Spider Man / Tropes G to P

• Genre-Busting: The series as a whole is a superhero story that is also a classic Coming of Age Story, a high school drama, romance story of all kinds (from teen romance all the way to epic melodramatic Star-Crossed Lovers stuff), kitchen sink working-class drama, a Screwball Comedy, science-fiction, and horror.
• Giving Them the Strip:
  • Mr. Stone, one half of a B-List merc team, tried to slow down the wall-crawler by using his Swiss-Army Weapon to coat the entire floor in glue so as to give his life-draining partner Mr. Styx a chance to use his touch of death. Spider-man easily leaps out of his boots onto the ceiling.
  • Also, Phil Urich, the only lucid man to take the identity of the Green Goblin, did this the first time he encountered Spider-Man, simply discarding his glove when Spidey snagged it with his webbing. (Clearly, Sanity Has Advantages, even when taking on the identity of a villain who's usually Ax-Crazy.)
• Girl Next Door: Played with in regard to Gwen Stacy. Gwen was more of an exotic flower whom Peter only met after he left Forest Hills and "went out into the world", i.e. Manhattan and college. She came from an upper-class background, her father was a respected elder citizen of New York who belonged to the same gentlemen's club as millionaires J. Jonah Jameson and Norman Osborn. Her boyfriend before Peter was Harry Osborn, the prospective heir of Norman, and in her first appearance, she was introduced as a high-school beauty queen. However, as she became the Betty to Mary Jane's Veronica, she moved into this category.
  • Mary Jane, in all versions but the original. Amusingly, Mary Jane was literally a girl next door in the original, as the niece of Aunt May's next-door neighbor, and coming from the same working-class Queens background that Peter did. She literally became this Trope in the Ultimate universe, having lived next door to the Parkers since she was a little girl and, before their Relationship Upgrade, was the geeky best friend of an equally-as-geeky Peter.
• Godwin's Law of Facial Hair:
  • J Jonah Jameson is the publisher or editor-in-chief of the Daily Bugle, a fictional New York City newspaper. He's famous for his temper and irrational hatred of Spider-Man. He's depicted with a toothbrush mustache to reflect his Bad Boss status in the Daily Bugle. During the 1960s, Jameson was depicted with a Toothbrush mustache but it varies from comic to comic in recent years, as Jameson is either depicted with a toothbrush mustache or just a cropped mustache.
  • Spidey puts particular emphasis on J. Jonah Jameson's toothbrush mustache when Captain America takes issue with a libelous headline the Daily Bugle is running against Spidey. The comic panels gradually zoom in on Jameson's mustache as Cap puts the squeeze on him, making it very clear who Cap is thinking of. One page later, Jameson has shaved it off as Spidey cheerily signals his approval of the revised headline.
• Guile Hero: Spidey is not averse to defeating his opponents with traps and science stuff. When he needs to throw down though, he can.
• Hammy Villain, Serious Hero: While Spider-Man is Marvel's king of snark, his modern incarnations are down-to-earth Nice Guys who work harder to pay their bills than fight supervillains. Most of his rogues gallery is anything but, including the cackling Green Goblin, the egotistic Doctor Octopus, and the theatrical Mysterio.
• Hand Wave: A particularly famous explanation whenever people ask where Spider-Man could be swinging from with no building in sight and his web line doesn't appear to be attached to anything is that there just so happened to be a helicopter off-panel that he's swinging from.
• Hates My Secret Identity:
  • In nearly every version of the franchise, Flash Thompson idolizes Spider-Man, but he and Peter Parker can't stand each other (at first - in the comics, they grow into good friends). Particularly played for laughs in the Ultimate Spider-Man (2012) cartoon: under the pretext of putting Flash somewhere safe, Spidey shoves him into a locker and then comments how petty it was, but fun!
  • Also the case for Gwen Stacy who liked Peter but hated Spider-Man.
  • Not "hatred", but Anti-Villain Black Cat was attracted to Spider-Man and the feeling was mutual, so Spidey decided to unmask himself as Peter Parker...which horrified Black Cat because she only loved Spidey. Some Character Development helped her appreciate Peter Parker as well.
  • In Marvels, Phil Sheldon has nothing but disdain for Peter, specifically because he respects Spider-Man as a hero and hates how J. Jonah Jameson slanders him, and sees Peter as an opportunistic weasel providing fuel to Jonah's vendetta just to earn a dirty buck with his Spidey photos.
• Head-Turning Beauty: Mary Jane Watson. "Face it Tiger, you just hit the jackpot!" You sure did, Mr. Parker. You sure did. Black Cat matches her in this.
• Heel–Face Turn:
  • Venom is a classic case of a Heel Face Turn to create an "edgier" hero. Also because Venom — created and illustrated by Todd McFarlane — was, for a time, considerably more popular than Spider-Man himself, being a giant, hulking, over-designed monster with zero qualms about killing. Quintessential '90s anti-hero, essentially. Flash Thompson and Eddie Brock in his second tenure as Venom have been flat-out heroes, but still lack qualms about being more brutal than conventional superheroes.
  • The Rhino eventually went legit, turning himself in, serving his time, and getting released on good behavior before settling down with a doting Russian woman. It lasted all of one more appearance. The new evil Rhino killed his wife, sending him on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge. He put the costume back on, killed the new Rhino, and is back as a villain.
  • Back in the 1980s, the Sandman got sick of crime and went straight. He actually joined the Avengers for a while. That lasted a good twenty years, real-world time. Then his old teammate the Wizard stuck him in a machine and brainwashed him to be evil again. Sigh.
  • In Last Remains, Norman Osborn goes through this as a result of Kindred's influence and becomes The Atoner. How long this will last has yet to be seen, but he decides to become the "Gold Goblin".
