Spider-Man is Marvel’s most popular hero, and has been for a very long time. The Amazing Spider-Man jumped to the top of the heap at Marvel, and while it would take some time before it was outselling everything else, that day would eventually come. Spider-Man is an amazing character, and that’s really all there is to it. Stan Lee and Steve Ditko were definitely on to something with the character, and that has paid dividends with comic fans, as they were able to get a character that would grow with them. Spider-Man proved that the more human, character-focused stories of Marvel could defeat the more fantastic stories of their distinguished competition, and since then, comic readers have been blessed with some amazing stories.
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Over the years, Spider-Man fans have been though some high highs and some very low lows. We’ve gotten some best of all time stories, but we’ve also gotten a lot of bad ones. Over the years, there have been misconceptions about the character and his history, and this has hurt Spider-Man in the eyes of many. These five things are what everyone gets wrong about Spider-Man, and they’ve done damage to the character and his fans.
5) Spider-Man Isn’t Actually Relatable
Many consider Spider-Man Marvel’s most relatable hero, but I’m here to tell you something — Spider-Man is not actually relatable, even when you take the superpowers out of the equation. Peter Parker is a super genius, near the level of people like Reed Richards and Tony Stark. His parents were secret agents, and his aunt was a homeowner in New York City. He may have been a “nerd”, but in reality he was extremely good-looking, and has dated multiple supermodel-caliber woman, including who one who was legitimately a supermodel. He can somehow afford pretty nice apartments in Manhattan despite mostly working low-paying jobs. Sure, he’s poor and he’s gets fired from his jobs, but most readers have as much in common with Peter Parker as a poor American person has with a poor person with from a third world country.
4) The Clone Saga Actually Wasn’t Terrible
The mid ’90s Spider-Man Clone Saga is one of the most panned Spider-Man stories of all time. Marvel brought back the Spider-Clone from The Amazing Spider-Man #149, and built an entire multi-year story out of it, even revealing that the Peter Parker we had been following since 1975 was actually a clone (this was eventually revealed to not be the case). The story gets a lot of criticism, and there are lots of good reasons for that — it went on way too long, the creators who started it all left the Spider-Man books before it ended, and there wasn’t a plan for the ending. However, the first year or so of the Clone Saga was actually pretty great. Ben Reilly was a compelling character, Kaine was an awesome shadowy villain, and there were a lot of really cool issues. Now, things did get pretty bad after a while, but it’s honestly better than it gets credit for. I would even say that the last story, “The Final Chapter”, was mostly pretty good. The only problem with that final story is that it brought back Aunt May, but otherwise it was pretty great, an ending that almost made up for the low quality of the later stages of the Clone Saga.
3) Spider-Man Being a Loser All the Time Is Depressing
This one is more for Spider-Man editorial than for fans, because honestly, the fans have known this for ages. There’s this idea that Spider-Man is “relatable” because he losses all the time. That he wins his fights as Spider-Man, but Peter Parker loses and that’s what people like about Spider-Man. This is, frankly, an asinine opinion. A character who loses all the time isn’t compelling, they’re depressing. Watching Spider-Man constantly get beat by life in a million different ways is one of the main problems with The Amazing Spider-Man for a lot of readers. There’s nothing wrong with hardships in a character’s life — in fact, there should definitely be hardships — but when a character’s whole life is a series of failures, like we’ve been getting from Spider-Man for almost 20 years now, it gets too depressing to follow for long periods of them.
2) Angry Spider-Man Isn’t as Scary as the Memes Say
There’s a meme going around about how dangerous Spider-Man is when he’s angry. Now, obviously, Spider-Man is stronger than any human in the real world. He can bench press around ten tons and has been showing holding up massive amounts of weight. However, compared to some of the heavy hitters of the Marvel Universe, including some of his own enemies, even an angry Spider-Man isn’t all that dangerous. The feats that most people point to are Spider-Man holding up collapsed buildings, usually for a few moments in order to allow people to escape or to allow himself to escape. What people don’t realize is his position those situations and the distribution of the weight play a much bigger role in these feats than his physical strength. It’s the same reason you can use a level to lift insane amounts of weight — physics and leverage. Spider-Man is strong and can do a lot of damage, but in the pantheon of super strength, he’s closer to the bottom of the ranks than the top, even with adrenaline taken into account.
1) Spider-Man Would Do More for the World As a Scientist than as a Superhero
Make no bones about it, Spider-Man is definitely a great hero. He’s saved countless lives over the years. New York City would have been wiped off the map many times over the years without Spider-Man, and he’s been integral in battles that saved the world. However, when it comes right down to it, Spider-Man would do more for the world as a whole with his intelligence than with his powers. Spider-Man is genius that is respected by people like Reed Richards, Tony Stark, and Hank Pym. He was able to create his webshooters and web fluid at his home in Queens with just the things that he could find at home. If Peter Parker battened down and embraced science, he would make a huge difference in the world. Spider-Man is great, but if Peter Parker was serious about saving the world, he’d give up the tights for a lab cat.
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