While originally a product from Japan, a manga rather than a comic book, considering that it's BASED on a comic character I felt that this still falls within the realm of a forgotten comic. So with that, allow me to introduce you to Yu Komori AKA Spider-Man

Yu Komori was a studious if withdrawn middle school student living in Tokyo with his widowed aunt. While working on an experiment using radioactivity controllers, Yu was bitten by a spider that had somehow been exposed to his research materials. Sickened by the radiation from the bite, Yu discovered that he had received the spider's strength and wall-crawling during a confrontation with some bullies. Intrigued by this new development, he designed a costume and a pair of webshooters, deciding to keep his powers secret.

Yu initially had no intention of using his powers as a superhero, much like his American counterpart he entertained the idea of being a stunt performer, but when an electrically-powered cyborg(This universe's version of Electro) began an unstoppable crime spree, a million-yen reward was offered for the criminals capture. Hoping to use the money to help his childhood friend and secret crush Rumi pay for her mother's medical bills, Yu confronted Electro, but his inexperience led to his defeat, and Electro made off with millions in cash, killing the security guards in the process. A second encounter with Electro at a shopping mall would result in the death of the scientist who had created Electro, who was being forced to steal the money so he could have his humanity surgically restored. Realizing that the scientist's death doomed him to isolation, Electro went mad, blaming Spider-Man and vowing revenge. In a brief struggle, Yu struck Electro with all his strength, mortally wounding him, and revealing that Electro was Rumi's older brother. Although the media hailed Spider-Man as a hero for stopping Electro, Yu grieved that he had taken a life, and struggled with the guilt of having killed Rumi's brother. Rumi, however, did not blame Spider-Man for her brother's death.

Still reeling from Electro's death, Yu then became involved when a large lizard-like creature attacked the medical research company owned by the father of his best friend, Araki. Consulting Dr. Inumaru, a biologist friend and mentor of Yu's, Yu and Araki notice blood on the doctor's lab floor. Shortly after that, the pair are attacked by the Lizard, and Araki is abducted. Yu blames himself for not acting to save his friend.

Araki's father receives a ransom demand from the Lizard to deliver the notes on a new formula being developed, and Spider-Man promises to rescue Araki. As Araki's father makes the ransom drop, Spider-Man watches from a distance, and sees Dr. Inumaru, realizing that his mentor is the Lizard. Dr. Inumaru destroys the formula notes, and reveals that a year prior, Araki's father had tried to murder Inumaru over a new medical discovery. Surviving the attempt on his life, but abandoned in the harsh jungle, Inumaru fought to survive, until he somehow contracted a form of therianthropy, and learned that he could now assume a lizard's form when he was angry. Spider-Man saves Araki from Inumaru's crocodiles, and orders Araki and his father to flee. When Yu is unable to reason with the Lizard, even going so far as to tell the Lizard Spider-Man's true name, he is forced to kill the Lizard by throwing him to the crocodiles. At the last second, however, the Lizard reverts to Inumaru, suggesting that in his last moments, he found some peace. The betrayal and death of his mentor rattles Yu, and he becomes uncertain if, the next time he encounters a supervillain, he won't instead sympathize with them.

Shortly after the Lizard case, Spider-Man saved a group of men from a fugitive from America, a wrestler called the Kangaroo, who was wanted for murder. During a chase, the Kangaroo caused substantial damage to the city, for which Spider-Man was blamed. Matters were made worse when the owner of the Joho newspaper, which had initially offered the reward for Electro's defeat, decided to smear Spider-Man as a means of recouping the losses paying him the million yen had incurred. Soon Spider-Man was seen as a publicity-hungry hypocrite, and even when he saved a child from a stampeding mob caused by the Kangaroo, and donated his Electro money to a number of orphanages, public opinion was still against him. After taking a job at the Joho paper to earn enough money to search for Kangaroo, Yu and his friends are wounded during a series of hit and run accidents. Yu learns from the doctor treating their wounds that Kangaroo has put the entire city into a panic by stealing a deadly bacteria. The accidents that wounded Yu and his friends, and the riot that nearly kept them from receiving medical attention, are due to the citizens racing to escape the city before Kangaroo releases the bacteria. Yu, as Spider-Man, tracked the Kangaroo down, and defeated him, retrieving the bacteria and returning it to the police. However, the Kangaroo's words during the battle shook Yu's confidence in himself, and afraid that he may one day follow the same path as the Kangaroo, Yu threw his Spider-Man costume away thus mimicking the famous story of his American counterpart