  • Overdrive from The Superior Foes of Spider-Man is smart enough that this trope is his entire reason for being a costumed villain. He grew up as a young boy who idolized superheroes, and reasoned that the quickest way to become an Avenger would be to start off as a villain and then eventually reform and fight alongside his childhood heroes.
• Iconic Sequel Character: Many characters iconic to the Spider-Man franchise don't actually appear until much later in the comic's run than one might think, even if they were mentioned early.
  • Mary Jane Watson didn't have her first full appearance until Issue #42, four years into the book's run, and almost half a year after the departure of Steve Ditko: she was established as The Ghost and The Faceless as early as Issue #15, appearing with her face obscured in Issue #25, with another appearance in the Annual, and was built up as a character that Aunt May wanted to set Peter up on a date with, which Peter kept trying to dodge (because he's Peter).
  • The Green Goblin, Spider-Man's Arch-Enemy appeared in Issue #13 after the likes of Vulture, Mysterio, Doctor Octopus, and the rest. The Kingpin comes more than 50 issues later, appears after more than 190 issues in 1979, and [[Characters/MarvelComicsVenom Venom didn't make his first real appearance until issue #299 in 1988, over 25 years of publication later.
  • Special mention goes to Gwen Stacy. Due to being referenced often in flashbacks and Adaptation Displacement, it may come as a shock to some fans to find out that she was Spidey's third love interest (behind Liz Allan and Betty Brant). Likewise, Peter's best friend and eventual enemy Harry Osborn made his debut in the same issue Gwen did, The Amazing Spider-Man #31.
  • Miles Morales, Peter's successor in many continuities, didn't show up until 2011—a whopping 49 years after the first issue. Even within his original series - Ultimate Spider-Man - Miles doesn't show up for 11 years, debuting at the beginning of the 3rd series, 160 issues in.
• Incredibly Obvious Bug: Spider-Man has spider-tracers, red peanut-sized spider-shaped devices he used to track people down. Usually, they are fired from the top of his web-shooter at fleeing villains who are none the wiser. One of the reasons why Spider-Man doesn't use the spider-tracers anymore may be due to the fact the bad guys he attached them to frequently found them and used them against him. Especially bad since they're designed to set off his spider sense, meaning they can be used to trigger false positives in that sense, turning one of his greatest edges into a weakness as Iron Man has demonstrated.
  • The tracers were easy to find, since they were red, shaped like the spider-insignia on his back, and they looked like the kind of trinkets one would find in a Cracker Jack box. His clone, the Scarlet Spider, was much smarter about this: he created Minidot Tracers, which were still red, but were also circular and MUCH smaller.
  • One story arc has a villain with a penchant for paying attention framing Spider-Man for a slew of murders, by leaving found spider-tracers on all of the victim's bodies.
  • In a Brand New Day story, one of them was as big as a CD. The trackee of course noticed it.
• Irrational Hatred:
  • J. Jonah Jameson, while almost never outright villainous, scratches the limits of the impossible in regards to his hatred of Spider-Man. He despises him with extreme passion, constantly referring to him as a menace, nevermind the fact that Spidey has saved Jonah's life, and New York and the world, on a regular basis. Whether or not there's an explained reason for it depends on the adaptation, but even when there is an excuse, it generally falls apart given everything Spider-Man's done for the world. In an early Lee/Ditko story he privately admits he is jealous from Spider-Man's selflessness◊. Though there's a number of other reasons as to why he dislikes masked vigilantes, his hatred is possibly related to the fact that Spider-Man shows up in his newspaper, and just making a crusade after him sells more papers.
  • Eddie Brock's entire reason for hating Spider-Man was that Spidey unwittingly exposed his shoddy journalism, although mentally bonding to the also-unstable Venom symbiote didn't help either party. It took decades in real-time and years in comic book time for Brock to get over it and become a better person.
• I Reject Your Reality: J. Jonah Jameson has an unhealthy tendency to make people who correctly believe that Spider-Man is a hero have second thoughts. Jameson refuses to accept the opinions of others, including his own son, that Spider-Man is a hero, trying to make his confronters second guess themselves. He also refuses to believe that Spider-Man himself is a hero and just sees him as a disruptive force of destruction. In many adaptations, this is one of his Flanderized qualities.
• It Began with a Twist of Fate: It varies based on universe and continuity, but Spider-Man generally gets bitten by a certain spider and gains his superpowers through a genuine twist of fate—by simply being in the right place at the right time. Ezekiel Sims would later claim however that the spider chose Peter as it was dying. It saw Peter's suffering as a benefit, as someone like that once given power would never allow themselves to be a victim again.
• It's All About Me: Peter Parker had this attitude after he got bitten by a spider, saying that all he cares about is himself and Uncle Ben and Aunt May, and the rest can go to hell. An attitude that has its logical and tragic consequence when it leads directly to the death of his father figure. This attitude of selfishness is also something shared by many of Peter's supporting cast and on some level, all his villains. Jameson in particular, though he also navigates it somewhat.
• Jerk Jock: Eugene "Flash" Thompson, one of Spider-Man's foils. He bullies Peter Parker constantly, but is a big fan of Spider-Man, not knowing they're the same person. In a subversion, the comics have him and Peter actually becoming friends after they graduate from high school. How's that possible? He isn't without his bad sides; When he was framed for being the Hobgoblin, everybody believed it immediately.
  • At least until a car accident gave him amnesia all the way back to college, erasing the past 10-20 years or so from his memory (Comic-Book Time).
  • Flash's evolution may have come with his military service after he graduated from high school. When he comes back to the U.S. after his tour of duty is over, he's a lot more circumspect and mature than the arrogant prick he was at the start of the series. This is partly represented by his sincere and heartfelt apology to Peter for all the crap that he put him through during high school.
