Originally Posted by
Revolutionary_Jack
Well take a look at the Japanese Supaidaman series and its great success. Again the major audience for Spider-Man is in merchandise and it's sold to an audience too small to care about or understand the story. Most people come know who Spider-Man is before they know he is Peter Parker. That is a basic empirical reality. Search your feelings, you know this to be true. Spider-Man as an icon has a transcendent value greater than his origins as Peter Parker. You can't simply conflate that with "the story of Peter Parker" and pretend that it's equivalent. It isn't.
To talk about the story of Peter Parker and what's important and essential to the value of that story, is quite apart from whether "Spider-Man only needs [X] character, everyone else is negligible". Because to take that logic to the absolute extent, which is what I am doing, Peter Parker wouldn't meet that requirement.
And what can be more personal or intimate in terms of civilian interactions than a love story?
Mary Jane is Marvel's biggest civlian character. Her and Peter are the only major superhero-civlian romance/marriage across Marvel history (Reed/Sue, Jean/Scott, Hank/Janet, T'Challa/Storm, Medusa/Black Bolt, Hawkeye/Mockingbird, Rogue/Gambit, Scott/Emma, Jean/Scott/Logan/Emma, Jessica/Luke). She's also in the top 10, or top 11 of female characters with most appearances in Marvel comics, and the only civilian. (Storm is #1 by the way). So one can argue that MJ strengthens and doubles down Peter's civilian connections than otherwise.
Some people don't like numbers, they don't like statistics. But at the end of the day, the objective hard facts of number of appearances, is one of the few real indicators you can have in terms of "what readers are interested in", "what consistently maintains its popularity and replenishes its fanbase", and "what stories and characters writers have frequently returned to again and again". This is what really can tell you what's what in terms of "who is the most important character after Peter".
All other arguments, "how Spider-Man was first introduced", "factory settings", "creator's vague intentions", that's basicaly subjective preferences masqueraded on shifting goalposts.