Stan Lee pitched a teenager who gets bitten by a radioactive spider, can't pay rent, and spends most of his time getting yelled at by a newspaper publisher. Sixty-two years later, that single concept has metastasized into an entire arachnid-themed corner of the Marvel Universe — a web of characters so dense that keeping track of them all requires a flowchart the size of a Manhattan phone book. Spider-Man. Spider-Woman. Silk. Scarlet Spider. Spider-Gwen. Arachne. Kaine. Miguel O'Hara. Julia Carpenter. Ben Reilly. And that's before you get into the ones who haven't headlined their own miniseries.
The arachnid marvel of the Marvel Universe isn't just a gimmick. It's a genuine mythology — one that sprawls across dimensions, clone sagas, symbiote infestations, and mystical totems. If you've ever wondered who's who in the spider-verse, which ones actually matter beyond Peter Parker, and why Marvel keeps spinning off new web-slingers, this is your field guide.
Peter Parker: The Original Blueprint
Everything starts with Amazing Fantasy #15, cover-dated August 1962, cover price 12 cents. Stan Lee wrote it. Steve Ditko drew it. And the character they produced — a skinny kid from Queens who got spider-powers at a science exhibition and immediately used them to make money on television — broke the superhero mold in ways that still reverberate through the genre.
The origin is almost too familiar at this point, but the details that made Peter Parker work in 1962 are the same ones that keep him relevant. He's poor. His clothes are terrible. The popular kids hate him. When he gets powers, his first instinct isn't altruism — it's showmanship. He wrestles a guy named Crusher Hogan for a cash prize. The tragedy that follows — Uncle Ben's death, the burglar Peter let escape earlier killing the only father figure he had left — is the engine that drives everything afterward.
Powers and How They Evolved
Peter's power set has been remarkably consistent, which is unusual for a character with a six-decade publication history. Wall-crawling, superhuman strength (initially rated at 10 tons, later bumped to approximately 25 tons in the current continuity), proportionally-enhanced speed and agility, and the spider-sense — a precognitive danger-detection ability that manifests as a tingling sensation at the base of his skull.
The spider-sense is what separates Peter from nearly every other hero in Marvel's roster. It's not just a "danger nearby" alert. At its most refined, it gives Peter directional information about the nature and location of threats, allowing him to dodge gunfire, anticipate punches from opponents he can't see, and navigate pitch-black environments. In Amazing Spider-Man #33 (February 1966), the famous sequence where Peter lifts the collapsed machinery to save Aunt May works precisely because the spider-sense guided him to the exact leverage point. It's a detail that gets lost in most adaptations.
The web-shooters are worth mentioning separately because they're one of Ditko's smartest additions. Peter didn't get organic webbing from the spider bite. He built the shooters himself, using a proprietary adhesive formula he developed in his bedroom. That means every time he runs out of web fluid — which happens with punishing regularity — he's effectively powerless in combat. It's an elegant weakness built into an otherwise overwhelming ability set.
Key Appearances Worth Tracking Down
Beyond the obvious milestones (the origin, Gwen Stacy's death in ASM #121, the symbiote suit in ASM #252), the Peter Parker stories that hold up best in 2026 are Kraven's Last Hunt (1987), J.M. DeMatteis's six-issue crossover that reads like a horror novel wearing a superhero costume; Spider-Man: Blue (2002), Jeph Loeb's Valentine's Day story that revisits Peter and Gwen's relationship with a maturity neither Lee nor Romita Sr. could have managed in the '60s; and Dan Slott's Superior Spider-Man run (2013-2014), where Doc Ock swaps minds with Peter and becomes the most effective — and most terrifying — Spider-Man the city has ever seen.
"I had forgotten. Being Spider-Man isn't about the power. It's about the weight."
— Peter Parker, Amazing Spider-Man #700 (2013)
Jessica Drew: Spider-Woman Gets Her Own Identity
Jessica Drew's origin is genuinely weird in a way that most Marvel backstories aren't. She was born in London, raised in Transia (a fictional Eastern European nation), and received her powers not from a random spider bite but from an experimental serum her father injected her with after she was exposed to uranium radiation. The serum was derived from irradiated spider blood. She was then placed in a genetic accelerator by the High Evolutionary, which is a name that sounds like a prog rock album and is absolutely a real Marvel concept.
