An unofficial fan encyclopaedia
Sixty years of Spider-Man on screen, checked line by line rather than remembered. Villains recur across timelines that were never supposed to touch, and plenty of what everybody repeats turns out not to be true.
- 13Wore the mask
- 20Villains
- 15Films
- 35Screen entries
- 17Corrections
No official image appears anywhere on this page. Every mark, figure and skyline here is drawn in code.
What is in here
This one draws the shape instead. Three things below are built as data you can read at a glance, which is the one thing a wall of pictures and paragraphs is bad at.
01
The matrix
20 villains against 15 films. Who recurs, who crosses continuities that were never meant to meet, and which film carries the heaviest roster.
02
The timeline
Sixty years spaced by real time instead of one row each, so the eleven-year stretch with no Spider-Man on screen appears as an actual gap.
03
The corrections
17 things fans repeat that do not survive checking, and the ones that are genuinely contested say so on their face rather than being smoothed over.
No. 01 · 1962
- First appearance
- Amazing Fantasy #15
- Cover date
- August 1962
- Actually on sale
- 5 June 1962
- Credited to
- Stan Lee and Steve Ditko
- First solo series
- The Amazing Spider-Man #1, March 1963
Two dates, and fans police the difference
Comics of that era carried a cover date roughly two months ahead of the newsstand date. August 1962 is what is printed on it. It was physically on sale from 5 June 1962.
He only exists because the book was being cancelled
Amazing Fantasy was an anthology in its dying days, already scheduled to end with issue #15. Lee recalled that the publisher only let him try Spider-Man because the title was finished anyway. That last issue still promised more Spider-Man on its editorial page.
Who created him is genuinely disputed
Lee and Ditko are the credited creators, and beyond that the accounts conflict. Ditko said he never knew whose idea it was. Kirby claimed it started with him and Joe Simon, and Simon’s own memoir contradicted Kirby. There is no settled answer, and anyone giving you one is choosing a side.
No. 02 · Under the mask
Three in live action, ten more across the animated films. Turn one over to see who is under it.
Every web here is drawn in code, not taken from anywhere. * marks a universe designation that rests on a single source.
No. 03 · Who fought whom
Twenty villains, fifteen films, ordered by the month each first appeared in the comics. Every other Spider-Man site lists this. Drawing it is what shows you the shape.
| Villain | Spider-Man 2002 | Spider-Man 2 2004 | Spider-Man 3 2007 | The Amazing Spider-Man 2012 | The Amazing Spider-Man 2 2014 | Homecoming 2017 | Into the Spider-Verse 2018 | Venom 2018 | Far From Home 2019 | No Way Home 2021 | Let There Be Carnage 2021 | Morbius 2022 | Across the Spider-Verse 2023 | The Last Dance 2024 | Kraven the Hunter 2024 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ChameleonASM #1, Mar 1963 | Chameleon appears in Far From Home but is not its villain | Chameleon is the villain of Kraven the Hunter | |||||||||||||
| VultureASM #2, May 1963 | Vulture is the villain of Homecoming | Vulture appears in Morbius but is not its villain | Vulture is the villain of Across the Spider-Verse | ||||||||||||
| Doctor OctopusASM #3, Jul 1963 | Doctor Octopus is the villain of Spider-Man 2 | Doctor Octopus is the villain of Into the Spider-Verse | Doctor Octopus is the villain of No Way Home | Doctor Octopus appears in Across the Spider-Verse but is not its villain | |||||||||||
| SandmanASM #4, Sep 1963 | Sandman is the villain of Spider-Man 3 | Sandman is the villain of No Way Home | |||||||||||||
| LizardASM #6, Nov 1963 | Lizard appears in Spider-Man 2 but is not its villain | Lizard appears in Spider-Man 3 but is not its villain | Lizard is the villain of The Amazing Spider-Man | Lizard is the villain of No Way Home | Lizard is the villain of Across the Spider-Verse | ||||||||||
| ElectroASM #9, Feb 1964 | Electro is the villain of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 | Electro is the villain of No Way Home | |||||||||||||
| MysterioASM #13, Jun 1964 | Mysterio is the villain of Far From Home | Mysterio appears in No Way Home but is not its villain | |||||||||||||