  • More lately, he became an Ensemble Dark Horse and gets to be the 4th Venom, and he's touted as a through and through superhero, in spite of his evil jock past and the symbiote's usual villain status, meaning that he manages to make Character Development stick.
  • In the Ultimate universe, Peter does try to defend himself from Flash after he gets his powers. He winds up accidentally breaking Flash's hand, and the jerk's parents sue Aunt May and Uncle Ben for the medical costs.
    • In the Ultimate universe, much of the character development Flash would later go through in the regular continuity is instead given to Kong, one of his friends and a fellow Jerk Jock who also picked on Peter Parker... until he, a fan of Spider-Man, came to the (independently-reached) realization that Peter and Spider-Man were one and the same. Over the course of the series, he eventually mended bridges with Peter and became friendly with him, and seemed to break with Flash entirely.
    • A major theme in the Ultimate Spider-Man title is that bad people often aren't seen as bad by society itself and that lets them step on people to get what they want. After Gwen Stacy dies, when Kong tries to claim that Flash isn't that bad of a person, Peter gives a long "The Reason You Suck" Speech about why Flash is ultimately the high school equivalent of this. His position on the football team lets him get away with bullying and be rewarded for acting like a jerk to people who "don't matter" in his eyes, and he when he grows up he'll continue to behave this way thanks to being coddled and indulged. As mentioned, Flash in this series is much more of a dick and his Pet the Dog moments are extremely rare.
  • In Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane, Flash is one of M.J.'s best friends. In that series, he's depicted in a more sympathetic light, as he's also frequently belittled and demeaned by his Alpha Bitch-ish girlfriend Liz and nurses a crush on MJ herself. Whilst the other members of the football team are also Jerk Jocks to an extent, and some even bigger ones than Flash (at one point even planning to ruin a drama club performance that MJ was starring in because it happened to be scheduled at the same time as one of their games, until Flash persuaded them not too), MJ and his other best friends are quick to call Flash out on his being a jerk, especially to Peter.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: J. Jonah Jameson. Sure, he's short-tempered, tight-fisted, and an often obnoxious loudmouth, but he's also been shown as a tireless crusader supporting everything from labor union rights to mutant rights, going after organized crime figures and corrupt politicians despite repeated attempts on his life, and discreetly supporting various charities and social projects, and even hiring a good lawyer for Peter Parker when Parker was falsely accused of murder. He's been pretty much consistently portrayed as a social liberal whose ideals are wrapped in civil liberty and constitutional rights. despite the fact that he's a mean-spirited douche to the people around him.
  • In the arc where Spider-Man publicly unmasked himself as Peter Parker, Jameson went so far as to refer to Parker as being like a son to him, and that he had always regarded Parker as the "last honest guy in town". What does Jameson do next? Turns around and sues the crap out of Parker for misrepresentation. Of course, he wasn't entirely unjustified in doing this; he was also later confronted by other characters about how much of a jerk he'd been to Spider-Man / Peter over the years.
  • It should also be noted that Jameson's character is interpreted drastically differently, Depending on the Writer. Some writers really tend to push the "heart of gold" aspect, whereas others still prefer to present him as a genuine Jerkass, ignoring any character development to the contrary by other writers. (This usually coincides with alternating interpretations of Jameson as a genuinely competent newspaper publisher and an angry tabloid publisher with an agenda. The latter version is occasionally characterized as clueless and outright sociopathic, too, whereas the former version sometimes borders on hidden philanthropist. It's really inconsistent, to say the least.)
    • It should be noted that during Stan Lee's run on Spider-Man Jameson is always a Jerkass Scrooge who feels that appearing to have a heart of gold is the best way to make money.
  • Mainly though, the character seems to be kind of like Spider from Transmetropolitan. He's a complete asswipe, no doubt, but he surely is also a kind person at heart and has shown this on several occasions. For example he genuinely cares about honesty, integrity and civil liberties and can be quite nice (or at least, less caustic) to his friends, like Peter or his employees, despite being a sarcastic jerk.
  • JJ was once offered a deal: if he stopped bashing Spidey every time he needed an editorial, he'd get an exclusivity deal with the New Avengers. He even got to hear Captain Fucking America tell him Spidey was a hero rather than a monster. His response? After shaking hands on the deal, he promptly went back to not only committing libel, but making accusations of bribery and digging up things like "wanted murderer" (Wolverine), "terrorist" (Spider-Woman) and "convicted drug dealer" (Luke Cage, who was framed and exonerated).
  • These inconsistencies are avoided by the Ultimate Universe J. Jonah Jameson (probably because the only writer was Bendis). He embodies this trope completely. Three examples stick out - firstly, after firing Peter in a temper tantrum, he comes to the kid's house and opens up to him about his son dying, before offering to give him his job back and allowing him to start shadowing Ben Urich so he can get a taste for real journalism. The second is him doing a Heel–Face Turn on the whole Spider-Man thing after the Ultimatum arc when it's not certain if Spidey survived, and writing a heartfelt public apology/obituary for the webslinger. Lastly, he eventually discovers Peter's secret identity and his first reaction is to offer him money. He says he'll pay for Parker's entire college education on the basis that "I'm a rich man, I'd hardly notice."
  • In Marvel Versus DC, when it looks like The End of the World as We Know It, Spidey asks Jameson if he has any last digs to get in. Jonah responds "For what it's worth, I'm sorry", to which Peter can only say a quiet "Oh."
  • In the storyline The Death of Jean DeWolff, Jameson responds to a question about whether he believes Spider-Man deserves to die with "Hitler deserved to die, so do assassins, cop killers, scum like that. Whatever else he is, Spider-Man is not one of those."
