Betty Brant
Elizabeth "Betty" Brant-Leeds is a fictional character appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics, usually in stories featuring the superhero Spider-Man. She is the personal secretary of J. Jonah Jameson at the Daily Bugle,[1] and served as both a supporting character and love interest for Peter Parker. She later became a reporter for the Daily Bugle and the girlfriend of Flash Thompson/Agent Venom, later marrying Ned Leeds/Hobgoblin.
Betty Brant
The Amazing Spider-Man #4 (September 1963)
Stan Lee (writer)
Steve Ditko (artist)
Elizabeth "Betty" Brant
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Betty Brant-Leeds
Since her inception, the character has been featured in various media adaptations, such as feature films, television series and video games. In film, she was portrayed by Elizabeth Banks in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy, and by Angourie Rice as a teenaged version in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) films Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019), and Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) and the web series The Daily Bugle (2021–2022), with Antonina Lentini voicing another version in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023); the What If…? Spider-Girl incarnation of Betty Brant also cameos in Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions, Spider-Man Unlimited, and Across the Spider-Verse.
Publication history[edit]
Created by writer Stan Lee and artist Steve Ditko, she first appeared in The Amazing Spider-Man #4 (September 1963).[2]
Other versions[edit]
Ultimate Marvel[edit]
In the Ultimate Marvel universe, Betty Brant is again the loyal secretary of J. Jonah Jameson at the Daily Bugle.[25] She is a headstrong woman, trying to get by in life and having as much fun on dates as she can get. This version has a considerably different personality as she goes as far as making bets about the deaths of missing co-workers. She also lacks her mainstream counterpart's brown bob hairstyle and instead sporting long black hair (but her design was not concrete at the beginning of the series). She worked herself up into a rage while trying to build the Bugle website to which Peter Parker took over from her and got his job at the Bugle as a webdesigner.
Jameson rejects her request to find out more about the disappearance of Nick Fury, alleging that a brief affair with Kraven the Hunter before his arrest proves that she is incapable of any reporting assignment beyond covering college fashion shows.[26] Sometime after the original Spider-Man's death, Betty later gets the footage of the new Spider-Man stopping some muggers and presents this to Jameson. The story of a new Spider-Man makes the headlines.[27] Betty is subsequently killed by Venom after trying to expose the new Spider-Man's identity.[28]