The Bizarre Story of the Original Spiderman

In 11 years working at a comic book store, we never knew what was going to walk through the door. Actually, that’s mostly a lie. The town had strategically positioned three halfway houses within a block of us, so most of what walked through the door were transients and vagrants who wanted to spend four hours walking around deciding what CD or DVD to spend their three dollars on before spending the rest of the day at the convenience store next door playing Keno. I do not miss retail.

Still, we’d get pretty exciting finds once in a while.

One day, a little old lady came into the store with two garbage bags full of “funny books” that had belonged to her husband. She was actually referred to us from another comic book store down the street that wasn’t interested in her trash. Their mistake. Normally when an older person refers to comics as funny books, they either have a collection of Disney, funny animal, or Archie books, which have very little value compared to superhero comics. That was not the case here. Inside those trash bags was an array of fantastic Silver Age comic books that we paid her thousands of dollars for. We sent several of the books off to CGC, the premier comic book grading company, and one of the books, Lois Lane #4, wound up being the highest graded copy in the world. When the eBay auction ended, we were so surprised by what it sold for that we contacted the woman to let her know what happened and pay her an additional thousand dollars.

Situations like this were rare. Normally the stuff people wanted to sell us was not that exciting, but it was far from the most exciting thing to ever walk through the door. A man entered the store carrying a briefcase and saying he had some comics he was interested in selling. He unlocked the briefcase, opened it up, and inside was a small but extraordinary collection. He was like the real life Big Daddy from Kick-Ass, but the comic book version, not the version in the movie starring Nicholas Cage. Sitting on top of the small stack of comic books in this briefcase was none other than a high grade copy of Amazing Fantasy #15, the first appearance of Spider-Man. Unfortunately for us, the guy wanted way too much for it so we were not able to make a deal.

Spider-Man has been Marvel’s most popular and successful character for decades, quite possibly since his creation, but that sort of data from the 60’s is difficult to find. Before the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the only Marvel character who could compete with the popularity of Spider-Man was Wolverine, but since Wolverine had this nasty habit of killing people, his sometimes mature content could not compete with the popularity of the friendly, neighbourhood Spider-Man. Whenever a creative work reaches the height of popularity, the question is inevitably asked of the creator: where did you get the idea?

The Official Story

Spider-Man was created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko. The extent to which each man was involved in the creation is a matter of debate. Stan Lee has multiple different stories for where he got the idea, and at this point can’t even remember himself which one is the truth.

The underlining theme is that he was pretty much out of ideas for new superpowers, but then decided that someone who could climb walls would be cool, which it is. Because comics were becoming more popular with a younger audience, he decided to have Spider-Man be a high school student, who had to deal with normal teenage problems in addition to fighting crime. The publisher thought this was stupid and that superheroes needed to be godlike and infallible, like Superman, and that teenagers could only be sidekicks.

The publisher was wrong, and Superman is boring as hell, because who on Earth can relate to an extraterrestrial God with zero real life problems and an unwavering moral compass? Because it was going to be the final issue anyway, Stan Lee got to throw an 11 page origin story for Spider-Man into the comic, concluding with Stan Lee as the narrator, and not Uncle Ben, saying that “with great power comes great responsibility.” That issue sold extraordinarily well, and so Spider-Man was given his own book.

And then another, and then another, ad infinitum.

That’s the quick synopsis of the official story, and officially this is the story that Marvel is sticking to. Given our society’s unfortunate lack of mindreading technology, the only way to find out how someone developed an idea is to ask that person, or perhaps consult their early notes or sketches, if such a thing exists and is available. The problem with that is the man you’re asking is Stan Lee, who is a notoriously unreliable narrator.

Stan Lee is the Thomas Edison of comics, a shameless self promoter who slapped his own name on anything and everything that came across his desk, regardless of his involvement in it. Am I saying that Stan Lee and Thomas Edison are talentless hacks who never had an original idea in their lives? Of course not, but it can never be known how much of what they created was actually an original idea, or just work stolen from Steve Ditko, Jack Kirby, or Nikola Tesla.