| Green Goblin (Norman Osborn)ASM #14, Jul 1964 | Green Goblin (Norman Osborn) is the villain of Spider-Man | Green Goblin (Norman Osborn) appears in Spider-Man 2 but is not its villain | Green Goblin (Norman Osborn) appears in Spider-Man 3 but is not its villain | Green Goblin (Norman Osborn) appears in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 but is not its villain | Green Goblin (Norman Osborn) is the villain of Into the Spider-Verse | Green Goblin (Norman Osborn) is the villain of No Way Home | |||||||||
| Kraven the HunterASM #15, Aug 1964 | Kraven the Hunter is the villain of Kraven the Hunter | ||||||||||||||
| ScorpionASM #20, Jan 1965 | Scorpion appears in Homecoming but is not its villain | Scorpion is the villain of Into the Spider-Verse | |||||||||||||
| Harry Osborn (New Goblin)ASM #31, Dec 1965 | Harry Osborn (New Goblin) appears in Spider-Man but is not its villain | Harry Osborn (New Goblin) appears in Spider-Man 2 but is not its villain | Harry Osborn (New Goblin) is the villain of Spider-Man 3 | Harry Osborn (New Goblin) is the villain of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 | |||||||||||
| RhinoASM #41, Oct 1966 | Rhino is the villain of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 | Rhino is the villain of Kraven the Hunter | |||||||||||||
| ShockerASM #46, Mar 1967 | Shocker is the villain of Homecoming | ||||||||||||||
| KingpinASM #50, Jul 1967 | Kingpin is the villain of Into the Spider-Verse | ||||||||||||||
| ProwlerASM #78, Nov 1969 | Prowler appears in Homecoming but is not its villain | Prowler is the villain of Into the Spider-Verse | Prowler is the villain of Across the Spider-Verse | ||||||||||||
| MorbiusASM #101, Oct 1971 | Morbius is the villain of Morbius | ||||||||||||||
| HobgoblinASM #238, Mar 1983 | |||||||||||||||
| The SpotPPTSSM #97, Dec 1984 | The Spot is the villain of Across the Spider-Verse | ||||||||||||||
| VenomASM #300, May 1988 | Venom is the villain of Spider-Man 3 | Venom is the villain of Venom | Venom appears in No Way Home but is not its villain | Venom is the villain of Let There Be Carnage | Venom is the villain of The Last Dance | ||||||||||
| CarnageASM #345, Mar 1991 | Carnage appears in Venom but is not its villain | Carnage is the villain of Let There Be Carnage |
No Way Home is the only crossing point
Five villains return, played by their original actors, across gaps of seven to nineteen years. It is the only time the three live-action continuities meet.
The Vulture escapes the MCU
Michael Keaton's Vulture is the one character to appear in both a Marvel Studios film and Sony's separate universe, which is why his row has a gap in the middle.
Venom spans three continuities, as two different men
The symbiote appears in the Raimi trilogy, in Sony's universe and in a No Way Home cameo. The host is not the same person, which is why the row reads as one story and is not.
Hobgoblin has never appeared in a film
An entirely empty row. He was created in 1983 specifically to replace the Green Goblin, and forty years later he has not once made it to the screen.
No. 04 · Sixty years
Every screen entry from 1967 to 2027, spaced by real time rather than one row each. The gaps are the point.
Each mark is one screen entry, placed by year. The empty stretch is 1984 to 1994.
Dates are US wide release. UK and premiere dates often run earlier: Civil War premiered 24 days before the date shown.
- 9 Sep 1967The first screen adaptation of any kind, on ABC.
- Oct 1974Spidey Super Stories, a live-action segment inside PBS's The Electric Company. Danny Seagren is the first live-action Spider-Man on television, and he never speaks aloud, only in word balloons, to make children read.
- 14 Sep 1977The CBS pilot airs, with Nicholas Hammond as Peter Parker.
- 1977That pilot is re-cut and released to cinemas outside the US: the character reaches the big screen for the first time.
- 17 May 1978Toei's Japanese series. Alien blood instead of a spider bite, and a giant robot called Leopardon.
- 6 Jul 1979The CBS series ends after 13 episodes.
- 12 Sep 1981Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends on NBC. Firestar is invented for the show because the Human Torch was unavailable, then added to the comics.
- 19 Nov 1994The Fox Kids series, 65 episodes, the version a generation grew up on.
