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Since his debut in 1962, Spider-Man’s catchphrase has been his guiding principle. Amazing Fantasy #15, the character’s first appearance, ends with the line, “with great power there must also come responsibility,” and the proverb has stuck to the character stronger than any pieces of webbing. The phrasing may change slightly, with most pieces of media using “with great power comes great responsibility,” but the core message has stuck across decades of comics, television, and film.

However, Christopher Daniel Barnes, who voiced Spider-Man in the 1994 Fox Kids animated series, thinks the proverb is only telling half of the story. “I will say this, I think the catchphrase of Spider-Man, with great power comes great responsibility, is fundamental because it’s about the coming-of-age hero arc,” Christopher Daniel Barnes declared during a panel at GalaxyCon Nashville 2026.

He added, “One thing I notice is that as I’ve gotten older, I’ve really come to appreciate that it is actually on a spectrum, because what they don’t tell you, and what you don’t know until you’re older, is that with great power comes great responsibility, but with great responsibility comes great sacrifice. With great sacrifice comes great pain. And with great pain comes great rage. And with great rage comes a desire to control everything.”

Yes, this sounds villainous, and it also sounds like Yoda’s message to Anakin Skywalker in The Phantom Menace, but that’s the idea. According to Barnes, Spider-Man is heroic because he chooses to be a hero when his circumstances could’ve easily made him a villain.

“Now you’re on the villain arc, which is why all the best villains are fallen heroes,” Barnes reasoned. “You don’t know that until you’re older. I think that placing that within the context of Spider-Man and the greater sort of mythical arc, it really means a lot to me. And I feel like that line brings in all those other aspects because when you realize that you never quite see Spider-Man the same way, and it’s a very interesting sort of psychological dynamic that I’ve grown to appreciate.”

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