She emerged with powers that overlap significantly with Peter's — wall-crawling, enhanced strength, agility — but with significant additions. Jessica can project bio-electric blasts she calls "venom blasts" (unrelated to the symbiote character), and she possesses a pheromone-generation ability that allows her to influence the emotions of people around her. Men tend to find her compelling; women tend to feel uneasy in her presence. It's an uncomfortable power that several writers have explored with varying degrees of nuance.
The 1977 Series and Why It Flopped
Marvel launched Spider-Woman as an ongoing series in April 1977, written initially by Archie Goodwin with art by Sal Buscema. The series was conceived partly as a trademark protection measure — Marvel had learned that Filmation was developing a live-action Spider-Woman show, and the company rushed to establish a comic book presence first. The result was a character who existed before anyone had fully figured out what she was supposed to do.
The series ran for 50 issues before cancellation in 1983. Sales were never strong, partly because the '70s comic market was brutal for anything that wasn't headlined by an established male character, and partly because Jessica's supporting cast never gelled the way Peter Parker's had. She bounced between Los Angeles and London, worked as a bounty hunter, and tangled with villains that never quite reached the iconic tier of Spidey's rogues. Despite the cancellation, the character persisted — and Brian Michael Bendis's Spider-Woman: Origin (2005) miniseries and subsequent Secret Invasion role brought her back into the conversation.
Cindy Moon: Silk and the Forgotten Spider
Here's the thing about Cindy Moon that makes her fascinating. She was bitten by the same radioactive spider that bit Peter Parker — on the same day, at the same science exhibition. Ezekiel Sims, a mysterious figure connected to the spider-totem mythology, discovered her and locked her away in a bunker for fourteen years. Fourteen years. While Peter was swinging around New York becoming an Avenger, Cindy was sitting in a concrete room, trained in martial arts and spider-abilities by a man who believed she needed to be hidden from a predator called Morlun.
Dan Slott introduced her in Amazing Spider-Man #1 (2014, Vol. 3), and the concept was immediately compelling. Cindy's powers are similar to Peter's but with key differences: her webbing is organic, produced from glands in her fingertips rather than mechanical shooters; her spider-sense is more powerful than Peter's, manifesting as actual prophetic visions rather than directional tingling; and her physical strength is rated slightly below his.
Robbie Thompson and Stacey Lee launched Silk as a solo ongoing in 2015. The series positioned Cindy as a journalist working for a cable news network, which was a clever echo of Peter's own media-adjacent career. Her costume design — a dark blue bodysuit with a distinctive red spider emblem, fingerless gloves, and a scarf-like element — gave her a visual identity that read as distinctly modern without falling into the trap of sexualizing female heroes the way '90s comics routinely did.
The Spider-Totem Connection
Cindy's existence ties directly into one of the strangest corners of Spider-Man mythology: the Web of Life and Destiny. Introduced by J. Michael Straczynski during his Amazing Spider-Man run (2001-2007) and expanded massively during the Spider-Verse event (2014), this concept establishes that spider-powered individuals across the multiverse are connected by a mystical web. Cindy isn't just another person who happened to get bitten. She's what Ezekiel calls a "perfect match" — someone whose connection to the spider-totem is even stronger than Peter's.
That mystical layer adds something the pure-science origins of the Lee/Ditko era never had. Whether it improves the concept depends on who you ask. Some readers felt Straczynski's mythology made the spider-bite feel less random and more fated, which undercuts the accidental nature that was central to Peter's character. Others found it added genuine depth to a franchise that had been running on variations of the same origin story for forty years.
Scarlet Spider: Ben Reilly and the Clone Saga Mess
If you want to understand why older comic fans flinch when someone mentions the word "clone," bring up Ben Reilly. The Scarlet Spider identity originated in one of the most controversial storylines in Marvel history: the Clone Saga, which ran from 1994 to 1996 across multiple Spider-Man titles and nearly drove the franchise off a cliff.
The short version: Peter Parker discovers he's actually a clone, and the "real" Peter has been living as Ben Reilly all along. Ben returns to New York wearing a rough red hoodie costume with a blue spider emblem and calling himself the Scarlet Spider. He's leaner than Peter, rougher around the edges, and carries a pair of impact webbing shooters and stinger darts — gadgets that Peter never used. The costume, designed by Tom Lyle, had a deliberately unfinished quality: the hoodie, the exposed web-shooter mechanisms, the torn sleeves. It looked like someone had assembled a Spider-Man suit from a dumpster behind a costume shop.