However, Yu's retirement was short lived, as a Spider-Man imposter had appeared, attacking people seemingly at random. Although Yu tries to ignore this imposter, as the crimes escalate in severity, from assaults to thefts to attempted murder on random citizens, he vows to stop the imposter after Rumi is assaulted. But no sooner had Yu donned a new costume to begin the search for the fake Spider-Man, then he received a challenge from someone calling themselves Mysterio, who had promised to stop "Spider-Man"'s crime wave.

Meeting Mysterio on a bridge, with thousands of citizens watching, Spider-Man is humiliated and beaten, and during an escape from the police, a young boy is injured. Taking the boy to the hospital, Spider-Man learns that unless 500,000 yen can be raised for surgery, the boy will go blind. Taking a job as a stuntman to raise the money, Yu learns that the boy was never in any danger, but that the doctor lied to him in the hopes that Spider-Man would surrender. Mysterio appears to kill Spider-Man, but Yu leads him to fight on top of a speeding train, making Mysterio's spider-sense dampening mist useless. Disabling Mysterio's other gadgets, Yu shatters his helmet, revealing that Mysterio himself was the imposter. Mysterio is defeated, and Spider-Man's reputation is restored, but Rumi leaves after being unable to deal with Yu's secrecy.

Yu's life becomes further complicated when he saves a young girl from a gang in his civilian identity. In the confusion, Yu is accused of being a part of the gang, and is unable to explain his actions without revealing his powers. What's more, he recognized one of the assailants as a senior in his school, the kendo team's captain Mikawa. Although Yu's involvement with the assault was hushed up by the school, the rumour still circulated, and Yu soon found himself outcast from the other students. Devising a plan to trap the real assailants, Yu joins the kendo team and singlehandedly defeats every member with his powers. He repeatedly defeats Mikawa himself, taunting the team captain with every defeat, until Mikawa lashes out in anger, revealing himself to be a coward and hurting his own reputation. However, Yu is accosted by the brother of the girl who accused him, and beaten. After, he learns that Rumi has taken a job as a waitress in a nightclub. Yu is assaulted by the club's security for violating their rules on underaged patrons, but as he's ejected from the club, he promised Rumi that he'll return with his school uniform, telling the security men that he's the captain of the kendo team. This leads to the school administrators believing it was Mikawa who was assaulted at the club, further damaging his reputation. In a rage, Mikawa arranges to ambush Yu, and attacks him with the entire team. However, Yu defeats them all, and gets them to confess to the assault Yu himself was accused of. Araki, who was concerned for Yu, overhears the confession, and backs Yu's story up, but Yu alienates his friend by not revealing the nature of his newfound strength.

Yu later found himself and his friends in a hostage situation, when a psychotic American veteran went on a shooting rampage that culminated in several deaths and injuries, and a near-crash of a jetliner which Spider-Man narrowly averted.

Unable to deal with the stress of his actions as Spider-Man, as well as obsessing over Rumi, Yu falls in with a gang of drug dealers led by high-school student Inumaru (no known relation to the scientist who became the Lizard). Yu grappled with Inumaru's charm, coming to befriend the young criminal, but not wanting to fall into his sociopathic lifestyle. After stopping Inumaru's lackies from assaulting a girl, Yu and Inumaru's girlfriend found themselves kidnapped by Inumaru's yakuza rivals. Although Yu was able to defeat their abductors, he was unable to prevent Inumaru from being ambushed. Despite being outnumbered, Inumaru escaped, and tried to flee the city, only to be killed by the police.

