10 Best Costumes in the Spider-Man Comics

Spider-Man is Marvel’s most popular hero, an icon in the world of superheroes. Spider-Man took Marvel’s heroes with feet of clay approach and perfected it, creating a hero that fans could understand in every way. Spider-Man’s life became a cavalcade of villains and allies, and his popularity meant that many of the greatest artists got to work on his comics. Spider-Man books have often been a feast for the eyes, with the Wall-Crawler’s characters getting some of the best costumes in the history of superhero comics. Spider-Man’s pantheon of characters is the best of the best, and they have the threads to prove it.

Spider-Man characters have always looked great, whether they be in the comics or in the many Marvel movies Spider-Man has starred in. The comics are, of course, where all of the great Spider-Man comics originate from, and this is where the best can be found. These ten characters are the best-dressed in the Spider-Man comics, with their costumes doing an amazing job of laying out who they are.

Spider-Man’s Original Costume

Marvel is full of lovable losers, but few of them can match Spider-Man. Peter Parker just can’t catch a break, but there’s one place that Spider-Man has always had luck in spades — his costume. This blue and red webbed classic is easily among the greatest costume designs of all time. While there have been little alterations to it over the years — the size of the eyes changes often and some artists like the web wings while others don’t — it’s hard to argue with how perfect that Spider-Man’s costume was right from the beginning.

It’s impossible to find a bad part of the original Spider-Man costume. The colors are perfect, the web design is genius, the mask is amazing, and it’s all topped off by two different but excellent spider emblems on the chest and back. Spider-Man’s amazing costume definitely forced artists to go even further with the costume designs of villains. Spider-Man sometimes gets new costumes, but he always goes back to old faithful.

Venom’s First Symbiote Costume

Venom is going through big changes right now, but one thing about Venom that fans can be sure of is that he’ll always look sensational. Venom has never had a bad costume, but his best is obviously his first. Now, the original Venom costume is basically just Spider-Man’s black costume — which is why the black suit won’t be on this list — but there are a few little modifications that make it unique. The most obvious is the mouth, its jagged teeth and long tongue becoming the most iconic part of the character’s look. There’s also the clawed fingers, a nice little touch that shows just how wild Venom can be.

The large white spider, whose legs wrap around to the spider on the back, is an awesome design that fits Venom better than it ever did Spider-Man. Venom’s spider emblem looks threatening, something that fits the character to a tee. The inky black of the costume was perfect for a character that was meant to be the villainous opposite of Spider-Man. It’s hulking size was the last touch, making Venom into a character that readers can’t really look away from.

Miles Morales’s First Costume

Miles Morales first appeared in the original Ultimate Universe after the death of Peter Parker. Miles gets his own version of Spider-Man’s powers and decides to take his place. Much like the first Spider-Man, Miles lucked out with his costume immediately. No one would have minded if Miles ran around in a more traditional Spider-Man costume, but the fact that the costume went in its own direction was a great decision. Miles was always his own Spider-Man, so giving him his own costume was a little bit of visual storytelling that worked wonders.

The costume kept the color red, the webs, and a spider insignia, but used them all in different ways. Black was the main color of the costume, which went wonderfully with the red. The costume is instantly striking and has a very sleek feel to it. It’s topped off by a mask that is designed similarly to the original, but its black and red coloration makes it look much meaner. It’s an excellent costume and it’s always strange when they change Miles’s costume because they can rarely match his first costume.

The Iron Spider Costume

Spider-Man didn’t join the Avengers full-time for ages — he was long a reserve member of the team — but once he did, he started to become more of an important person in the superhero community. He also got to spend way more time with Iron Man. Iron Man saw how intelligent and skilled Spider-Man was and took him under his wing. The two of them made for a great team and eventually, Iron Man wanted to do something nice for his friend and created the Iron Spider armor. It was a pretty revolutionary design, combining design elements from Spider-Man, Iron Man, and, paradoxically enough, Doctor Octopus.

The Iron Spider armor uses the Iron Man colors, not the classic Spider-Man colors, and it looks sensational. The gold is a nice highlight for the costume and really makes the different parts pop, especially the spider emblem and the eyes. However, the coolest element, and unique among Spider-Man comics, is the arms. These were technically supposed to be extra spider legs for Spider-Man and they look amazing. They give the Iron Spider armor an even more intimidating feel, which is heightened by the dark red color. It’s a feast for the eyes.

The First Scarlet Spider Costume

The Scarlet Spider is a beloved character by a certain generation of fans, the kids who grew up reading ’90s Spider-Man comics. The Clone Saga is one of the more infamous Spider-Man stories of all time, but Ben Reilly did build up a pretty large fanbase, who even today love the character. A big reason why the Scarlet Spider caught on has to be his excellent costume. It’s an extremely simple design, but the best part of it is the fact that it goes so far from the original Spider-Man costume. There are some familiar design elements — the red and blue, the mask style, a spider emblem — but they’re used in different ways, and some elements that are completely the Scarlet Spider’s costume’s own.

