10 Grim Realities Of Superhero Origins

5. Spider-Man Would Be Ill For A Bit

The origin story: Peter Parker was a shy, quiet, bookish teenager who excelled in his studies whilst uniformly failing to be popular at his New York high school. Whilst on a trip to a laboratory with his class, the science-smart Peter was bitten by a spider who had accidentally passed through a demonstration of radioactive equipment. Zapped with said radiation, the arachnid's poison somehow passed on the abilities of the eight-legged freak to Peter, allowing him to climb walls, increased his strength and imbued him with an early warning "Spider Sense".

Using his smarts to develop his own form of web fluid and with a sense of responsibility imbued in him by the tragic, avoidable death of his Uncle Ben, he becomes your friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man!

The grim reality: We don't ever get the exact deets on what particular radiation the spider has been dosed with (Stan Lee, strangely, isn't a science genius). What we do know is that considering it's being transferred from a tiny spider using its tiny maws on somebody's hand - and since the spider didn't look poisonous itself - then it's unlikely to cause any long-term effects to the unlucky Peter Parker.

At worst he'd be a bit poorly for, say, a couple of weeks, around about the half-life of the radiation that's been mixed into his blood. He obviously wouldn't end up getting the powers of a spider because people get bitten by animals all the time, and there are probably animals that have been accidentally dosed with similar small amounts of radiation, and they don't become Dog-Man or whatever. There'd be no Spider-Man, just Peter taking a few weeks off school to chuck up his guts.