I had previously done a post exploring the likely influences on J. Jonah Jameson. I have since done two posts excavating and exploring how much, or how little teenage life as we know and understand it played a part in shaping Peter Parker. Now I would like to explore what I think are the likely influences on the character of Peter Parker, the alter-ego of Spider-Man. Which were the cultural touchstones (books, movies etcetera) that provided referents and guides for Steve Ditko and Stan Lee in their writing of the most famous superhero to start out as a teenager. How much did Spider-Man conceivably borrow? How much did Lee and Ditko change and innovate on their models? This post is speculative so it’s not by any means definite. Nonetheless I give my reasons for making the claims below.
There’s an old adage that goes “What do they know of England that only England know?” Over the years this adage has become a kind of moving meme whereby people swap England and still carry the intended meaning that you can’t know everything about your field without engaging with stuff outside that field. So the time has come to rephrase this question: “What do they know about Spider-Man that only Spider-Man know?”
A character like Spider-Man/Peter Parker and his arrival in comics is not in any sense a common occurrence. He originated in 1962 and despite being two decades younger than Superman and Batman, rapidly closed the gap and became the third most famous and iconic superhero in comics history. As such Peter Parker’s development and introduction ought to be placed in relation to a cultural context and in conversation with his most likely influences.
FIRST SPIDER-MAN, THEN PETER PARKER
It might seem odd to do a post about the influences on Peter Parker separate from Spider-Man. There’s an entire post to be made about the composite nature of superheroes where they exist as alter-egos and then in superhero identities but that’s quite outside the humble premise of this post today. As I mentioned in my previous post, when you survey the origins and development of Spider-Man as a character, when you trace the development step-by-step from Simon and Kirby’s failed “Spiderman” character all the way to Amazing Fantasy #15, one begins to appreciate that the character developed incrementally. Originally Spiderman was intended as a variation on the 1940s comic Captain Marvel by Fawcett Comics i.e. a child who became a superhero with an adult body. This version was repurposed as The Fly with Tommy Troy. When Kirby came to Marvel, the decision was made (we don’t know by either Kirby or Lee) to make the character into a teenager.
In Short: Spider-Man was created first. Peter Parker was designed afterwards. The development of Peter Parker as a character needs to be considered separately from his alter-ego. The question can be asked as to what touchstones Lee/Ditko consciously or unconsciously appealed to be in the visual design, presentation, and characterization of Peter Parker.
HOLDEN CAULFIELD
The Catcher in the Rye was published serially in 1948 and published in a single volume in 1951. It follows a teenager Holden Caulfield as he angst’s and rages at the world of “phonies” all around him while strolling through New York City. On its publication, Salinger’s novel was a best-seller and it was one of the first works of “literary fiction” that centered on a teenage protagonist and Holden Caulfield became one of the touchstone characters of Post-War America inspiring several authors, actors, film-makers, musicians, as well as future assassin of John Lennon – Mark David Chapman, but let’s leave that aside for now.
The concept of “teenage angst” was a relatively new phenomenon when The Catcher in the Rye debuted. Today’s there’s an entire pop-culture ecosystem — from Punk to Grunge to Emo to Goth and so on — dedicated around it. Holden Caulfield can be said to have codified this concept, of giving the original expression of this idea. The sense that a teenage kid could have an inner life and consciousness that reflects the state of the world in a manner no less persuasive than an adult protagonist. In that sense, The Catcher in the Rye is a precedent for Peter Parker and his never-ending introspective monologues about how being Spider-Man is draining and unrewarding.
Furthermore, the connection between Spider-Man and Holden Caulfield has been made by some observers. Andrew Garfield himself in the run-up to promoting The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) said that Peter and Holden were two characters he most related to, and compared them in many interviews, saying at one point: “Holden Caulfield and Peter Parker, I think those two are related in some way.” [1]
This led Andrew O’Hehir in Salon, to elaborate on the connection between the two characters:
While there has been tremendous discussion among historians and scholars about the contributions of Marvel Comics legends Stan Lee, Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby in creating Spider-Man, as well as about the numerous possible sources of inspiration — a pulp-magazine crime-fighter called the Spider, an Archie Comics hero called the Fly, a 1950s character prototype called the Silver Spider…one obvious source is often overlooked. Orphaned high-school wunderkind Peter Parker made his first appearance in print about a decade after the publication of “The Catcher in the Rye,” at the very height of J.D. Salinger’s fame and influence. Solitary, haunted by guilt and sworn to defend the weak, Peter is a virtual clone of Salinger’s Holden Caulfield, albeit with a fantasy alter ego Holden lacks.
