SPIDER-MAN

 

SPIDER-MAN

Real Name: Peter Benjamin Parker

First Appearance: Amazing Fantasy (Vol. 1) #15, August 1962

Powers: As a teenager, Peter Parker was bitten by a small Common House Spider which happened to be in the path of a particle accelerator's beam and was massively irradiated. The stricken spider fell on to Parker's hand, broke his skin with its fangs, and died. The radioactive, complex mutagenic enzymes in the spider's blood that were transferred at the time of the bite triggered numerous body-wide mutagenic changes within Parker. As a result, he developed a number of proportionate abilities of the spider from that event.

Spider-Man has Class 10 superhuman strength, superhuman speed, agility, endurance, reflexes, recuperative powers, balance, coordination, and sense of equilibrium. His hands and feet have the ability to manipulate the inter-atomic binding forces of matter, allowing him to form temporary molecular bonds between his body and another object. This enables him to cling to solid surfaces and scale walls simply by placing his hands on them. Finally, he possesses a "spider-sense" which alerts him to danger. This takes the form of a tingling sensation at the base of his skull. Through experience, Spider-Man has learned how to sense differences in the various tingles he feels, determining whether a danger is potential or immediate, how intense a threat it is, what direction it is coming from, etc. Spider-Man has trained himself so that his reflexes instinctively kick in whenever he feels a sudden, immediate threat, carrying him out of danger without even thinking about it consciously. Working together, his reflexes and spider-sense enable him to move fast enough to dodge bullets. The spider-sense is keen enough that he registers hidden weapons on a person he passes by, or the presence of an old foe in plain clothes on the street, whether or not they are currently planning to attack or commit a crime.

Spider-Man's webbing is a fluid adhesive highly-compressed into cartridges attached to the web shooters on his wrists. Extra cartridges are stored on his belt. By altering the nozzle on the web shooters, Spider-Man can release webs in three forms: Thin single web-lines, a tangling spray of cobwebs, and a liquid paste. All three forms of webbing dissolve after about an hour of exposure to the elements. Generally, he employs web-lines, firing them at the corners of buildings in order to swing himself through the city. Web-lines can also be woven into various shapes as they form, allowing him to create things like web shields, domes, cages, baseball bats, hang gliders, projectile balls, etc. His web shooters also carry a firing mechanism for his spider-tracers, small spider-shaped tracking devices that use an adhesive to stick to his targets. Originally, he had to employ a handheld receiver to pick up the tracer's signal, but later learned how to key their transmissions to the same wavelength as his spider-sense, allowing him to pick up and track down tracers mentally.

Spider-Man has undergone a number of temporary changes over the years. While trying to remove his powers, he accidentally caused himself to grow four extra arms. He has also been transformed into a giant man-lizard and man-spider at times. While wearing the alien symbiote costume, Spider-Man had access to self-regenerating webbing produced from within the costume, and could mentally reform the suit into any set of clothing he desired. During his Identity Crisis, Spider-Man assumed four different identities: Prodigy, Ricochet, Dusk, and Hornet. As Prodigy, he played up his superhuman strength while toning down the agility factor, and he did the reverse as Ricochet. He wore a sculpted bulletproof vest as Prodigy to give the illusion of invulnerability, and as Ricochet he employed a set of eight throwing disks, four mounted on each sleeve. As Dusk, he used a costume from the Negative Zone which had glider foils under the arms that allowed him to fly for short distances, and its jet black coloration made him virtually invisible in darkness. As Hornet, he wore an armored suit and misled the public into believing him physical powers were a result of exo-skeletal enhancement. He also used the Scarlet Spider's "sedative stingers" which fired from his gauntlets, and his jet pack had a set of four retractable wings which enabled him to fly and made him highly maneuverable.