• Just Friends: After a tumultuous on-again, off-again relationship, Spider-Man and the Black Cat settled into this. It lasted from the '90s to the mid-2000s before Brand New Day reset them back to sexual partners with Felicia not knowing Peter's identity and then had her become an antagonist as a result of the events of Superior Spider Man. The Amazing Spider-Man (2018) has seen them reconcile as friends.
• Keep the Home Fires Burning: Mary Jane Watson-Parker struggles between her desire to support Peter Parker in his role as Spider-Man and her real fear that this time could be the night she sent her husband out to die. This is notably a factor in the Kraven's Last Hunt storyline when for two weeks MJ doesn't know if Peter is dead.
• Knight of Cerebus:
  • Carnage serves as a classic example from the main continuity. Being a psychotic serial killer with a symbiote that both runs on and craves blood, he particularly stands out amongst Spidey's colorful Rogues Gallery because he's not interested in money or power; all he wants to do is kill as many people as he can, as violently as he can.
  • Morlun from JMS' run — not for the run itself (because he was the run's first antagonist), but the series as a whole. Because he significantly ramps up the threat level, his mere presence is a sign things are about to turn grim. Spider-Verse takes this up to eleven when his entire family is introduced.
  • In Ultimate Spider-Man, expect things to get dead freaking serious whenever Norman Osborn or anything else having to do with him shows up, possibly even more so then in the main continuity. Venom, too, has this distinction, symbolized by the fact that he's the first villain Peter fights without his Spider-Man costume. Just Venom's suit alone can threaten nuclear war!
• Knight Templar: The high-tech vigilante Cardiac targets people who commit evil and immoral acts, but find legal loopholes to escape justice. And let's face it; a lot of people would take Cardiac's side here. His victims are horrible men who rob people blind and cause innocents to suffer, but find ways to legally do it, always with selfish goals in mind. Even Spider-Man, who tries to stop him when he can, can't help but admire him a little sometimes.
  • Another notable admirer of Cardiac is none other than Otto Octavius, who met the vigilante while going through something of a Templar phase himself as the Superior Spider Man. Originally outraged when Cardiac stole one of his old inventions, Otto had a quick change of heart when he learned what Cardiac planned to use it for, and the team-up produced what was arguably Otto's most redeeming Pet the Dog moment in the entire run.
• Knockout Gas: Enemies of Spider-Man have used it from time to time. Mysterio, Kraven, the Chameleon, the Hobgoblins, and Green Goblins are all culprits.
• Laser-Guided Karma:
  • In his origin story Spider-Man allows a burglar to escape from a pursuing policeman. One page later his beloved Uncle Ben is dead, killed by the same man. Not a Tragic Mistake, as this event then galvanizes him to devote his life to heroically fighting crime instead of propelling him towards a tragic catastrophe. This is also why Spider-Man decides not to interfere with the event when he travels back through time in Amazing Spider-Man #500.
  • J. Jonah Jameson's poor treatment of Peter Parker and his financing attempts to capture/kill Spider-Man have repeatedly come back to haunt him.
  • Flash Thompson seems to be an aversion, as he ends up sharing an apartment with Peter Parker. Averted/lampshaded when he loses his legs when serving in Iraq, saving a fellow soldier, fulfilling the jock ending up crippled aspect of this trope.
• Life Drinker: Morlun belongs to a clan called the Inheritors that maintain their immortality by draining life energy from people, especially people who are animalistic totems.
• Lizard Folk: The Lizard, is sometimes a straight up bi-pedal version. After One More Day his villain Komodo is Exactly What It Says on the Tin, a Komodo dragon.
• Love Interest vs. Lust Interest: In the comics for awhile the love interest was Mary Jane and the lust interest was Black Cat. Peter prefers women who are interested in Peter, not Spider-Man. Black Cat is an adrenaline junkie and Anti-Villain who only cares about Spider-Man, she couldn't be less interested in Peter Parker. In some continuities (like the '90s cartoon) her civilian identity Felicia Hardy actually liked Peter before her transformation.
• Lust Object: Mary Jane Watson and Black Cat pretty much fall into this, due to them being among the most beautiful women in all of Marvel. In Mary Jane's case, it's a lot darker due to her attracting stalkers. With Black Cat, it's a bisexual case, with a wide range of male suitors and female lovers she's dated.
• Madonna-Whore Complex: Pops up quite a bit in regards to Peter's romantic life. The women in his life tend to be divided amongst the "Madonnas" such as Gwen, Aunt May, and Carlie Cooper, and those deemed "The Whores" as seen with Felicia and Mary Jane. Characters like Gwen and Aunt May are treated with solemn reverence and treated as the most important women in Peter's life, while Felicia and Mary Jane were derided for their sexual agency and confident personalities and argued for being "Not a good fit" for Peter.
• Magic Meteor: The Looter's whole shtick was stealing meteorites for their power-granting ability.
• Magnetism Manipulation:
  • Electro once had this as his main power, being able to negate his weakness to water by making it evaporate with electromagnetism before it touched him, and he was also able to paralyze people by overcharging their synapses with it. Otherwise, his normal Shock and Awe powers had basic electromagnetic capabilities which he used for things like Wall Crawl and fast travel on metal objects.
  • Spidey himself does this on a lesser scale, as his Wall Crawl powers are explained to be him using electromagnetism to adhere to any surface he desires.
  • Spider-Man's Alternate Universe daughter Spider-Girl had an even more powerful version, as she could use her magnetic field to repel whatever she was sticking to and stick others to walls.
• Make Some Noise:
  • Clayton Cole, a.k.a. Clash, is a self-proclaimed "Superstar of Sound", allowing him to torture Spidey with painful sound waves without causing damage to their surroundings. But he can still demolish walls and even bring down buildings with his sonic pulse generators.
  • Shriek has the ability to fire damaging sonic blasts out of her hands, in addition to giving off a psychic aura that makes people more violent and impulsive.