Andrew O’Hehir, “Spider-Man and Holden Caulfield: A secret history”, July 03 2012. [2]
I part ways with O’Hehir in considering Peter a “virtual clone” of Holden. Holden Caulfield differs from Peter Parker in a key way. He is a rich kid. I mentioned in my previous post that the concept of “the teenager” originated in a place of privilege, of middle to upper class white privilege. Holden Caulfield fits that pattern to a T. Unlike Peter Parker who attends Midtown High School, Holden drops out of a preppy boarding school from where he’s expelled. The character when read today more than once comes across as entitled and angry with an aspect and affect that reads — “totally a white guy”. Take the comparison between Peter and Holden too far and you end up equivocating middle-class teen angst and working-class teen angst and pretending the two are similar.
It’s certainly true that The Catcher in the Rye has had a definite popularity across the board, and it’s a fact that Mark David Chapman, the assassin of Lennon, was working-class. Arguably the ignorance and downplaying of class in postwar America was one of the factors that engendered the uncritical identification with Holden as a character in mass culture, and an unopposed representative of teenage angst that prevented other flavors and varieties from having a say.
It’s easy to read the Lee-Ditko era and see the characterization and personality of Peter where he’s often quick to anger and hot-blooded and see this as embodying teenage angst. But there’s also numerous differences. Peter even at his most self-centered in AF#15 loves his Uncle and Aunt. His entire career in showbiz was driven in an attempt to win money for his adoptive parents. Holden Caulfield has teenage angst in the classical sense of it not being tethered to “real problems” but Peter Parker absolutely does have real problems.
In defense of The Catcher in the Rye, it does deal with teenage life in more realistic terms than Amazing Spider-Man. Limited by its genre and by the censorship, Spider-Man in all his years of high school couldn’t deal with a portrayal of teenage life as realistic as the one in Salinger’s novel, which has references to teens committing suicide, drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes, drugs etcetera. The novel also more openly deals with sexuality in that the novel focuses on Holden wanting to lose his virginity but also disliking every woman he comes across with. In one notable scene he solicits a prostitute and takes her to a hotel. That admittedly doesn’t end well for him but it’s an example of the kind of scenes you couldn’t deal with in a comic like Spider-Man. Under the Comics Code Authority, the character’s sexuality could never be openly dealt with in the 1960s leave alone themes of suicide, drug use and alcoholism (things did change in the 1970s with Spider-Man but that’s a post for another day).
Holden Caulfield is also a character with misogynist aspects, whereas Peter Parker isn’t. This is not to say that the character in the Lee-Ditko run, and later runs, wasn’t filled with moments of chauvinism or male entitlement. He absolutely was especially given the various writers of multiple generations that worked on the title. But as a character, Peter certainly did change and evolve in his relationships and understandings of women. Undoubtedly at age 15, when originally introduced in Amazing Fantasy #15, owing to being bullied by anti-intellectual bullies, Peter had difficulty communicating to girls. But from ASM#07 when he worked at the Daily Bugle, he started his first relationship (and also his first friendship) with Betty Brant. The way Peter admits in his internal monlogue in ASM#9, “Maybe I haven’t many friends — but one wonderful one like Betty makes up for I haven’t got!” is a level of gratitude and warmth that Holden doesn’t readily give (and if so only extended to elect objects of sympathy like his sister).
There is perhaps an aspect of wish fulfillment to this, because certainly for all we like to imagine and project Spider-Man as a serious superhero who dealt with real problems, the character was still packaged in a superhero genre that was still mainly a male power fantasy, and certainly having a pretty female companion as a shoulder to cry on is part of that. But regardless, as Peter evolved as a character in comics, by accident he became someone who related more to girls than boys his age, being a rare superhero character who was heterosocial (preferred the company of women) rather than homosocial (generally likes to hang out with the boys). This makes him essentially different from Holden, and also (one can argue) pre-emptively vaccinates Peter from the more toxic form of teenage identification that has dampened the reputation of The Catcher in the Rye.
