The beautiful thing about comic book characters is that, aside from being effectively immortal, they don’t have to be limited by the stories they’re set in. If a character is popular enough, they can have a number of alternate possible stories or even different versions of themselves. Spider-Man is one of the best examples of this.
He is such an enduring character that his iconography can be applied in a limitless amount of ways if the writer in question is talented enough. It’s given fans the incredible gifts of a punk rock Spider-Man and even reintroduced Gwen Stacy as Spider-Gwen. And sometimes… sometimes it gives fans things they didn’t ask for. Because as fun as Spider-Man’s versatility is, spiders can also be really creepy. And leaning into this fact of life lead to the creation of the most horrifying version of Spider-Man ever, Spiders-Man. And honestly, just by existing he’s more terrifying than any movie villain Marvel has produced thus far.
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Considering the infamous “Parker Luck” it’s a wonder Peter Parker doesn’t thank his lucky stars that it was only one spider that bit him. On Earth-11580, Peter was a promising young student who was invited to Horizon Labs for a tour. Tragedy and horror would mix though when Peter fell into a colony of irradiated spiders which then devoured him. Pretty horrifying right? Don’t worry, it gets worse.
The spiders did consume Peter, but due to the experiments performed on them, they absorbed his consciousness into themselves, becoming a collective hive mind masquerading as the man they consumed. It then dedicated itself to fighting crime in “Cruel York” But despite claiming to have Peter Parker’s mind inside the many thousands of insects that make up its form, Spiders-Man clearly has difficulty engaging with the humanity that Peter was known for.
He allied with its fellow alternate Spider-Men to stop the Inheritors, but by that point, he had developed a taste for human flesh, though he tried to very poorly hide this fact. And yet, when an attempted solution for containing the collectors presented itself by destroying the Web of Life and Destiny, Spiders-Man first spread his spiders through it, ensuring he had eyes and ears throughout the multiverse. But this also hints at the scope of his abilities, transcending even the limits of dimensions and potentially an avenue of immortality.
He’s nothing short of horrifying, however. Even villains like the Green Goblin or Venom don’t have quite a horror story for an origin like Spiders-Man does. The closest any of Spider-Man’s villains come to beating him in sheer gore is Carnage, but even Kletus Casady’s origin isn’t as disgusting as Spiders-Man’s. And should he ever appear in any form of medium (almost guaranteed to be something geared towards older audiences) Spiders-Man might not even be portrayed as a hero. He’s too inhuman, and that might actually be insulting actual Inhumans. He lacks Peter Parker’s humanity which is what made him such a great hero. So if he ever does show up outside of comics, it won’t be because he’s here to fight crime.
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