• Make Them Rot:
  • Carrion can cause organic matter to rot with a touch.
  • DK can cause a person to immediately dissolve by touching them.
• Master of Disguise:
  • The Chameleon. He wears exquisitely made latex masks, is a skilled mimic, and his own mask is equipped with voice changer software. For a time, the Chameleon also used a holographic belt that could instantly create an image of whoever he wanted to pose as. Chameleon is also astounding at being able to imitate someone. When he poses as Tigra, Avengers Academy member Finesse (who prides herself on knowing a person through their fighting moves) is in denial Chameleon could duplicate Tigra's micro-expressions enough to fool her.

    Chameleon: Well...that's why I'm a professional.

  • Aside from his robotics and special effects skills, Mysterio is also an expert at passing himself off as an ordinary person. He used the alias of "Ludwig Rinehart" both in a plot to drive Spider-Man crazy and then as the malevolent manager of a retirement home, and in The Amazing Mary Jane disguised himself as a Prima Donna Director to secure funding to make a movie about himself.
• Master of Illusion:
  • Mysterio falls into this trope, and he even titles himself "The Master of Illusion". Though his illusions are all based on his previous employment in the special effects industry, they can still be terrifyingly effective (though trying it on an Omega Class psychic? is not a good idea). After Mysterio committed suicide in Daredevil, and returned from the dead, his subsequent appearances revealed that he may or may not have Came Back Wrong, with actual illusion-casting powers. In the Old Man Logan storyline, Mysterio makes illusions so real that it tricks Wolverine into killing all of the other X-Men and breaking him when he dismisses the illusion.
  • It's also done on occasion by the Chameleon.
  • The Clone Saga included a mysterious villain named Judas Traveller who appeared to have almost unlimited reality warping powers. After many issues of build-up, it came as something of a disappointment when it finally turned out he was just an illusionist.
  • A minor foe, Mirage, and Fusion, who appeared in only two stories. (Admittedly one of them was awesome.)
• Meta Origin: The spider that bit Peter was revealed to have given powers to two others, Silk (who was also bitten) and the Thousand (who ate it in a bid to become superhuman, explaining what happened to it).
• Monster Modesty: Spidey has had several monstrous villains over the years. While some employ Nonhumans Lack Attributes, we do get characters like The Lizard and Vermin, two monster characters who have varying degrees of intelligence and enjoy running around in torn-up pants (and a lab coat in the Lizard's case).
• Moral Myopia:
  • Norman Osborn runs on this; if it happens to him it's unforgivable, but if he does it to someone else, it's business as usual. Best shown in The Night Gwen Stacy Died; he laughs off killing Gwen Stacy and openly mocks her death to Spider-Man's face, but when Spidey damages his Goblin Glider, he flies into an Unstoppable Rage and swears to make Spidey pay for doing so.
  • Miles Warren, aka the Jackal, often rants about how Spider-Man is "blind to the value of human life" based on nothing more than the death of Gwen Stacy, when the wall-crawler's only role in that event was that he failed to stop the Goblin killing her. Considering that Warren has gone so far as to create multiple clones suffering from cellular degeneration that will inevitably kill them as part of his plans to get "revenge" on Spider-Man, it becomes clear that he is the one with no thought for the value of human life, treating living beings as expendable pawns in his plans for revenge.
  • Felicia Hardy, aka The Black Cat takes any betrayal by Spider-Man, real or imagined, very personally and will often go to extreme lengths to make him pay for it. Perhaps the best example is when she became The Queenpin after Spider-Man (actually Doctor Octopus in Spider-Man's body) sent her to prison for theft and she tried to take revenge on the real Spider-Man by defeating and unmasking him. This is despite the fact that Peter is often very forgiving of Felicia when she violates his trust in some way like when she stole and sold a sample of his blood.
• Motive Decay: None of Spider-Man's villains ever started out with stable motives:
  • Doctor Octopus bobbed up and down from wanting to complete his life's work, world domination, petty thievery, and just wanting revenge on Spidey for past humiliation. Usually excused by the fact that the accident made him plumb crazy, and the AI in his arms was screwing with him. Plus his short foray into trying to cure AIDS! To be fair, in-universe it was believed that he was trying to create some form of biological weapon. Only the readers knew that he was searching for a cure purely to save his first love.
    • Not quite Motive Decay when you consider his original Evil Plan was to... hold some hospital staff hostage, followed by some odd scheme to take over a nuclear power plant and rebuild it in his own image, for a purpose whose details were never specified.
    • In The Amazing Spider-Man (J. Michael Straczynski), Doc Ock had a rival who'd stolen his design for the arms. There was a three-way battle between Ock, Spidey, and the rival in a hotel, and when the rival took out some support columns Spidey tried to get people out. Ock braced the falling ceiling and got people out - but then let it fall on Spidey and went off to get at that rival. He never lost sight of his objective and went into "get Spider-Man 'cause I'm a bad guy and that's what bad guys do!" mode. It seems he's gotten out of this. Of course, he'll be back again, and will need a reason.
  • Green Goblin's early motives were to become New York's crime lord, humiliating Spider-Man, and then after being hit with Easy Amnesia, he goes dormant, resurfaces to murder Gwen Stacy, goes underground in Europe, and plots The Clone Saga for, profit? and then since returning, he has become even more erratic than usual.
• Ms. Fanservice: Spidey's love interests are, usually, shown like this.
  • Back when Steve Ditko drew the book, not so much since The Comics Code was in effect and they all wore modest dresses, and most of them were in high school. By college, however, characters like Gwen Stacy and Mary Jane Watson were introduced. Gwen, however, stopped being this par for the course of her Character Development and, y'know, death. Mary Jane, however, kept the revealing clothes and flighty personality even after maturing, though in her case it's justified: She's an actress/model, and it's literally her job to be hot. Still, while most superheroines have an Impossible Hourglass Figure, MJ is almost always buxom and leggy, and she doesn't have the superpowers to justify it.
