Originally Posted by
Revolutionary_Jack
If I want to be open about why I take this personally. The reasons why I have always taken this personally, is that Brevoort's idea amounts to insulting the readers who bought and appreciated the grown-up version of Spider-Man. It amounted to rewriting history and shuffling the actual classic and mainstream Spider-Man out of the spotlight. It's an essentially a form of gaslighting at the publishing level, astro-turfing on the corporate level, where they basically lab-create a new version of Spider-Man and pretend this is the real deal. And I did feel hurt and insulted when that happened and when I heard these justifications. I just find the idea that people can't relate to Spider-Man if he's old absurd and basically Kafkaesque. It's insulting because when I was 8 years old, I did relate to the adult Spider-Man and obviously given how successful the character was and always has been, I can't have been the only one and in fact I probably numbered among the majority. Brevoort is basically saying that a reader like the eight-year old me was never their intended audience or that I simply didn't exist in their considerations. That didn't mean that I didn't like reading old adventures of the Ditko era, or that I didn't like Ultimate Spider-Man, or the Spectacular Spider-Man cartoon (whose creator wanted to age Peter up anyway)...but I never once wanted that to be the only version of the character. In the same way I like reading and seeing multiple versions of James Bond, Batman, Superman.
I have a pretty good memory, and I can tell you that until OMD and BND, the idea that Spider-Man was about youth was just absurd. The truth is that the notion that Spider-Man should be in high school or never graduate, or never grow-up is an entirely recent thing cooked up in the '90s and was never a real aspect of the character in the classic period (let's say, the first 25 years from 1962-1987).
-- There are far more Spider-Man stories in high school from the 90s and 2000s (starting with Untold Tales of Spider-Man on which Brevoort worked as an editor, to Bendis' Ultimate Spider-Man) than in all that came before. Go back to the original Lee-Ditko run, and you will find that most of it isn't set in high school, the main setting is the Daily Bugle office. There are more high school moments in Untold Tales than in the original run of the character.
-- Until 2008, every single cartoon, without exception was set in college or graduate level. Since 2008's The Spectacular Spider-Man, every single cartoon features Spider-Man in high school. Every video-game, with the exception of the Ultimate Spider-Man video-game, features Peter Parker older and an adult, and not as a teenager. Stan Lee's newspaper strip, which until the 2002 movie, was the primary exposure for most civilians to Spider-Man, a version that Lee had full creative control over, and contributed more regularly than he did on the 616 book, likewise features an older Peter Parker. That was the version I was exposed to as a kid (at 8 years old).
Brevoort says that it's selfish for one generation to lay claim on Spider-Man...but that applies far more so to him and Quesada and others. The truth is Spider-Man had his highest period of sales in the classic period, and far more eyeballs have seen and read a married Spider-Man than ever will gaze at BND and Slott's stuff. Only a small handful of people cared or was invested in the idea of "the classic version of Spider-Man which readers aren't introduced to" and their selfish claim over that (and utterly misinformed, deceitful, and wrong notion of that claim) now actively limits and prevents new readers from seeing the actual classic Spider-Man.