SPIDER-MAN

By 1971 Peter Parker had had enough of being Spider-Man. In Amazing Spider-Man #100 he brewed a serum meant to strip away his spider-powers for good — and drank it. It backfired spectacularly: instead of losing his powers, he grew four extra arms. Six arms, one horrified wall-crawler, and a secret he couldn't exactly hide under a jacket. Thus began "The Six Arms Saga," Amazing Spider-Man #100–102.

Desperate for a cure, Peter turned to Dr. Curt Connors — who had a lab at his Southampton summer house. Bad timing: a shipwrecked stranger was also washing up nearby, a pale, bloodthirsty scientist named Michael Morbius, whose own experiment had turned him into a living vampire. Amazing Spider-Man #101, "A Monster Called Morbius!" — Roy Thomas's first issue as writer, Gil Kane on pencils — gave Marvel its first Bronze Age vampire and its first six-armed hero in the same month.

The saga piled on: Connors transformed into the Lizard again, Morbius hunted for blood, and a six-armed Spider-Man fought them both while trying not to be seen. By #102 the extra arms were gone — but the story stuck around. Decades later, a What If...? argued that keeping the arms would have let Spider-Man save Gwen Stacy — and even defeat Thanos. All because a cure went sideways.