If you want to know the real story behind their ideas, you have to look much deeper than their own accounts of things. That, or invent mindreading technology.

The Costume That Came First

What do you think when you look at a crude Halloween costume with a web pattern, a spider on the chest, and a mask that covers the entire head instead of just the eyes? You probably think it looks like some low quality, knock off Spider-Man outfit that some poor child’s parent bought them because they couldn’t afford the real thing. That’s certainly what it looks like. It’s crude, but everything’s there. There’s just one small detail: Amazing Fantasy #15 was published in 1962. This costume is from 1958, and it wasn’t the first.

In 2006, a collector from Massachusetts, John Cimino, acquired a lot of Spider-Man costumes. Included was a costume similar to the one described above, but all yellow instead of with black limbs. He assumed it was a Marvel branded suit, but upon further investigation, it was not. Extensive research revealed that the costume in his possession had appeared in a 1954 catalogue from Ben Cooper Inc., a Halloween costume company of the time.

This was a full eight years before the comic book character existed. It must have sold reasonably well, because every year through 1962, Ben Cooper released a similar but slightly updated Spider Man costume, including the 1958 version.

Could this have just been a case of parallel thinking? It’s very possible for multiple people working independently to develop the same idea, like Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz discovering calculus. This would be an extremely plausible answer, if it were not for the reach Ben Cooper had.

Founded in Brooklyn in 1937, Ben Cooper Inc. was not just a Halloween costume company, they were the Halloween costume company. By the 1960’s, they reportedly held a 70-80% market share of the Halloween costume industry. That is jaw-droppingly insane. A 70% market share is a CEO’s dream. By contrast, Coca-Cola has a 43.7% market share, and the seemingly ubiquitous Apple’s market share only hovers at around 25%. Ben Cooper Inc. ultimately filed for bankruptcy in 1991 and was bought out by a competitor in 1992.

Ben Cooper’s costumes were everywhere, the Spider Man costume was popular enough to have been issued and updated year after year, and their headquarters were just 10 miles away from Marvel’s offices. In case you aren’t smelling something fishy yet, in 1963, long before Spider-Man had achieved mainstream popularity, Ben Cooper released the first ever licensed Marvel Halloween costume: Spider-Man. Why would a company that had already been producing a Spider Man costume for nearly a decade pay to license the mostly unknown character from Marvel?

To add some fuel onto the conspiratorial fire, Cimino wrote to Steve Ditko in late 2014 asking about the similarities between these costumes and his Spider-Man design. To be fair, Cimino wasn’t doing it because of conspiracies or for it to be some “gotcha” moment for Marvel, he was just a really big fan who wanted to know as much about the history as possible. When Ditko replied in 2015, his letter simply read: “The burden of proof is on the person who makes the assertion, claim, charge.

Some clippings, etc., are not rational proof of anything but some clippings, etc.” That strikes me as more than a bit deflective and suspicious, but that could just be how Ditko was. He was notorious both for not wanting to talk about Spider-Man and for being a recluse — the kind of recluse whose personal and work address were both listed in the phone book and who would almost always reply to fan letters, even if just to say how uninterested he was in talking about or doing whatever it was they were asking.

But still, something about this doesn’t sit right.

Theories

Parallel Thinking

One theory is that this really was just a case of parallel thinking. This seems extraordinarily unlikely, to the point of being virtually impossible. The only way this could work is if Lee and Ditko created the character, completely unaware of the costume, and then the costume maker, rather than sue, politely called up Marvel and brokered some sort of deal with them. There was an extremely strong case for a lawsuit, and this is America, so while technically possible, this seems more than a little farfetched.

Accidental Plagiarism

The second theory is that it was accidental. Stan Lee’s children were born in 1950 and 1953, so they would have been trick or treating while Cooper’s Spider Man costume was out on the streets. Ditko did not have a wife or any children, but considering what a friendly and communicative recluse he was, he probably opened his door to hand out candy on Halloween.

