Is Peter Parker truly a loser compared to other heroes?

[SpideyCeo]

I love spidey one of the best heroes in the world, but compared to supes, batman, captain america, ironman and wolverine, he falls short of being a mainly idolized man fantasy, and to much of a nerdy torture porn type. I think thats the problem spiderman, he has creators and writers who just wont develop him into any sucessful male empowerment who looked up to and always somehow failing and looking weak. Meanwhile, heroes like superman or captain america are the lynchpins of respect yet mature masculinity and ironman and wolverine are the shallow desires of masculinity and respect(especially to women) and i feel thats what makes them better heroes than spiderman, they fufill expectation for their target audience most of the time while peter has to be written as a neurotic or ooc loser as a part of his teenage/young adult appeal but ends up hurting his image as a character who mostly has writers screeing him over for some reason relating to manchild habits.

So who agrees, the peter parker concept is mostly undermined intentionally out of sheer contempt of the character to me when he deserves to be treated like one of the greatest heroes. Even other characters like spiderman are done better on other mediums because at least they keep the characters entertaining and desirable to the reader via finding some way to root for his struggles without whining or being a crybaby via angst. Like Dick Greyson or Beast Boy. Or hell even Naruto without the sasuke angst.

[Kaitou D. Kid]

I don't agree with any of this.

I can't think of a superhero that embodies male empowerment more than Spider-Man. How many other male heroes are as emotional as Spider-Man while still being cool? How many other male heroes can be badass without being aggressive? Who else is as good with kids as Peter in JMS' run without it coming off emasculating?

Every male hero prior to Spider-Man was a stereotypical alpha male. Spider-Man was the James Dean of superheroes. He was the first to challenge notions about masculinity. That is very empowering. To turn him into a "male fantasy like Wolverine" is to disempower any man who is not Flash Thompson.

[SpideyCeo]

I don't agree with any of this.

I can't think of a superhero that embodies male empowerment more than Spider-Man. How many other male heroes are as emotional as Spider-Man while still being cool? How many other male heroes can be badass without being aggressive? Who else is as good with kids as Peter in JMS' run without it coming off emasculating?

Every male hero prior to Spider-Man was a stereotypical alpha male. Spider-Man was the James Dean of superheroes. He was the first to challenge notions about masculinity. That is very empowering. To turn him into a "male fantasy like Wolverine" is to disempower any man who is not Flash Thompson.

I have a list man. Wolverine is one of these examples ir9nically and hes a alpha pussyslaying stud. Peter is one of tge kost agressive and irrationally impulsive heroes in fiction in my opinion.

but Peter Parker is the regular "guy in the street". If Peter can, he will sacrifice himself to help a mon to get enough money to aoid being kicked out with his three kids. Would any other superhero do something like that?

Have you read any books with daredevil. A man that does that through an actual job and skill. Peter is just a pre mature version of Barry Allen. And before you bring up how real spidey is, you must apply how real it to relate to peter, reminder he has a genius level intellect and super powers yet still acts like a struggling college student meanwhile barry and matt have gotten their acts together and balance there regular lives by acting on their struggles by getting productive jibs that compliments their powers, matt is blind but is a attorney and barrys a living motion generator and has a darker/stressful life balancing his hero/regular life yet hes a professional investigator.

He's not a loser, but he is perceived that way. He does face more setbacks than the typical superhero.

I just have fans fatige from expecting something settled in his victories and reputation/perception. Im not saying he should be chadly like ironman, but im sick of him not becoming akin to johnny storm already. Hes still a simp. This is why batman is still more popular than he is. Batman has a better perception of being the man we want to be, and still act like deep down. Peter....is a defeatist fantasy that men are going to have psychotic problems down the road due to how peter always keeps repeating his immature and self defeating habits.

[Kaitou D. Kid]

I have a list man. Wolverine is one of these examples ir9nically and hes a alpha pussyslaying stud. Peter is one of tge kost agressive and irrationally impulsive heroes in fiction in my opinion.

None of this is true. Wolverine is consistently portrayed as more aggressive, less in touch with his emotions, and worse with kids than Spider-Man.

[Alan2099]

Peter is a looser in the same way that Charlie Brown is a looser.

A lot of it's bad luck and lack of respect, but we admire them because they're good people, they loyal to their friends, and they dust themselves right back off and get going again.

It's not that Peter has more bad stuff happen to him than your average hero, it's just that the bad stuff is more real and relatable. While Bruce Banner is dealing with a new version of his alternate personality and Ironman has to replace parts of his body with metal to stay alive, Peter is late on his bills and lost his costume in the laundry mat.

[Kaitou D. Kid]

Some of the impression that Peter is a loser comes from the culture and not the comics.

The bullying part of Peter's life is the best example of this. People have this idea that Peter was constantly punched and shoved in lockers by Flash, but the Lee/Ditko Peter was the least physically bullied of all the versions. Most of the bullying in the Ditko run is social bullying, and Flash only physically assaults him once. The impression Peter was constantly wedgied and shoved in lockers came from Hollywood's portrayal of nerds and not from an actual Spider-Man comic.

Later versions of the origin show Peter get a lot more bullied than under Lee/Ditko. This is because culture impacts comics as much as comics impact culture. The idea that Peter is a loser probably started out the same way. Some people who later became writers noticed surface-similarities between Peter and beta males in sitcoms, and then projected the latter onto Peter.

