What Happened To Everyone Who Killed Spider-Man?

Those times Marvel's web slinger was killed!

by Andrew Pollard
Ultimate Spider-Man Death
Marvel Comics / Mark Bagley / Justin Ponsor

Comic books being comics books, death is a scarily frequent occurrence.

Granted, these deaths may not always be the most permanent of arrangements, yet that doesn't take away from how impactful some of these demises can be both for readers and for the characters who inhabit these worlds.

One hero who has been particularly hit hard by death over the decades is Peter Parker. For poor Spider-Man, his life has been thrown upside down after suffering the losses of his Uncle Ben, his 'one true' Gwen Stacy, and even briefly Aunt May in the One More Day story that would see Peter wipe his marriage with Mary Jane out of existence.

While death has tragically surrounded the wall-crawler at times, the Grim Reaper has even come a-calling for Parker himself on several occasions throughout the character's decades-long history.

By the very nature of the comic-book beast, those deaths have not always exactly stuck, with alt-worlds, time-travel, all-powerful magic and general shenanigans being just some of the reasons why dead didn't really mean dead for Web-head.

Here, then, are ten such examples of times when Spider-Man was killed off - with a fair few of these making for absolutely brutal reading.

10. Terraxia

Ultimate Spider-Man Death
Marvel Comics

In the grand scheme of Marvel Comics, Texarria is an extremely minor character. However, she is one of the select few who is able to say that she killed Spider-Man.

This all-powerful rogue made her bow back during The Infinity Gauntlet, and she'd only actually appear in three issues before she herself was killed off. But during those three issues, Texarria instantly made herself a major player by a) decapitating Iron Man, and b) beating Spider-Man to death with a rock.

The shot of Spidey being killed isn't actually shown in Jim Starling and George Perez's iconic tale; instead, we readers see Texarria mounting the Wall-crawler in one panel, then Thanos smiling as we see Texarria holding a bloody rock over Peter's dead body.

When it happened, this very much was the very real death of the very real Peter Parker. Only comics being comics, this arc saw Adam Warlock and Nebula put the brakes on Thanos' scheme and reverse the universe back to its former self - as in, the deaths of Iron Man, Spider-Man and numerous others never technically happened.

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Once described as the Swiss Army Knife of WhatCulture, Andrew can usually be found writing, editing, or presenting on a wide range of topics. As a lifelong wrestling fan, horror obsessive, and comic book nerd, he's been covering those topics professionally as far back as 2010. In addition to his current WhatCulture role of Senior Content Producer, Andrew previously spent nearly a decade as Online Editor and Lead Writer for the world's longest-running genre publication, Starburst Magazine, and his work has also been featured on BBC, TechRadar, Tom's Guide, WhatToWatch, Sportkskeeda, and various other outlets, in addition to being a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic. Between his main dayjob, his role as the lead panel host of Wales Comic Con, and his gig as a pre-match host for Wrexham AFC games, Andrew has also carried out a hugely varied amount of interviews, from the likes of Robert Englund, Kane Hodder, Adrienne Barbeau, Rob Zombie, Katharine Isabelle, Leigh Whannell, Bruce Campbell, and Tony Todd, to Kevin Smith, Ron Perlman, Elijah Wood, Giancarlo Esposito, Simon Pegg, Charlie Cox, the Russo Brothers, and Brian Blessed, to Kevin Conroy, Paul Dini, Tara Strong, Will Friedle, Burt Ward, Andrea Romano, Frank Miller, and Rob Liefeld, to Bret Hart, Sting, Mick Foley, Ricky Starks, Jamie Hayer, Britt Baker, Eric Bischoff, and William Regal, to Mickey Thomas, Joey Jones, Phil Parkinson, Brian Flynn, Denis Smith, Gary Bennett, Karl Connolly, and Bryan Robson - and that's just the tip of an ever-expanding iceberg.