Okay, look.
Spider-Man has dated around a whole lot and I decided to take it upon myself to look through
about six decades of comic books in order to decode the massive web that is Peter Parker’s
love life.
Oh god.
So in order to make this video not like an hour long, we’re going to need to set up
some ground rules because yeah, I’ve read all of those same lists online and they are
really not that good.
It seems like they were written by some people that read a few Wiki articles and called it
a day.
So here’s what we’ve have on the table.
As always with this channel, I am ONLY going to be talking about the mainstream Earth-616
continuity.
Additionally, this is strictly going to focus on women that Peter has had significant romances
with in the comics, not just one off dates or hookups.
This means that no, I am not counting the time that Peter went on a date with Carol
Danvers or the time that he went on a date with Sue Storm WHILE HE WAS IN HIGH SCHOOL.
This also doesn’t include women that Peter shared a single kiss with or women that just
have crushes on him.
So that means no Liz Allen, Officer DeWolfe, or Silver Sable.
Finally, even if Peter and his partner don’t explicitly call each other boyfriend and girlfriend,
I’m counting it if they spent a significant amount of time together.
I also reserve the right to mention love interests that I just think are interesting because
you know what?
It's my video.
I THINK this covers all of my bases so people won’t go in my comments saying “Um actually!”,
but who am I kidding?
People are going to anyway.
But before we get too far into things, I want to give a big thank you to our sponsor for
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in the future on this channel, but anyway.
Back to the video.
Peter’s first girlfriend was Betty Brant, a secretary at the Daily Bugle.
They hit it off when Peter checked in on her after the Vulture attacked the office and
just LOOK at Peter’s swag here.
The two dated for a good while, but Betty started to get jealous of Liz Allen, Peter’s
former crush who started to actually develop feelings of her own for Parker.
Despite Peter having moved on from his obsession with Liz and repeatedly explaining to Betty
that he wasn’t interested in her, Betty’s jealousy ended up being too much and she broke
up with Peter to start dating a Daily Bugle reporter named Ned Leeds who she would eventually
marry.
Fun fact, Peter and Mary Jane (who I will of course be talking about later in the video)
were best man and maid of honor respectively at Betty and Ned’s wedding.
Anyway, it’s probably for the best that Peter and Betty didn’t keep dating considering
that Brant was really looking for a steady guy who worked a good, non dangerous job.
If they stayed together then Peter would never be able to tell her that he was Spider-Man
and keeping a secret that big is SUPER unhealthy for a relationship.
Yet, they stayed close friends well into adulthood.
With Betty out of the picture, Peter was free to date once again and now that he had moved
on to college, this would be the perfect opportunity.
On his first day of school, Peter’s Aunt May got sick and was hospitalized.
He was completely oblivious to the world around him and his new classmates thought that he
was stuck up as a result.
This included a beautiful woman named Gwen Stacy.
However, Gwen saw this cold shoulder as a challenge and frequently flopped between fawning
over Peter and hating him.
Now ever since high school, Aunt May kept trying to set Peter up with their neighbor’s
niece, Mary Jane Watson, but Peter kept avoiding the meetup.
For years, Mary Jane was a punchline in the comics.
She was just this unseen background character until she finally showed up and delivered
that iconic line.
“Face it, tiger.
You just hit the jackpot.”
From here, Gwen and MJ would both casually date Peter and his best friend / roommate,
Harry Osborn, but over time, Mary Jane ended up getting more serious with Harry and Parker
did the same with Gwen.
Sadly, Gwen’s father was killed after saving a kid from rubble that fell during a fight
between Spider-Man and Doctor Octopus and she briefly moved to London while she was
in mourning.
Now here’s where things get a little bit tricky.
In 2004, there was an infamous storyline called Sins Past which added some really… weird
stuff to this situation.
See, it turns out that before leaving for London, Gwen had actually hooked up with Harry
Osborn’s father, Norman A.K.A. the Green Goblin all while in the middle of dating Parker.
