Origin

On Earth-90214, Peter Parker was a teenager living in New York City in the 1930s, being raised by his Uncle Ben and Aunt May, socialist agitators who inspired and encouraged blue collar protests. After the murder of his uncle, he joined his aunt in protest, causing him to cross paths with reporter Ben Urich, who gave him a job as his assistant. After receiving a call from one of Urich’s informants about an illegal museum shipment, Peter went to check it out alone. Men who worked for the gangster, Norman Osborn (nicknamed The Goblin), were unpacking a supposed cursed object, which they dropped. A cluster of spiders rushed out of it, one of which bit Peter. He was faced by a giant spider spirit who claimed to only kill those with evil intent, so he gifted Peter with power instead.

Creation

A noir variant of Spider-Man first appeared in Spider-Man Noir (2009) by David Hine, Fabrice Sapolsky, and Carmine Di Giandomenico. He was part of a new Noir theme publishing initiative which had multiple miniseries featuring noir variants of classic Marvel characters, set on Earth-90214. Thanks to the Spider-Verse publishing initiative that teamed up variants of Spider-Man as a team, Spider-Man Noir grew in popularity beyond the original Noir initiative.

Major Story Arcs

The Goblin

With his new powers, Peter designed the Spider-Man identity and paid Osborn a visit to threaten him. He saw Urich there accepting a bribe. He confronted Urich, revealing his identity to him. This inspired Urich to turn against Osborn, which got Urich killed. Urich had entrusted all of his evidence against Osborn to club owner Felicia Hardy, who was instructed to trust Peter with it. Peter couldn’t go to the authorities because the Osborn had everyone in his pocket. Instead, he used the Spider-Man identity to shut down every operation and gangster that Urich connected to The Goblin. The gangsters started to pressure Osborn. He replaced the newspaper editor Jameson with his gang member, Chameleon, to plant anti-Spider stories and sent the cannibal Vulture after Peter’s aunt, believing Pete had Urich’s files.

Peter shot and killed the Vulture before May could be hurt and then went to the meat packing district to a place Urich called the Torture House. There he found Jameson and Felicia kidnapped for their roles helping Urich. He jumped into action taking out Osborn’s men. He then tackled Osborn, who was holding Felicia at gunpoint. In the struggle, Osborn managed to remove Peter’s mask, but Peter was able to rip the human face off Osborn, revealing the green scaly skin underneath, the origin of his nickname Goblin.

Peter vowed to take him to face justice rather than kill him, but Osborn was swarmed by the remaining spiders, falling into the New York sewer system and swept away.

Eyes Without a Face

Eight months after Spider took out the Goblin, a new player was filling the vacuum in the criminal underworld, Crime-Master. Spider is looking for leads but is coming up short. All he found was an abandoned theater full of the dead bodies of Crime-Master’s competition. He recognized one of them as Don Moretti, who owned a club in Harlem. He went to the club to clear it out believing Crime-Master had taken it over.

At the same time, Peter got a lead from a fellow reporter Robbie about government funded experiments by Doctor Octavius. Robbie believed it was a bigger story than just experiments and ended up going missing looking into The American Nazi Party and their connection to missing black people. Spider-Man believed Crime-Master was cooperating with the Nazis, so he went back to the Harlem club to lean on the workers. Crime-Master showed up with his top goon, Sandman. Sandman beat the snot out of Spider until some feds raided the club and shot Sandman full of holes.

Sandman smelled like chemicals that reminded Spider of Octavius. This led him to believe that the kidnapped black people were being used as test subjects. He snuck back on to his lab on Ellis Island and found the missing people including his friend Robbie. He released the prisoners, but Robbie had already been experimented on. Crime-Master and his goons were there as well trying to destroy the evidence. Luckily, Spider has tipped off the feds in Harlem, and they arrived to back him up, arresting the goons and deporting Octavius to Germany.

Spider-Verse

In 1939, during the New York World’s Fair, the magician known as Mysterio challenged Spider-Man on stage, hoping to steal his power in a blood ritual. Spider took the bait but bested Mysterio. Unfortunately, at the same time, a multiversal killer named Karn teleported on to the stage. He had been travelling dimension to dimension hunting spider-avatars. Luckily, Superior Spider-Man from Earth-616 was following him. Superior Spider teleported Spider Noir to the year 2099 where they hid out with other Spider-Variants.

Eventually, Noir and the others would be deputized by Superior for their own missions. First, Noir was partnered with Prabhakar (Spider-Man of India) to go searching for the homeworld of Karn and his people, The Inheritors. Later, he was assigned to protect Silk from Earth-616 who seemed to naturally attract the Inheritors. He was partnered with Spider-Woman from Earth-616.

He was injured protecting Silk and sent back to his homeworld to heal. His fellow Spider-Man variants managed to beat the Inheritors without him.

