Ben Reilly is (supposedly) the clone of Peter Parker. He fought Peter once, because both he and Peter believed they were the original Spider-Man. After losing this battle, and now believing himself to be a clone, Ben left New York and travelled the country for five years. Upon learning of Aunt May's health condition, he returned to New York.

Ben put together a new costume to help Peter with the Spider-Man duties, and was dubbed the "Scarlet Spider" by the Daily Bugle. Ben remained the Scarlet Spider for some time, until after Peter and Mary Jane left New York. Because the Scarlet Spider was being such a nuisance to the new Doctor Octopus II, she created a fake Scarlet Spider to ruin his reputation. So, Ben assumed the one identity she could never tarnish--Spider-Man!

Meet Peter Parker, once a brilliant, although meek, High School student, orphaned as a child and raised by his doting Aunt and Uncle. At a science fair, Peter was bitten by an irradiated spider and gained the proportionate strength, speed, agility and "early warning" spider-sense of that arachnid. He used these powers for personal fame and fortune as a masked Spider-Man.

But when Peter failed to stop a criminal who later killed his beloved Uncle Ben, the youth's costumed identity took on a far greater significance. He realised that with great power, must also come great responsibility.

So Peter became to wall-crawling menace of the criminal element; a young man determined to atone for the tragic death of his Uncle - The Amazing Spider-Man!

Mary Jane, a former supermodel and soap actress, is Peter's wife, a relationship which was in doubt for some time but which appears once more to have at least a fighting chance of surviving. After the recent turmoil of the validity of her husband's identity Peter, Ben and MJ have grown closer as a family.

She is currently carrying her and Peter’s first child.

During the first Secret Wars, Spider-Man's costume was shredded. Spider-Man found a device that he thought looked like "it wants to make a costume". It produced a small, black ball that initially set off his spider-sense as he picked it up. The ball oozed over the confused hero and became a black costume. Spider-Man wore the costume for a few months, enjoying the fact that it produced its own webbing and could change to mimic his civilian clothes.

Spider-Man soon discovered his nifty new threads were actually an alien symbiote trying to bond to him. Mr. Fantastic separated the two with his "sonic blaster" and captured the symbiote for study. The symbiote escaped but the hero tried to kill the symbiote using the noise from a church's bell tower. The plan worked too well, and the symbiote saved Spidey's life before hiding itself in the church.

Eddie Brock was the star investigative reporter for the Daily Globe. Eddie was a particularly driven man, desperate to gain the approval of his stone-hearted father. His biggest score, a man confessing to be the murderous Sin-Eater, was exposed as a fraud, when the real Sin-Eater was captured by Spider-Man. The paper fired him, his father disowned him, and his marriage ended. Brock's mind locked onto Spider-Man as the source of all his woes and thus began Brock's burning hatred of the Wall-Crawler. Stopping by a church to pray before he committed suicide, Brock's intense hatred of Spider-Man was noticed by the symbiote. The two bonded and Venom was born.

Virtually nothing is known of the past of Janice Olivia Yanizeski before she first appeared as Joystick, including the origin and nature of her apparent superhuman powers.

She is a competitor in "The Great Game", a contest where wealthy people worldwide pit superhuman champions against each other and wager heavily on the outcome. On some occasions non-competing super humans are picked as targets.