The Tiny Detail Everyone Misses About Spider-Man’s Name

Every Spider-Man fan knows that it’s not Spiderman. It’s Spider-Man. So the question is: Why did Stan Lee add the hyphen? How did he become Spider-Man? Well, some fun facts about Spider-Man’s name journey: he didn’t start as Spider-Man.

It started as Insect Man. Stan immediately pushed that away since it was generic and lacked any punch. The next name was Fly Man. He was going literal, since this came from him seeing a fly on the wall. He pushed this away since he couldn’t imagine a cool, mysterious, and popular superhero named after a common household fly. Could you? He did like the idea of it, though, for the most part. He started thinking of creepy-crawlies, which did NOT lead to Spider-Man, but Mosquito Man. Yes, Mosquito Man. Stan almost immediately rejected this. He focused on the power itself rather than the bug theme. This led Stan to Stick-to-Wall Man. This, of course, faced rejection, same as the others. It was far too long, clumsy to say, and frankly, sounded ridiculous. He scrapped all of those and resorted to simply saying names out loud. This led to him saying Spider Man.

This stuck. It clicked as soon as he said it, and then we had our winner. He then thought of how close it is spelled to Superman, from DC. So this brings us back to our first topic. The hyphen. Now, we all see the immediate difference between Spider-Man and Superman, right? But Spiderman and Superman, side to side? Not so obvious. But he still had to run the idea past the head publisher of Marvel Comics.

Martin Goodman was the head publisher at the time. When he heard the idea about the broke, anxious, nerdy orphan teenager being a superhero named after arachnids, he argued against the idea. Back then, teenagers were sidekicks, like Batman's Robin. They were also muscular, rich, handsome, and basically flawless. His first objection was against the Spider idea in general. Who likes spiders? He argued they were creepy, and who would cheer on a hero named after a bug that you wanted to squish? Then there was the whole teenager, and he had too many problems. But even after the idea was rejected, Stan couldn’t let the idea go. So he found a loophole.

There was a dying Marvel Comic book, Amazing Fantasy, so he snuck Spider-Man onto the cover and a short 11-page origin story on it. Amazing Fantasy #15 is when Spider-Man technically started, and also when the comic book ended. He just had the problem of drawing Spider-Man.

First, he asked the legendary artist Jack Kirby to draw Spider-Man. For those who don’t know him, he co-created Captain America and The Fantastic Four. But Kirby drew him as this muscular, heroic god-like figure, more like Thor than the web-head we know, which didn’t fit the idea of what Stan wanted. He wanted Peter Parker to be this ordinary-looking, slightly scrawny kid next door. So he took the idea to Steve Ditko.

Ditko was a master of drawing moody, mysterious, and quirky characters. Ditko is the genius who designed the iconic look we know today, the full mask, the web-shooters, the lean, flexible body.

Fun Fact: The full mask is so that any kid, in any background, could imagine themselves under it.

A few months after Amazing Fantasy #15 hit the newsstands, the sales numbers finally came in. It was not just a hit; it was the highest-selling comic book they had sold all year. And when Goodman heard about this, he ran to Stan, and he decided to give Spider-Man his own series.

And in March 1963, The Amazing Spider-Man #1 hit the shelves, and the web-slinger officially became the global phenomenon we all know and love as Spidey.