At one point, Spider-Man was chosen by the Enigma Force to bear the energies of the Uni-Power. The Uni-Power was a force that traveled throughout the universe, endowing host after host with the powers, knowledge, and identity of Captain Universe in order to combat specific evils. In Peter Parker's case, he was exposed to a unique energy field at the exact time the Uni-Power chose to infuse him with its energy. The result was that he gained all the power of Captain Universe without the hereditary knowledge and sense of identity the Uni-Power normally bestowed on its wielders. Spider-Man now possessed well beyond Class 100 strength, increased speed, endurance, and reflexes, invulnerability, and the power to fly. His hearing was superhumanly acute and his "Uni-Vision" gave him telescopic sight and x-ray vision. Spider-Man could generate uni-force energy as light or highly destructive concussive force blasts, and had the ability to manipulate molecular structures. He used this power to summon his costume at will and control his webbing, mentally causing it to shape into giant animated hands, or shaping a web-dome around a bomb and transmuting the webbing into Adamantium, containing the explosion. Eventually, the unique energy field was reversed, he fully transformed into Captain Universe, defeated his threat (the Tri-Sentinel), and lost the extra powers.

More recently, Spider-Man has gone through serious changes. First, he was transformed into a giant spider when the Queen stimulated his "insect gene", only to eventually return to normal. Not much later, he fought to the death with his foe Morlun and lost, but connected to the Great Weaver and was reborn. These experiences augmented and added to his powers, marking him as a mystical "totem" through the power of the spider. Previously in the Class 10 strength range, he upgraded into the Class 15-20 range. His wall-crawling power was equally distributed across his entire body, enabling him to make objects cling to his chest, back, or elsewhere simply by willing it. He had augmented vision, letting him see in the dark, and an acutely developed sense of touch. He could pinpoint minute traces of wind and air flow, and was highly sensitive to vibrations being carried through solid objects. This let him isolate various kinds of sounds or impacts being created in his nearby area, and hone in on particular ones he wished to track or find. The oscillating properties of his webbing could be used to heighten this sensitivity if he wove a web and sat in the center like a spider, feeling the vibrations pulse through the strands. His webbing was produced organically from spinnerets on the underside of his wrists, apparently by synthesizing food stuffs and waste in his body. He could also extend stingers from his wrists, foot long blades which could be used for combat and produced an adaptive venom that paralyzed his foes. Finally, he developed an intuitive knowledge of arachnids, allowing him to instinctively recognize and classify any he saw with an innate encyclopedic knowledge, and the ability to communicate with insects and arachnids to a rudimentary degree.

To complement his heightened abilities, Tony Stark re-designed Parker's costume with new advances and trinkets. His mask was equipped with telescopic, infrared, and ultraviolet lenses, as well as audio enhancers letting him pick up on and monitor heartbeats, radio-band scanners that could tune into emergency frequencies, and a two-way communication microphone. It also came with carbon filter to protect him from smoke and gas inhalation. The entire suit was made of heat-resistant kevlar to withstand temperature extremes and small arms fire, while the mesh webbing underneath his arms allowed for limited gliding ability. The suit's nanomesh enabled him to alter its appearance, morphing it into any of his previous costumes or hiding the suit altogether. It also contained retractable spider legs which extended out from his backside. These legs had dexterous hooks on the ends to grab and manipulate objects, as well as tiny video cameras which he could use to look around corners or in several directions at once by projecting their video feeds into his mask. Following Civil War, Spider-Man abandoned his "Iron Spider" suit, and the events of One More Day apparently reversed all the new powers and enhancements he had received in recent years, as he rejected his connection to the Great Weaver.

After beginning employment at Horizon Labs, Peter had access to special materials and equipment which he used to improve his crime-fighting. His web-shooters were modified with a voice activation sequence, enabling him to fire a variety of web-types or spider tracers without hitting the palm triggers. New variations of webbing can be instantly accessed, including magnetic, acid, and lead-lined webbing. He weaponized some of his spider-tracers, such as Anti-Metal Vibranium tracers that dissolve metals on contact, and cryo-pellet tracers that freeze targets solid. His regular tracers are also upgraded with GPS tracking beacons, increased range, and are wired for sound. Working with the Future Foundation, he received a new costume that could morph into different designs, including his regular suit or FF wear, or revert to a generic body suit to wear under his clothes.

