Spider-Man is easily Marvel’s most popular and influential character, and it’s easy to see why so many people are fans of the Friendly Neighborhood Wall-Crawler. Not only is he one of the most relatable and heroic characters ever created, but his powers are really awesome to see in play. It’s also no surprise that Marvel decided to introduce more spider-themed characters to capitalize on the love for Spider-Man. The Spider-Family is what fans call the collection of Spider-people who swing around and save the day, and although they aren’t as close as some other well known superhero families like the Bat Family, they are still a collection of some of Marvel’s best and brightest. So with that said, why don’t we take a look at the Spider-Family and decide which of them is the most powerful?
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Before we do that, though, we need to set some ground rules. This is not an indicator of who I believe would win in a fight or anything else like that, but rather looking solely at their powers and trying to determine who could do the most damage in a vacuum. A lot of this list will partly be interchangeable, as most of the Spider-Family are very, very close in terms of raw strength, but there are enough other factors present to give us a fairly clear picture of what to do here. For sake of simplicity, we also won’t be counting any alternate universe characters, or contentious members like Venom and the like. With that prefaced, let’s get right into ranking the seven most powerful Spider-Family members.
7) Silk
Coming in at seventh place we have Cindy Moon, the hero Silk. She is the perfect example of just how close most characters on this list are in terms of power, as Silk was bitten by the same radioactive spider that gave Peter all of his powers. She’s got the same skillset, with the slight deviations of organic webbing and being a twinge weaker in exchange for being a tad faster than Peter. Even then, trying to find any difference between the two of them in terms of actual capabilities is just about impossible, so it goes to show that while she might not be quite as strong as Spider-Man, Silk can still definitely hold her own just as well as any other Spider-person out there.
6) Madame Web
Julia Carpenter was originally introduced as Arachne, became Spider-Woman, and has now settled on being the new Madame Web. Her speed, strength, and durability are on the same level as everyone else in the Family, but she has the added benefit of some low level psionic abilities. She’s capable of creating psionic webbing that she can feel psychic vibrations through, and after inheriting the first Madame Web’s connection to the Web of Life and Destiny, precognition, telepathy, and the ability to astral project. These traits don’t necessarily allow her to deal more damage, but the potential for them to cause psychic trouble is there, and I’d say that’s enough to give her a slight advantage over Silk.
5) Spider-Man (Peter)
It feels almost sacrilegious to put Peter so low on this list, but at the end of the day it just makes sense. Peter is the default Spider-person, the standard from which all are derived and judged. It only makes sense that, in order to help differentiate later characters, they were given extra bits and bobbles to help justify them being related to Spider-Man, but standing apart. That’s not to say Peter isn’t incredibly powerful. He very much is, shown being able to lift incredible weights and go toe-to-toe with behemoths like the Rhino on the regular. This isn’t so much that Peter himself isn’t strong or couldn’t win a fight with anyone here, but rather that every character after him on this list is basically just Peter plus some additional abilities, which give them a slight edge in terms of raw power.
4) Chasm
Case in point for being Peter and some extra, Ben Reilly is quite literally exactly that. He is a perfect clone of Peter made by the villain Jackal, and he comes equipped with everything that Peter can do as default. On top of that, Ben recently jumped into some psycho-reactive goo created by the Beyond Corporation, which enhanced him with the ability to generate hard-light constructs and create bursts of pure energy. On top of that, his Spider-Sense was altered to allow him to basically have a type of radar vision in tracking down dangers, which only makes his new arsenal all the more deadly.
3) Spider-Man (Miles)
Next on our list is the second Spider-Man, Miles Morales. Miles has all the same baseline powers as the other Spiders, but he also has quite a suite of additional powers to boot. Most relevantly, he can channel bioelectricity into attacks he calls Venom Blasts, which can range anywhere from a mild shock to a giant burst, capable of downing multiple people anywhere in the same room as him. He can also solidify it into shapes like web threads and even a Venom-Saber. Much like Chasm, his Spider-Sense has also evolved to a type of radar sense, with Miles being able to detect people in a limited Daredevil style, all of which add together to make him one heck of a threat when he chooses to take you down.
2) Kaine
Kaine is the lesser known but even more dangerous clone of Peter made by the Jackal. Unlike Ben, Kaine is an imperfect clone, and because of that his body and powers have been mutated. While before he could only match Peter in strength, over time his abilities evolved to a far higher level. His raw strength allowed him to fight on an even level with Peter, Ben Reily, and the extra buff evil clone Spidercide all at once, and Doctor Octopus has even stated that Kaine is physically stronger than the original. Beyond just that, his wall-crawling ability has mutated into the Mark of Kaine, where he generates energy in his hands he can use to burn whatever he touches. Kaine is easily the most deadly version of Peter Parker in the traditional Spider-Family, but even he doesn’t top this list.
1) Spider-Woman
Jessica Drew is the original Spider-Woman, and physically speaking the strongest member of the Spider-Family. Instead of being bit by a radioactive spider, Jessica was experimented on by her father with tech given to him by the High Evolutionary, grafting a spider genome to her own. This process gifted her with the same set of powers as Spider-Man, alongside her own version of Venom Blasts, though a bit less powerful and focused than Miles’s. She also has the ability to glide short distances, but what really earns her the top of this list is the fact that she is just one level above everyone else in terms of power. She’s been stated and shown to be stronger than Spider-Man multiple times, her punch sending him sailing down the street while his only made her stumble. Old Marvel guidebooks placed her strength at lifting seven tons, but that was a while ago when power levels were generally smaller. In newer guidebooks, every other member of the Spider-Family has a level four strength, and Jessica is the only one with a five. Granted, guidebooks always need to be taken with a shaker of salt, but this does match up with what we’re consistently told and shown. Every other Spider-person is strong, but Jessica is just a tad bit stronger.
So there we have the seven strongest members of the Spider-Family, ranked exclusively by raw power. It was definitely a close call considering how similar everyone’s powersets are. What do you think? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!’
