What's the best portrayal of Spider-Man and his mythos outside 616?

[CrimsonEchidna]

I think I've mentioned before that Spectacular Spider-Man, Into the Spider-Verse, and Spider-Man PS4 have all been my favorite adaptations.

[Ultimate Captain America]

Mid-20s? Just one step after being teenager? All that discussion about an "adult" Spider-man suddenly sounds so hollow...

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Mid-20s? Just one step after being teenager?

It's several "one steps". After 15, you have 16, then 17, then 18, then 19, then 20. Then 21, then 22, then 23, then 24.

Ten years have at minimum passed in Spider-Man's continuity, overlapping with the larger 616 timeline of 14 years since the FF shuttle launched.

All that discussion about an "adult" Spider-man suddenly sounds so hollow...

You are an adult at Age 18 last time I checked. You can vote/drink/drive and so on. You can also go to war and get killed/crippled at that age too.

[Hol]

Ultimate Spider-Man comic. Hands down. Just re-read the whole run. It's perfect. Bendis gets Peters voice IMO like no one else.

[PCN24454]

Hope you enjoyed the cherry you picked. You're welcome. Anyway it's moot because Peter doesn't drink anyway.

He does. It just goes badly.

[Russ840]

I would say the original Rami Trilogy is by far the best live action adaptation of Spidey and the 94’ animated series is the best cartoon.

Along with these I’d say the PS4 game and Ultimate Spider-Man comic.

[RD155]

Ultimate Spider-Man comic. Hands down. Just re-read the whole run. It's perfect. Bendis gets Peters voice IMO like no one else.

Won’t argue with you on how good the ultimate run was. Bendis absolutely nailed it. I honestly feel it’s one of the better Spider-Man runs ever. It was one of the main reasons I started collecting comics again back in the day. Bendis does get a lot
Of hate....at times even from me. However that USM Bendis/Bagley run was entertaining and fun as hell

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Bendis does get a lot
Of hate....at times even from me. However that USM Bendis/Bagley run was entertaining and fun as hell

Bendis hate is largely for his handling of Non-USM properties. Within Spider-Man, Bendis is a pretty respected and beloved figure, arguably up there with Lee/Ditko/Romita.

[Hybrid]

As I mentioned earlier, a lot of the hate is from Marvel overexposing him, relying on him for all the big events, as well as a multitude of different titles. He was like the creative lead that everyone had to answer to. That kind of complacency causes the line to suffer, much like how Slott’s run on Spider-Man went on way too long. I think Bendis suffered creatively from it as well, like with how Riri was so badly written.

His earlier stuff outside USM is also great. Like Jinx, Powers, Daredevil, and Alias. New Avengers was also important to getting the team to the center of Marvel, though I’m not the biggest fan because of the Sentry. God I hate the Sentry.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

As I mentioned earlier, a lot of the hate is from Marvel overexposing him, relying on him for all the big events, as well as a multitude of different titles. He was like the creative lead that everyone had to answer to. That kind of complacency causes the line to suffer, much like how Slott’s run on Spider-Man went on way too long. I think Bendis suffered creatively from it as well, like with how Riri was so badly written.

His earlier stuff outside USM is also great. Like Jinx, Powers, Daredevil, and Alias. New Avengers was also important to getting the team to the center of Marvel, though I’m not the biggest fan because of the Sentry. God I hate the Sentry.

To be honest, I really don't think Bendis was the best fit for team books. He's best working in small casts and a single protagonist. Stuff like Alias, Daredevil, USM...and of his later stuff, I love Infamous Iron Man, which is one of the best Doom stories.

I think JMS handled the New Avengers better as a team dynamic in his issues in ASM than Bendis did in his run. It's telling that Captain America Civil War borrowed so much from JMS' issues in ASM namely the "you move" speech (given to Sharon Carter) and Peter's interactions with Tony Stark albeit the movies nerfed it without the part that the two finally come to blows and part ways on a bad note.

[Mister Mets]

Bendis hate is largely for his handling of Non-USM properties. Within Spider-Man, Bendis is a pretty respected and beloved figure, arguably up there with Lee/Ditko/Romita.

There were some people who didn't care for Ultimate Spider-Man, but as it was in a different continuity, they were freer to ignore it.

A factor in the Avengers criticism was that someone who dpesn't like his run is losing a book they like (He did also make some radical changes even if sales were good.)

I don't recall as much Daredevil criticism, although it could be that the fan-base was a good match for his approach. It was always a more experimental title.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

A factor in the Avengers criticism was that someone who like his run is losing a book they like (He did also make some radical changes even if sales were good.)

I am generally not an Avengers fan. Aside from Roger Stern's run in the '80s and Hickman's run after Bendis (which was the most radical take on the Avengers, so much so that it made Bendis' stuff look quaint), I am not all that keen on them.

I don't recall as much Daredevil criticism, although it could be that the fan-base was a good match for his approach. It was always a more experimental title.