In fact one can argue that the character of Holden Caulfield is far closer to Harry Osborn, the lonely rich kid Peter meets when he graduates to college who in the course of the continuity, after Steve Ditko’s departure, evolved to becoming a far more troubled and disturbed character, having far worse relationship and personality issues than Peter did, and likewise developed a drug addiction. This story was published in 1971 in ASM#96-98 (called “the Drug Trilogy” informally) in defiance of the Comics Code Authority.
As for whether the creators of Spider-Man knew The Catcher in the Rye. I have not come across any mention of this book by either Lee or Ditko. Having said that, It’s more than a little safe to assume that Stan Lee was familiar with The Catcher in the Rye. He had literary ambitions of writing “the Great American Novel” and was quite well read and attentive to latest fads and trends (3). Of course given the popularity of the novel, it’s likely Ditko was also familiar with it though there doesn’t seem much indications to confirm it as of now. Nonetheless, the popularity of The Catcher in the Rye was such that it infected and percolated in the American consciousness and Ditko and Lee might well have absorbed it externally without actually reading it.
REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE
Equally important and culturally defining as The Catcher in the Rye is the 1955 classic Rebel Without A Cause. Rebel wasn’t the first American movie to deal with teenagers, but it was certainly the most successful and defining in the 1950s.
Everything from Happy Days to George Lucas’ American Graffiti to the musical Grease to more recent examples such as Dawson’s Creek, The OC, The Breakfast Club are all in some way or form variations of archetypes, plots, and tropes that first appeared in Rebel Without A Cause, making it one of the most influential films in American cinema.
It’s directed by Nicholas Ray, starring James Dean, Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo and in smaller roles, Dennis Hopper who went on to become a character actor and director.
Rebel Without A Cause is set in the West Coast, in Sunny California. So that makes it different from The Catcher in the Rye which is NYC, born and bred. The car culture of the West Coast is on full display in this book featuring as it does drag races and “games of chicken” (that Lucas ran with for American Graffiti).
![Rebel Without A Cause – [FILMGRAB]](https://film-grab.com/wp-content/uploads/photo-gallery/07%20(843).jpg?bwg=1547380232)
Unlike Salinger’s novel which focuses on the character outside school for most of the book, Rebel has quite a few scenes at the start set in high school showing hallways, locker rooms, and a field trip to the Planetarium, so it puts across in some nascent form the famous high school caste system that’s beloved of teenage cinema – jocks and nerds, the outsider and the popular girl. The climax of the film which has a teenager run around with a gun and shooting people also makes the film continuously prescient and prophetic about high school life in a way that The Catcher in the Rye isn’t.
As such Rebel would have provided a touchstone for high school social dynamics. Certain scenes such as a “knife fight” between Jim and Buzz (the main bully) find echo in the Lee-Ditko run in the boxing match in ASM#08 between Peter and Flash.
However Rebel shares one element in common with The Catcher in the Rye, chiefly in that it’s filled entirely with rich kids. James Dean has issues with his Dad, but drives around a 1949 Mercury Coupe. His mother also wears mink coats. Even Sal Mineo’s far more emotionally troubled and disturbing Plato, is also the son of a rich man who’s a terrible father, and is essentially raised by the black maid of the family, emblematic of the uncomfortable way racial issues were acknowledged, but not commented on in some of the most interesting classic films.
Rebel Without A Cause skirts class issues in favor of Freudian family dynamics, while dealing with the social malaise of growing up in the age of the atomic bomb. Of the three leads, James Dean of course plays the lead, and his tragic death in a car accident haunts the film in a most poignant way. At the same time, it must be pointed out that James Dean was 24 years old when he appeared in Rebel Without A Cause. His features were youthful but he was an actor in his mid-20s playing a near-decade younger. This ended up setting a common trend of casting adult actors just out of their teenagers as high-schoolers. The other two leads – Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo – were much closer to the ages of their characters, being about 16 or 17 years of age around the time of filming.
The character of Plato as played by Sal Mineo is much closer visually and in terms of age to Peter Parker as he appears in AF#15.
Right – Peter Parker in Page 1 of AF#15
Sal Mineo, who plays the character Plato in the opening scene at the police station dresses similarly to Peter Parker in the first panel of Amazing Fantasy #15. He sports a black vest over a shirt and pants and similarly has a troubled and lonely affect and body language. Like Peter Parker who’s raised by his Aunt and Uncle, Mineo is raised by the family maid (played by Marietta Candy) who he clearly sees as more of a parental figure than his parents.
