Highlights
- Spider-Man's web shooters and spider-sense are unreliable powers that have malfunctioned and put him in danger.
- Spider-Man's idealism and love for others can be seen as a weakness, as it often leads to trouble and a lack of strategic planning.
- Ethyl Chloride and water are unexpected weaknesses for Spider-Man, hindering his abilities and rendering him vulnerable.
The very concept of a superhero is for the hero to be a wielder of great strength and morals that are a cut above the standard. Truer words have never been said for Spider-Man. Whether or not one of these characters comes with incredible abilities or merely a strong sense of Justice and the skills needed to enact it, superheroes have always come with their own individual weaknesses that have helped humanize them and make them seem more relatable, and here swings Spider-Man.
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Spider-Man is one of the most recognizable Marvel Comics superheroes of all time, having appeared in so many video games many have been forgotten. From his early dominance due to his relatable street-crime fighting to his recent success with three separate major film franchises over the past twenty years, this character is filled with resolve and strength. However, he also has his fair share of weaknesses, prompting him to become even more relatable to audiences since he isn’t all-powerful.
7 Unreliable Powers
Peter’s web shooters are, in most iterations of the character, developed by himself and hugely important to his superhero doings as Spider-Man. However, while they usually do work well, there has been a fair share of times and various actions or hindrances that have led to them malfunctioning and leaving Peter essentially helpless at the hands of various criminals.
Additionally, Peter’s spider-sense is a big part of his character. From the moments when his “tingle” tells him that something, in general, is wrong to the key moments during significant battles against deadly adversaries when it helps him look in a certain direction to catch danger, this uncommon power that simply relates to “heightened senses” is huge to Spider-Man, but it doesn’t always work so well. From time to time, due to mental difficulties or distractions, Peter’s spider-sense has stopped working and almost caused his death.
6 Idealism
There are a lot of superheroes who can be considered white knights. While characters like Tony Stark can be described as reluctant heroes and the Punisher is more aptly called an anti-hero, Spider-Man is among the ranks of the true and pure hero types. Like Captain America, Spider-Man focuses on the immediate danger to anyone, not the greater good and the larger picture. This often results in trouble for him, and a weakness in planning how to tackle larger threats.
Namely, Peter is weak because of those he loves, many of whom have a habit of dying frequently. This can be called a strength, but it has gotten him in trouble more often than not. Whether it is his rage at Uncle Ben’s death, his constant fear for the safety of Aunt May or his love interests like Mary-Jane, or having simply too much compassion for villains who are on the brink of death, he just won’t stop saving people. The difficulties this has caused Peter over the years aren’t likely to stop, because the character never learns that there are greater and lesser evils.
5 Ethyl Chloride
An unusual weakness, Ethyl Chloride is actually the little-known Kryptonite to Spider-Man. This compound is what makes up bug spray, and it can in fact be used in real life to kill actual spiders. For years in Marvel Comics, the result has been basically the same when Peter Parker or any of the other Spider-related heroes or villains come into contact with the substance, making for a deadly realization for Peter every time he is near the substance.
Though Ethyl Chloride has been used less frequently in Marvel Comics of late, there are certain villains, like the Spider-Slayers of Spencer Smythe, that utilize it and have been able to easily take Peter Parker down due to this easily created substance. It is an old joke to use bug spray against Spider-Man, but this old joke remains in the modern day as a potential way to absolutely hinder all of Peter Parker’s spider-like capabilities in a devastating fashion.
4 Water
In some ways, this one goes without saying. While other heroes that can be seen flying around the skylines of their city can simply fly and therefore have no problem with water, the same unfortunately cannot be said for Peter Parker or any others of the Spider-Verse. Bodies of water aren’t friendly to those trying to latch onto something tall with their webs, making water a surprising and simplistic hazard for Spider-Man.
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Additionally, the hazard goes even further. Despite large bodies of water being generally avoidable for a hero who primarily works on the streets of New York, any water at all can be a real problem for his web shooter gadgets themselves. They’ve gotten too wet before, and completely stopped working, not to mention being easily crushed by villains at times.
3 The Countryside
This is a problem similar to bodies of water. Some Marvel fans have wondered what it would be like to see Spider-Man in different parts of the world, and in some media, it has been seen, such as in Spider-Man: Far From Home when Peter went on a school trip to Europe. However, in general, there is a reason that Spider-Man prefers to stick to cities and not travel to the suburbs or countryside.
Quite simply, there aren’t tall buildings in the countryside, which would ruin the verticality of Spider-Man video games for sure. While Peter could still fight villains with his strength and handle many of his abilities outside of New York, the feel of Spider-Man involves zipping across the New York City skyline, not being stuck walking around the country as he goes to fight crime. There is a reason that Spider-Man has never needed a vehicle in his superhero adventures over the years.
2 Money
A surprising problem, but Spider-Man actually has absolutely no money most of the time. Outside the MCU, Peter is generally one of the poorest superheroes, often seen mending his own costumes. While his mentor Tony Stark had solved this problem for the MCU Spider-Man, the ending of Spider-Man: No Way Home finds Peter in a familiarly problematic place monetarily, often helping him make certain situations worse.
This could end in Parker working as a photographer for J Jonah Jameson, a frequent sight from the comics that has often left him pretty poor. Spider-Man is generally quite separate from organizations like the Avengers, and he’s not generally had their backing monetarily enough to stop him from having to keep up the traditional secret identity and real-world job in addition to his superhero activities.
1 Radiation
An uncommon and unfortunate occurrence, it has been proven in the comic books on a very special occasion that Peter Parker’s spider-like abilities could be stripped from him using radiation similar to that which gave him the abilities in the first place. This strange phenomenon occurred in the unusual Clone Saga in the Spider-Man comic books, a saga featuring some of Spidey's best-ever villains.
Peter Parker and the Clone Saga don’t need to be delved too deeply into to understand that Parker lost his Spider-Man powers through the use of radiation on him. Several major Marvel superheroes have deeper relationships with radiation, including the Hulk who Peter surprisingly beat once. This particular hero, while not having been explored as deeply as others, is significant in the potential it holds for the future of the MCU Spider-Man.