Aunt May Parker

May Reilly married Ben Parker and became the beloved aunt who raised her orphaned nephew Peter in Queens, New York. An ordinary but remarkably resilient woman, she has no superpowers—only fierce devotion to family.

Few supporting characters in comics history have proven as enduring — or as genuinely beloved — as Aunt May Parker, who first stepped onto the page in The Amazing Spider-Man #3 back in 1963, conjured into existence by the legendary team of Stan Lee and Steve Ditko at the very heart of Marvel's Silver Age explosion. Over more than six decades of publication, she has appeared in 545 catalogued issues across titles including The Amazing Spider-Man, Ultimate Spider-Man, and Peter Parker: Spider-Man, sharing those pages with some of Marvel's most iconic figures — J. Jonah Jameson, Mary Jane Watson, Gwen Stacy, Norman Osborn, and Flash Thompson among them. With 24 key-issue appearances to her name, she's no mere background fixture; collectors and readers alike have long recognized that her presence carries genuine weight in the stories that matter most. She is, in every sense, one of the great constants of Marvel Comics — a character whose quiet humanity has anchored some of the most emotionally resonant storytelling the medium has ever produced.