[NC_Yankee]

[QUOTE=SpideyCeo;4986127]I love spidey one of the best heroes in the world, but compared to supes, batman, captain america, ironman and wolverine, he falls short of being a mainly idolized man fantasy, and to much of a nerdy torture porn type. I think thats the problem spiderman, he has creators and writers who just wont develop him into any sucessful male empowerment who looked up to and always somehow failing and looking weak. Meanwhile, heroes like superman or captain america are the lynchpins of respect yet mature masculinity and ironman and wolverine are the shallow desires of masculinity and respect(especially to women) and i feel thats what makes them better heroes than spiderman, they fufill expectation for their target audience most of the time while peter has to be written as a neurotic or ooc loser as a part of his teenage/young adult appeal but ends up hurting his image as a character who mostly has writers screeing him over for some reason relating to manchild habits.

So who agrees, the peter parker concept is mostly undermined intentionally out of sheer contempt of the character to me when he deserves to be treated like one of the greatest heroes. Even other characters like spiderman are done better on other mediums because at least they keep the characters entertaining and desirable to the reader via finding some way to root for his struggles without whining or being a crybaby via angst. Like Dick Greyson or Beast Boy. Or hell even Naruto without the sasuke angst.[/QUOTE
I do not agree with this. Why? 1: Think of all the hot women Peter was with. MJ, Felicia and Gwen and that is just a start. 2: Other heroes have their issues as well. Alcoholism ( Iron Man) being just one example.

[Riv86672]

Spidey as a dominant alpha male super stud winner.
No, that’s not the Spidey i fell in love with or want.

It’s funny but Spidey’s always offered me something I can relate to.
I got different things from the same stories depending on where I was in life.
As a kid it was pure escapism, pretty colors, cool villains etc. A few years later it was the less than ideal home life, the missing father figure, the cash problems, the shitty school environment; all things he didn’t run away from, but didn’t always triumph over either.
Then there was the balancing of work and personal life, the romantic entanglements (because for as many hot women as he’s gotten with, those women have always been a source of drama and heartache for this guy), the just plain growing up. Eventually there was marriage and all the great and not so great stuff that comes w. it.

I mean, i like Wolverine, and Tony Stark, and Cap etc. but, I’m not the best at everything I do, or a handsome self made genius, or a role model.
I’m a guy who’s always just tried his best to do the right thing and it hasn’t always worked out for me that’s okay.

[Mia]

Spidey as a dominant alpha male super stud winner.
No, that’s not the Spidey i fell in love with or want.

It’s funny but Spidey’s always offered me something I can relate to.
I got different things from the same stories depending on where I was in life.
As a kid it was pure escapism, pretty colors, cool villains etc. A few years later it was the less than ideal home life, the missing father figure, the cash problems, the shitty school environment; all things he didn’t run away from, but didn’t always triumph over either.
Then there was the balancing of work and personal life, the romantic entanglements (because for as many hot women as he’s gotten with, those women have always been a source of drama and heartache for this guy), the just plain growing up. Eventually there was marriage and all the great and not so great stuff that comes w. it.

I mean, i like Wolverine, and Tony Stark, and Cap etc. but, I’m not the best at everything I do, or a handsome self made genius, or a role model.
I’m a guy who’s always just tried his best to do the right thing and it hasn’t always worked out for me that’s okay.

I posted this on the Batman board. But it applies here:

https://www.knowledgeformen.com/what-is-a-beta-male/


It's an article on what constitutes an alpha male vs. a beta male. To me Peter (at least the 90's version I was introduced to when I started reading and the version I prefer). Is actually a real Alpha male. Alpha men (and women). They don't live to impress others or keep score. They live life on their terms and for what makes them happy.

[scilover]

I wouldn’t say he’s a loser compared to the other heroes. He’s more laidback and more of a jokester compared to for example captain america. Plus, the writers always want to make sure spiderman stays young and fun.

[jackolover]

You can’t have Spider-Man be a Superman that’s all-powerful. The character was created so we can relate to his insecurities, like we have. I wouldn’t call them weaknesses, but if Spider-Man was unbeatable, you wouldn’t be able to feel the struggle he goes through.

As to depicting Peter Parker as a loser, there are two schools of thought here.

1. That Peter can’t achieve success, because he’s driven by guilt to sabotage any success because he has to jump into danger every time it appears, and that negates any commitment to achieving success.

2. There are people who know Peter is smart and should be in a better position than what he’s in - Reed Richards, and Tony Stark being a couple. The start of ANAD had Peter attempt to be successful as CEO of Parker Industries, (like Superior Spider-Man did for a while), and that was a vision that people had for Peter.

Who is Spider-Man? I look at him as a symbiote of Spider DNA and human DNA, so Peter is going to tend towards a creature that traps someone and sucks the life out of them. It may look very much like ultruistic heroism, but I see it as some spider tendency as well. That’s a cruel view of what Peter Parker does, but you can’t suppress all the Spider tendency of that creature in the man. It’s scary, and terrifying to the criminals he attacks. It’s going to affect his behaviour and eventually sabotage most of his human tendencies in life. I’d like to think the creators had that in mind when they created Spider-Man.

[SpideyCeo]

Anyone that writes peter going back to being poor is not someone who O buy wants the character to be anything more than a loser.

[Klaxton]

Calling Peter a torture porn type compared to Wolverine is utter nonsense. Wolverine has suffered in every way that Peter has, and far more too.

[Hulkout42]

The latest issue of NS Amazing proves to me why he is one of the greatest heroes of the Marvel U.

[Immortal Hulk]

The latest issue of NS Amazing proves to me why he is one of the greatest heroes of the Marvel U.

Exactly!