The Importance of Spider-Man's Landlord in Shaping His Story

Spider-Man is ultimately a story of class, and in 2021, Spider-Man: No Way Home ended by taking our favorite wall-crawler back to those basics, with the help of a very important cameo.

Marvel’s fourth Spidey movie, Brand New Day, finds an anonymous Peter Parker living poor and alone, and fighting crime in a DIY costume. It’s a far cry from how he started out in the MCU, when he was recruited by billionaire playboy Tony Stark in Captain America: Civil War, becoming Iron Man’s protégé and de facto successor. But starting from the bottom is perfectly in line with Spidey’s history, both in the comics as well as in the Sam Raimi-directed movies in the 2000s, which nailed the everyman aspect of the character originally intended by co-creators Stan Lee and Steve Ditko back in the 1960s.

First published in 1962 in a brightly-colored landscape of gods and monsters, Spider-Man quickly became the quintessential working class superhero. Created by writer Lee and artist Ditko — New Yorkers who grew up in the Great Depression — Peter Parker was an orphan raised by his hardworking aunt and uncle in Queens, New York. But it wasn’t until 1965 that Peter moved out and went to college in Amazing Spider-Man #31, first living with his wealthy friend Harry Osborn, and then on his own at his notorious Chelsea apartment in Amazing Spider-Man #139.

While the next few hundred issues would pit Peter against his usual villains — Mysterio, Hobgoblin, Kingpin, and so on — Muggins would show up every once in a while, usually for a page or two, as a reminder that Peter had to juggle crime fighting with real responsibilities and all while maintaining a secret double life.