    • Most fans will attest that Mary Jane fit the Trope most during Todd McFarlaine's run on Amazing Spider-Man; he did several "cheesecake" shots of female characters, and as the most visible member of the supporting cast, she had most of them, the art during his run giving her a sudden preference for midriff revealing tops and dangerously daring necklines.
  • Gwen is a very beautiful blonde-haired woman who wears outfits (particularly skirts with thigh-high socks and boots as well as dresses) that highlight her very voluptuous body (that's nearly as sexy as MJ's body), buxom breasts, hourglass figure, and long, toned legs.
  • Black Cat had a suit designed for Navel-Deep Neckline, made out of black PVC, and had a build that would require lots of surgery to get in real life, even more so than a lot of other heroes. Her miniseries The Evil that Men Do opens with a Shower Scene focuses a great deal on her body, such as a close up of her washing her legs or showing her figure via Sexy Silhouette.
  • In a very weird way, Marvel has been trying to turn Carlie Cooper into this, most likely to increase her popularity. Low cut jeans, bared midriff, a tattoo that's near her lady bits but still visible in order to increase the midriff, and was probably the only girl in Spider-Island shown during the 'Naked New York' scene. However, because people just can't stand her, it's been rather ignored.
• Multi-Armed and Dangerous:
  • In The Six Arms Saga, Spider-Man attempted to get rid of his superpowers... but the attempt failed rather spectacularly, giving him six arms.
  • The Spider Doppelganger has multiple clawed arms.
  • Doctor Octopus famously sports four additional mechanical limbs, as do derivatives from Doc Ock's mold like Lady Octopus and the Squid.
  • Spider-Man/Deadpool: Itsy Bitsy is a woman who received DNA from both Spider-Man and Deadpool, which caused her to turn into a psychotic spider-like creature. She has six arms armed with guns and sharp organic webbing.
• Mutual Envy: The Spider-Man/Human Torch Trade Paperback "I'm With Stupid" shows their relationship through the years, with the last story, "I'm With Stupid" pointing out the good things they have: Spidey gets to be near all the hot women and also be able to follow Reed without needing a translation into "normal," Johnny gets to have the trappings of fame and go to various universes Spidey would do anything to go to. Or the perks of power "with NONE of the responsibility."
• Narcissist: A trait that nearly all Spider-Man characters to some level have shown at different times:
  • Peter after being bitten by a spider, decides to court celebrity and fame as a performer rather than use his newfound superpowers and changes for scientific analysis and research. While Uncle Ben's death teaches him why this isn't good, he still retained a narcissistic streak well into his later years such as Roger Stern's "The Daydreamers" where he dreams about winning the Pulitzer, the Nobel, joining the Avengers and the Fantastic Four at the same time with both of them fighting each other over him, and of course Jameson kisses his boots and grovels at his feet. This changes after his marriage with Mary Jane when both of them realize their Hidden Depths and he becomes more genuinely selfless. Post-OMD, he retains some sense of it, such as insisting to Mary Jane that it's okay for him to lie to Carlie Cooper for his double life because he wants her to love him for "plain ol' Pete" only for her to dump him, as MJ more or less predicted she would when she finds out that he lied to her. And as Peter Lampshades in The Amazing Spider-Man (2018), he rather liked the fame and adulation that came with being a CEO of a company with unearned wealth and degree.
  • Even his work as Spider-Man has an element to it. Peter's main angst as Spider-Man is primarily how his guilt affects him and him personally, how it screws up his life, and how his attempts to help others cause problems for him because he's misunderstood or he's unlucky. His reaction to Goblin killing Gwen is how Norman killed "his woman". In Slott's "No One Dies", his excessive concern and grief over losing loved ones leads him to add a new Heroic Vow which Mary Jane points out is excessive and grandiose since he's a superhero and not god and that his great sensitivity tends to make him lose sight of what he is actually capable of and what his actual responsibilities are.
  • Narcissism is also a trait and flaw for many of Peter's supporting cast one which they overcome. Flash Thompson goes from a selfish jock to a dedicated serviceman inspired by Spider-Man to serve something bigger than himself. Gwen Stacy in Ditko's run started out as a self-absorbed Ice Queen before mellowing out to an overly sensitive girl in Lee-Romita's run. J. Jonah Jameson is of course almost supremely self-absorbed and self-centered even when he is doing good, acting noble, and serving something bigger than himself, with his narcissistic side co-existing with his heroic side.
  • Mary Jane is interesting for someone whom others see as this, and who also tells herself that she is one many times, but actually proves to be more consistently selfless than most. After walking out of her broken home and abandoning her sister to make something of her life, she became devoted to her Aunt Anna and even her neighbor May Parker, notably being friendly and visiting them even when Peter was too busy. Her decision to stick by Peter in The Night Gwen Stacy Died even after she lashes out at him. Her support and encouragement of Peter being Spider-Man during one of his "Spider-Man no more" phases when they were friends (thinking out how she, the most irresponsible person she knows, prefers Peter continuing to remain the most responsible man person she has ever met), and ultimately becoming a very devoted, faithful, and loving wife to Peter. Post-OMD, MJ lapses into her pre-character development narcissism but her selfless streak returns from time to time (such as encouraging Peter to find love and happiness even if she is still in love with him herself), helping her boss Tony Stark, and flirting with superheroics even when she doesn't want to.
• Noble Demon: Spidey's Rogues Gallery consists of a few.
