Black Tarantula

A mysterious and powerful crime lord with a lineage stretching back centuries, the Black Tarantula rules a vast criminal empire and first clashed with Spider-Man when his operations brought him to New York. His extraordinary fighting skills and near-superhuman resilience made him an immediate and formidable threat.

Few villains who crash into the Marvel Universe carry the immediate weight that Black Tarantula does — debuting in The Amazing Spider-Man #422 in 1997, courtesy of Tom DeFalco and Joe Bennett, this figure arrived at the tail end of the Copper Age and has proven remarkably durable, with a presence stretching nearly three decades into 2026. Cutting across some of Marvel's most prestigious titles — The Amazing Spider-Man, Daredevil, and Spider-Gwen: The Ghost-Spider — Black Tarantula keeps genuinely elite company, sharing pages with Spider-Man, Matt Murdock, and even Gwen Stacy across alternate realities. That kind of cross-title, cross-universe staying power marks a character who has quietly burrowed deep into the Marvel tapestry, and for collectors who love discovering the hidden connective tissue of the universe, Black Tarantula is absolutely worth tracking down.