Plato is a genuinely bullied kid whereas Jim Stark (James Dean) is a spoiled angry kid who changes schools but he’s mocked for being an outsider by the popular gang and is dismissed by Judy (Natalie Wood) in favor of Buzz. At the same time, Plato as the film hints is a kid struggling with his homosexuality and nurtures a big crush on Jim Stark and one of the many ways that distinguishes Rebel Without A Cause is that it’s a movie centered on a bisexual love triangle centered on a romantic male lead (Dean) as the object of attention. [4]
At the same time, Plato’s despair and anger also leads him to violence, to carry a gun which makes Rebel weirdly uncomfortable. On one hand it’s prophetic in highlighting and foreshadowing the problem of school shooting which has become an (ongoing) problem in USA for three decades. On the other hand, Rebel, unintentionally and accidentally, perpetuates the harmful stereotype that bullied kids become school-shooters which has fairly little evidence of being a consistent pattern, and derives from dated information about the Columbine shooters [5]. Not to mention making the only coded-gay character violent and doomed to a tragic death.
Occasionally there’s also been talk in various circles that Peter Parker in Amazing Fantasy #15 was on path of becoming a “school shooter” based on the thought bubble of him thinking in tears and bitterness that “I’ll show them” in the first issue.
J. Michael Straczynski in his famous run, has Peter intervening in a school shooting at his old high school and reflecting that the school shooter was someone much like he was. Dan Slott has argued that Peter was on the path to becoming a villain in AF#15 [6].
When we first met Peter Parker, he was a teenage bespectacled nerd who resented all the other kids. One of his first lines was, “Some day I’ll show them all! Some day they’ll be sorry they ever laughed at me.” That’s not something a hero would say. If Peter had never learned the lesson of “great power and great responsibility,” there’s every chance he would have become a supervillain
Dan Slott
The fact is that Peter’s first instincts on becoming a superhero and getting superpowers was to become famous and make money. Getting Even rather than Getting Mad. In other words, completely harmless, legal (if self-centered) outlets. He makes money in the hope of paying back and helping his Aunt and Uncle who he continues to love. Which is to say that Peter’s first instinct is more or less to become Justin Bieber or an Instagram Influencer. Selfish but in a banal normal sense. Peter Parker in the comic, unlike Sal Mineo’s Plato enjoys a loving family home, and isn’t driven to violence. Pulling a thought bubble of sincere expression of bitterness and rage at being bullied out of context, is easy to do, but that always leads to prejudices that say more about its time than the original comic and character. The idea of a bullied Peter automatically on the path to supervillainy or becoming a school shooter is a dated trope that despite being closer to our time is about as dated and old-fashioned as some aspects of Rebel Without A Cause have become.
RIGHT: Peter Parker by JRJR
Peter Parker’s visual and narrative trajectory in comics is to imagine if Sal Mineo from Rebel Without A Cause grew up and became James Dean. If the sidekick character actually got bitten by the spider and became the main protagonist of the story. It’s a common observation that Peter Parker became more handsome after Steve Ditko stepped down and John Romita Sr. and it’s true in the sense that Romita Sr.’s designs of Peter Parker (which in comics has become his default look) are more romantic than Ditko’s.
But nonetheless it seems obvious that Ditko intended Peter to be a good-looking man, albeit someone who grows good-looking over time. The classic high school movie trope of the nerdish girl wearing glasses and then removing it and getting a makeover only to prove to be beautiful to become Prom Queen, plays out in Lee-Ditko Spider-Man only with the male Peter.
After getting bitten by a spider, Peter continues wearing glasses for several issues but then in ASM#8, the “Tribute to Teenagers” issue has Peter tussling with Flash who knocks over Peter’s glasses and breaks it. A thought bubble has Peter express that “I don’t need those specs anyway” and for the rest of the Lee-Ditko run, Peter Parker is a good-looking handsome guy who certainly is far more handsome in features than say Ned Leeds (his rival for Betty Brant) and Flash Thompson and when he enters college, Harry Osborn (who has inherited his father’s weird hairstyle, the poor sap).
