NULL-MYTHS: "SPIDERMAN AND HIS WEB OF DOOM" (THE THING #7, 1953)

I probably wouldn't bother mentioning this minor story from Charlton's generally pedestrian horror-comic THE THING if it didn't happen to use the name "Spiderman" for its ghoul star, and if Steve Ditko didn't happen to be an occasional contributor to the title. But I'm not implying any influence, given that there's a very well-documented narrative as to how Jack Kirby brought the name "Spider-Man" to the attention of Stan Lee, who in turn teamed with Ditko on the resulting superhero. So this time the coincidence between "a title Steve Ditko worked on" and the name "Spiderman" seems to be nugatory, particularly because Ditko did not contribute to this issue and probably never read the comic except to check his own works.

An additional odd detail is that GCD attributes the story to Walter "The Shadow" Gibson, but if his other scare-stories are this lame, that explains why no one regards him as a horror-tale writer. An ordinary couple rents an old house from a creepy old fellow with the name of "Nemo" (though the name-use doesn't resonate with either Homer or Jules Verne). But Nemo tells the couple that no one should venture into the attic. He later tells the reader he knows no woman can resist opening a forbidden room, and sure enough, the wife does so. After a few false starts, Nemo, transformed into "Spiderman," attacks her, but only sucks her blood and lets her walk around the house like a zombie. The husband twigs to the plans of the arachnid menace and sets the house on fire, consigning Spiderman to burn up with his "web of doom."