Yu then encountered a strange woman only he could see, whom he had learned was responsible for several mysterious freezing deaths. Driven to near madness by her power, Yu was ready to kill her with a knife, when she instead threw herself off a bridge, rather then live with the weight of the lives she had taken.

Yu soon finds himself held prisoner, this time by revolutionaries who have kidnapped a high-ranking police official and a young civilian. Breaking free of his bonds and saving the fevered civilian, Yu nearly kills the ringleader, but relents at the last minute, shaken that he could come so close to murder.

When Rumi is murdered by a serial killer called the Mad Racer, Yu joins the police task force to catch him. Yu learns how to race from cycling instructor Taki Shogo, who was later revealed to be the Mad Racer himself. During a confrontation with Shogo, Yu took the wheel of Shogo's car, causing him to crash. Shogo was shot by a police sniper, and Yu was left mourning Rumi. Yu donates blood to a young man named Mitsuo, who soon develops spider powers of his own. However, Mitsuo is bitter at the world, and the power soon goes to his head. He pulls off several daring robberies, and seriously injures several police officers before Spider-Man confronts him. Mitsuo lies to Spider-Man and promises to reform, but Yu later returns home to find the Spider-Man suit and webshooters missing. Sure enough, "Spider-Man" soon begins attacking a steel company that had ruined Mitsuo's family. Mitsuo and Yu confront each other, but Mitsuo threatens the life of his own sister Yukiko, whom Yu has grown to love. However, Mitsuo's power and menace drives Yukiko insane, and she begs Yu to kill him; when Yu hesitates, Yukiko becomes completely unhinged. Learning that Mitsuo forced his own sister into prostitution, Yu becomes determined to defeat his power-mad doppelganger. During the fight between the Spider-Men, Mitsuo's spider powers fade, and he slips off a roof, falling to his death.

Yu's school comes under the influence of the seemingly telepathic Miss Miwa, a new teacher, who inspires the students to harm themselves and, as Yu learns, has killed others in the past. As Yu digs deeper into the mystery of Miss Miwa, he faces the fear that his friends and classmates may have been corrupted, the paranoia that he cannot escape Miwa's surveillance, the murder of the school principal, and Miwa's efforts to corrupt him. As the school comes under siege by the insane students, Spider-Man confronts Miwa, who reveals that she has no control over the power she possesses. As the school comes under police attack, Miss Miwa commits suicide by standing up, allowing the police to shoot her dead.

Yu is horrified when a man is murdered in his arms, torn apart by an invisible beast. He learns that the dead man was part of a yakuza group connected to the recording industry, and that he was part of a gang that assaulted a young singer who refused to bow to the mob's demands. Yu witnesses the other members of the gang mauled by the invisible tiger, and tries to appeal to the singer, to no avail. He then tries to warn the president of the recording company, who refuses to believe him. Out of fear, the mob sends an assassin to kill the singer; Yu confronts the assassin as the killer leaves the singer's apartment, but before he can act, the tiger, no longer invisible, attacks and kills the assassin. Yu finds the singer clinging to life, and contemplates letting her die to stop the murders, but in the end, he sympathizes with her and encourages her to lash out one last time. The tiger simultaneously slaughters the rest of the mobsters and recording company executives, no matter where they are, even killing the company president on a jetliner. As the singer finally dies from her injuries, Yu sees the tiger in her room, covered in gore, and understands that the rage she felt that lead to her creating the tiger is inside every person which is where the series ends.

Yu possessed powers almost identical to his American namesake Peter Parker, though there were some differences. Namely Yu also seemed to possess enhanced senses of hearing, vision, and smell, which could be considered on the level of Wolverine. Yu was also bulletproof, although he could be bloodied and bruised through repeated punches and by getting knocked around by super strong opponents.

All in all Japanese Spider-Man or Spider-Man the Manga, is a HIGHLY enjoyable read and a great way to tackle a familiar superhero in a new setting and with a new protagonist.

With that I leave you with this