  • A literal example is Demogoblin, who was created due to a curse placed on the second Hobgoblin, who had previously made a Deal with the Devil. Throughout most of his career, Demogoblin acted like a Sinister Minister, killing people who he believed were sinners, which usually included many Innocent Bystanders. However, in a battle with the actual Hobgoblin, he made a Heroic Sacrifice to save an innocent child who the Hobgoblin had deliberately put in harm's way, dying in the process. This made Spider-Man more disgusted with the Hobgoblin than he ever had been; in the end, the demon who his wickedness had spawned had been nobler than he had been.
  • Sandman is often portrayed as somewhat heroic, or at least he's only doing super crime for the money. But he has a moral code and is not above teaming up with Spider-Man if the situation requires it.
  • Venom may be a violent psychopath determined to destroy Spider-Man and anyone who gets in the way of that goal, but he always tries to avoid hurting innocents and tends to go out of his way to protect them. This is because, in Brock's delusional mind, he's the hero of the people and Spider-Man is the monster that New York needs to be saved from.
• No Ontological Inertia: "The Lizard" was created by a man, Dr. Curt Connors, trying to grow his right arm back. When he becomes the Lizard, his right arm does, indeed, grow back. When he's cured and reverts to normal, however, he loses his arm again. Connors's RIGHT ARM has No Ontological Inertia. Ditto for Kommodo, who uses an improved version of Dr. Connors's formula, that allows her to transform at will. In human form, she has no legs. Where on earth do they come from?
• Not Me This Time: This happens to Spider-Man a lot, apparently. In Fallen Son: The Death of Captain America, Peter visits Uncle Ben's grave and sees Rhino walking through the cemetery. He attacks, thinking he's up to something (despite Rhino pleading that he isn't here to fight), and their fight breaks a gravestone belonging to Rhino's mother... which was the only reason he was there in the first place. When he realizes this, Spider-Man attempts to apologize, but Rhino is, understandably, far too angry to listen.
  • Subverted in that even though Norman Osborn will often deny involvement in a scheme hurting Spider-Man, lazy writing will often retcon him as being the mastermind.
  • In the Spider-Man spin-off Jackpot, the heroine, later accompanied by Spidey himself, beats up a minor villainess who was smuggling but really hadn't anything to do with what Jackpot wanted to know about. The snippy answer of the villainess was something along the lines of: "What? Do you think every villain in New York gets a daily update about every crime?!"
• Not Quite Flight: Spider-Man sometimes uses his webbing to create glider-wings, parachutes, bungee cords, and other means to send himself through the air when there are no convenient tall buildings or trees to swing from.
• The Notable Numeral: The Sinister Six.
• Official Couple Ordeal Syndrome: Spidey and Mary Jane. Dating a superhero makes you a target of hundreds of supervillains. Marrying him means the writers want to break it up as much as possible. And yet, because this is the web-slinger we're talking about, things could be even worse.
• The One Who Made It Out: Some of the stories (at least before the Dan Slott era^note Where Peter is a CEO businessman) deal with Peter's Angst about the fact that being Spider-Man is delaying or hurting his ambitions and plans for his career or attempts to live up to his potential. This is also part of the arc of his supporting characters.
  • Norman Osborn in his revival often taunted Peter for being an underachiever who more or less still lives in the same way he did as a young man, was still poor, and came off as an underachiever. Doctor Octopus in the Superior Spider Man initially expressed the same views.
• Outdated Outfit: The Amazing Spider-Man (Lee & Ditko) was especially bad for this. Seeing almost all the adult men wearing fedoras, teenage boys wearing bow ties, and girls wearing long skirts are especially jarring by today's standards.
  • Mary Jane Watson is a huge victim of this, being a fashion model during her appearances in the 1980s and 1990s. The funny thing was that the contemporary "big hair" look that Todd Mc Farlane gave her in the 1990s actually dated more quickly than her "so outdated it's cool again" 1960s hairstyle, which was then brought back.
  • Supporting character Captain Jean DeWolff dressed like someone out of a 1940s film noir and drove a matching vintage roadster, but that seems to have been a deliberately retro look.
• Outside-Genre Foe: While Peter does live in the Fantasy Kitchen Sink that is the Marvel Universe, he largely sticks to traditional supervillains. However, he has encountered a few villains who fall into either more grounded or fantastical genres:
  • Shathra and Morlun are more on the magical side of things, the former being the avatar of spider wasps while the latter is a type of vampire that feeds on the life essense of people from across the multiverse who are connected to the web of life and destiny.
  • While they haven't lasted long, he has encountered ordinary people who for whatever reason have come into conflict with him as Peter Parker with many of them belonging to more dramatic and realistic genres. A notable example is Jonathan Caesar, a stalker who kidnapped Mary Jane and threatened to kill her if they don't get married.
• Painted-On Pants: Mary Jane usually wears these. So does the Black Cat, both in and out of costume.
• Pair the Spares: It's fairly common for supporting cast members to get bounced around like this. Harry Osborne used to date Mary Jane, but ended up marrying Peter's high school love interest Liz Allen after she hooked up with Peter. Similarly, Flash Thompson has dated Mary Jane, Gwen Stacy, Black Cat, Liz Allen, and Betty Brant, though only Betty and the Black Cat were exes at the time.
• Phlegmings: Spider-man's collection of symbiote villains (Venom, Carnage, et al.) have this in spades.
• Pick on Someone Your Own Size: Most of the villains Spider-Man met when he was a teenager only developed a hatred for him after he kept getting in their way.
  • While the adult Green Goblin originally fixated on the then-teenaged Spider-Man because he intended to make an impression on the New York mobs by capturing Spider-Man, who he thought would be an easy target, the Goblin soon became obsessed with the idea of making the much younger Peter Parker the "heir" to his legacy as the Green Goblin, seeing in Peter Parker the traits he wanted his heir to carry on, but found lacking in his own son.
• Portable Hole: The Spot has power over interdimensional portals, which he can place and remove as if they were solid objects.
