- [Steve] The burden of proof is on the person
who makes the assertion, claim, charge.
Some clippings, et cetera, are not rational proof
of anything but some clippings, et cetera.
- So, as the story goes,
when first designing the character of Spider-Man,
Marvel icon Stan Lee turned to his frequent collaborator
and legendary artist Jack Kirby to draw up the costume.
But Kirby's design of the character
was too strong and heroic.
Spider-Man needed to look different from
the stereotypical superheroes of the past.
Stan then turned to other legendary artist
Steve Ditko to take a crack at it.
Ditko's design of Spider-Man was sleek, it was bold,
it made sense for an acrobatic, wall-crawling superhero
and it might have been stolen.
(dramatic music)
How are you doing you wonderful nerds?
Scott here and this controversy was written about
a few years back in a New York Post article
titled The Billion-Dollar Spider-Man 'Cover-Up',
and a few of you guys have sent this my way to look into.
'Cause like busting comic misconceptions
used to be a thing that we did
on this channel, occasionally.
You see, this Spider-Man costume debuted
with the character in the Marvel Comics from 1962,
but then there's this little oddity
a literal spider man costume created
by Halloween company Ben Cooper that
hit store shelves in 1954.
That's eight years before Peter Parker would make
his first appearance as
the friendly neighborhood wall-crawler.
And I wanna be clear,
this wasn't some random, small-time costume maker.
While the company went bankrupt in the 80s and the 90s
and really isn't around in full force today,
Ben Cooper was one of the largest Halloween costume
manufacturers between the 1950s and 70s.
Their cheap costumes were iconic,
they were everywhere,
and they dominated the Halloween market for decades.
So, is it possible that when designing Spider-Man's costume,
Steve Ditko drew inspiration from this spider man that
existed in the public for nearly a decade at that point?
If that was the case, then you might expect Ben Cooper
to approach Marvel and say something like,
hey, that's our idea could you stop making money off
of our idea, please!
Okay, thank you.
I love you.
You know, basic cease and desist copyright, whatever.
But here's a weird thing.
Just a few months after Spider-Man's comic book debut,
Ben Cooper and Marvel struck
a licensing deal for the character.
Ben Cooper would make an official Spider-Man costume
in place of their initial, yellow one.
And here it is right here.
Well, actually this is a version of the costume sold
in the 70s, but it's the same basic design as the one
that hit store shelves in 1963.
It's almost a hybrid of the Spider-Man comic costume
and the original Ben Cooper costume.
It incorporates a lot of yellow
and has more webbing patterns printed over it,
with a creepy, hairy spider emblem on the chest,
and the mask is pretty okay except
whoops, I'm a hell man.
Oh God, there's like 70s diseases in there.
It's all just a little odd, isn't it?
I mean not the costume, of course that is,
but Spider-Man just made his first appearance
by the end of 1962,
and by 1963 he already had official merch?
Granted, that on its own might not sound that weird,
considering today where we slap logos on everything
but as far as we know, this Ben Cooper Spider-Man costume
was the first ever piece of Marvel merchandise, period.
That's a little strange because, again, Ben Cooper
was a huge company and they were all about licensing
characters from pop culture to make their cheap costumes,
but they got a hold of this brand new Spider-Man character
before they tried for other, more popular,
superheroes like Batman who'd have been
out for ages at that point.
It's just a little suspicious.
And there's one more twist to this story.
Hypothetically, if Steve Ditko was inspired
by the Ben Cooper spider man when he drafted up
the design of the Marvel character,
then credit should really go to the artist
who created that yellow mess.
So, who might that be?
(dramatic music)
Yeah, that's right, according to this article, Jack Kirby
may have been working at Ben Cooper,
possibly designing costumes,
theoretically drawing up this specific spider man idea.
And that's why, as the article explains,
years later when Jack Kirby was asked about his involvement
with creating Marvel's Spider-Man, he has said things like,
- [Jack] I created Spider-Man.
We decided to give it to Steve Ditko.
I drew the first Spider-Man cover.
I created the character.
I created the costume.
- So, the full idea, to wrap your head around it,
is this, Stan Lee approached Jack Kirby to design
the costume for their new character Spider-Man,
Jack drew an idea that Stan didn't like,
so he passed the project off to Steve Ditko
who drew inspiration from the Ben Cooper costume that
was designed nearly a decade prior by Jack Kirby,
and Marvel kept the whole thing under wraps
for decades, all this time, for reasons I am sure...
Uh-oh, my common sense is tingling.
I'm sorry, I can't keep pretending like this tangled web
of conspiracy theories holds any water.
This is the part of the video where I say,
no, this is dumb.
Almost as dumb as gluing half a mask to your face
for a visual joke without any plan on
how to remove it painlessly.
Ow, ow, ow!
Look, it can be really easy to latch
onto conspiracy theories like this.
It's why I framed the video around
this air of dark intrigue.
The hint of a secret cover-up being exposed
is exciting, it's enticing.
And I mean when Steve Ditko, himself, was asked
point blank if he stole the design of Spider-Man
from the Ben Cooper costume, he wrote back,
rather ominously,
- [Steve] The burden of proof is on the person who
makes the assertion, claim, charge.