- 2 Oct 1999Spider-Man Unlimited. It ends on a cliffhanger that is never resolved.
- 3 May 2002Sam Raimi's Spider-Man. Tobey Maguire. $823.9m worldwide.
- 11 Jul 2003The MTV series, cel-shaded CGI, with Neil Patrick Harris as Peter Parker.
- 30 Jun 2004Spider-Man 2. $797m, and an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects.
- 4 May 2007Spider-Man 3. At a reported $258m it was the most expensive film ever made, a record it held for twenty days.
- 8 Mar 2008The Spectacular Spider-Man, with Josh Keaton.
- 1 Apr 2012Ultimate Spider-Man, with Drake Bell, talking to camera.
- 3 Jul 2012The Amazing Spider-Man. Andrew Garfield, Marc Webb. $757.9m on its theatrical run.
- 2 May 2014The Amazing Spider-Man 2. $709m on its theatrical run, the lowest-grossing live-action Spider-Man film, and Sony shelves its planned sequels.
- 6 May 2016Tom Holland's Spider-Man debuts inside the Marvel Cinematic Universe, in Captain America: Civil War.
- 7 Jul 2017Homecoming, the first solo film made under the Sony and Marvel Studios arrangement.
- 19 Aug 2017Marvel's Spider-Man on Disney XD, with Robbie Daymond.
- 5 Oct 2018Venom. Sony begins a universe of Spider-Man characters without Spider-Man in it.
- 14 Dec 2018Into the Spider-Verse. Miles Morales headlines for the first time, and it wins Best Animated Feature.
- 2 Jul 2019Far From Home.
- 6 Aug 2021Spidey and His Amazing Friends, the first full-length Marvel animated series made for preschoolers.
- 1 Oct 2021Venom: Let There Be Carnage.
- 17 Dec 2021No Way Home. $1.921bn, the highest-grossing Spider-Man film and the highest-grossing Sony release.
- 1 Apr 2022Morbius.
- 2 Jun 2023Across the Spider-Verse. At 140 minutes, the longest animated film produced by an American studio.
- 14 Feb 2024Madame Web.
- 25 Oct 2024Venom: The Last Dance.
- 13 Dec 2024Kraven the Hunter.
- 29 Jan 2025Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man on Disney+, set in an alternate MCU timeline.
- 25 May 2026Spider-Noir on MGM+, with Nicolas Cage, released in both black-and-white and colour.
- 31 Jul 2026Brand New Day, directed by Destin Daniel Cretton.
- 18 Jun 2027Beyond the Spider-Verse is scheduled. It was originally dated March 2024 and has moved four times. Not released
There is an eleven-year hole
Between late 1983 and 1994 the character is essentially absent from screens. The gap is the widest thing on the chart, and it sits right in the middle of his most famous decade in print.
Everything happens after 2002
Thirty-five years produced a handful of entries. The twenty-four years since the first Raimi film produced most of the rest, and the pace is still rising.
No. 05 · Days old
Spider-Man: Brand New Day took $360 million in its first weekend, the biggest domestic opening weekend ever recorded, ahead of Avengers: Endgame at $357.1m.
Watch for this
The widely circulated $355m was Sunday’s estimate. Monday actuals revised it to $360,091,572, which flipped it from second-biggest to biggest. The lower number is still being repeated.
- Released
- 31 July 2026 in the US, after a 27 July premiere
- Director
- Destin Daniel Cretton
- Written by
- Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers
- Running time
- 145 minutes
- Budget
- $225 million
- Box office
- $1.053 billion
- Position
- 38th MCU film, 4th MCU Spider-Man film
Cast
- Tom HollandPeter Parker / Spider-Man
- ZendayaMichelle Jones-Watson
- Jacob BatalonNed Leeds
- Jon BernthalFrank Castle / Punisher
- Michael MandoScorpion
- Marvin Jones IIITombstone
- Mark RuffaloBruce Banner
- Marisa TomeiMay Parker
Box office figures read on 5 August 2026. They are still moving.
No. 06 · Check yourself
Every one of these is repeated confidently somewhere else. 10 of the 17 are contested rather than settled, and those say so.
On screen
Nicholas Hammond was the first live-action Spider-Man.
Danny Seagren was, in PBS's Spidey Super Stories, from October 1974. Hammond's CBS pilot did not air until September 1977, nearly three years later.