Marvel's plan was to have Ben replace Peter as the main Spider-Man. Readers revolted. Sales dropped. The editorial team reversed course, declared Peter the original all along, and killed Ben in Peter Parker: Spider-Man #75 (December 1996). Ben Reilly stayed dead for roughly twenty years before returning during the Clone Conspiracy event (2016) and subsequently headlining a new Scarlet Spider series in 2017.
Kaine Parker: The Other Scarlet Spider
Kaine is another Peter Parker clone — but where Ben was stable, Kaine was degrading. His cellular structure was deteriorating, his face scarred, his temperament volatile. He first appeared in Web of Spider-Man #119 (December 1994), initially as a villain murdering people with a touch that left distinctive handprint burns on their faces. The "Mark of Kaine" became one of the Clone Saga's most visceral images.
Kaine eventually adopted the Scarlet Spider identity in Scarlet Spider Vol. 2 (2012), written by Chris Yost with art by Paco Diaz. Set in Houston, Texas, the series positioned Kaine as a reluctant, brutal anti-hero — someone who kills when he deems it necessary, who lacks Peter's quipping humor, and who carries the psychological weight of being a "failed" clone. His costume during this period was the black-and-red suit that Peter originally wore during the Spider-Island event, repurposed with additional armor plating and a more aggressive silhouette. The Houston run lasted 25 issues and remains one of the more underrated Spider-family titles.
Spider-Gwen: The Ghost Who Drums
On Earth-65, Gwen Stacy got bitten instead of Peter Parker. She's a drummer in a band called the Mary Janes. Her Peter Parker — the one who never got powers — died trying to become the Lizard in a desperate attempt to be special. And Gwen carries that guilt the way Peter-616 carries Uncle Ben's death: as an open wound that never fully heals.
Spider-Gwen debuted in Edge of Spider-Verse #2 (November 2014), written by Jason Latour and drawn by Robbi Rodriguez. The design was the hook. Rodriguez gave Gwen a costume that felt genuinely fresh in a market saturated with Spider-Man variants: a white hooded bodysuit with a black spider emblem, teal accents on the gloves and boots, and a hood that frames her face in a way that suggests both anonymity and vulnerability. The color palette — white, black, teal — reads as clean and modern against the typical red-and-blue. Rodriguez's art style throughout the character's early appearances was loose, kinetic, and deliberately rough around the edges, which gave Spider-Gwen a visual energy that felt like it belonged in a zine rather than a corporate superhero comic.
"I was bitten by a radioactive spider. And for a year, I was the one and only Spider-Woman. You probably know the rest."
— Gwen Stacy / Spider-Gwen, Edge of Spider-Verse #2 (2014)
The character's immediate popularity — driven largely by Rodriguez's design and the emotional punch of Gwen's origin — led to an ongoing series, Spider-Gwen (later retitled Ghost-Spider), which ran for multiple volumes and established a rich supporting cast including a dimension-hopping Captain America (Samantha Wilson), a version of Matt Murdock who works as the Kingpin's lawyer, and a Mary Jane Watson who resents Gwen for abandoning the band to fight crime.
Why Spider-Gwen Worked When So Many Variants Didn't
The Spider-Verse event produced dozens of alternate-reality Spider-people. Most of them appeared once and vanished. Spider-Gwen stuck because Latour and Rodriguez built her around an emotional core that didn't depend on Peter Parker's mythology. Her guilt is about her own Peter — a Peter she failed, not an Uncle Ben she never knew. Her relationship with her father, Captain Stacy, who initially hunts her as Spider-Woman before discovering her identity, mirrors the Peter/Gwen dynamic but inverts it. The stakes are personal and specific to Earth-65, not borrowed from the main continuity.
Julia Carpenter: Arachne and the Second Spider-Woman
Julia Carpenter first appeared in Marvel Super Hero Secret Wars #1 (May 1984) — yes, the original crossover event — as a new character given spider-powers through a government experiment. The Commission on Superhuman Activities injected her with a combination of spider venom and exotic plant extracts, granting her powers nearly identical to Peter Parker's, including wall-crawling, enhanced strength, and a spider-sense. She also gained the ability to generate psi-webbing — telekinetically-created web constructs that don't require physical web fluid.
