Today's Fact
Verified against multiple independent sources. Issues cited below.
Six arms were nothing. In the 'Changes' arc, Spectacular Spider-Man vol. 2 #15–#20 (2004) by Paul Jenkins, the villain the Queen (Ana Soria) plants a kiss on a captured Spider-Man — and injects a mutagen. Peter grows extra segmented eyes, loses his grip on his own mind, and transforms, stage by stage, into a monstrous man-spider and then a full giant spider.
Then the giant spider died — giving birth to Peter Parker. A human Peter emerged from the spider's body, reborn with upgrades the bite never gave him: organic webbing produced by his own wrists (no more web-shooters or fluid bills), spinnerets, stingers in later stories' lineage, and a sharpened rapport with actual spiders and insects through his spider-sense.
The arc ran as an Avengers Disassembled tie-in, which is partly why it vanished from memory: the Avengers were falling apart in the next book over. But its changes stuck for years — the organic web-shooters carried straight into the Sam Raimi-era comics status quo, and 'the time Spider-Man gave birth to himself' remains the single weirdest sentence in Peter Parker's medical history that is entirely canonical.
Why It's Obscure
Peter Parker has been cloned, replaced, and rebooted. Only once has he been his own mother.
Gallery
Comic art of Spider-Man — no AI imagery, nothing mislabeled.
Sources
Every claim above is verified against at least two of these independent sources.
Bullpen Bulletins
- Spider-Man Became an Actual Spider to Give Birth to Himself — Screen RantVerifies: in the Changes arc, the Queen's kiss in Spectacular Spider-Man vol. 2 #16 injected a mutagen; Peter transformed into an actual spider, which gave birth to Peter Parker.
- Spectacular Spider-Man vol. 2 #20 — SpiderFan.orgVerifies: the Queen's kiss caused Spider-Man to transform into a giant spider across #15–#20, an Avengers Disassembled tie-in.
- Spectacular Spider-Man vol. 2 #19 — SpiderFan.orgVerifies: by #19 Peter has completed the transformation into a giant spider in the Queen's hive, as her gene-bomb plot unfolds.