The now-famous Spider-Man first appeared in August 1962 on the pages of ‘Amazing Fantasy’. The character was created by writer Stan Lee and artist Steve Ditko. At the time, Marvel was experimenting with new heroes, and the idea of “a teenage superhero” seemed risky: teenagers in comics usually served only as sidekicks to adult heroes. But Spider-Man changed everything.
In the comic, Peter Parker was an ordinary high school student: shy, intelligent, but misunderstood by those around him. After being bitten by a radioactive spider, he gained superpowers, but this newfound strength didn’t solve his problems—it only added new ones. The public welcomed the character enthusiastically, and in 1963 Spider-Man received his own series, The Amazing Spider-Man, which quickly became one of Marvel’s most popular titles. This marked the beginning of a long and ongoing story of one of the world’s most famous superheroes.
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The character’s debut took place during a tense period of the Cold War, the year of the Cuban Missile Crisis. People in the Soviet Union, of course, did not have access to American comics, and the word “comic” itself was unfamiliar to most. Because of this, Spider-Man and other Marvel heroes became known in the USSR only years later.
However, in the 1980s, the Soviet Union did develop its own Spider-Man comics. They were published as a supplement called “Adventures and Science Fiction” to the magazine Ural Pathfinder. The supplement featured both Soviet and foreign adventure and science fiction stories, journalism, and comics by local artists.
Yet the Soviet “Spider-Man” had nothing in common with his American namesake. It was a completely separate storyline, much harsher and darker in tone. The author of the comic was listed as I. S. Ermakova, and the artist as I. V. Kozhevnikova.
The plot begins with KGB Major Buganov being assigned to investigate the disappearance of women from apartments on upper floors. It soon becomes clear that they are being kidnapped and killed by a creature that is a fusion of a human and a spider. At the crime scenes, the remains of bodies are found, as if dissolved, along with sticky webs.
Buganov learns from a psychiatrist that many people have reported seeing a giant spider, and one woman is convinced that her husband transformed into the creature. The major traces the case to Professor Gorbovsky, a specialist in spiders. One night the monster kidnaps another woman, and Buganov returns to the professor.
Gorbovsky confesses that he created the creature, lost control over it, and has merged with it himself. They go to the spider’s lair, where the remains of its victims lie. The professor explains that as a result of his experiments on merging consciousness, he became the spider. Gorbovsky then tries to kill Buganov, but KGB agents arrive in time and destroy the monster.
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As you can see, the Soviet version of Spider-Man turned out to be completely different from the American one. In the United States, Peter Parker became a symbol of a teenager learning to accept responsibility and overcome difficulties while remaining human. His story inspires and gives hope that even an ordinary person is capable of great deeds. In the USSR, however, the spider figure took on a dark, unsettling meaning. It became not a hero, but the embodiment of dangerous experiments on nature and the human mind.
