SPIDER-MAN

Long before any billionaire handed Peter Parker an armoured costume, he forged his own. In Web of Spider-Man #100 (1993), the story “Total War” by Terry Kavanagh and Alex Saviuk, a gang war over the Kingpin's old empire puts Spider-Man in front of the New Enforcers — a small army of hired villains carrying serious firepower. Ordinary spandex was not going to survive the evening, so Peter cooked up a pseudo-metallic compound in a lab and wore the result into battle: the silver Spider-Armor.

The plating did the job it was designed for. Gunfire bounced off it, and the shell shrugged off fire and electricity that would normally have ended the fight in seconds. The trade was written into every panel: the armor was heavy, and heavy is poison to a hero whose whole style is speed. A bulked-up, slowed-down Spider-Man lumbered through a battle he would usually have danced through, protected everywhere and graceful nowhere.

Then Thermite found the flaw. The Enforcer hit the suit with heat and then a freezing blast, the shocked metal turned brittle, and Spider-Man had to smash his own armor apart to escape being sealed inside it. The Spider-Armor's complete service record is a single issue: invented, tested, and destroyed between two covers, never rebuilt in that form — a one-night invention that later armours, from the MK II onward, quietly owe their existence to.