The red body suit is unadorned by anything, a nice simple design that is perfect for this costume. The blue sweater gives the costume something of a homemade aura, but that’s definitely not the case when it comes to the webshooter bracelets and the belt, which are custom-made by Ben himself. Because it was the ’90s, there was also at least one pouch on the costume, but it was placed inexplicably on the calf. The Scarlet Spider costume is an amazing achievement, and much, much better than any of the many costumes the character has worn since then.

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The Spider-Man 2099 Costume

The Spider-Man 2099 costume is a masterpiece and there’s really no other way to look at it. It’s the perfect way of taking a costume and making a modern version of it that actually looks modern and not just edgy for its own sake. It’s hard to know where to start when singing its praises because everything is perfect; is it the dark blue color that makes him a part of the shadows of the future? The way the red designs give the costume some amazing contrast? The brilliance of the designs themselves? The mask? The elbow blades? The web cape?

Spider-Man 2099’s costume does everything it’s supposed to. Miguel O’Hara’s world is a much darker, violent place, and this costume fits that world. It’s immediately intimidating, a costume that will make someone think twice about messing with Spider-Man 2099. It’s one of those designs that grabs the eyes and then it lives in your mind forever.

The Ghost Spider Costume

There are all kinds of arguments for why bringing any Gwen Stacy variant into the Marvel Universe is a bad idea, but one can’t deny just how popular Spider-Gwen is. The character has become a multimedia star, and a big reason for that is the costume. It’s a bold piece of costume design, taking all of the Spider-Man costume tropes and making them that much better. The colors are sensational; the white is bright, the purple is pretty purple, and the black sets it all off nicely. The design of the costume is killer, with each sectionplaying off the others. The hood is the best part, a unique choice that allows the costume to stand out from other Spider costume designs.

The Spider-Gwen costume has so much style. That’s really the best way to describe it. It’s another costume that is so good that so far only tiny modifications have been made to it. Spider-Gwen’s costume is a visually striking number, and it has just the right intimidation factor for a street-level hero like Gwen. Spider-Gwen’s costume is one of the better costumes of the last twenty years and will go down among the best costumes of all time.

The Superior Spider-Man Costume

Spider-Man’s comics haven’t been great lately, but over a decade fans got to read one of the best Spider-Man stories ever — The Superior Spider-Man. This book began in the aftermath of the death of Spider-Man when Doctor Octopus took over the body of Peter Parker. Ock decided to become a superhero when he saw Peter’s memories and soon donned his own version of the Spider-Man costume, one that combined elements from his own costumes, as well as Spider-Man’s costumes. The Superior Spider-Man costume is an excellent design, one that says a lot about how different Doctor Octopus was as Spider-Man from Peter Parker.

The arms are the most obvious change from the classic design that this costume pays homage to, adding a flavor of both Doctor Octopus and the Iron Spider. The black replacing the blue is the perfect choice, speaking to the darkening of Spider-Man. The web portions and the mask are the most Spider-Man parts of the whole costume, and they work brilliantly, giving the costume just the right contrast. It’s an amazing variant of a classic Spider-Man costume.

Doctor Octopus’s White Suit

Doctor Octopus started out his supervillain career in a green jumpsuit that has a fine design but didn’t really do anything for a slightly out-of-shape scientist. Look, some people should be kept away from spandex, and unless he’s in Peter Parker’s body, that’s Otto Octavius. However, Doctor Octopus would get a much better costume as the years went by, trading in the spandex for a white suit that is perfect for Doctor Octopus.

The suit is cut to perfection and the white is bright and eye-catching. Different artists draw Octopus with different bodies, but it doesn’t matter if he’s a slimmer Doctor Octopus or a more rotund Doc Ock, the suit makes him look perfect. It gives him an intimidation factor, almost an organized crime air, that he never had while in the spandex. It’s the perfect Doctor Octopus costume.

Electro’s Costume

Electro’s costume is exactly the kind of thing someone named Electro would wear. It’s one of those designs that is extremely ridiculous, but that’s a huge part of the charm. It has to be yellow, of course, since that’s the color most often used for electricity in comics. It definitely is going to have lightning bolts on the costume and it has some on the chest, but also on the gloves. It has trunks, definitely a relic of their time, but they work with the way the different colors of the costume. The black of the shoulders and headpiece is a great little idea, a nice darkness that gives the costume a little more edge. And then there’s the mask.

If the trunks are a throwback to an earlier time, then the mask is a big flashing neon sign dating the costume. However, it’s become such a big part of the look of Electro that it works. In fact, it more than works. It’s like a crown on a king. It’s ostentatious and eye-grabbing. It’s the defining feature of Electro and whenever they try to modernize the character, it never lasts; this costume is always too good to leave behind.

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