Today, we look at the ever-changing age of Peter Parker when he was bitten by that radioactive spider.
This is "Gonna Change My Way of Thinking," a feature spotlighting notable examples of retcons that don't fit into the framework of Abandoned an' Forsaked, which is specifically about stories that outright "overturn" older stories. There are many examples of "retroactive continuity" that do not actively abandon the works of the past (especially cases where the overall continuity was rebooted). Some of them are minor, some of them are major, all of them are interesting enough to me that I figure that they are worth writing about.
As I have written a number of times over the years, the original creators of the Marvel Universe really weren't putting a whole lot of time into some of the more minute details of the characters. This is far from the idea that they weren't putting as much thought into things. That often gets suggested about both Silver Age AND Golden Age comic book creators and hey, I won't lie, it certainly WAS true for a lot of them, but generally speaking, these creators WERE putting a lot of thought into their work, that thought just wasn't about stuff like continuity or anything like that. The notion at the time was that there was a cycle and no one reading comic books in, say, 1962, was still going to be reading comic books in 1966. Stan Lee quickly realized that while that might have been true for Marvel's earlier comic books, it did not appear to be the same way with the new superhero stories that Marvel was telling and everything adjusted accordingly. However, when Spider-Man was introduced 60 years ago by Lee and Steve Ditko, neither of them bothered to really come up with a definitive age for Peter Parker. He was simply a teenager...
The amusing thing to me, though, is that (as my buddy Joshua Lapin-Bertane has pointed out to me a couple of times over the years), is that very early on, Lee and Ditko revealed a rough age for Spider-Man and it was probably older than you expected. You see, the issue all started with Amazing Spider-Man #4, where Peter Parker first met J. Jonah Jameson's secretary, Miss Betty Brant...
I love that THE VERY NEXT ISSUE, Betty is in the opening sprawl as a member of the cast...
Peter and Betty quickly drew close to each other and she was his first romantic interest, as shown in this outstanding Ditko/Lee sequence in Amazing Spdier-Man #7 (one of the things that always amuses me about these early stories is that Lee was SO impressed with Ditko's plots that he couldn't help but brag about them as he was scripting the comics. A whole lot of, "Wow, this is sure a different story here, huh, folks? Wow!"
The issue is that readers were kind of weirded out that a working woman was interested in dating a teenager, so Lee felt that he had to explain in the letter pages of Amazing Spider-Man #12 that, all logic be damned, Betty Brant was somehow YOUNGER than Peter Parker, although that fact would make absolutely zero sense...
It sure seemed like Lee was saying that Peter was about 18 years old at that point, right? Sixteen issues later, Peter graduated high school...
As I've noted a few times over the years, there is pretty much NO way that Lee and Ditko would have ever had Peter graduate high school that quickly if they knew that the series would go on for basically ever.
WAS SPIDER-MAN 15 WHEN HE WAS BITTEN BY A RADIOACTIVE SPIDER?
Still, since a number of issues DID pass from Amazing Fantasy #15 to Amazing Spider-Man #28, no one knows for sure what age Peter was when he was bitten. The most popular answer, though, is also, I believe, the first one to make it into print.
In the 1989 graphic novel, Spider-Man: Parallel Lives (by Gerry Conway, Alex Saviuk and Andy Mushynsky, Peter notes that he was 15 when he was bitten by the spider...
WAS SPIDER-MAN 16 WHEN HE WAS BITTEN BY A RADIOACTIVE SPIDER?
Four years later, though, in Spider-Man Unlimited #1, there was a backup story by Mike W. Barr and Jerry Bingham where Peter, in a daze from a fight against the Scorpion, suddenly sees himself as a 16-year-old again, right before the spider bites him...
He realizes that he is not actually in the past and comes to in time to defeat the Scorpion.
WAS SPIDER-MAN 17 WHEN HE WAS BITTEN BY A RADIOACTIVE SPIDER?
A decade later, in Amazing Spider-Man #500 (by J. Michael Straczynski, John Romita Jr. and Scott Hanna), we see Spidey caught in a very clever and intricate time travel storyline and part of it involves him going back to when he was 17 and he was bitten by the radioactive spider...
WAS SPIDER-MAN 18 WHEN HE WAS BITTEN BY A RADIOACTIVE SPIDER?
Exactly one year later, in Marvel Knights Spider-Man #7 (by Mark Millar, Terry Dodson and Rachel Dodson), Peter attends his high school reunion and likely while thinking about that, he notes that he first became Spider-Man when he was 18 years old...
The funny thing about Millar and Straczysnki both being responsible for Peter being 17 and 18, respectively, is that almost precisely a year later, it was Millar who pretty much solidified Spider-Man as being 15 when he was bitten by the spider by Peter's press conference revealing his secret identity in Civil War #2 (by Mark Millar, Steven McNiven, Dexter Vines and Morry Hollowell )...
and then Straczynski had to do that same reveal in Amazing Spider-Man #533 (by Straczynski, Ron Garney, Bill Reinhold and Matt Milla)...
So it sure seems like 15 is the one that has the longest life, but it is funny to see how many different ages it has been over the years.
Thanks for the suggestion, Ramon! Okay, folks, feel free to suggest more examples of this sort of thing! Obscure ones, famous ones, whatever! Send your suggestions to brianc@cbr.com!