Spider-Man's Sticking Power

IN A YEAR SO STUFFED WITH COMIC-BOOK CHARacters that 26 superheroes jockeyed for the chance to punch one purple alien in Avengers: Infinity War, you might be forgiven for feeling a little superhero fatigue.

- Eliana Dockterman

Your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man—who, despite his modest moniker, has starred in no fewer than eight live-action movies in 16 years—has become the most overexposed superhero of all.

This year alone, the webslinger starred in three huge projects: Infinity War, a Spider-Man video game and now an animated film called Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, out Dec. 14. And yet all three were met with widespread acclaim and commercial success (if early box-office predictions for Into the Spider-Verse are to be trusted, at least). That list excludes Venom, an offbeat film about Spider-Man’s villainous doppelgänger, but even that was a box-office smash. The character’s proliferation begs the question: Why aren’t audiences sick of Spidey?

Marvel legends Stan Lee and Steve Ditko conceived SpiderMan in 1962, when impressive but inaccessible heroes dominated comic books: Superman was an alien, Wonder Woman a demigoddess, Batman a brooding billionaire. Peter Parker was just a nerdy high school kid who couldn’t work up the courage to ask out the girl next door. He was young—like his audience— funny, flawed and relatable.

Spider-Man may be Marvel’s most popular character, but his success on the big screen has never been a guarantee. Following Sam Raimi’s acclaimed trilogy starring Tobey Maguire, which ran from 2002 to ’07, Sony rebooted the series in 2012 with two middling films starring Andrew Garfield that retreaded the ground of their predecessors. After all, an audience can be asked only so many times to watch Uncle Ben die while muttering something about power and responsibility.