Peter and Gwen specifically didn’t do the deed, but yep, she and Gobby definitely did,
with the act resulting in Gwen becoming pregnant with twins that also had an accelerated growth
rate due to Norman’s mutated genetics.
Because comics.
Gwen had the children while she lived abroad and they were stolen by Norman, but the rest
of that story is probably better saved for another video.
With all of that out of the way, Gwen moved back to New York and resumed her relationship
with Peter until she was tragically kidnapped by Norman, now retconned to be after her because
of the threat that she posed to him regarding their children.
This led to one of the most important moments in all of Spider-Man’s history with Green
Goblin tossing Gwen off of a bridge and Spidey trying to save her, but because of a miscalculation,
the sudden jolt of Gwen being grabbed by Spider-Man’s webbing resulted in her neck being snapped.
This tragedy stuck with Peter, but he grew closer with Mary Jane who was there to comfort
him during this trying time.
Also going through a rough time was MJ’s boyfriend, Harry, due to his father seemingly
being killed during the same confrontation with Spider-Man.
Because of this, Harry became obsessed with killing Spider-Man and as a result, pushed
Mary Jane away which only brought her closer to Peter.
They finally got serious and Pete actually proposed to her which she rejected.
Yeah, the two of them have been pretty on and off for years, especially since MJ couldn't
always handle Parker's life as Spider-Man which she had known about since before they
even met so of course, we will be back.
In between flings with Mary Jane, Peter dated a woman named Cissy Ironwood who I'm sure
you’ve never never heard of and for good reason.
She pretty much only existed to be some random girl that Peter casually went out with only
to get attacked by Doctor Strange who was a werewolf at the time.
Because comics.
She showed up just a little bit more only to ditch Parker in order to hit on The Beast
who was visiting campus.
Then there's Debra Whitman, a secretary at the university when Peter was a teacher's
assistant.
She was instantly into Peter, but he was too busy to really notice her.
They did end up casually dating later, but Peter was like the worst to her.
He was constantly bailing on Deb because of Spider-Man related activities, he wouldn’t
use his newspaper contacts in order to help her uncle who was being threatened, and Peter
instantly forgot about her when he saw that his new neighbor was hot.
I mean look at this.
“Oh, yeah.
Got a date with Debbie.
Deborah what’s-her-name.
Whitman.”
Dude, Deb was so good to Peter that he once dropped by her apartment completely unannounced
when he was in pain after a fight.
Naturally, Debra let Peter stick around, nursed him back to health, and even made him a big
ass breakfast.
Did Peter say thank you or even EAT the breakfast?
NO!
When Parker finally started to take notice of Debra, it was too late because she was
dating a jock named Biff Rifkin, a man with the most jock sounding name imaginable.
Even while she was dating Biff, Debra was still super into Peter, but things got a bit
complicated when she started to figure out that he was Spider-Man, but her therapist
wrote it off as schizophrenia.
In an unusual approach, the therapist sought out Peter and asked him to pretend to be Spider-Man
so that he could reveal his identity to Debra, hoping that this unorthodox shock therapy
would snap her out of her "delusion".
Although Parker initially refused, he came around to the idea which…
actually worked.
This was also the push that Debra needed to leave town and finally divorce her abusive
husband back home, which yeah, it turns out was also a thing that was going on in her
life.
We didn't see much more of Debra until Civil War when Peter publicly revealed his identity,
prompting her to write a book called “Two Faced: How Peter Parker Ruined My Life”.
Little harsh, but considering that the publisher (owned by the Daily Bugle because of course
it is) had her embellish the truth, but part of me feels like canceling Peter is at least
a LITTLE justified considering just how he treated Deb.
But hey, at least he never hit her like he did Mary Jane that one time which YEAH, that
actually happened.
Now much more importantly of Parker's relationships is Felecia Hardy A.K.A.
Black Cat.
She's a cat burglar who flirted and made out with Spider-Man a bit, but not much else.
However, after tussling a couple of times, she promised to go straight, albeit after
one last job.
When that didn't work out, she decided to be extra extra and exclaimed that she would
rather die than go to jail.