• Power Perversion Potential:
  • Webs. As a matter of fact, Todd McFarlane wrote an implicitly explicit (consensual) bondage foreplay scene◊ (between Peter and his wife Mary Jane Watson) into an issue during his short run on the explicitly-created-for-him Spider-Man (no adjective) series from the early 1990s.
  • The Chameleon, a shapeshifter and Master of Disguise, provides a very creepy example. On one occasion when he discovers Spidey's secret identity, he disguises himself as Peter with the intention of committing a Bed Trick on Mary Jane. It doesn't get further than kissing, however, as she is immediately able to tell that he's not Peter (it helps that she deliberately slips him some misinformation that the real Peter would have known to be wrong, just to make sure). When MJ calls him out on it, Chameleon then turns into a stereotypical muscular hunk, and then a sophisticated-looking older man, to show that he can take any physical visage she might fantasize about, before shifting back to his normal form with the intention of taking her by force anyway. Unfortunately for him, though, this is the moment when MJ beats the ever-loving crap out of him with a baseball bat.
• Progressively Prettier:
  • Peter Parker is a classic example. Drawn by Steve Ditko, Peter was a skinny, thin-faced geek and Spider-Man was thin and more spider-esque. When John Romita Sr - a former romance comic artist - took over the pencilling duties, Peter Parker became significantly more handsome and Spider-Man took on a more muscle-bound appearance. May be Handwaved in that when Ditko was drawing it, Spidey was a teenager, and as he got older and got real exercise to go with his superstrength, his frame may well have filled out naturally.
    • The artists' notes in the first volume of Ultimate Spider-Man bear this out: in that series he's a high-schooler again, and he's drawn explicitly scrawnier and ganglier than the main universe version, with a note that he is supposed to be very thin, not having built up muscle from years of webslinging.
    • Peter does look less spindly and more conventionally attractive even towards the end of Ditko's run. That change began with Amazing Spider-Man #8 when Flash Thompson broke his glasses, and Peter decides he doesn't need to do that much Clark Kenting, considering the spider bite corrected his vision.
    • This is acknowledged in "Along Came a Child" from Marvel Comics Presents #120, which features a teenager who turns out to be the boy who witnessed Peter climbing up a building in Amazing Fantasy #15. Having figured out that Spider-Man is the same odd boy he saw years ago, he strikes a deal with J. Jonah Jameson, and the Daily Bugle publishes a police-sketch that accurately depicts Peter as he appeared in AF #15. Of course, Peter no longer looks like that.
  • Also, surprisingly enough, Gwen Stacy. In her early appearances, as drawn by Steve Ditko, she had highly, angular eyebrows, pinned up hair, a constant haughty expression, and fairly modest clothing; her features were sharp and angular and although she could occasionally pull off a nice pout, the fact that lots of characters called her pretty was the only hint to the fact that she actually was so. But when John Romita took over the drawing, Gwen was softened, her features became more angelic, she let her hair down, gaining her iconic bangs and headband, and she dressed in much sexier clothes.
  • Averted with Mary-Jane Watson who was The Faceless and The Ghost for most of Ditko's run albeit it was implied that she was quite gorgeous (based on the reactions of Liz Allan and Betty Brant who saw her before Peter did), but it's a Riddle for the Ages how Ditko's version of Mary-Jane would have looked like.
  • When he was first introduced, Eddie Brock was a very poorly kempt middle-aged man, and although he was very muscular, he had an oversized, grotesque frame. All of this was meant to signify that he was in a poor place mentally and that he was clearly villainous. As he became more heroic, he got more of a standard Heroic Build and looked about a decade younger, to the point where nowadays he's a bona fide Chick Magnet.
  • It even happened to Aunt May for a few issues when Romita took over! Luckily, the fans complained she looked too young and she was soon back to her old appearance.
• Psycho Electro: Electro is normally a very downplayed version of this trope. However, he went crazy after the Superior Spider Man (actually Doctor Octopus in Peter's body, at that time) experimented on him. He can no longer control his powers (to the point of accidentally frying his ally/lover) and has frequent nightmares of Spider-Man torturing him.
  • The Electro of Ultimate Spider-Man is very psychotic, unhinged, and paranoid, unlike his original Marvel counterpart, where he was (at the time, anyway) just your basic thug with electricity powers.
  • Max Dillon's successor as Electro, Francine Frye, is a much bigger case, a Monster Fangirl that soon after getting electric abilities gave a Kiss of Death to Max in order to absorb his power.
• Punch-Clock Villain:
  • The Shocker differs from his peers mainly because he considers supervillainy more of a job than a way of life. He is essentially a gifted inventor that considers robbing banks to be more entertaining than a typical desk job, and has taken pains to avoid causing casualties in the past. Later, he starts working for Hammer Industries, which hires him out as muscle, where he punches into work and has a supervisor, etc.
  • The Sandman is, while a supervillain, still a halfway decent person, who, among other things, changed his real name so that his mother wouldn't get caught up in his criminal career. He even tried a heroic career, and kept it for quite a while before the Chronic Villainy set in. He is still shown to be a relatively amiable person once you get past the life of crime, and is noticeably less violent and cruel than his peers in Spidey's Rogues Gallery. He occasionally gains traits of an Anti-Villain as well, especially in Spider-Man 3, where he was a full on Anti-Villain who only commits crimes to save his daughter. In the early Marvel days, Sandman and Ben Grimm ran into each other in a neighborhood bar. They put down some minor troublemakers who were disturbing the peace, then spent the rest of the afternoon sitting side-by-side at the bar, swapping stories over beers.
• Put on a Bus: This happened to several characters over the years, ranging from Liz Allan to Flash Thompson to Debra Whitman to Harry Osborn to even Mary Jane herself. It turned out to be a round trip, since subsequent writers would bring them all back at one point or another.