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It’s the car, right? Chicks dig the car.

When done right, a superhero with a car can be a cool concept. After all, fans have spent decades dreaming about driving the Batmobile. Batman with a car works, but Spider-Man not so much. Spider-Man swings through the city with his webs, so why on Earth would he need a car?

That’s a logical question, but it didn’t stop Stan Lee from ordering Marvel Comics to give Spider-Man his own Spider-Mobile in 1974. At the time Stan Lee was serving as publisher for Marvel Comics, and Gerry Conway was writing Amazing Spider-Man.

“The Spider-Mobile. This was a notion that Stan had, because Stan was put in an odd position,” Gerry Conway says during a spotlight panel at San Diego Comic Con 2013. “[Lee] moved up from being an editor/writer to being the publisher of Marvel Comics in 1970 or 1971. And as a result of that, his priorities had to shift towards how can he climb revenues for the company.”

According to Conway, the decision to give Spider-Man a car came down to licensing possibilities.

“He was approached by I think it was Hasbro, or it might have been Tonka Toys or some company that said, ‘Listen, we found that what really works for characters, for toy characters, in addition to the figures, is if they have a lot of cool stuff with them. Could you maybe give each of your characters a cool car.’ And Stan said sure, because he didn’t have to do it. So, he told me Spider-Man needs to have a car.”

Conway was understandably apprehensive.

“I’m like, you do realize that Spider-Man swings on a web between buildings, and the car would really slow him down in doing that. So, he was like, ‘I don’t care what you do with it. Just give it to him.’ So, we played it for laughs, and we sank it like in the same issue. I forget whether we actually sank it in the same issue or the very next issue. We sank it off into the East River.”

Conway’s memory is slightly off. The Spider-Mobile is introduced in Amazing Spider-Man #130, but the car wasn’t used much before it was driven into the East River in Amazing Spider-Man #141. However, the Spider-Mobile came back to haunt Conway decades later.

“There is a follow-up to that, which is about 20 odd years later. I was in a Toys R Us with my daughter who was like two or three years old at the time and saw one of these coin-operated riding devices and said, ‘Can I get on that.’ And I look over and it’s the Spider-Mobile, with Spider-Man and a little jalopy. It lives. So, even the dumbest ideas still manifest themselves years later.”

Marvel's most reliable superhero has proven he can do a whole lot more than just 'whatever a spider can.' Swing into Spidey's history with Popverse's...

• Best Spider-Man comic books 
• The best Spider-Mans (or is it Spider-Men?)
• Spider-Man movie watch order
• Spider-Man's actors, ranked
• The best Spider-Man suits
• and the Spider-verse explained!

Just watch out for that radioactive blood.