Bye, Felecia.
Of course, this didn't stick and when Black Cat finally came back around, she and Spider-Man
started dating proper and even became crime fighting partners.
While all of this was going well, Felecia made it very clear that she was attracted
to Spider-Man and not Peter Parker.
This was a big reversal of the normal problems that his relationships brought, but it did
end up being an issue though and the two broke up as a result.
Of course, Peter and Mary Jane are definitely soulmates so they ended up getting back together,
Peter proposed a second time, they got married, almost had a kid when Mary Jane got pregnant,
was poisoned, and had a stillbirth.
Wow… that got really dark.
Oh, but just you wait.
It gets darker.
See, MJ was seemingly killed in a plane explosion, but in all actually, she was kidnapped by
a stalker.
Yep.
Now during this time of apparent death, Peter had another love interest.
As Gwenpool would say “Remember that time you dated Gwen Stacy’s cousin?
Because I do!
I remember all of that.”
Jill Stacy moved to New York and became friends with Peter and MJ, getting so close that she
ended up actually becoming Mary Jane’s BEST friend.
Oh, and she canonically looks like Gwen Stacy, but with black hair.
There were some romantic hints with Peter, but that was it.
However, following MJ’s apparent death, Jill started getting uncomfortably close with
Peter, making some pretty obvious moves.
Let me make this very clear.
Jill Stacy started catching Peter, the ex-boyfriend of her dead cousin, on the rebound when his
wife seemingly died who also happened to be her best friend.
Now that is some soap opera level nonsense!
Things never got too serious between them since Peter was wrapped up with mourning his
dead wife because yeah, of course, but once Peter rescued MJ from her stalker, Jill basically
vanished from comics as a whole, even though Peter and Mary Jane separated immediately
afterwards.
Peter and Mary Jane’s relationship was all over the place with it ultimately ending when
they made a literal deal with the devil and sold their marriage to the demon, Mephisto,
in order to save a dying Aunt May in the infamous storyline “One More Day”.
Instantly following this new timeline, Peter met a forensic scientist named Carlie Cooper,
the best friend of Harry Osborn’s new girlfriend, but as he was distracted by his newly ex-girlfriend
via demon, Mary Jane, who was also at the party, this didn’t go anywhere.
I swear to god, this is going to be important later since they do end up dating, but first,
we need to take a really weird and complicated detour.
Okay so one of my favorite comic writers, Jason Aaron, wrote this mini series about
Spider-Man and Wolverine being hurled through time after a group of bad guys were robbing
Time Diamonds from a bank.
Because comics.
As a part of this, a woman named Sara Bailey, one of the bank’s tellers, got mixed up
in the time travel shenanigans as well.
It’s not really dived into much since most of the book revolves around Spidey and Wolverine’s
dynamic, but when the three of them got trapped in the old west, Peter and Sara ended up having
a serious relationship, complete with that classic act of carving their initials into
a tree.
Peter was actually going to propose to Sarah with an inert Time Diamond, but it reactivated
and sent everyone back to the beginning of this whole time nonsense at the bank.
After stopping the robbers, Peter wanted to resume his relationship with Sara, but she
didn’t remember anything that happened, just Peter and Logan.
Cut to a sad shot of Peter sitting against the tree that he had carved into which was
miraculously still standing years later and… that’s all we heard about things.
Kind of underwhelming, but this is still canon.
Okay, back to Carlie.
She and Peter officially start dating when he asked her out… at a Halloween party while
she was dressed as his ex-girlfriend, the Black Cat.
Honestly, their dynamic was really cute.
She’s into roller derby and tries to teach Peter, but because he needs to pretend to
not have super powers, he intentionally fails in a spectacular fashion.
Oh, she also got drunk one time and got a Spider-Man tattoo.
During an event called Spider-Island, Carlie ended up getting spider powers along with
most of Manhattan and Peter even pretended like he just got them as well.
However, Carlie noticed that he was suspiciously really good at using these powers and started
to put two and two together.
