`Spider-Man' director Raimi honed his craft as a teenager.(Knight Ridder Newspapers)

Byline: Terry Lawson

LOS ANGELES _ For Sam Raimi, it's just a small sling of the web from the strip malls of suburban Detroit to the skyscrapers of New York City seen in "Spider-Man 2."

"Everything you see in this movie comes out of what my friends and I learned making our little movies in Detroit," said Raimi, who grew up in Franklin, Mich. "While all the other kids in high school were going to football games and hanging out and playing sports, Bill Kirk, John Cameron, Scott Spiegel, Bruce Campbell, Josh Becker and Rob Tapert and I were pooling our allowances and using the money we earned snow-shoveling and grass-mowing to make our little movies.

"We did everything, trading jobs. It would be: `OK, on this one, you be the actor. I'll be the cameraman. Scotty'll come up with the script. We'll bring Bruce's old car in and run over a dummy. Who can make a dummy?' These were my friends. I could have never made it without them. I would never be here without that background."

With the exceptions of Tapert, Raimi's producing partner on successful TV projects like "Xena: Warrior Princess" and "Hercules: The Legendary Journeys," and Campbell, who has become a B-movie cult figure (and who chronicled the gang's early days in his funny autobiography "If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor" (Dimensions, $13.95 paperback), none has earned the notoriety of Raimi. "Spider-Man" holds the record for the biggest movie opening ever, earning $115 million in its first weekend, and is the most successful comic book adaptation of all time, with a box-office ...