Other specialized costumes he created include the stealth suit and armored suit. The stealth suit had three modes: blue, green, and red. Blue was normal. Green warped light and sound to render him invisible and inaudible. No one could see or hear him in this mode without specially designed goggles and earphones. Red was a more aggressive sonic dampener mode, neutralizing all sound before it reached Spider-Man's ears. This made it impossible for him to hear or be heard, but it effectively immunized him against Hobgoblin's lunatic laugh. The armored suit was lightweight but fully proof against at least small caliber bullets. It also included magnetic webbing that scrambled electronic signals from passing through. By covering a remote-detonated bomb with magnetic webbing, Spider-Man could prevent the detonation signal from reaching the bomb, or he could web up the detonator itself and achieve the same effect.

During the Ends of the Earth event, Spider-Man adopted a new armored costume specially prepared to battle the Sinister Six. It used exo-skeletal enhancements and heavily reinforced armor to let him grapple with the Rhino, pushing his strength to nearly Class 70. He also carried an electrified whirligig designed to rip through the Rhino's own reinforced suit. For the masters of deception, Mysterio and Chameleon, Spidey equipped the suit with special lenses able to penetrate and ignore Mysterio's illusions and holograms, as well as filters to block out hallucinatory smoke and gas. His audio receptors were keyed to Chameleon's exact heart beat signature, allowing him to identify the spy regardless of his disguise. The suit was electrically insulated to prevent Electro from damaging him at all, and contained cyber-helmet circuitry to override Doctor Octopus's control of his mechanical arms or Octobots. Finally, for Sandman, Spider-Man could emit a spray of radioactive dye, letting him locate the "alpha particle" that contained Marko's consciousness when in his silicon form. By piggybacking an electronic signal onto Marko's brain waves, he could input new shapes and configurations into Sandman's mind, forcibly altering Sandman's body to match.

When Otto Octavius took possession of Spider-Man's body and memories, he strove to become a Superior Spider-Man. Otto updated Spider-Man's costume to include more advanced optical lenses, equipped with scanning and identification software that provides him with Head's-Up Display data on anything he looked at. This included identifying various people and superhumans (with a brief powers and bio summary for his review), pinpointing electronics and adjusting for different visual tracking modes, such as infrared, night vision, or tracing specific radio frequencies. The lenses also coordinated with his Spider-Bots, modified from Octavius's earlier Octobots, which patrolled the city by the thousands and sent him alerts on various threats or crimes to the lenses or his personal tablet. The Spider-Bots were equipped with Uatu Jackson's facial recognition software, allowing Otto to rapidly locate individual people within the city limits. They could also tap into communication frequencies, such as cellular or police band radios, or assume control of different electronic systems. The Superior Spider-Man adapted talons on his gloves and boots that not only functioned as weapons, but also carried "nano-tracers" that microscopically cling to a target, providing GPS location signals and audio reception. For pre-planned battle scenarios, Otto rigged his chest-piece with a touch-activated switch that triggered specific traps and programs based on his verbal commands. He later upgraded his costume with four retractable "legs" from the backpack, useful for support or to lift and strike at objects from a distance.

After regaining control of his body, Peter Parker launched himself into the inherited Parker Industries and revolutionized his tech and equipment. He now wears a lightweight armored costume proof against beam weapons and small arms fire. Voice-activated web-shooters can switch between various specialized cartridges including micro-coil Z-metal "bug zappers", impact-absorbing web foam, or more traditional webbing. He also uses an upgraded Spider-Mobile and a Hydro-Spider for underwater activity.

Peter Parker holds a bachelor's degree in physics. A highly inventive thinker and a gifted intellect, Parker is an accomplished scientist, inventor and photographer.