Spider-Man has one lesson that he lives by in his superhero career, and that is something his Uncle Ben told him. Before his tragic murder at the hands of a burglar, Uncle Ben told Peter Parker that “with great power comes great responsibility.” This means that, if Peter has power, he has to be responsible with it. Peter wasn’t at the start, and as a result, his Uncle Ben died. Since then, Spider-Man has worked hard to live up to his beloved uncle’s words. However, when looking at the different versions of Spider-Man in the multiverse, as well as Peter’s clones, not all variants live up to this lesson.
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From Spider-Man from Earth-616 to all his variants, and the different versions in his own world, here are 10 Spider-Men who best live up to Uncle Ben’s words, and those who don’t.
10) Superior Spider-Man
Superior Spider-Man is Doctor Octopus, as the villain stole Peter’s body before his own died of cancer after a massive battle with his enemy. Once he took over Peter’s body, he continued with the role of Spider-Man, but with some changes. The most significant change is that Superior Spider-Man is more violent and doesn’t hold back like Peter would.
Doc Ock became a hero, but he was so violent that other heroes began to question his motives. Of all the Spider-Men on Earth-616, Superior Spider-Man is the one who lives up to Uncle Ben’s lesson on being responsible with his powers the least.
9) Spider-Man Noir
Spider-Man Noir is from Earth-90214, a universe where the Marvel heroes first showed up in the 1920s and 1930s. There are almost no superpowers in this world, except for characters like Spider-Man, who got his powers from a mystical Spider God. This is another variant of Peter Parker, and just like the mainline Peter, he also lost his Uncle Ben, this time as retaliation from a New York City businessman for organizing a strike.
Unlike the Earth-616 Spider-Man, Noir uses guns, including pistols, revolvers, a submachine gun, and even incendiary grenades. He had a different motto to live by, and that is, if there is too much power, he has to take it away from those who have it. Since Noir has no problem killing, he lacks much of Uncle Ben’s beliefs.
8) Spider-Man 2099
Spider-Man 2099 is Miguel O’Hara from Earth-928. This is the 2099 world, which takes place in the far future, showing that some heroes from today have ended up still existing in the future, with different people taking on familiar roles. He got his powers when his boss at Alchemax betrayed him and drugged him with a hallucinogen, and then Miguel ran an experiment on himself, which combined with the drug to give him the powers of Spider-Man. Much like Spider-Man Noir, Miguel is a lot more violent than Peter Parker, and as a result, is not someone who lives up to the Uncle Ben lessons for the original Spider-Man.
7) Spider-Punk
Spider-Punk is Hobie Brown from Earth-138. He was a foul-mouthed teen living in a fascist society ruled over by its president, Norman Osborn. He was bitten by a spider irradiated by illegal waste dumping, which gave him his powers. He then began to rise and fight against the oppression.
However, Spider-Punk was very much not like Peter Parker because he knew he had to go to extremes to save his world from the evil president. Spider-Punk decapitated Osborn with his guitar and helped end the man’s threat. Hubie also sometimes uses barbed wire instead of webbing, and he is far from a disciple of Uncle Ben’s lesson from Earth-616, but in his world, that wouldn’t have worked anyway.
6) Kaine
Kaine is one of the Peter Parker clones from the Clone Saga storyline. While Ben Reilly was the main clone, Kaine was the first attempt at cloning him, but thanks to a flaw, he ended up mentally unstable. However, Jackal allowed him to live as a test subject to see how long he would survive. This left the clone angry and jealous of Ben and Peter, and thanks to his instability, he was very violent and had no problems hurting people who tried to hurt him.
Kaine actually killed someone, and Peter Parker (in the form of Ben Reilly) had to stand trial for it. However, Kaine did demonstrate some of Uncle Ben’s lessons when he confessed to the murder and eventually sacrificed himself to save Peter from the Jackal. In the end, he took full advantage of Uncle Ben’s lessons.
5) Norman Osborn
Norman Osborn is one of the Spider-Man characters who has undergone a significant transformation over the last few years. It all started when Sin Eater took away his sins, and he found redemption. He then became Peter’s Man-in-the-Chair for a time, where he was creating new costumes for Spider-Man and helped him while becoming a hero himself. In 2025, Spider-Man underwent a drastic change in attitude, and it wasn’t until Ben Reilly showed up that he learned this new Spider-Man wasn’t Peter at all.
Instead, Peter is off planet and is unable to return home. It has now been revealed that Norman Osborn is the new Spider-Man, and he has every intention of keeping Peter’s dream alive. As hard as it is to believe, Norman represents what Uncle Ben preached, and that shows how far he has come from his villain days. However, at the same time, he is a lot more violent than Peter, as shown when he broke Shocker’s hands.
4) Ben Reilly
Ben Reilly was the clone that replaced Peter Parker and kicked off the fan-hated Clone Saga storyline. Jackal created this clone after failing the first time with Kaine, and he sent in Ben to upend Peter’s life, with the clone believing he was the genuine Peter, with all of his memories, including those of Uncle Ben. However, when Ben and Peter realized one of them was a clone, it caused so many twists and turns that fans struggled to keep up.
However, with Peter’s memories and the love of Uncle Ben in his mind, Ben has tried to keep the important lesson about responsibility alive. Ben has since become Scarlet Spider and then the villain Chasm when the Beyond Corporation erased his memories. Ben has since become a hero and is upholding Uncle Ben’s lesson again.
3) Peni Parker
Peni Parker is the variant from Earth-14512. Unlike other Spider-Men, she uses a robot that she operates using her dad’s tech and is known as SP//dr. Her father died while piloting the SP//dr suit, and her Uncle Ben and Aunt May told her she was the only one who could carry the project on, with “responsibility.” Like Peter, she also began her superhero journey as a teenager, having her first fight at the age of 14. Thanks to having her own Uncle Ben, she had the same mentor to help her understand the importance of always doing the right thing.
2) Peter Parker
Peter Parker from Earth-616 is the first person in Marvel Comics to learn the life lesson from Uncle Ben. However, he sadly didn’t understand it until Spider-Man let his uncle die by allowing a burglar to escape without doing anything about it. However, Ben’s death is what has led Peter to apply his uncle’s lesson to everything he does in life.
There have been moments when he has let the message slip by, but those are rare, and he has done everything he can to ensure he lives up to Ben’s lesson every day of his life since then. However, thanks to the moments where Peter became less heroic (such as when he made a deal with Mephisto), there is one person who is more in line with what Uncle Ben taught him.
1) Miles Morales
Miles Morales never had his own Uncle Ben, and he learned most of what he knows about responsibility from his father, a police officer, and his mother, a strong Latino woman. He also learned from Peter himself, both the Ultimates version and the Earth-616 variant. Miles is a teenager, and as a young hero, he is also one of the most virtuous and honest superheroes on Earth.
He tries not to hurt anyone and always does what he can to save everyone, just like Peter Parker. Miles Morales is everything that Peter Parker should be, and he is still young enough to maintain that morality, and he has a support system around him to help him always do the right thing.
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