James Dean’s Jim Stark is a character searching for meaning who in the course of the film tries to take responsibility and be responsible for people around him. First when he tries to go to the police about Buzz’s death against his parents counsel that they focus more on social image rather than civic obligations. Later Jim tries to be responsible for Plato, appealing to him to give himself up and peacefully calm him down but his best efforts get undone when the trigger-happy police shoot him anyway (which also has uncomfortable resonances today). In that respects, Jim Stark as a character does mirror and anticipate the arc of Peter as a character who grows out of his social malaise and takes responsibility. Though in Peter’s case because he comes from a working-class, he doesn’t have to revolt against his parents to do that. He just has to honor and respect his roots.
There’s another aspect of Rebel Without A Cause that it shares with Spider-Man, namely in the fact that Jim Stark’s parents are quite elderly and more likely to be grandparents than parents of the hero. The exaggerated age difference between parents and children was a choice of driving home how old-fashioned and out of touch parents had become but it’s not very believable. This is a problem with Spider-Man where Aunt May and Uncle Ben, while being Peter’s foster parents (with Ben being the older brother of Peter’s father) are also maybe a little too old in looks to be direct Uncle and Aunt to a 15-year old nephew. One can of course argue that people in working-class America aged quicker and harder (especially after the Great Depression) but it’s an element that’s out of place in both the film and the comic.
Fundamentally, the main idea of teenage life in the post-war era was one of a kind unmotivated angst at the previous generation. It was essentially middle-class and psychological since the original teenagers came from a privileged set, whether in Rebel Without A Cause, The Catcher in the Rye or Archie Comics for that matter. What separates and distinguishes Spider-Man and still does so to this day, is that it’s a story of working-class teenage angst. A specific subset that really had no prior reference and to be honest I think a case can be made for Peter Parker being the first working-class teenager in popular culture completely at odds with the rich and spoiled teenage kids in American movies and American literature. It’s common nowadays to see comics as a suppliant medium to cinema and literature but it’s possible for comics to introduce ideas that the other mediums didn’t or in some case innovate on earlier models.
AVOIDING “AMERICANUS GENERICUS”
If we are to consider one of the ways in which Peter Parker compared to other heroes, rather than look at his age we might consider his visual design. Peter Parker is perhaps the first secret identity who has a distinct look and isn’t generic, compared to Clark Kent, Bruce Wayne, Billy Batson, Barry Allen and others before him.
In the Golden Age of Comics, the majority of focus was on the superhero identity and not the civilian identity. This coupled with artistic limitations and old fashioned illustrative designs means that faces and characterization were generic. For instance, in their very first appearance Clark Kent/Superman (art by Joe Shuster) and Bruce Wayne (art by Bob Kane) have virtually the exact same face and type — White, Male, Black-Hair, rugged good looks, strong chin. In my best Wile. E. Coyote Latin I’d say “Americanus Genericus”. Now some of this can be down to Bob Kane just not being a very good artist (and in real life, not a very good person in general). He’s been known to swipe artwork and designs and lift panels from earlier comics and Bruce Wayne’s original generic design can be down to Kane borrowing common types in comics at the time rather than give his hero his own looks. [7]
Their identical facial features are entirely coincidental and a result of default to type because obviously the focus was on Batman and Superman and those two costumes fundamentally differed from one another. In fact the visual interchangability of Clark and Bruce was a plot point in quite a few Silver Age World’s Finest comics and often subject to contemporary jokes [8]. Greg Capullo, a contemporary DC artist has illustrated his own personal guide on what distinguishes Clark and Bruce but the fact is that even with Capullo’s admittedly helpful guide, these two guys are still the exact same type [9]. The few distinguishing marks chiefly in that Clark has a hair curl as Superman and as Clark he wears glasses, does little to hide this fact. They are emblematic of the generic visual design approach in superhero comics in the Golden Age, where few non-powered characters had distinct faces and the focus in superhero comics was on costumes and props.
Peter Parker though has a face that’s unique and distinct. A brunette with an angular face, medium-sized brown eyes, eyebrows that are slightly thick and expressive. Peter Parker is visually himself in a way that Clark and Bruce aren’t. He ain’t no Genericus Americanus.
As an artist, Steve Ditko was unique for his character design, giving many characters unique faces, unique hairstyles and silhouettes. Given that we know that Ditko was insistent on featuring Peter Parker outside the mask far more than Stan Lee was, the fact that he spent so much time making Peter’s face expressive and distinct is remarkable.
