Writing (about) Spider-Man

Or, How to Create a Character Beloved for 60+ Years

An Interview with George Tsakiridis

An actor, filmmaker, and scholar, George Tsakiridis holds a Ph.D. from the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago in Religion and Science. Interdisciplinary in spirit, his teaching, research, and writing engage the fields of science, religion, and philosophy. Selected as a Fellow for the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences last year, he now serves as an Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Religion at South Dakota State University, where he has won the Edward Patrick Hogan Award for Excellence in Teaching, the Outstanding Research in Humanities Award, as well as the J.P. Hendrickson Liberal Arts Faculty Scholar Award. Most importantly, and the context for this conversation, his edited collection, Spider-Man and the Sacred: Essays on Religious Themes in the Comics has just dropped (McFarland, 2026).

In your introduction, you argue that Spider-Man is best understood through the comics themselves. What does reading Spider-Man as a textual tradition – rather than primarily watching him through films or television – allow scholars to see that adaptations often obscure?

The Spider-Verse is a continually growing canon of literature – including films, TV, and so on – so there are a few different ways to look at this question. I think that understanding Spider-Man through the comics puts us in the original medium of the intended experience. Over time, the television and films have created new ways of understanding Spidey that are then read back into the comics, and the more writers and artists that have tackled Spidey, the more things evolve. For example, Todd McFarlane's Spider-Man in the early 90s was groundbreaking. 

My own way of looking at religion and theology is often through interpretation of texts, in all forms, so going back to the original comics can be an important part of this process for understanding the Spider-Man universe, especially since there is so much source material now. That said, it was also important to me in putting together this volume that I had chapters from different eras and series within Spider-Man's texts. Since everything since Amazing Fantasy #15 and subsequently, The Amazing Spider-Man is derivative, getting back to the comics gets us closer to the original mythos, which provides an opportunity to dig in and see the richness of the primary texts.

One of the strengths of Spider-Man and the Sacred is that it brings together contributors from different disciplines—religion, philosophy, literature, history, pop culture, and comics scholarship. As editor, what common thread or central question did you hope would unite these diverse essays?

That's a big question. I think any volume of this sort benefits from interdisciplinary study, in large part because you have different hermeneutical lenses looking at the material. Psychologists, historians, and religious scholars will all look at the text with different eyes, so you catch so much more nuance. Since Spider-Man has so much discussion of guilt and morality, it naturally can attract scholars of many fields as those issues are discussed in different ways across disciplines. Yes, I would say guilt and morality became a throughline.

Your chapter on the Sin-Eater examines one of Spider-Man's darkest storylines from the 1980s. Why do you think the Sin-Eater arc marked such an important turning point for Spider-Man comics, and what does it reveal about changing cultural attitudes toward guilt, morality, and redemption during that decade?

In one sense, Sin-Eater is an easy story arc to pick because it is one of the few explicitly religious characters in the Spider-Verse. My original intention was to do something out of Spectacular Spider-Man because it was a big part of the comic history of Spider-Man and the first true spinoff. As I dove into the two-story arcs of Sin-Eater from the 1980s, I found he had been resurrected more recently, and in a much more explicitly theological way.

There's a lot to unpack here. I think the recent run shows how much comics have changed over the years, where something so supernatural and explicitly religious would be such an epic story arc. However, to get to the heart of your question, the original story arc also told us so much about the 1980s in a changing urban landscape. The 1970s and 1980s brought us a number of vigilante storylines as people cried out for some sort of justice in a violent world. Sin-Eater taps into that, but even more so, it puts up a mirror to Peter Parker and the type of person he is. The Sin-Eater story arc shows us the internal struggle with morality that vigilantism might raise within all of us. The desire for justice is balanced with a desire for order and moral certainty. The Sin-Eater character is less exotic versus someone like Green Goblin or Lizard, yet he shows us so much about who we are, both individually and as a society.

The path that led me to Sin-Eater was really about doing something with Spectacular Spider-Man and falling into a rabbit hole with this really great character. As with a lot of research projects, you end up with something much richer than you intended by just following the literature.

Spider-Man has always carried the famous maxim, "With great power comes great responsibility," but your work suggests that his stories also wrestle with religion. Why does this aspect often get overlooked by both comic book fans and academics?

The famous maxim about responsibility is inherently moral and deals with the identity of Spider-Man, so religion can flow naturally from that. Because morality often entails issues of guilt and reconciliation, the foundational maxim keeps coming around for Peter Parker. He is forced to deal with the failure that created his moral center. Though he doesn't often speak of religion explicitly, his identity is formed in a moral core, which we see with many superheroes. Questions of religion are natural for Spidey because we often look for answers in something beyond us when confronted with our own shortcomings or with our own finitude.

As for the current relevance of the book, as popular as Spider-Man was when I was a kid, the films, specifically the Tom Holland films of recent years, have created enormous popularity for the character. Going back and looking at the comics starts to show us how much depth was present to begin with even before the films started being produced. I think we're just getting started with Spidey studies, which is a funny thing to say for a character that's been around for over sixty years.

Why has Spider-Man remained culturally relevant for more than sixty years despite dramatic changes in American society?

I think Peter Parker teaches us how to be a good person, but one who also struggles with normal things. If you look at some of the literature on Spidey, this theme recurs. Spider-Man is more of an "everyman" sort of superhero. He's someone we can all relate to because he struggles with the same basic problems we all do – relationships, finances, family – you could keep going. He's humble, for the most part, and when he isn't humble, it's shown as a moral failing. Spider-Man continues to be successful because he is so relatable. Tom Holland has done a lot to bring this relatability to the screen. Part of the reason Spider-Man continues to succeed as a moral exemplar is that the portrayals of Spidey have been done so well.

That's where a lot of the depth is, but I think the fun nature of Peter Parker/Spider-Man also draws us in. He has a sense of humor. So it is this relatability and good humor that connect with us and then allow us to go on the journey of self-reflection with him. Seeing a superhero struggle with the same things we all struggle with is so valuable, partly because he does succeed. He overcomes the struggle. And that is the hope for all of us: to overcome our own struggles and succeed both morally and in life.

Leslie Kreiner Wilson, Interviewer and Editor

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