Doctor Octopus first appeared in The Amazing Spider-Man #3 (July 1963), created by writer Stan Lee and artist Steve Ditko. Lee recounted: "Usually in creating a villain the first thing I would think of was a name, and then I would try to think of, 'Well, now that I've got the name, who's the character going to be and what will he do?' For some reason, I thought of an octopus. I thought, 'I want to call somebody Octopus. And I want him to have a couple of extra arms just for fun'. But I had to figure out how to do that". The character reappeared in The Amazing Spider-Man #11-12, then again in #31-33.