Chip Zdarsky said in a podcast with Stegman and Cates that the attraction Daredevil had to him, and maybe also Bendis, is that it was still a pretty small isolated corner, generally unaffected by big events and happenings in the wider MU so there was space to do what the writer wanted/needed without having to tie things in.

I think Mark Waid's run on Daredevil was the really controversial one in recent times.

[RD155]

Bendis hate is largely for his handling of Non-USM properties. Within Spider-Man, Bendis is a pretty respected and beloved figure, arguably up there with Lee/Ditko/Romita.

Ooooo I don’t know about that. That’s a bit of a stretch to put Bendis in that category as far as beloved Spider-Man writers/artist go. Again I do like Bendis quite a lot. For a while he was arguably my favorite writer. Personally I feel he never quite got a grasp of writing a more adult 616 version of Spider-Man. At times it felt like I was reading Ultimate Peter in the 616 universe. He couldn’t separate the two. I feel he always struggled to play in someone else’s sandbox. When he had complete control over something he was golden. USM and Powers are two great examples. It was his playground and he built that world and he absolutely nailed it. For whatever reason when he came into a world with a backstory he struggled to give characters individual voices. They all sounded the same.

Again I love Bendis but 616 Spider-Man definitely wasn’t his his strongest work in my opinion..

[Hybrid]

With the Avengers, I actually prefer it when they aren't treated as the center of the Marvel Universe. While it's true their push to the center began before the MCU, it was made much worse after the 2012 movie, where everything revolved around them and everyone else got shafted. You had the X-Men shoved off into a corner with no promotion, no video game or animated series appearances, and stuck in an endless loop of regurgitated stories while playing second-fiddle to not just the Avengers, but the Inhumans. God, the Inhumans is one of their biggest misfires I remember. The sole saving grace is Kamala Khan, but I've found many to believe her Inhuman connection is her greatest weakness, and I can see why.

The Fantastic Four is another example, given that their title was cancelled for three years and didn't return until it became clear Disney was buying Fox. Like with the X-Men, they got quietly pushed away so they can promote the Avengers above all else.

The main issue with the Avengers being treated as the core is that it makes the universe seem smaller when everything revolves around them. Marvel is so fixated on events, and all the big line-wide stuff is Avengers. Sure, you had your events for X-Men, but they were on the side such as the Inhumans vs. X-Men (which was a terrible series). Everyone having become an Avenger at one point or another makes the idea a lot less special, and all the most important stuff being related to them makes the others seem like add-ons.

Of course, this is related to the other media. The video games weren't allowed to have X-Men/FF just because of higher-ups not wanting to promote Fox, giving us the terrible Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite. The X-Men/FF were barred from appearing in animation as well, and that's a sad fact. The Avengers being the total focus of Marvel means everything else takes a backseat, and the characters, lore, worldbuilding and concept established outside of them don't appear, causing the Marvel Universe to seem only half as big as it really is.

Just look at the MCU: In the movies, Spidey wants desperately be an Avenger. In the comics, he's always been much closer to the Fantastic Four. A lot of the issue with MCU Spider-Man is that they made him an Iron Man fanboy, too reliant on the shared universe, and of course, the Avengers factor way too much into his story.

I have quite a bit of contempt for the Avengers, but a lot of it is situational, due to Marvel's blatant favoritism that spawned from the movies. There were some great stories, like with the main series and West Coast Avengers in the '80s, the Busiek run and the Hickman run, as well as different sub-titles like Thunderbolts and Young Avengers. My distaste for the Avengers will likely go away soon enough, given that Marvel's favoring of them will likely stop soon due to recent events.

That's another reason I'm glad the X-Men and Fantastic Four have their film rights back in Marvel Studios' hands. While we haven't see how big this is with the MCU yet, the fact that the X-Men are given a full-on relaunch with over a dozen new titles planned alongside a "reboot" that redefines them after countless years of being in a rut, and the Fantastic Four have also returned to being the greatest team of the setting (and we're getting Future Foundation, Doctor Doom and an Invisible Woman mini as a bonus), while both are allowed to appear in media adaptations again, I'd say these two franchises are back in Marvel's good graces.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

I have quite a bit of contempt for the Avengers, but a lot of it is situational, due to Marvel's blatant favoritism that spawned from the movies.

I prefer things when Avengers were a dumping ground for second-stringers and not Marvel Justice League. As the center of all things Marvel, the Avengers are trash.

There were some great stories, like with the main series and West Coast Avengers in the '80s, the Busiek run and the Hickman run, as well as different sub-titles like Thunderbolts and Young Avengers.

One reason I love Hickman's run is that mid-way through it stops being about the Avengers and ends up being the Reed Richards story with T'Challa and Namor as two incredibly violent sitcom enemies who literally can't stand each other. His run on New Avengers/Avengers is a sequel to his run on Fantastic Four and of course it leads to Secret Wars 2015 which ends up being a Doom versus Reed story on epic scale. Doctor Doom re-establishes himself as the alpha and omega of all Marvel villains and I love that bit where God Emperor Doom yanks out Thanos' skeleton from his skin to remind everyone who's in charge.