Over the course of Ditko’s run, you see Peter Parker with a wider variety of expressions than I wager, Bruce and Clark offered in the Golden Age combined. The lack of visual expressiveness and the emphasis on them as superheroes was one reason why these characters were more expressive in their costumed identities than behind the mask. With Spider-Man’s that not the case. Peter’s a very expressive face. In fact rather than focusing on Peter Parker being a relatable character because he originated as a teenager, one can argue that what made him relatable was simply having a face with more diverse expressions than other protagonists in superhero stories at that time.
This helps drive home that Peter has a more realistic face, his expressiveness also allows Ditko to put the character into a variety of situations — comedic and dramatic, serious and grim but also goofy, and in some cases, even scheming and diabolical. Basically Peter the comics character were he converted into a three-dimensional flesh and blood living hologram-AI would be considered a dramatic actor with excellent range. The artist Ron Frenz in interviews often suggested that Tom Hanks of the 1980s was platonically the best actor suited to play Peter, and Hanks as an actor with his great range from comedy to drama and the spectrum in-between gives you some idea of Peter as a character [10].
We can see in the collage plucked from AF#15 to ASM#28, that Ditko evolved Peter’s face subtly. Originally he wore glasses, and then he had a Widow’s Peak (that small V-formed at the top-center of Peter’s forehead) and then by ASM#28, you have a Peter that looks quite a bit like the character he would evolve in John Romita Sr’s more “central casting” look, with strands of hair tufting down removing the widow’s peak that Ditko originally gave him. But regardless of these small changes, or rather because of these small changes, Peter ends up being a character with a distinct face compared to Clark and Bruce.
The greater visual realism and expressiveness of Peter leads one to wonder if Ditko sought greater inspiration from real life. In the case of Peter, there’s one visual reference that’s perhaps been emphasized a bit too much, and others that derive from me watching and reading 50s Hollywood movies, and following my own subjective intuitions.
STEVE DITKO
It’s a common observation made by many, and certainly shared by me at one time, that Peter Parker is visually modeled on Ditko’s profile photograph in his High School Yearbook.
The resemblance is striking. At the same time lately I’ve had some doubts and I feel everyone (including me) have maybe gone a bit too far in being caught up with our cleverness of seeing how Ditko resembles his high school photo. Obviously researchers and critics like nothing better than autobiography and constantly want to find out and dig through to see if something’s based on a person’s real life and whatnot. The main reason for my doubts is my more methodical reading through of the production history of Spider-Man. I re-read Blake Bell’s biography of Ditko, and a second read led me to pick up details which I, and many others (including Mr. Bell) had missed or failed to highlight before.
Blake Bell’s biography of Steve Ditko reproduces three images of Ditko in high school [11]. The most famous one is the one above paired next to Peter in ASM#03. Here are the other two.
These two photographs show teenage Ditko not looking a great deal like Peter Parker after all. These photographs come from 1943, two years before Ditko graduated in 1945 for his yearbook. Steve Ditko is about 16 years of age in these two photographs, i.e. closest to Peter Parker in AF#15. The thing to notice is that Ditko’s not wearing glasses but he is in his yearbook. So perhaps Ditko only got prescribed glasses in his last two years. There’s not enough information explaining this either way. Of course Ditko could have taken his glasses off for these shots but that doesn’t explain why he wore glasses in his High School Senior year if he felt strongly about it.
These two photographs show Ditko unsmiling (i.e. “resting b–ch face” and casually dressed looking as if he just showed for the photo and can’t wait for it to get done). Whereas Ditko in his senior year in high school is smiling, he has his hair oiled and combed over for the Yearbook. In other words, Ditko dolled up for graduation and if Ditko designed Peter Parker based on his high school yearbook photo, he was basing that on his memory when he looked most handsome and felt most confident. As can be seen in the high school yearbook photo and this one with him in the Army in military fatigues, at the age of 18. He has here a wry grin while his hair is tousled and wavy. Certainly Ditko Age 18, is the best Ditko’s hair will ever be given that he would have a receding hairline by his thirties.
In facial features, Ditko lacks the expressive eyebrows that Peter Parker has, and given that Ditko went from not needing glasses to wearing glasses by the time he graduated, the inversion of that with Peter going from not needing glasses to getting bitten and never needing them again, certainly reads like wish-fulfillment. If so I relate. I didn’t need glasses growing up but I got prescriptions in my college years.
