Can someone explain chronology of all the main Spder-Man titles?

[FeniusFarsaid]

I'm very confused by how many different Spider-Man titles there have been. I understand that Amazing Spider-Man is the main one and that it's been going on pretty much continuously for like 40 years but where do Spider-Man, Peter Parker The Spectacular Spider-Man, Web of Spider-Man, etc. fit into this? I also understand the original book titled just Spider-Man was created for Todd McFarlane. Were any of the other Spider-Man titles created for a specific reason, either in continuity or in the real world? Or did they have no purpose beyond being just a second/third Spider-Man title?

[Revolutionary_Jack]

I am a little confused about your use of the word chronology. Do you mean which titles came first and so on?

The short answer to your paragraph, is that most of the issues in Spectacular Spider-Man, Web of Spider-Man, and other satellites are, with some exceptions, intended to be self-contained and standalone. So you can read those issues theoretically in any order and each issue will have notes somewhere specifying its connection to the ASM run of its time.

[Mister Mets]

Most of the titles existed so there would be more Spider-Man titles, and occur at roughly at the same time as the Amazing Spider-Man issues published at the same time.

There is sometimes a purpose for it. Marvel Team-Up always has team-ups. Peter Parker the Spectacular Spider-Man was originally supposed to focus more on Peter's college life, while Amazing Spider-Man focused on the Daily Bugle. Later runs featured crime-centered stories.

Sometimes the purpose of the title is determined by the creative team. When Todd McFarlane had his Spider-Man book, he basically had Spidey fighting monsters. After he left, the title became more of an anthology, with follow-ups to earlier work (Ann Nocenti doing a sequel to the Mad Dog Ward, Erik Larsen telling a second Sinister Six story, Steven Grant returning to the Punisher, JM DeMatteis doing a three issue villain spotlight) and then eventually it focused on street-level crime under Howard Mackie.

There are some exceptions.

Untold Tales of Spider-Man was set in the same time as the Lee/ Ditko comics. The main idea was to look at what it would be like if there were a second Spider-Man title at that time.

The anthologies Webspinners and Tangled Web often featured untold stories, with Tangled Web focusing on people affected by being around Spider-Man.