Either or both of these men could have seen the costume, either being worn by a child or in a catalogue, and forgotten about it. With the idea somewhere in the back of their minds, when it came time to create a new character, they could have subconsciously drawn on the image they had seen and unintentionally plagiarized it.

You may be thinking that’s hardly plagiarism — it’s not like the costume had any sort of backstory. Well, no, but also kind of yes. The Halloween costume had a mask that covered the entire face, something unheard of for superheroes at the time. It was also being worn by children and possibly teenagers who were out looking for free candy.

The whole radioactive spider thing, the robber killing Spider-Man’s uncle, that sort of stuff they definitely created on their own. But the very notion of a spider themed superhero who was not an adult, and the majority of the look of the costume itself, could have been derived from their recollection of the Halloween costume.

Intentional Theft

The third possibility is that the idea was stolen maliciously. They were out of ideas for characters, but they had seen this costume and they liked it. Or the idea of it, anyway.

The Ben Cooper costume was pretty rough, and for some reason it was coloured like a costume for “Bumblebee Man,” but clearly Steve Ditko is a better artist than whoever created that costume. They liked it, and so they took it. They changed the colour and made it prettier, perhaps hoping it would be legally distinct enough to avoid losing a lawsuit over, but they still intentionally copied the costume they had been seeing every Halloween for years.

Then, after the first issue was a success in 1962 and Spider-Man got his own book in 1963, it was time to act fast. They had to get out in front of this thing before it took down the empire they were creating, so they reached out to Ben Cooper to strike a deal for that year’s line of costumes. Perhaps they offered exclusive rights to create licensed costumes, free of charge, or some other “too good to be true” offer, which Cooper took not realizing that Spider-Man would grow to be a billion dollar asset that they should probably be fighting harder for.

The Jack Kirby Connection

Finally, there’s the little matter of Jack Kirby, the other Marvel artist who claims to have created Spider-Man. Kirby did preliminary work for the character, though Ditko definitely liked to downplay his role. There is a chance that Kirby designed both the Marvel character and the Ben Cooper costume.

Kirby had been working with another artist, Joe Simon, but they split up in 1954. Simon went into advertising, and Kirby is believed to have been doing freelance work. While trying to make enough money to get by, Kirby could have approached Cooper to pitch costume ideas, and offered them an adaptation of Joe Simon’s “Silver Spider,” a comic he had pitched to Harvey Comics in 1953 that they rejected.

This would fit the timeline, and it would make it possible for Kirby to have designed the costume for Cooper while then redesigning it eight years later for Marvel. Neither time would he have been given any real credit for it, but he took credit in multiple interviews, so he clearly felt he deserved some. Still, this is all speculation and there is no real evidence that Kirby had done freelance work for Cooper, just the costume itself, their close proximity, and Kirby needing money.

The Unsolved Mystery

I’m honestly not sure where I land on this one. I can’t believe it was just a coincidence, that’s for sure. But was the idea for Spider-Man stolen by Marvel, or did they accidentally create something that they had already seen but weren’t consciously thinking of? Even if it was an accident, I’m inclined to believe that someone at Marvel realized what they had done and that they were the ones to contact Ben Cooper first.

Perhaps Kirby had designed the costume for Cooper, and, despite being largely cut out of the process at Marvel, warned them about the impending lawsuit they could face from his earlier design.

With Stan Lee, Steve Ditko, Jack Kirby, and most likely anyone at Ben Cooper who was part of the agreement they made all being deceased, and with Cooper out of business, we will never know. There is no one left to set the record straight, and so the true origin of Marvel’s most famous character will forever be a mystery. Perhaps there’s some secret file buried somewhere deep in Marvel’s vaults that holds the answers to this secret, but Disney’s far too busy cashing all their checks from the MCU to care about trying to uncover something like that.