Her initial costume was a white-and-black design that bore a superficial resemblance to Spider-Man's symbiote suit, which caused some confusion among readers. She operated as Spider-Woman for years before adopting the name Arachne during the Civil War event (2006-2007), when she registered under the Superhuman Registration Act and joined a government-sanctioned team. Her role in Civil War was small but significant: she was one of the few registered heroes who felt genuine moral conflict about the Registration Act's enforcement methods.
Julia's most interesting period came during Omega Flight (2007), a miniseries set in Canada where she served as the team's Spider-powered member. The series wasn't a commercial success — it lasted five issues — but it gave Julia a chance to operate outside Peter Parker's shadow, dealing with threats that had nothing to do with New York City's usual rogue lineup.
Miguel O'Hara: Spider-Man 2099
Miguel O'Hara is a geneticist living in the year 2099 who gets 50% of his DNA rewritten with spider genetics during a sabotage attempt by a jealous colleague. The result is a power set that diverges significantly from Peter Parker's. Miguel has organic webbing produced from spinnerets in his forearms (not his wrists — the distinction matters for how artists draw the costume). He possesses talons on his hands and feet that allow wall-crawling without the bio-electric adhesion Peter uses. He has enhanced vision that lets him see in complete darkness and track fast-moving objects. And he has fangs that deliver a paralytic venom.
Peter David wrote the character's debut in Spider-Man 2099 #1 (November 1992), with art by Rick Leonardi. Leonardi's costume design was one of the best of the entire 2099 line: a dark blue bodysuit with a red skull-and-web pattern across the chest, a tattered cape-like webbing under the arms that allows gliding, and no mask — Miguel's face is fully visible, which was a deliberate contrast to Peter's fully-covered costume. The visual language said: this is a Spider-Man who doesn't hide.
The 2099 imprint was Marvel's attempt to create a futuristic line of heroes, and Spider-Man 2099 was its flagship title. The series ran for 46 issues (1992-1996) and maintained surprisingly consistent quality, with David's writing mixing corporate thriller elements, Latinx cultural identity, and environmental themes that felt ahead of their time. Miguel was recently reintegrated into present-day Marvel continuity and now operates as a multiverse-monitoring figure following the Spider-Verse and Spider-Geddon events.
Miles Morales and the Ultimate Legacy
Brian Michael Bendis and Sara Pichelli introduced Miles Morales in Ultimate Fallout #4 (August 2011), following the death of the Ultimate universe's Peter Parker. Miles is a biracial teenager from Brooklyn — African-American and Puerto Rican — who gets bitten by a genetically-engineered spider created by Norman Osborn's Oscorp. His powers overlap with Peter's but include two additions that fundamentally change his fighting style: a venom strike (a bio-electric touch that can incapacitate opponents) and camouflage (the ability to blend into his surroundings, essentially invisibility).
Pichelli's initial costume design — a black suit with a red spider emblem and red web lines — became instantly iconic. The visual distinction from Peter's red-and-blue was stark enough to make Miles immediately recognizable at a glance, which is harder than it sounds when you're working within the same basic silhouette. The costume also reflected a deliberate design philosophy: Miles needed to look like he belonged in 2011 Brooklyn, not 1962 Queens. The sneakers, the hoodie worn over the suit in early appearances, the headphones — these were all choices that grounded the character in a specific time and place.
Miles survived the destruction of the Ultimate universe and now operates alongside Peter Parker in the main Marvel continuity (Earth-616). His solo ongoing, Miles Morales: Spider-Man, launched in 2019 with Saladin Ahmed writing and Javier Garron on art, and it quickly became one of Marvel's best-selling titles — regularly moving 80,000+ copies per issue in the direct market, a number that puts it in the top tier of non-event comics.
Anyone Arachnid? The Deep Bench
Beyond the headline characters, Marvel's arachnid roster runs deep. A few worth knowing about:
- Anya Corazon (Spider-Girl / Araña): A Mexican-American teenager who received a mystical spider tattoo that grants her powers through an ancient society called the Spider Society. Her original costume — blue with a red spider and web-pattern accents — was designed by the same team that launched Marvel Team-Up Vol. 3 in 2005. She later adopted the Spider-Girl identity during the Grim Hunt storyline.
