Tangled Web: What Color is Spider-Man’s costume?

Years ago, there was a discussion on the John Byrne message board that made me reconsider a major part of Spider-Man’s visual identity. Is Spider-Man’s costume red and blue, or red and black? If so, what appears to be blue is simply blue highlights because that is how black is represented in a particular medium.

I was not aware of this as a point of contention, partly because the Mego Spider-Man action figure, made before I was born, is clearly red and blue.

I was mainly familiar with these from Wizard’s twisted Toyfare Theater feature, where they also featured other Megos Green Goblin, and the Lizard, as well as other Marvel Silver Age characters (Doctor Doom, Iron Man, etc.) so I always assumed the toys were from the 1960s. It’s actually from the 1970s, so it demonstrates that the costume was later understood to be red and blue, but it doesn’t prove anything about what it was initially supposed to be.

There are numerous examples of blue highlights being used to represent things that are colored black, unless Conan’s hair was meant to be blue.

In addition, some of the early covers do suggest a Spider-Man that whose costume is colored rather dark. Here I think it’s instructive to look at the original comics because any reprints might be the result of a subsequent editor putting their thumb on the scale.

Spiders aren’t naturally blue, and this image would make sense if Spider-Man has a blue spider on a red and black costume rather than a blue spider on the blue portion of a red and blue costume. The spider on his back has later become red.

There are some arguments for the costume being blue. Superheroes are often meant to be in primary colors, it is a clear visual reference to Superman’s costume, and it does clearly look blue in some other early covers.

In some panels of Amazing Fantasy #15, it does basically appear the same color as a policeman’s uniform.

However, there are some rather overpowering uses of blue in a few silver age comics to represent something that is colored black. Here’s Black Panther in the Avengers.

There are ways in which early visual decisions are reversed and retconned. We’ll take a quick digression to the Hulk. In his first appearance, the Hulk was grey.

The printing process was apparently less consistent with a grey Hulk, so in the next issue the Hulk was green. This became the universal take for the character for the next few decades.

When The Hulk #1 was reprinted or when his origin was retold, the decision that was often made was to simply recolor the Hulk, and pretend that the character had always been green.

This all changed when Al Milgrom took over the title, and decided that the grey Hulk was a different form of the Hulk. He brought back the grey Hulk in Incredible Hulk #324—nearly twenty years after the first appearance—which was the status quo when Peter David took over the book, in his pivotal run with Todd McFarlane.

Since then, the grey Hulk has been seen as the initial version of the Hulk, making a triumphant return for several years, and also being the focus of a Jeph Loeb/ Tim Sale mini-series.

There might be something similar with Spider-Man. Perhaps the character was initially meant to be red and black, but readers figured it was red and blue, and that became the way the character was seen for most of its existence. It could be that the way we see the character now is different from what it will be in the future. In an upcoming Peter Parker: the Spectacular Spider-Man arc, Joe Quinones will be illustrating a time travel team-up between Spider-Man and his younger self. It does appear to feature a Spider-Man whose costume is red and black. Maybe this will lead to an understanding that Spider-Man’s costume was originally red and black, but then shifted to red and blue.

It is worth noting that in his Amazing Spider-Man run, Erik Larsen briefly featured a red and black costume distinct from the red and blue.

So, what do you guys think? Was the suit always meant to be red and blue? Do you like the idea that it might have originally been red and black?