Secret Wars

After the multiverse was destroyed in a series of incursions, Doctor Doom of Earth-616 was able to stitch together pieces of multiple realities into Battleworld, each district representing a different reality. One such district had a number of Spider-Man variants from different worlds, including Noir. He was keeping an eye on the other Spiders who had banded together. When they attempted to fight variants of Tombstone and Carnage, they got in over their heads, so Noir came to their rescue.

While explaining himself to the other webheads, they were interrupted by a version of the Sinister Six, members of which came from different worlds. They were working for a variant of Norman Osborn, who was able to scan for their unique morphogenic frequencies. He could tell they were each from a different world but also in sync with each other. They were the key to understanding the Great Web of Life and Destiny, which was torn apart when the multiverse was destroyed. Noir decided to stick around and see what Osborn was up to.

Osborn’s true intentions were eventually revealed. He was going to build a machine to sap the energy from each of the spider-heroes. He and his Sinister Six were no match for the combined strength of the Spiders though. The Spiders cleared the threat and managed to wait for Reed Richards of Earth-616 to rebuild the multiverse and return them to their homes.

Electroverse

After the Spider-Man variants succeeded against the Inheritors, they decided to stick together as the Web Warriors, headquartered on Loomworld (Earth-001), to watch over worlds that lost their Spider-Hero to the Inheritors. He is called in during an emergency when Spider-Gwen is taken by a team of Electro variants who also discovered the Great Web. They went to the crime scene, where the Electros left behind a cache of silver they were trying to steal. Noir and the others take the silver to bait the Electros.

Unfortunately, the Electros had already broken into Loomworld. The Web Warriors fought them, but the Electros messed with all of their electronics. Karn, who chose the Spiders over the Inheritors, helped them get to a safe Victorian-era Earth with no electricity that the Electros couldn’t follow. There, they recruited a new steampunk Spider-Woman. Once there, the Spiders all put their brains together to create an electric lure and conductive webbing to trap the Electros long enough to locate Gwen.

Once Gwen joined the fight, Karn pulled the Spiders out, trapping the Electros behind.

Death and Resurrection

When the Inheritors used resurrection technology to return, the Web Warriors jumped into action. Noir attacked head-on but was grabbed by Morlun. Morlun fed on his essence, killing him in front of the others. On the other side, Noir was confronted by the Spider-God who gave him his powers. It said Noir’s work was not yet done and sent him back to his home world.

The Cicada Stone

After his resurrection, Peter left The Bugle to become a private investigator, but Jameson continued to give him leads. One such lead was the murder of a Black Cat waitress named Holly that Peter knew through his aunt’s community center. She had an insect necklace charm on her that she couldn’t possibly have afforded. Doing research at the library, he identified it as the Babylonian Cicada Stone, but someone cut the power and stole his research. He went to the MET to find an expert who turned out to be the waitress’ twin sister, Huma. Peter eventually agrees to help her look for her sister’s killer.

Their search brought them to Europe to look for a German curator who had answers about the Cicada Stone. The Nazis were making travel to Berlin difficult, so they needed help from a diplomatic couple in London, who referred them to a pilot, Harry Charles, in Italy. Unfortunately, goons were on to them and managed to steal the Cicada Stone. They went to Berlin empty-handed anyway but found the curator dead and his killer, Electro, waiting for them. They were rescued by Harry and one of her contacts, Byron Ironsides, who sent them to a Uruk digsite that was favored by Electro’s employer, the Nazis, to meet one of his contacts “Checkpoint Red.”

Unfortunately, when they hit a Nazi security checkpoint, Huma reveals herself to be a Nazi collaborator the whole time. However, the other mysterious women in Spider’s company reveal themselves as well. Harry Charles is secretly a Dora Milaje warrior named Hu-Ri, and Checkpoint Red was trained by the Russian Red Room. Together, they are able to make their getaway. Hu-Ri fills Spider in on the M’Kraan Crystal which she had sworn to protect but the Nazis were getting close to it. Everyone who has helped Spider get to the digsite had a vested interest in keeping the crystal out of the Germans’ hands.

The trio head into the Temple of Inanna, but Huma had beaten them there, revealing she was Inanna. She was with Electro, who was gaining power from the Cicada Stone that Ianna had the whole time. Ianna is able to finally open the door to the underworld and regain her powers. She also raised all the dead rogues that Spider had already defeated. During the brawl, Spider is thrown into the underworld, where he is visited by Uncle Ben and Ianna’s sister Ereshkigal, the god who empowered Peter in the first place. They gave him what he needed to destroy the crystal and cut Ianna off from the underworld forever.

End of the Spider-Verse

When the wasp goddess, Shathra, attempted to reshape the Web of Life and Destiny into the Great Nest, she targeted the spider-heroes of the multiverse for her new army of drones. Noir was unfortunately one of the heroes stung and turned into a drone of the Sisterhood of the Wasps. This is only temporary as Silk and Arana are able to retrieve and combine totemic artifacts that cure all the drone Spider-Heroes.