- Spider-Man Noir (Peter Parker of Earth-90214): A Depression-era Spider-Man operating in 1930s New York. His powers are more limited (no wall-crawling — he uses web lines and grappling), and his costume is a black fedora, goggles, and trenchcoat affair that looks like it was assembled from a film noir prop room. David Hine and Fabrice Sapolsky launched the character in Spider-Man Noir #1 (2009).
- Peni Parker (SP//dr): A nine-year-old girl who pilots a bio-mechanical spider suit that she co-pilots with a radioactive spider she shares a psychic link with. Created by Gerard Way and Jake Wyatt for Edge of Spider-Verse #5 (2014), the character's anime-influenced design was a deliberate departure from the typical Spider-Man aesthetic.
- Spider-Man UK (Billy Braddock): A member of the Captain Britain Corps from Earth-833 who also possesses spider-powers. He appeared during Spider-Verse as a coordinator for the spider-army and was notable for being one of the few Spider-variants who operated within an established superhero framework (the Captain Britain mythology) rather than as a street-level vigilante.
- Tarantula (Anton Miguel Rodriguez): Technically a Spider-Man villain rather than a hero, but worth mentioning because his mutation into a giant spider-creature during Spider-Island (2011) represents one of the franchise's most disturbing body-horror sequences.
Comparing the Arachnid Marvel Roster
With this many spider-powered characters, a breakdown helps. Here's how the major players stack up against each other across the metrics that actually matter when you're reading or collecting their stories.
| Character | First Appearance | Key Power Distinction | Signature Run | Best Entry Point |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Peter Parker | Amazing Fantasy #15 (1962) | Spider-sense (precognitive) | Lee/Ditko, Slott's Superior | Ultimate Spider-Man (Bendis) |
| Jessica Drew | Marvel Spotlight #32 (1977) | Bio-electric venom blasts, pheromones | Bendis's Origin (2005) | Spider-Woman: Origin #1 |
| Cindy Moon (Silk) | ASM Vol.3 #1 (2014) | Organic webbing, prophetic spider-sense | Thompson/Lee Silk (2015) | Silk Vol.1 #1 |
| Ben Reilly (Scarlet Spider) | ASM #149 as clone (1975) | Impact webbing, stinger darts | Clone Saga (1994-96) | Scarlet Spider Vol.2 #1 (2012, Kaine) |
| Gwen Stacy (Spider-Gwen) | Edge of Spider-Verse #2 (2014) | Interdimensional travel via watch | Latour/Rodriguez (2015-18) | Edge of Spider-Verse #2 |
| Julia Carpenter (Arachne) | Secret Wars #1 (1984) | Psi-webbing (telekinetic constructs) | Omega Flight (2007) | Secret Wars (1984) #1 |
| Miguel O'Hara (2099) | Spider-Man 2099 #1 (1992) | Talons, fangs with paralytic venom | Peter David's full run | Spider-Man 2099 #1 |
| Miles Morales | Ultimate Fallout #4 (2011) | Venom strike, camouflage/invisibility | Ahmed/Garron (2019-) | Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man #1 (2011) |
| Sources: Marvel.com official database, Diamond Comic Distributors shipping lists, CGC Census data. | ||||
The Spider-Totem Problem: Too Many Spiders?
Every few years, someone at Marvel asks: are there too many spider-characters? The answer, commercially speaking, is no. Spider-Man remains Marvel's single most bankable character. The Spider-Verse animated films — Into the Spider-Verse (2018) and Across the Spider-Verse (2023) — grossed a combined $1.16 billion worldwide according to Box Office Mojo, and they did it largely by celebrating the multiplicity of spider-heroes rather than reducing them.
But there's a legitimate creative tension. Each new spider-character dilutes the uniqueness of what made Peter Parker special. When he was the only guy who could crawl walls in New York, every story carried weight. When there are eight spider-powered heroes operating across the multiverse simultaneously, the "one and only Spider-Man" concept erodes. The Spider-Verse comics event (2014) addressed this directly by introducing Morlun and the Inheritors — a family of interdimensional vampire-arachnids who hunt spider-totems across realities. The threat was existential: if Morlun kills every spider-person in the multiverse, the Spider-Man concept dies permanently.
