How different do the Spider-Man and X-Men sides of Marvel feel from each other?

[Zelena]

Spider-man is about the Everyman while the x-men is a team that wants acceptance and standing up to social prejudice.
The primary villains are also different from each other From spider man Norman Osborn the green goblin was a corrupt businessman with superpowers and a crazy side while from the x-men magneto and apocalypse are powerful mutants with the former wanting mutant superiority and believes co existence with humans is a fool’s dream shield while the latter is a social darnwinest seeking the survival of the fittest.

I would say that Spiderman has nothing to prove to the world: he does what he feels he has to do.
He may be hated, he may be loved… he has faced all reactions along the years, it didn't change him. Well, the authors can't really change him. The readers love him for being first and foremost Peter Parker who hides his identity behind a mask and fights for justice. Peter Parker isn't usually at odds for being Spider-man, he is at odds for doing Spider-man's work.

On the other hand, X-men went through an evolution, they are more an author's creatures, more or less heroic, more or less moody, more or less sympathetic.
It depends on what the author wants to say.

[SpideyCeo]

I would say Spider-Man is about empowerment while the X-Men are about acceptable and solidarity.

Spidey is not about empowerment, hes the anti empowerment hero because he sacarfices power for responsibility or lack of. Xmen is about empowerment and individuality.

[SpideyCeo]

Certainly it feels at time that Spider-Man is in a whole other world from a lot of marvel franchises.

But the beauty of Spider-Man is he can effectively be inserted anywhere. He's the everyday common man like you and me, thus he's always the perfect POV character in any story. Stick him in everything from a Thor to an X-Men to a Guardians of the Galaxy story, and he just works. He's been doing it for decades.

I feel batman andnevrn wolverine play that role much better than Spidey.

[Kaitou D. Kid]

Spidey is not about empowerment, hes the anti empowerment hero because he sacarfices power for responsibility or lack of. Xmen is about empowerment and individuality.

He is about empowerment in a philosophical sense. He is the bullied outcast who gains powers and gets to say whatever he wants to say behind the mask. He also deals with class issues more often than X-Men (as does Miles Morales).

[pageturner]

Certainly it feels at time that Spider-Man is in a whole other world from a lot of marvel franchises.

But the beauty of Spider-Man is he can effectively be inserted anywhere. He's the everyday common man like you and me, thus he's always the perfect POV character in any story. Stick him in everything from a Thor to an X-Men to a Guardians of the Galaxy story, and he just works. He's been doing it for decades.

He also has the perfect set of abilities to fit in anywhere.

Strong but not insanely strong
Brilliant but not super big brain
agile near the top but not the top
fast but not a speedster

He is almost never useless. He works on the street, with major bad guys, in space, with the exception of in Namors world he fits everywhere.

[Mike_Murdock]

As a kid of the 90s, I loved the Spider-Man and X-Men cartoons. One of my favorite episodes is when they crossed over. My favorite era of the X-Men is the early Claremont era, which is filled with colorful villains. It also had a lot of scenes in New York. It probably didn't hurt that Claremont also did Marvel Team Up. To me, this feels like a false dichotomy possibly influenced by the Fox X-Men movies.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

To me, this feels like a false dichotomy possibly influenced by the Fox X-Men movies.

It's a false dichotomy created by Marvel Cinematic Universe fanboys, and also Ultimate Marvel fanboys, who totally don't understand the actual intent and approach of these comics.

At its core, each Marvel character is supposed to work and operate as a separate and standalone entity with self-reinforcing elements. That's the ideal. The whole shared universe crashing on each other's couch thing which people fetishize now is Plan B, where characters and titles that can't sell can gain value by being mashed together, or affixed to the coattails.

The "shared universe" is a classic carny trick that exists to make you part company with the cash in your wallet, nothing more, nor less. It has no inherent value to itself. That doesn't mean that stories don't exist that make creative use of the shared universe but at its core, the stories are not supposed to depend on it.