The Gwen Stacy Affair

While travelling worlds, times, and dimensions, Spider hit a new low. He was served with an eviction notice, broke up with Mary Jane, had to let his aunt move in with a friend after her health took a turn for the worse, and let a new criminal outfit called the Scorpion Gang take over the streets in his absence. This is when he was visited by Gwen Stacy who hired Peter to look into the murder of her father, Police Captain George Stacy. The cops had the morgue surveilled closely, so Peter had to go as Spider, where he found a red thread in George’s hair. Between the thread and his extensive files, Peter determined that George was a member of the Scorpion Gang, and that he had killed him when he confronted the gang at the harbor stealing gems.

Peter shared the truth about George with Gwen, but she refused to believe it. She believed he was undercover, and her depression over the idea forced her to lean on Peter, striking up a romantic relationship. She also rehired him to find Spider-Man's identity to bring her father justice. At the same time, Spider’s informants, the Back Alley Boys, let him know that the gems from the harbor job and the growing American Nazi party were related. The gem he recovered from the crime scene was now missing.

Complicating matters further was an escaped Nazi experiment super soldier. It was an unidentified man in a diving helmet, who could sap the energy from people leaving behind ash. Spider hunted him down, but when the man touched him, he absorbed Spider’s powers. Posing as Spider, he hunted down various criminals. Peter was afraid it would lead him back to Gwen, so he staked out Gwen’s apartment. His instincts were right when the killer arrived, allowing Peter to use him as a cover story as the killer of George. Gwen shot the man, but when he was unmasked, it was George Stacy.

Using a lead he got from a bartender who overheard Nazis talking about a weapon they had stashed in a church, Spider went to check the place out. He found members of the Scorpion Gang working with Nazi officers, led by a hulking Nazi in a gas mask. They had the gem stolen from Peter, which they were using to summon an occult demon. Luckily, it didn’t work just as the Hardboil gang broke in to take the Nazis out. Using them as cover, Spider made his move against the Nazi leader. He was revealed to be a swarm of cockroaches. Using a flamethrower brought by the Hardboil gang, Peter burned the bugs, the Nazis’ gear, and the entire building to the ground.

With confirmation about her father, Gwen decided to leave the city.

Powers & Abilities

Spider-Hero: Peter has the proportional strength, speed, and agility of a spider.

• Wallcrawler: Peter is capable of clinging to walls and other surfaces.
• Webslinger: Peter has organic webshooters in his wrist.
• Spider-Sense: Peter as a preternatural danger sense.

Gunslinger: Peter is armed with a pistol.

In Other Media

Television

• In the Avengers Assemble episode "Planet Doom," the alternate universe version of Spider-Man (known as "Slinger") wears Spider-Man Noir's costume. He was voiced by Drake Bell.
• Spider-Man Noir appears in the "Spider-Verse" storyline in Ultimate Spider-Man, voiced by former Heroes star Milo Ventimiglia. He teams up with the mainline universe's version of Spider-Man after the Green Goblin travels to the Noir universe in order to claim the DNA of that world's Spider-Man.
• Spider-Man Noir appears in a spinoff of the Spider-Verse movies, titled Spider-Noir. It will air on Amazon Prime with Nicholas Cage reprising the role of Spider-Man Noir in live action. His name will be changed. His real name will be Ben Reilly, and his alias will be The Spider.

Film

• Spider-Man Noir appears as one of the lead characters in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, voiced by actor and noted comic fan Nicolas Cage. This version of the character has a speech style taken from old detective films of the 30s and 40s. Unlike the other characters, he is also animated in black and white. In his world, the Noir Peter Parker is a private detective in 1933 and frequently fights Nazis.
• In Spider-Man: Far From Home, Peter Parker dons a black stealth suit that is heavily based on the Spider-Man Noir outfit.

Video Games

• Spider-Man Noir appears as one of the four playable characters in Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions, voiced by Christopher Daniel Barnes (best known as the voice of Peter Parker in Spider-Man: The Animated Series).
• Spider-Man Noir appears as an unlockable character in Marvel Super Hero Squad Online, voiced by Yuri Lowenthal.
• Spider-Man Noir's suit was offered as a pre-order bonus for the video game adaptation of The Amazing Spider-Man 2.
• Spider-Man Noir's costume is an alternate skin for Spider-Man in Marvel Heroes.
• Spider-Man Noir appears as an unlockable characters in Spider-Man Unlimited.
• Spider-Man Noir appears as a playable character in Lego Marvel Super Heroes 2.
• The Spider-Man Noir outfit is available as an alternate costume in the PS4 Spider-Man game.

Merchandise

• Spider-Man Noir was featured in Hasbro's Marvel Universe line.
• Spider-Man Noir was featured in Funko's Pop! line of bobbleheads.
• Diamond Select created a Spider-Man Noir PVC statue.
• Spider-Man Noir was featured in The Marvel Chess Collection from Eaglemoss Publications as a white pawn.
• Iron Studios released a statue of Spider-Man Noir and Spider-Ham.
• Spider-Man Noir was featured in Hasbro's Marvel Legends line as part of the Lizard Build-a-Figure wave.