson Hick wrote,
in an essay in Webslinger, about Spider-Man's connection
to the horror genre, "For the first time,
children understood horror.
The horror that, until now, only soldiers had known.
And this horror found an outlet in Hollywood.
The terrors of an atomic holocaust and nuclear mutation
fueled the imagination of filmmakers and film-goers alike."
If you're thinking, all of that happened in the 1950's.
Spider-Man didn't debut until 1962.
You're a dumb ...
So, you're right, all of that did happen in the 1950s,
and I am a dumb, but keep in mind
what actually was happening in 1962.
- [Announcer] This is a special report from CBS news.
- Good evening, this is Walter Cronkite
at CBS news headquarters in New York.
This day looked as though it might be one of armed conflict
between Soviet vessels and American war ships
on the sea lanes leading to Cuba.
- [President Kennedy] Within the past week,
unmistakable evidence has established the fact
that a series of offensive missile sites
is now in preparation on that imprisoned island.
The purpose of these bases can be none other
than to provide a nuclear strike capability
against the western hemisphere.
- Once again, Americans were in search of horror stories
to provide a sort of cathartic release
of pent up atomic fears.
Readers were hungry for it,
but you remember how there was that code
that prevented publishers from making horror comics?
Yeah, that made it nearly impossible for comic books
to tap into that market.
The readers demanded horror comics,
but the industry couldn't deliver anymore.
To be fair, some comic books tried
to relieve atomic fears in non-horror ways.
We talked before about how old Flash comics
eased cold war anxieties through stories of containment
and science, and if you missed that video,
maybe ... maybe subscribe, so you don't miss other ones.
The point is, American culture wanted horror stories
that the comic book industry couldn't really deliver
thanks to the comics code.
I mean sure, Marvel had suspense comics,
but they weren't really what people were looking for,
especially when you compare them to the gruesome,
terrifying tales the industry used to put out.
Then, here comes this strange new super hero,
named after a creature most people find scary,
with abilities that allow him to inhumanly twist
his body and skitter along walls, all drawn by an artist
known for his inherently creepy art style.
It's kind of serendipitous, don't you think?
To be clear, I'm not at all saying
the fact that Spider-Man happens
to check all these boxes was by design.
If Marvel wanted to intentionally create
a genuine spider monster, they could have.
There was nothing in the comics code
that specifically forbade it, although there was a clause
that essentially said, "just don't try to pull anything
on us guys, okay."
Besides, Marvel was all about pushing the limits
of the code anyway.
Oh what, we can't do vampires or werewolfs?
Then fine, here's a ware-tetradactyly named Carl
because screw you, I'm Stan Lee!
Not to mention that Marvel actually did
produce a story with a giant radioactive spider monster
in Journey into Mystery Number 73,
which was published almost exactly a year before
Spider-Man's debut.
When you add it all up, the spider and radiation motif,
his uncategorical nature as both a spider and man,
his creepy powers and Steve Ditko's unsettling artwork
during an era where readers were hungry for horror comics
that otherwise couldn't be produced,
it starts to make sense why Spider-Man
became a runaway success for Marvel.
He filled a hole left by the comics code
that shot the character's popularity
into the stratosphere.
Spider-Man was special, and everyone could see it,
even if they couldn't put their finger on why.
As Stan Lee wrote at the top of Spidey's origin,
costumed heroes are a dime a dozen,
but we think you may find our Spider-Man
just a bit different.
- And that was accidental.
I don't think we planned it that way,
but it was very fortuitous.
- But I want to know what you think.
Was Spider-Man's popularity due at least in part,
to him accidentally, or perhaps even intentionally
resembling a horror character?
And if that question wasn't confusing enough,
here's an easier one; what's your favorite horror comic?
Because I haven't read a lot of them,
and I'm interested, and I gotta prepare for October already,
even though it's only February.
I'd love to know what you're thinking,
down in the comments below.
I'll respond to some of them in the next
comment response video.
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My name is Scott, reminding you to read between the panels
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See ya.