Where should I start reading Spider-Man? There have been over 50 years of Spider-Man comics mostly across two universes, Ultimate and 616.

Universes!? Marvel comics started a long time ago, and their characters were all set in the same world, so they could meet each other and team up and stuff. But in the year 2000, someone had the idea to create a new world, where they could create modern versions of the origins and stories of Marvel characters like Spider-Man. This new Ultimate universe was denoted as Universe-1610, while the original was denoted Universe-616.

So the original Spider-Man comic which began in 1963, Amazing Spider-Man, continued in the 616 universe, but so did this new Ultimate Spider-Man comic in the 1610, or Ultimate universe. He exists in the same world as a lot of other comics under the Ultimate title like Ultimate X-Men.

In 2015, a comic book event called Secret Wars destroyed both of these universes and create a new, single Marvel universe with characters from both.

Here are all of the best starting points for reading Spider-Man, with a little information and Marvel Unlimited and Book links for each:

Marvel Universe (Universe-616)

Ultimate Universe (Universe-1610)

After Secret Wars

In 2015, Secret Wars reshaped the Marvel Universe. This is a fantastic story with both the 616 and 1610 Spider-Men playing big parts and resulted in the two sharing the same universe. Their new series are fantastic jumping on points if you want to read current adventures of Spider-Man.