In short, there’s some reason to suspect that Ditko might have based Peter in part on how he looked but if so then it’s an idealized self-portrait, and not autobiography. It’s also a bit odd why Ditko would model 15 year old Peter on how he looked at the age of 18 in 1945 and not in 1943 when he was closest to Peter’s age at the time of introduction which in terms of visual design is another tell as to why Peter ultimately aged given that he was likely modeled on an 18 year old image from the very start.
CLIFT AND CURTIS
Superheroes have always been modeled on movies and pop-culture to some extent or another. Clark Kent is partially named after Clark Gable and he has glasses that make him look like the silent comedian Harold Lloyd. Selina Kyle/Catwoman was apparently modeled on Hedy Lamarr. Captain Marvel by Fawcett is based on Fred MacMurray. In the case of Spider-Man, Ann-Margret being a reference for Mary Jane Watson is well known and widely attested but aside from that we don’t have acknowledged media inspirations for Spider-Man designs.
Nonetheless, nothing comes from nowhere. Given that Peter Parker has a more realistic and individual face than other Golden Age heroes and a more expressive face it’s easy to suppose that some real-life inspirations supplied a reference. Given that the 1950s were the height of movie dominance and Ditko himself was an active moviegoer according to Bell, it’s possible that cinema served as a model. In my opinion, the two actors of the 1950s, in terms of leading men, who seem to resemble Peter Parker and were likeliest to provide a model for him are Montgomery Clift and Tony Curtis.
Both were actors who were “young stars” who became major leading men in the 1950s. Hollywood was dominated at the start by actors like John Wayne, Clark Gable, Humphrey Bogart, James Stewart, Cary Grant, Spencer Tracy who came on to the scene in the 1930s but the 1950s saw Marlon Brando, then James Dean, Clift, Curtis, Burt Lancaster among others take over. So that meant that these actors were well placed to serve as a reference for a younger more contemporary hero, rather than taking reference from actors and films that would have been old even in the 1950s.
Montgomery Clift had a troubled personal life but was remarked upon for his good looks and his expressive eyes. One of his most notable films was A Place in the Sun, a sentimental adaptation of An American Tragedy where he plays a young man caught in a love triangle between a wealthy girl (Elizabeth Taylor) and a poor working class girl (Shelley Winters). Clift was a serious dramatic actor and romantic lead and rarely appeared in comedies.
The main common features Clift seems to share with Peter would be his expressive eyebrows. Likewise, while Clift was good looking and handsome he often played everyman sober figures in movies, whereas James Dean played larger-than-life figures in the three major pictures (East Of Eden, Giant, Rebel Without A Cause) he completed before he died. That meant that Clift was a believable reference for a good-looking but relatable protagonist, someone who could be plain featured but grow progressively and believably handsome.
Tony Curtis as an actor appeared in a wider range of roles than Clift. He played villains and heels but he also appeared in romantic films and comedies, and he was part of large ensemble casts in epics like Spartacus and The Vikings (where he co-starred with his wife Janet Leigh, with whom he had a daughter Jamie Lee Curtis). Curtis has medium-sized eyes like Peter, unlike Clift who had big expressive eyes. Curtis though has the more bony and angular chin, and thin physique is closest to Ditko’s Peter. He also has the widow’s peak that Peter Parker originally featured in Ditko’s pencils before its removal later on.
Curtis is also an actor who’s intense and commanding but not exactly extremely handsome at a glance. But he was nevertheless able to develop good chemistry and intensity with his female leads. He was also quite good at comedy in films like Some Like it Hot where when posing as a sea captain, he gets to seduce Marilyn Monroe and he’s quite convincing as he attempts to do so which at least explains in part why readers didn’t complain so much about a nerdish guy like Peter getting the likes of Betty and Liz to fight for him.
In my post on Jameson’s influences, I had mentioned the character of JJ Hunsecker from Sweet Smell of Success as an inspiration for Jonah. I also mentioned in passing that, “Peter Parker in terms of his facial structure as designed by Steve Ditko does look a bit like Tony Curtis in Sweet Smell of Success, with Tony Curtis’ angular cheeks and bony forehead similar to Ditko’s design of Peter.” I think that still holds true.