After everything went back to normal, Carlie confronted Peter with this revelation and
broke up with him on the spot for having lied to her this entire time.
Considering that his double life as Spider-Man is why they broke up, that tattoo must be
REALLY awkward.
Yeah, so after this, Peter’s love life was practically non-existent.
Not like he’d have much time to date anyway since he and his long time enemy, Doctor Octopus,
swapped bodies.
So yeah, this next relationship doesn’t REALLY count since it wasn’t Peter’s consciousness,
but people would get mad at me in the comments if I didn't at least blaze through it super
quick.
Anna-Maria Marconi is a brilliant scientist that Otto started dating when he enrolled
back in college since he was pissed that Peter had never gotten his doctorate.
The two hit it off and had an obnoxiously cute relationship to the point where Ock actually
intended to propose to her.
Of course, Peter eventually got his body back and was immediately really bad at keeping
his alter-ego a secret from Anna-Maria.
Parker did come clean both about being Spider-Man and the entire body swap thing so naturally,
their relationship had to end since Anna-Maria literally fell in love with a different person.
To make things more complicated, Peter released a woman named Cindy Moon from a bunker almost
immediately after getting his body back.
She was bitten by the same radioactive spider as Peter and is a special Spider-Totem called
“The Bride”.
As a part of this, she and Peter have a compulsive need to hook up whenever they're in the vicinity
of each other which obviously made things really awkward for Anna-Maria who was still
living with Peter.
Cindy ended up getting her own super persona, Silk, and grew into a solid character in her
solo books which basically had her strike out on her own away from Peter and really,
outside of being a spider character, she has nothing to do with the Spider-Man series as
a whole.
Moving on, when Doc Ock was in charge of Peter’s body, he created a company called Parker Industries.
Well this ended up getting insanely successful and the company went international.
For a time, Peter was dating Lian Tang, an engineer from Parker Industries Shanghai who
helped design a super high tech Spider-Mobile.
This was great and all until it was revealed that Lian was also working for the terrorist
organization, Zodiac, and was feeding them information in exchange for cancer medication
for her dying mother.
When she was found out, Parker gave her a second chance at the company, but obviously
their relationship ended as quickly as it started.
Also working with Parker Industries was Bobbi Morse A.K.A.
Mockingbird who was the company’s liaison to S.H.I.E.L.D.
Peter eventually asked her out with ZERO game, leading to Aunt May of all people having to
step in.
It’s crazy that throughout all of his history, Mockingbird is like the only superhero that
Spidey ever dated and it was actually pretty cool that they occasionally fought crime together.
When Parker Industries eventually shut down, Bobbi let Peter crash at her place and even
sleep in her infamous “Ask me about my feminist agenda” shirt.
Eventually though, Peter being a complete loser got on Bobbi’s nerves and they broke
up after realizing that they really had nothing in common.
Finally, I know this is kind of a low note to end on, but this brings us to Rebecca London,
a comedian that Spidey rescued who asked him out by throwing her business card at him.
Easily the best part of this is when Spider-Man showed up to their date in his costume, but
like with a suit jacket over it.
There’s really not really much more to this considering that Peter was busy with superhero
stuff and Rebecca got a boyfriend in the meantime, but I wanted you to see the double spider
suit so you’re welcome.
At the time of this recording, Peter and Mary Jane are back to the status quo and are happily
together and I REALLY hope that it sticks because I do not want to have to make this
video again after the literal weeks that I have spent researching all of this nonsense.
But if you liked this video then why not consider subscribing, or even watching another one?
And if you want to know about Peter’s web-shooters (the actual ones, not a euphemism) then check
out the video that I did all about them.
I gave the same level of obsessive detail in that as I did on this one.
And also, I do want to give a big thank you to the voice cast that I had on this video.
It’s a lot better than me trying to pretend to be multiple characters, especially ones
that are different genders from me.
I went ahead and gave all their credits down there in the description below.
But anyway, I hope you learned at least a little something new, and hopefully, I’ll
see you next time.