That storyline reframed the proliferation of spider-characters as a feature rather than a bug. They weren't diluting the brand. They were an army. And an army needs generals, soldiers, spies, and casualties — which is exactly what Spider-Verse delivered. Spider-UK dies. Spider-Man Noir gets critically injured. The victory requires every spider-person working together, which is the kind of narrative payoff you can only get when you've spent decades building a roster this deep.
Frequently Asked Questions About Arachnid Marvel Characters
How many spider-powered characters are there in Marvel?
The exact number depends on how you count. If you include every named spider-powered character across all realities — heroes, villains, alternate timelines, What If? one-shots — the number exceeds 60. The core group that appears regularly in main continuity (Earth-616) and recurring storylines is roughly 12-15 characters. The Spider-Verse event alone introduced approximately 30 distinct spider-variants across its tie-in issues.
Is Venom considered an arachnid Marvel character?
Not technically. Venom is a Klyntar symbiote — an alien organism. However, the symbiote first bonded with Peter Parker and took on spider-like characteristics (the costume design, the spider emblem, the web-shooter mimicry). The symbiote's subsequent hosts — Eddie Brock, Flash Thompson, Mac Gargan — inherited spider-adjacent abilities. So while Venom isn't a spider-totem character, the connection is inseparable from the Spider-Man mythology. Carnage, Venom's offspring, is even further removed from the arachnid origin despite sharing the visual lineage.
What is the best reading order for the Clone Saga?
The Clone Saga spans approximately 40+ issues across five monthly Spider-Man titles (1994-1996). Marvel published a collected edition called The Clone Saga Omnibus in multiple volumes that organizes the issues in chronological reading order. For a streamlined experience, the Clone Saga: The Ultimate Collection six-volume paperback set removes most of the filler and presents the core narrative. Be warned: even the streamlined version is a commitment. The original monthly publication involved rotating creative teams, contradictory editorial mandates, and a mid-saga reversal that makes the entire thing feel like two different stories duct-taped together.
Who is the strongest spider-powered character?
In raw physical strength, Cindy Moon (Silk) has been described by Marvel's official handbook as having the potential to exceed Peter Parker's strength level, though she hasn't fully realized that potential in most appearances. Peter Parker is typically rated at 25 tons. Miguel O'Hara (Spider-Man 2099) comes in slightly below Peter at approximately 10-15 tons. Jessica Drew's strength is comparable to Peter's at her peak. Miles Morales falls below Peter in pure strength but compensates with his venom strike and camouflage abilities. The answer ultimately depends on which version of which character you're reading — power levels fluctuate between writers and eras.
Does Spider-Gwen exist in the main Marvel Universe (616)?
Gwen Stacy of Earth-65 remains primarily tied to her home dimension, but she travels to Earth-616 frequently. She appeared in the main continuity during Spider-Verse, Spider-Geddon, and various crossover events. She also maintained a long-distance relationship with Miles Morales for a period, which required her to cross dimensional boundaries regularly. As of 2025-2026 continuity, she operates primarily on Earth-65 but appears in 616 stories as a visitor rather than a resident.
Where the Web Goes From Here
Marvel shows no signs of slowing down the spider-production line, and honestly, they have no financial incentive to do so. The Spider-Verse film franchise alone guarantees that characters like Spider-Gwen, Spider-Man 2099, and Spider-Punk will remain in the public consciousness for years. Every animated film appearance drives comic sales — Into the Spider-Verse pushed Miles Morales's solo comic from roughly 30,000 copies per issue to over 80,000 within three months of the film's release, according to Diamond's monthly shipping data.
The creative challenge going forward is keeping each spider-character distinct enough to justify their existence. Miles Morales works because his powers, personality, and cultural background are genuinely different from Peter's. Spider-Gwen works because her emotional core is specific to her reality. Silk works because her origin — fourteen years locked in a bunker — gives her a trauma response that no other spider-character shares. The ones that fail are the ones that read like Peter Parker in a different costume.
The arachnid corner of Marvel has grown from a single 12-cent comic book in 1962 to a multiverse-spanning mythology that encompasses dozens of characters, billions in box office revenue, and some of the most ambitious crossover storytelling the medium has attempted. Not every spider-person earns their spot. But the best of them — Peter, Miles, Gwen, Cindy, Miguel — have each expanded what a Spider-Man story can be. And that's worth following wherever the web leads next.