In Sweet Smell of Success, Curtis plays Falco a hustler and blackmailer who seeks to rise up the ladder by digging scandal and dirt and screwing people over to get ahead. The totally amoral Falco is driven by success and fame at the expense of all decent moral values. Some aspects of the Peter/Jameson dynamic does feel like a variation of the Falco/Hunsecker bond in that film. For example in Amazing Spider-Man#25, where he tries to convince Jameson to walkback his rejection of the Spider-Slayer only to convince him to fund it because he figured it was an easy opponent and he needed money for a light week of supervillainy, certainly is in line with Falco’s scheming and hustling tactics. Ditko draws Peter somewhat diabolically in this issue (which is the first one on which he has plotting credit) and that makes this part of Peter in this story like Tony Curtis.
So is it a simple matter of mashing Clift and Tony Curtis and forming Peter Parker? Not at all. Clift’s eyebrows and Curtis’ widow-peak and thin face, mixed together do not create the look of a character. To the extent they likely served as inspirations, it was a way for Ditko to triangulate the best and most expressive face for his hero rather than a simple 1:1 mash. There’s also the fact that times change, fashions change, and that to the extent Peter resembles Cift and Curtis, it’s possible it comes from him resembling and developing features of average male fashion design of the 1950s.
CONCLUSION
At the end of the day, my observations here are speculative. Since both creators are dead, I write this with some comfort and safety about the absence of cold hard denials poured over my after the fact observations. It’s likely that some day, digging through archives in the Stan Lee and Steve Ditko papers, we might find evidence pointing to the true inspirations or cultural touchstones for the characters.
Still, I’d argue that situating Peter in the context of the 1950s and early 1960s and seeing the visual and textual inspirations in that time is the best way to get a sense of where Spider-Man came from. At the very least, it’s important to try and understand the character in the cultural context he originated and take in the wider ecosystem of popular culture from which he originated. As and when new information comes along, I hope to revisit, correct or update this.
REFERENCES
- “Andrew Garfield: Caught in a web”
https://gulfnews.com/entertainment/andrew-garfield-caught-in-a-web-1.1039678 - Andrew O’Hehir. “Spider-Man and Holden Caulfield”. Salon. July 2012.
https://www.salon.com/2012/07/03/spider_man_and_holden_caulfield_a_secret_history/ - “Stan Lee the would be novelist who created worlds”
https://lithub.com/stan-lee-the-would-be-novelist-who-created-worlds/ - “Why Rebel Without A Cause was a milestone for gay rights”.
https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/movies/2014/06/20/why_rebel_without_a_cause_was_a_milestone_for_gay_rights.html - “Think school shooters are usually bullied and unpopular? You’re wrong.” Vox. November 3, 2014.
https://www.vox.com/2014/11/3/7132879/school-shooting-facts - “Events in landmark ‘Spider-Man’ issue have fans in a frenzy”
https://www.cnn.com/2012/12/26/showbiz/celebrity-news-gossip/spidey-700-controversy/index.html - Bob Kane, Part Two: The Swiper ~~ A “Comical Wednesday” Post
http://silverfoxlair.blogspot.com/2017/12/bob-kane-part-two-swiper-comical.html - “Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent Look Exactly Alike”. Screenrant.
https://screenrant.com/batman-superman-look-alike-dc-comics/ - “A comic book artist illustrates the visual differences between Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne”
https://boingboing.net/2020/07/18/a-comic-book-artist-illustrate.html - Comics-Creators on Spider-Man. Titan Books. Edited by Tom Defalco. Page 120.
- Blake Bell. Strange and Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko. Fantagraphic Books. 2008. Page 14
Elving's Musings 
Some interesting supporting evidence for the Tony Curtis connection is amazing 14 when the director charecter suggests Tony Curtis to play Spider-Man
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Wow, didn’t know that at all. Wonder if unconsciously that inspired me to cite Curtis. Thanks for calling that.
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The differences between Peter and Holden Caulfield can also be demonstrated through another character, who’s arguably the closest to Holden in current mainstream fiction: Greg Heffley, protagonist of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid book series by Jeff Kinney. I’m not sure if you read them, but Greg Heffley’s character is middle-class, selfish, entitled, often lies and uses those around him for his own gains, and is very cynical. While the nature of a book aimed at elementary/middle schoolers means that drugs and sexuality can’t be touched on like in Rye, Greg embodies the traits of Holden far more than Peter Parker (and indeed, author Jeff Kinney has cited Holden as an influence on the character in several interview).
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