Richard Parker

Richard Parker is Peter Parker's father, a secret agent who worked for American intelligence and was killed along with his wife Mary while on a mission abroad, leaving their young son to be raised by Aunt May and Uncle Ben.

Introduced in the pages of The Amazing Spider-Man Annual #5 in 1968 by the legendary trio of Stan Lee, Larry Lieber, and John Romita, Richard Parker is a Silver Age Marvel creation whose shadow stretches far longer than his relatively modest page count might suggest. Across 57 years of comics history, he's surfaced in titles ranging from The Amazing Spider-Man to Ultimate Spider-Man and even Spider-Man & Wolverine, sharing those stories with some of Marvel's most iconic figures — Peter Parker, Mary Parker, Gwen Stacy, and Ben Parker among them. With a key-issue appearance to his name and a presence that has quietly persisted into the modern era, Richard Parker is one of those characters whose importance to the broader mythology vastly outweighs his time on the page — a figure worth seeking out for any serious collector digging into the deeper roots of the Spider-Man saga.