Guess he'd feel guilty about not doing more in practically every big event .
There's also the thing back then with "Spider-Man shows up in the third issue", which Byrne's She-Hulk run points out directly:
So yeah, he's really the town's bicycle lol.
Yeah the story can't always be about Spidey, but making him useless is pretty dumb.
That Spidey/Black Widow team-up, the main character isn't Spidey, it's Natasha, since the story is all about her struggles and she has a more personal confrontation with Viper, though Spidey is in no way useless, as he helps move the plot along and even saves Natasha a few times.
As for Supes/Spidey team ups, the first one had Spidey staying behind, fighting Lex and Otto and saving Lois/MJ while Supes saves the planet, and the second had Spidey removing Kryptonite from Supes, then Supes slowed down a reactor's explosion while Spidey tried to figure out how to turn it off.
Basically they both used a variation of "Supes does one thing while Spidey does another", and that's kinda the best way for Spidey to even manage to do anything, specially considering this was pre-crisis Supes, so Spidey can't help out much in combat, since Superman is far stronger and the first story in particular had to make up stuff for Supes to not fight properly for Spidey to even have a reason to be there, and Spidey definitely can't compete with him in intelligence lol.
At least he got to do stuff, Otto in the first one was completely redundant as a villain, since Lex basically did everything related to the plan while Otto wasn't even sure what the end goal was, then he learned that Luthor was going to destroy the planet and decided to fight against Luthor... Which's hilarious nowadays considering the "Ends of the Earth" bullshit Otto tried to pull lol.
The second crossover was better in how Spidey was used, since he got to fight Parasite, and Parasite stealing Spidey's power allowed him to realize that Doom was going to betray him since he still had the Spider-Sense, which started to screw up Doom's plan, so the first one is basically a Superman story where Spidey gets to make snarky comments along the ride, the second one, by using Doom as the main threat and having Parasite around, it made Spidey not be as redundant.
At the very least, the first crossover gives up the best moment in comic books:
Lex Luthor riding Doctor Octopus =D.
Otto is weirdly happy to be carrying another man...
Go ahead, I may quote your "BND is Marvel having a collective mid-life crisis" as a signature =D
If his keikaku is making sure I drop Dark Nights at around mid point and not even bother with the sequel, the congrats, he succeeded lol.
Her solo looked alright, but I laughed when I saw the setting, a character from Greek Mythology ending up in Asgard... I'm just waiting for her to meet Kratos while she's there :P.
I was just wondering about how the "Batman is death" nonsense happened lol.