Quote Originally Posted by Prof. Warren View Post
Peter was not created to be an "archetype."
One Spider-Man became the success he did, the only hero in the post-war era to achieve in a very short time the popularity, esteem and fame of Batman and Superman...he became an archetype. Just like Superman and Batman did. That archetype isn't everything about his character and story and mythos but it does define a good part of his appeal.

If anything, he was created to demystify the heroic archetype of the costumed hero. The point was to turn the old, conventional notions of superheroes on their head.
And replace them with new conventional notions of superheroism. Spider-Man was definitely intended as a superhero and a new kind of one, but as per Stan Lee, the fact that Peter did what he did without any of the resources and abilities and advantages that Superman and Batman had, made him more of a hero than them. Read AF#15, and Lee's jibe in the opening caption about how Spider-Man is better than other "long-underwear characters" (i.e. Batman and Superman).

Making a living isn't what defined Peter.
A good part of the drama in his life across his run and adaptations is Peter supporting Aunt May, working a job he hates and that makes his life more complicated, and living in bad apartments and missing rent...so I have to say you are completely wrong on this. Heck take the Raimi movies, the entire subplot of Peter's relationship with his landlord and that line in Spider-Man 3 people like, "You'll get your rent when you fix this damn door." The Spider-Man PS4 game has a major sequence of Peter being evicted from his house and crashing in the couch in his Aunt's office.

It's how he grappled with his responsibilities to both his civilian life and his superhero life and the nuts and bolts of that
can easily change to suit the times.
I doubt that very much. Spider-Man Homecoming borrows the lifting machinery moment from the Master Planner Saga, but instead of a Peter in college and an experienced Spider-Man you now have a teenage Spider-Man, instead of Aunt May needing the isotope that could cure her or the memory of Uncle Ben, you have Tony Stark's craptastic "nothing without the suit" (which again he has Spider-Powers, he was always and will always be something without any suit). The emotional center of those stories can't be easily substituted.

Peter as a loner is still sympathetic. There's nothing to tag him as a creep.
I agree with that but many people read the Lee-Ditko era and see him as a future school-shooter or potential supervillain, Dan Slott himself said that number of times. Peter's first instinct was to become a celebrity and hack. He wanted to be the Justin Bieber of his time, not go out and get revenge.

Bendis, of course, also showed us in Ultimate Spider-Man what Peter would be like in the new millennium.
Yeah, and Bendis did that by ditching most of the melodrama. He said that for him, Peter always lived a charmed life and he never bought the "hard luck" concept one bit. So what he did was blend the Romita-Conway and other eras and put that in high school. Peter is now the cool kid and a boy band look-alike who as time passes and h stays in high school actually becomes the BMOC. He also wrote Peter as a teenager who is more mature than others at his age and smarter than the adults (easy to do in Ultimate Marvel). But the MCU Spider-Man splits the difference and has none of the advantages of either the classic or Ultimate one.