The comics
Uncle Ben says the line about power and responsibility.
He does not say it at all. In Amazing Fantasy #15 it is a narrator caption in the next-to-last panel, and the wording differs from the famous version. Uncle Ben delivering it as a deathbed line is a later invention.
On screen
Spider-Man 3 flopped.
It took $895.9m worldwide, the highest of the Raimi trilogy, ahead of Spider-Man at $823.9m and Spider-Man 2 at $797m. It is the least liked, not the least successful.
The rightsContested
Sony owns Spider-Man.
Sony owns the film rights. Marvel, and so Disney, owns the character, and Marvel took back full merchandising control in 2011. The often-quoted $175m and $35m figures come from a non-binding discussion document exposed in the 2014 Sony hack, and Disney publicly declined to give the real economics.
The comicsContested
Stan Lee got the idea watching a spider climb a wall.
Lee told that story for decades and then admitted in his own autobiography that he is no longer sure it is true, having repeated it so often. It is a story he told, not a documented origin.
The comicsContested
Stan Lee created Spider-Man and Steve Ditko just drew it.
There is no settled account. Ditko said he still did not know whose idea it was. Kirby claimed it began with him and Joe Simon, and Simon’s own memoir then contradicted Kirby. Genuinely disputed, and worth presenting as such.
On screen
The organic web-shooters were Sam Raimi’s idea.
They came out of James Cameron's earlier treatment. Raimi kept the choice; he did not originate it.
On screenContested
J.K. Simmons plays the same J. Jonah Jameson in the Raimi films and the MCU.
Different variants of the character. Simmons drops the toupee specifically to tell them apart.
On screenContested
The 1977 CBS series was cancelled because nobody watched.
Ratings were solid. CBS ended it after 13 episodes because it did not want to be seen as a superhero network, alongside weak performance with younger adults and high production costs.
On screenContested
The Spectacular Spider-Man was cancelled for poor ratings.
A corporate transaction killed it. After Disney bought Marvel, neither Sony nor Marvel held all the rights needed to keep making it.
On screen
Venom, Morbius, Madame Web and Kraven are MCU films.
They are Sony's Spider-Man Universe, a separate thing, and Spider-Man is not prominently featured in any of them.
On screen
Into the Spider-Verse was the first non-Disney, non-Pixar film to win Best Animated Feature.
Not close. Spirited Away, Wallace and Gromit, Happy Feet and Rango all won before it. What is true is that it was Sony Pictures Animation’s first win, and the first animated Spider-Man feature.
The comicsContested
Miles Morales was created because Donald Glover wore Spider-Man pyjamas.
The character was already in development. A Black Spider-Man was discussed at Marvel months before the 2008 election, and Bendis has said Glover influenced how he pictured him. Miles first appeared in Ultimate Fallout #4 in 2011.
The rightsContested
Sony's film rights are permanent and unconditional.
They are neither. A use-it-or-lose-it clause sits in the published 1999 and 2004 agreements, not in a leaked 2011 amendment as is often claimed: the production term lapses nine months after each film unless Sony pays to extend it, and five years after that unless another film is released, which works out to one film roughly every 5.75 years, with automatic extensions for delays outside Sony’s control. That is why the release cadence never slips far, and arguably why Sony’s separate universe exists at all.
The rightsContested
Sony only bought Spider-Man himself.
The rights cover an inventory, not one character. A single 2019 law journal article puts it at 627 characters, 70 teams, 544 supporting characters and 82 businesses, and every repetition of those figures traces back to that one article; the leaked documents themselves show lists without totals. That inventory is what the Venom and Kraven films are built from.
The rights
The 2019 Sony and Marvel split was about creative differences.
It was about money. Disney wanted a share of the films Feige produced, Sony declined, and the deal was repaired weeks later on revised terms.
On screenContested
Tobey Maguire really caught the tray with no effects, on take 156.
This one is genuinely unresolved. The account comes from the DVD commentary, where the effects lead and Kirsten Dunst both describe it as real, while also mentioning adhesive on his hand. A published fact-check approached everyone involved and could not corroborate it either way. Believe the commentary if you like, but the flat "no effects" version is not established.
Contested means the sources genuinely disagree, or the account rests on a leaked document or a single recollection. Those are marked rather than smoothed over, because a page that corrects other people has to show its own working.