Originally Posted by
Revolutionary_Jack
It's rarely executed well for one thing. Either Luthor's plans are too Mary Sue-ish in its complexity for it to be believably undone by Superman punching him or other characters are made to look dumb to make Luthor look good.
Being a racist, or a bigot to aliens, isn't a human motivation. It's a human flaw and human defect, but not a rational human motivation.
When you said Luthor Potus as President was relevant, I assumed you were referring to Trump and not Bush/Cheney. And that's the context this thread discussed that beat with. In any case Luthor Potus has less to say about Bush/Cheney and the Iraq War then it does about Trump. Where is the DC version of 9/11 that leads to a controversial war that divides people and divides American public and society.
Allegorically, Marvel did that with stuff like CIVIL WAR (albeit not too well since Millar's totally clueless about political allegories and America in general, typical Brit and all that). You had the Stamford Incident that led to overzealous reactions and fears, and paranoia that divided the superhuman community with emotions blinding reason...whether that's too forgiving or too charitable an interpretation of what America did in Iraq is of course another question altogether. The Bruce Timm cartoons at the DCAU, Justice League did that too with the Cadmus Story there, and of course the cartoon president there is implied to be Dubya.
Well Osborn isn't to be underestimated either. He's self-destructive and unstable but he's capable of destroying and killing a whole bunch of people and stuff along the way and causing a lot of damage.
I tend to think that it's hard for people to accept, offensive you might say, that people like Trump and Osborn are real dangerous threats and not really super-genius masterminds who are undefeatable. It would be flattering if some super-genius like Luthor was behind everything. But mostly you get a guy who's cunning, violent, and incredibly lucky. The thing is that all these guys need to do is get power and influence once. 99/100 times they would not get there, but the one time they do, tends to do a lot of harm and so on.
Spider-Man as a comic, and this is rarely commented on, is fundamentally a humor comic and also a romance comic, with bits of social commentary there. It's got strong connections to Will Eisner's The Spirit and also Carl Barks' Donald Duck comics. It borrowed a lot of ideas from outside traditional superhero genres. So that gives it a bigger thematic density then Marvel's other heroes in general. Spider-Man being at heart a comedy also makes him similar to Superman. I mean Superman works best when it's in a lighter, comic vein, and isn't all some weird Nietzschean/Randian/Rockwellian view about being a god among people. There are serious stories with Superman, and also Spider-Man, just as there are comedy stories with Batman.
Also it's true what you say that Marvel heroes are generally very much tied to society, institutions, and groups and so on, whereas Spider-Man is fundamentally a very individualistic story. I mean Daredevil and the Punisher are stories about the legal system, its flaws, its successes, and its weaknesses. You can argue that Jessica Jones and Luke Cage are in the same vein too. Whereas Spider-Man's story is fundamentally a personal story that touches on a bunch of issues. A Fantastic Four comic is about family and exploration, The Mighty Thor and Dr. Strange are fantasies (High Fantasy, and Occult and Urban Fantasy), Iron Man and Capain America are both about the military-industrial complex (from above and from below respectively) and so on.
Whereas Spider-Man isn't tied to any one thing. So that makes it very much like Batman and Superman, because Batman sure is a detective and Superman is a reporter but that doesn't limit or define their stories a great deal. Batman fights ordinary punks but he also fights Clayface and Solomon Grundy. Same with Superman.