Some clippings, et cetera, are not rational proof
of anything but some clippings, et cetera.
- And as mysterious as that response sounds,
the sentiment in there is right.
And at this point in the video, I do think it's worth noting
that the author of the New York Post article
that covered this whole costume conspiracy thing
wasn't just some random person on the internets,
it was Reed Tucker, author of Slugfest,
a book about the history of Marvel and DC's rivalry.
A book that a lot of my friends say is really good,
and factually accurate, but articles like this
kind of make me second guess some of this stuff.
Reed, I doubt that you're watching,
but I kinda expected better of you, given your reputation.
As thrilling and sensational as a secret Marvel
cover-up would be, I'd wager the explanation
behind this is a lot simpler.
Like for example, it's totally possible that
when designing the costume for Spider-Man,
Steve Ditko was inspired by the Ben Cooper
spider man costume, and that's why they both
have lots of web imagery.
However, when you're designing
the costume of a character with a spider motif,
doesn't it just kind of make sense
to incorporate web imagery in there?
I mean, just look at The Spider,
a pulp-magazine and serial hero from the 1930s and 1940s,
decades before all this Ben Cooper-Marvel stuff.
Wow, look at that!
Webs, who would've thunk it?
And other than that one detail,
the costumes just don't look that similar to me.
The painfully yellow fabric looks nothing
like the cherry-red and cobalt blue color scheme
of Spidey's classic costume.
The similarities are webs and the label spider man,
which wasn't even Ditko's idea,
Stan Lee came up with that name.
However, there is one part of the article's conclusion
that I do actually agree with.
When Spidey made his big comic book debut,
Ben Cooper probably saw a character with the same name
and a vaguely similar costume,
so they approached Marvel and struck up some kind of deal.
You know, like, you have a spider man, we have a spider man.
Let's work together on this one.
So, the following year, a new Ben Cooper Spider-Man costume
hit the shelves that more closely resembled the webhead,
and became the first known piece of official Marvel merch.
So, that just leaves the plot threads with Jack Kirby.
Right, like what could Jack Kirby mean when he said
that he created Spider-Man and his costume?
Isn't that what Steve Ditko did?
Well, honestly, that is a huge can of worms
that deserves its own video.
There's a lot of controversy surrounding
who exactly created which elements of Spider-Man.
- And that's where I come in.
That's right guys, Scott isn't the only person
discussing the fascinating history
of Spider-Man's costume this week,
and also wearing kind of ugly shirts while doing it.
- Hey!
- In fact, while the Ben Cooper costume may have played
a role in Steve Ditko's original design for Spider-Man,
Jack Kirby has a lot to answer for himself.
Over on my channel, I recently released a video discussing
another comic book creation of Jack Kirby's,
one that predates Spider-Man,
and may have played a role in bringing
our favorite wall-crawler to life.
- Yeah, you know, a lot of this comic book history stuff
is based on hearsay.
Like, was Jack Kirby really working at Ben Cooper
designing costumes between jobs as the article posits?
Did he create this yellow spider man costume?
I don't know.
The article cites no source for this info.
They say rumor has it,
but like whose rumor?
What rumor?
You can't just say that with nothing to back it up, Reed.
What are you doing, Reed?
I mean, theoretically, the answer might be found
in Ben Cooper's records,
but their factory burned down
in 1989 destroying everything and...
No, stop being paranoid!
The fire was not a part of some devious cover-up.
This isn't helping.
Can we just cut it? Cut this out of the vi--
(dramatic music)
All right, let's keep it going.
That's really fun.
Hey, thanks so much for watching that video.
Please go check out Owen's video after this.
It'll be linked in the description below,
and at the end screen, the last 20 seconds of the video.
You get it.
A true story, Owen and I actually came up
with this same topic for a video at the exact same time,
independently from one another,
and when we discovered this we kind of panicked a little,
well I panicked I can't speak for Owen,
I panicked a little bit 'cause I knew that
he'd be able to get his video out faster,
but we decided a good compromise would be to turn it
into kind of a last-minute collab,
so I, mostly, covered this weird conspiracy theory
with the costume, but Owen has a ton of other detail
that goes into the creation of Spider-Man.
Go check it out, it's a good time.
And hey, if you liked this video you can support us
over on Patreon.
I'd really appreciate it.
That's where all these scrolling names are coming from.
You can get your name here too.
And I would especially like to thank Cristoffer Lange,
Everett Parrott, Jonat Campos.
I'm so sorry.
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Luis Orozco, Matias Tironi, Shawn Griffin, Bart Labeda,
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I'm never gonna get tired of saying that.
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Matthew Jeanos, Natalie Englund, Nathaniel Naranjo,
Stephen Temple, Zach Van Stanley, Zachary Bahar,
and all of the other wonderful nerds who support
us over at Patreon.com/NerdSync.
Link in the description.
Click or tap right here to see Owen's video,
or right here to see something else
from us here at NerdSync.
Thanks for watching.
My name is Scott, reminding you to read between the panels
and grow smarter through comics.
See ya!
(upbeat music)