At the very bottom of the Multiverse sits a Peter Parker who never receives the powers at all. The radioactive spider sinks its fangs in, and rather than gaining the ability to scale walls, he ends up with an arm that stays paralyzed for good.
That is the floor of the ladder. And the distance between that Peter and the Spider-people perched at the summit of Marvel’s Web of Life is precisely what makes ranking this cast such a chore.
Hardly any hero has been reinvented as frequently. Peter kicked the whole thing off, of course, but a Multiverse that keeps growing has turned Spider-Man from a single person into an idea, and an idea can be handed to nearly anybody. Heroes you know, living lives you wouldn’t recognize. Strange creatures. Outright monsters.
Certain variants are powered by tech. Others wield abilities Peter wouldn’t even know the name for. A handful turned outright terrifying by pushing the concept in directions no one anticipated. Because brute force and agility alone can’t settle this, the ranking spans realities, beginning at the very bottom and working its way up to the figure who looms over everyone else.
The Peter who never becomes Spider-Man
Labeling this one a Spider-Man is a bit of a stretch, given that he never actually becomes Spider-Man. His arm is paralyzed by the bite, and the origin story stops right there.
Everything after that is grimmer still. That trauma arrives right alongside Uncle Ben’s death, pushing Peter into depression and ongoing therapy. He has plenty of heart to make up for it, enough to qualify as heroic. But there’s far more man than spider in him, which makes the math on his ranking straightforward.
Flash Thompson took the powers and skipped the lesson
Over on Earth-958, it’s Flash Thompson the spider chooses. Great power, great responsibility, and none of it sticks. Fame and money were what Flash was after, so he turned criminal with the abilities, robbed whoever he pleased and strong-armed Peter Parker into building gadgets that made the job easier.
Peter finally worked out exactly what Flash was, concluded he had no other option, and went after Spider-Man himself. The equipment he assembled for that mission performed so impressively that the Fantastic Four extended him an invitation to join.
The Peter who picked up guns instead
Slap a Punisher skull on Peter Parker’s chest and you know exactly how this universe handled Uncle Ben’s death. Forget the costume, forget any bite worth discussing. It’s guns and a name that needs avenging, straight out of the Frank Castle playbook.
The kills earn him credit, and the ending earns him even more, because this Peter wound up with a happier life than Earth-616’s ever managed. He got his revenge, rescued Gwen Stacy, killed Green Goblin, then walked away from vigilantism and settled down.
Spiders-Man is body horror with a hyphen
Here’s another take on the radioactive spider origin: radiation floods an enormous colony of spiders. Peter Parker tumbles into the swarm. Peter Parker stops existing. What crawls back out is Spiders-Man.
The spiders forming his body hold Peter’s identity as one collective consciousness, yet they can still scatter and operate individually. Most of Spidey’s trademark powers are absent. What he offers instead is pure skin-crawling dread.
Stan Lee got to wear the suit
As creators go, few in comics are as influential or as instantly recognizable as Stan Lee. Dozens of icons came from him, the Fantastic Four and Iron Man included, but Spider-Man is the creation that made him permanent, and one of the most popular characters on Earth.
Marvel has returned the favor in several ways, one of them being to put Lee in the costume. It’s happened both in comics and in games. The Amazing Spider-Man let players control Stan Lee, with the man himself supplying the full voice performance.
And in Spider-Geddon #5, readers met a Stan Lee who had become the Spider-Man of his own universe.
The one who fights crime with snack cakes
Everything about this Spider-Man’s look and movement reads as authentic, apart from a single detail that changes the whole picture: his weapon of choice against enemies is Hostess snacks. That’s the operating logic of his entire reality, where every superhero fights crime using Hostess Snack Cakes and nothing besides.
His origin was a crossover advertisement printed inside a Marvel comic, and he was eventually brought into the Spider-Verse properly. The powers are funny. They’re also restrictive, and those restrictions got him killed early during the Spider-Verse event.
Penelope Parker is 11 years old
No Spider-Man variant is younger than Spider-Girl, and few are more cartoonish. Penelope Parker came into her powers at 11 during a class field trip, then followed the standard Parker trajectory and headed out to fight crime.
On paper the power set is the usual package. The body is the problem. She lacks the raw strength the adult heroes carry, and although she’ll very likely grow into it, for now she occupies the Spider-Verse’s bottom rungs.
Spider-Monkey has a species problem
In the Marvel Apes universe almost every human is a variety of ape, so the Peter Parker there was a monkey when the radioactive spider bit him.
The abilities are essentially the familiar ones. It’s the body that holds him back, especially whenever a human opponent stands across from him in the Spider-Verse. His intellect was dialed down to monkey level as well, so combat strategy isn’t something he brings to the table.
Pete Spiderman, CPA, has an award-winning lawn
Edge of Spider-Verse #4 gave us a variant built specifically to underwhelm. Pete is a meek sort of guy who simply happens to have Spiderman as a surname. His profession is certified public accountant. His lawn, which has collected awards, is a source of tremendous pride.
Powers, he does possess. The description applied to them is those of a slightly out-of-shape spider. Combine that with the dorkiness and you can see why the other Spider-people aren’t hurrying to clear a seat for him.
May Reilly built her own way in
An alternate, younger Aunt May, May Reilly is the daughter of a scientist of some renown. She slipped into her father’s laboratory one day and was bitten by one of the spiders he kept there.
Nothing came of the bite. Not a single power, not one enhancement. What she took from it was a lesson: never allow anyone to cage you.
So she built her own solution, a mechanically enhanced Spider suit fitted with back-mounted arms reminiscent of the Iron Spider rig, and took to the streets as Lady Spider. It’s a clever piece of engineering. It still can’t bridge the strength gap between her and the Spider-Men handed their powers for nothing.
Across the 21st century Spider-Man has headlined 11 films, live action and animated alike, and none of them has come close to the weirdness parked at the bottom of this list. A man assembled from spiders. An accountant with a trophy lawn. A guy hurling snack cakes at criminals right up until it killed him.