Comic Book Questions Answered is a feature where I answer whatever questions you folks might have about comic books (feel free to e-mail questions to me at [email protected]). Today, I will explain how Spider-Man’s Spider-Sense works.
Reader Hal G. wrote in to ask, “I have a question that I would like to know the answer to. How does Spider-Man’s spider sense work? Is it just a tingle in his head, or is he able to see everything that could go wrong like in the movies?”
That’s an interesting question, Hal, because I never really had any idea that the movies might have shown Spider-Man’s Spider-Sense powers in any different way than the comic books, but now that you mention it, I guess the different media would suggest certain aspects that are different, sort of like how the movies started showing us Tony Stark’s face WITHIN the armor in all of the scenes, as opposed to the comic books, which rarely do so, because in the comics, there is no big name actor who you want to keep on screen/panel as much as possible (the same thing goes for why Tom Holland’s Spider-Man seems to take his mask off at the drop of a hat).
So let’s take a look at how the movies have depicted Spider-Man’s Spider-Sense, and then see how the comic books show how it works!
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How has Spider-Man’s Spider-Sense been depicted in the movies?
After looking into it, I honestly think that the movies’ depiction of Spider-Man’s Spider-Sense has been pretty much in keeping with the comic books. Here’s the first time we see it in action in Spider-Man (2002), where Peter Parker uses it in his fight with Flash Thompson…
This is the closest, I suppose, to the idea of Spider-Man “seeing” the danger before it occurs, as it does seem to suggest that he sees Flash’s fist coming before Flash punches him, but the rest of the fight seems pretty straightforward, Spider-Sense-wise, and then the same occured in the iconic scene in Spider-Man 2 where Peter saves his and Mary Jane’s life from a car being thrown through a cafe window by Doctor Octopus…
(That scene, of course, is one of the biggest plot holes in superhero movie history, as Doctor Octopus is looking for Spider-Man, and figures that Peter Parker knows how to contact Spider-Man. So, in order to get Peter to contact Spider-Man, Octopus first throws a car at Peter, something that Octopus HAD to think would have killed him, right? Soo….huh?).
So if that is how Spider-Man’s Spider-Sense is depicted in the films (and besides the cool scene where Peter Parker’s arm hairs all stand up on edge in Avengers: Infinity War, none of the uses of Spider-Sense in the Andrew Garfield or Tom Holland movies differentiate from the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man movies in how it is depicted), so how does that fit how Spider-Man’s Spider-Sense works in the comics?
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How does Spider-Man’s Spider-Sense work in the comics?
As I pointed out the last time I delved into Spider-Man’s Spider-Sense (when I discussed whether he could tell from what DIRECTION dange.r was coming from) (the answer was a general no, but if he concentrated hard enough, he could sort of jury-rig a way to tell what direction it was coming from, just by concentrating on where the sense increased in power), it is important to note that Spider-Man’s Spider-Sense doesn’t make any sense (pun not intended). It’s really one of the most nonsensical superpowers in comic books and there are a whole ton of nonsense superpowers in comic books. Unlike some of Spider-Man’s other powers which have a sort of consistency to them, his Spider-Sense is essentially magic. That’s really what it is. It is a magical power that allows him to sense danger before it occurs. There is no DEFINITIVE way that it works as writers over the years have constantly contradicted each other (like how Gerry Conway introduced the idea that Spider-man can’t sense danger if it is coming from someone that he knows of as a friend. That idea was later dropped by pretty much every writer since that point, including Conway himself during his return to the Spider-Man titles in the late 1980s).
The very first really good explanation of Spider-Man’s Spider-Sense came in Amazing Spider-Man Annual #1, where Steve Ditko and Stan Lee explained the basics of Spidey’s powers to new readers (remember, this was at a time when there were no real back issues, so this was hard-to-come-by information)…
Almost thirty years later, Tom DeFalco, Mark Bagley, and Sam De La Rosa gave us the MOST in-depth look at how Spider-Man’s Spider-Sense works in Spider-Man #26…
In other words, in a lot of way, Peter’s Spider-Sense sort of works like Daredevil’s Radar Sense, only here, Peter’s “radar” works through a tingling in the back of his head. He specifically does NOT see anything coming, just a sense of danger from a tingling in the back of his head.
In Amazing Spider-Man #594 (by Mark Waid, Barry Kitson, and Mark Morales), Spider-Man has been temporarily blinded by some acid to his face, and he uses his Spider-Sense to figure out when the new Vulture is about to attack by waiting until the danger tingling is the loudest in his brain…
So no, Hal, there is no vision or “sight” involved in Spider-Man’s Spider-Sense at all, it is strictly just a tingling sensation in the back of his head that warns him about danger.