4) Spider Speech
Among his more obscure and perhaps less useful powers is Spider-Man’s ability to communicate with actual spiders. I’m not entirely sure that this ability to talk to spiders actually falls under the whole ‘does whatever a spider can’ umbrella (spider-ese is certainly not a well-documented language), but neither does resurrection. Incidentally, when Peter Parker developed this power, it was after that cocoon resurrection, so I guess we can give it a pass for being made possible by the same mystical comic mumbo-jumbo. Despite being used in the comics to save innumerable lives, the ability has never made an appearance in video games nor on the big screen. I wonder why.
5) Fangs and Stingers
Though technically two powers, I’m grouping them into one to keep the body-part growing to a minimum (note the absence of six-armed Spidey on this list). They share in their primary function: both serve as venom-transmission tools. Yes, Spider-Man, at different points in several iterations, has grown stingers (something spiders, in fact, do not have) and fangs as methods of administering venom to his foes in order to paralyze or otherwise incapacitate them. I could see Insomniac’s Spidey stunning his enemies using non-percussive methods, but the idea of seeing the web-head bite an enemy on the neck seems so far out of place that I think it’s pretty safe to write it off the list of possible abilities.
6) Loving to Death
In the ridiculously gritty story Spider-Man: Reign, we see an older Peter Parker in a dystopian future featuring an authoritarian New York City. After being fired from his job as a florist, Peter goes a little bit nuts, doing things like fighting abusive police officers in nothing but his black suit mask and underwear. This may give you a little taste of the bizarre story of Reign, but it is nothing compared to the revelation that the story makes about Peter’s radioactive blood. That revelation is that the radioactivity is not restricted only to his blood, but that it actually applies to all of his bodily fluids. All of them. This is explained as Peter embraces the decomposed corpse of his deceased wife, Mary Jane, who it is revealed died of cancer as a result of being slowly poisoned every time she and Peter were intimate. Love bites. Needless to say, this facet of Peter’s powers will not be making an appearance in the new game.
So, there you have it. Hopefully I’ve helped you in developing a clearer image of what abilities our favorite web-slinger may have in his new game. Okay, maybe not, but hopefully you at least learned something. Okay, maybe not, but maybe I’ve at least peaked your interest about some of these comics. Spidey has a massive history full of fantastical feats and ludicrous stories. He’s truly earned the title of the Amazing Spider-Man. However, lots of these stories and feats are truly bizarre. That’s part of what makes these stories interesting, though. Nevertheless, it seems a safe assumption that most of these powers would be largely unwelcome in a video game. But who knows? Stranger things have happened.