Spider-Man character growth vs. staying in high school and Joe Quesada

[Kaitou D. Kid]

To sound a bit controversial on the surface (but only on the surface)... I will grant there is a chance that Spidey would have stayed longer in high school if Stan knew how big Marvel would get. But only in the sense that they would start a floating timeline from Day 1.

The same is true for all the other Marvel IP's. I don't think that's at all unique to Spider-Man. The Marvel Universe supposedly existed for 12-15 years, but Franklin Richards was 5 already in like the late 1960's. It's around that time when Marvel drops the real time feeling altogether.

What that probably means is that the Lee/Ditko/Romita run would have more evenly split the high school and college era. I don't even think it means that it would have delayed any other events like Peter graduating college and getting married - part of why the Marvel Universe slowed down as much as it did is to make up for how fast it went in the beginning. With it going slower from the beginning, there is also less of a need for it to slow down.

(That's also why I don't have a problem with adaptations adapting Lee/Romita content from when Peter was 18-19 into the high school years when Peter was 16-17 - not a big deal IMO.)

However, none of that would mean what Quesada and Co. think it means. Both Lee and Ditko made it clear from the beginning they wanted to grow Peter up. The Marvel universe as a whole has grown since then, even after time started "slowing down" in-universe. Like, even after Marvel dropped any resemblance of real time, it's clear that at least 10 years passed in-universe way before we even got to OMD.

Basically, there is a chance that in hindsight, Stan would have made Peter's journey look more like what Greg Weisman planned for Spectacular Spider-Man. Peter stayed longer in high school there but ultimately there was still a plan to age him up. But even if that's somehow true, that's still a far cry from "Spider-Man is about youth" or from OMD having any sort of valid point.

I mean, it's not [that simple. There are other factors why Peter left college so fast, like Ditko wanting to give Peter a character arc and also cultural factors like Spidey becoming more popular with college students. My point though is that in a vacuum, wanting to more evently distribute the stories is the continuity is the only reason you might do things differently in hindsight - which literally has nothing to do with OMD or what Quesada is talking about.