Time to Take a #Selfie… Don’t You Mean a Spidey?

The first appearance of the Vulture and Spidey Selfies

At my daily job there is one phrase I hear the most, SELFIE! Don’t get me wrong, I’ve taken my fair share of selfies and it can be fun. The main problem I have with selfies is where people give credit to for the creation of selfies. Most people think that social media created the selfie. Today I’m going to tell everyone were the first true selfie came from. Spider-Man!

Is everyone done laughing now? Good. Hear me out, recently I was at work when I saw a guest walk up to Spider-Man and ask for a selfie (for those of you who don’t know I work at Island of Adventure Orlando at Marvel Super Hero Island) Spidey told the guest that he invented the selfie. Everyone around had a good laugh (including myself), but Spidey was very adamant that he created it. This looks like a job for A Spidey Fan.

Before I started my research into this I had to go pick up my subscription at my local comic shop. It’s been a while so I had a few months of back issues to catch up. One issue in particular caught my eye- Amazing Spider-Man issue 01.3 Learning To Crawl. For those of you who don’t know what the Learning to Crawl arc is, the basic rundown is a retelling of when Peter first became Spidey with a new modern twist and some new ideas. Yeah, I know, another retelling series, but in this issue it showed me something very interesting. It showed the first battle between The Vulture and Spidey. Why is this a big deal? This helps the Spidey Selfie cause.

Amazing Spider-Man issue 2 dates back to May of 1963. It’s your typical early Spider-man story: Peter needs money, battles a new villain, loses, comes up with a way to fight villain, beats villain, finds a way to make money, and him and Aunt May live happily ever after until the next issue (until part 2 of the issue). Simple, right? Here is where Spidey said he created the selfie. How did Peter make his money? He sold pictures of Spider-Man he took to the Daily Bugle. As we all know Peter is Spidey, so in essence he was selling pictures of himself that he took himself. Isn’t that the definition of selfie? So I think Spidey won this round.

Were there selfies before 1963? Most likely. Selfies have probably been around as long as cameras have been around, but it’s always fun to hear Spidey take credit for it. To his credit, he could be the first celebrity to do selfies (so take that Kim Kardashian). Until next time, Web-heads.