Bonus Facts

For anyone born after the year 2000: you know how creepy it is when you get a phone call from someone, maybe even someone you’ve only met once or twice, without you having given them your number? And what sort of crazy stalker would they have to be to show up at your house? As it turns out, this wasn’t always the case. There are these things called phone books.

They show up at everyone’s house or apartment, and they have the name, phone number, and address of everyone in your town. While they still exist, these days phone books are mainly just items to be torn in half by magicians, but we actually used to use them, and it wasn’t considered weird or creepy at all.

Spider-Man had a lot of different books, far too many to name. Marvel loves to cash in on whatever character or franchise is most popular, giving them as many as a dozen books running concurrently, though usually capping out at 4 or 5. The derogatory slang for Marvel fans who would mindlessly purchase all these books and not read anything by another company was “Marvel Zombies.” On January 1st, 2006, Marvel released issue 1 of a 6 part series titled Marvel Zombies. It was written by Robert Kirkman, creator of The Walking Dead.

Speaking of Marvel and zombies, in 1973 Marvel decided to file a trademark on the word “zombie,” and it went over exactly the way you would think that it would. In 1975, the trademark was approved, and Marvel owned the word “zombie.” The trademark was finally challenged in 1996 and was canceled for being far too broad. This begs the question of why it was approved in the first place. How do you trademark a word that has been in published works since at least as far back as 1810?

What could possibly stand in the way of Wolverine overtaking Spider-Man’s popularity? Professor X created a school to teach adolescents to control and utilize their emerging powers, but what if one of these kids develops a power that’s too dangerous to simply wait until they can control it, like a mutant who could create an uncontrolled nuclear fission reaction with their bare hands? Well, since getting humans and mutants to live peacefully together is Xavier’s number one goal, and since a disaster caused by an uncontrollable mutant would damage human-mutant relations, that’s when he sends Wolverine off with a 6 pack of beer to sort the problem out, for the good of humanity. As Wolverine’s been telling us for the past 40 years, “I’m the best there is at what I do, but what I do best isn’t very nice.”

Frequently Asked Questions

Who created Spider-Man?

Spider-Man was created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko.

What was the inspiration behind Spider-Man’s creation?

Stan Lee was out of ideas for new superpowers but decided that someone who could climb walls would be cool. He also decided to have Spider-Man be a high school student dealing with normal teenage problems in addition to fighting crime.

What was the reaction of the publisher to the idea of a teenage superhero?

The publisher thought it was stupid and believed superheroes needed to be godlike and infallible, like Superman, and that teenagers could only be sidekicks.

How did Spider-Man’s first appearance perform?

The first appearance of Spider-Man in Amazing Fantasy #15 sold extraordinarily well, leading to Spider-Man being given his own book.

What is the significance of the Spider-Man Halloween costume from 1958?

The Spider-Man Halloween costume from 1958 is significant because it predates the comic book character by several years, raising questions about the origin of the idea for Spider-Man.

What theories exist about the origin of the Spider-Man idea?

There are several theories, including parallel thinking, accidental inspiration from the Halloween costume, and malicious theft of the idea. Another theory involves Jack Kirby’s potential involvement in designing both the costume and the character.

What was the market share of Ben Cooper Inc. in the Halloween costume industry?

Ben Cooper Inc. reportedly held a 70-80% market share of the Halloween costume industry by the 1960s.

What was the response of Steve Ditko when asked about the similarities between the Halloween costume and his Spider-Man design?

Steve Ditko’s response was ‘The burden of proof is on the person who makes the assertion, claim, charge. Some clippings, etc., are not rational proof of anything but some clippings, etc.‘

What was the significance of the Spider-Man costume in the 1954 catalogue from Ben Cooper Inc.?

The Spider-Man costume in the 1954 catalogue from Ben Cooper Inc. is significant because it predates the comic book character by eight years, suggesting a possible connection between the costume and the creation of Spider-Man.

Sources

• Original Decoding the Unknown video: The Bizarre Story of the Original Spiderman
• Hero image source by thegetty / openverse, cc0.