It’s funny that so many people think Spider-Man works best as a teen...

[PCN24454]

I love this fantasy argument people conjure up about 'new viewers', they always assume they won't go back and research/watch the older/better seasons, which are always widely available. A great deal of older Pokemon seasons I know for a fact are reran on UK television.

For the record, I was always of the opinion Ash's story came to a natural end in Pokemon: The Power of One, just as Peter's story came arguably to it's natural end with MC2.

Isn’t that precisely why people think that others won’t read the back issues? You’re referencing a 22 year old non-canon movie as an ending as though nothing happened afterwards.

It’s telling that most people can’t be bothered to learn about any of Spider-Man’s villains beyond the Ditko ones. It’s basically saying that they have no intention of actually reading the series. It’s why so many series just decide to reboot their continuity after a certain amount of time.

[Lee]

After going back and watching hundreds of old episodes of Pokémon, they're no longer a new viewer.

A kid watching their first episode of Pokémon, whether it's season 2 or season 22, will accept that Ash is a 10 year old kid. They won't be aware of the implausibility of Ash's age, and they wouldn't care. The show continues to thrive with Ash remaining the same age.

Spider-Man being a teenager for decades would be no more implausible than Spider-Man being a 20-something for decades. It's the same conceit. It's standard practice for long-running cartoon and comic characters.

[Frontier]

After going back and watching hundreds of old episodes of Pokémon, they're no longer a new viewer.

A kid watching their first episode of Pokémon, whether it's season 2 or season 22, will accept that Ash is a 10 year old kid. They won't be aware of the implausibility of Ash's age, and they wouldn't care. The show continues to thrive with Ash remaining the same age.

Spider-Man being a teenager for decades would be no more implausible than Spider-Man being a 20-something for decades. It's the same conceit. It's standard practice for long-running cartoon and comic characters.

I think Spider-Man is a very different type of property than Pokemon though. Like, Peter is meant to develop far more than Ash is.

[Kevinroc]

I think Spider-Man is a very different type of property than Pokemon though. Like, Peter is meant to develop far more than Ash is.

I think Goku is probably a better comparison than Ash.

[TinkerSpider]

I love this fantasy argument people conjure up about 'new viewers', they always assume they won't go back and research/watch the older/better seasons, which are always widely available. A great deal of older Pokemon seasons I know for a fact are reran on UK television.

For the record, I was always of the opinion Ash's story came to a natural end in Pokemon: The Power of One, just as Peter's story came arguably to it's natural end with MC2.

Precisely.

This argument is wholly fantastical and not all rooted in reality. Especially today, when older issues are easily accessible in trade books, Marvel Unlimited, library collections, etc. Spider-Man was already decades old when I started reading, and I went and found all the older stories. And I am far from unique. It’s why Marvel sells collections of older stories on the first place. They are not aimed at long term readers, who already know the stories, not the collectors, who aren’t interested in trades.

[PCN24454]

I think Spider-Man is a very different type of property than Pokemon though. Like, Peter is meant to develop far more than Ash is.

I find the opposite. Ash is meant to develop more than Peter. You should never expect a mainstream comic book character to develop.

Heck, Peter still has the same moveset he had in the first comic book as though nothing had happened since then.

[TinkerSpider]

I don't think this matters. The suspension of disbelief is already being tested when the reader is told that the stories in the Steve Ditko run happened in the 21st century.

Only long-term readers will be aware that Peter has had so many summer breaks. As it is now, you can count all the Christmases the Marvel Universe has had and see how it breaks the timeline.

It's the "Why is Ash Ketchum still 10 years old in Pokémon?" argument. Only the hardcore long-term viewers outside of the target audience will care enough to ask the question. New viewers won't have experienced all of the decades of previous adventures to notice the inconsistency.

By and large, I don't think the general audience thinks of Spider-Man any differently than they do Bart Simpson, Donald Duck or James Bond. There's the understanding that the characters are timeless.

No. People expect Peter Parker to mature. Precisely because he’s a coming of age character and his entire story depends on him learning and growing.

You’re arguing he is an episodic character.

He’s not. His adventures are serial.

Sales of Spider-Man since OMD have fallen far more sharply than sales of Batman or X-Men. And while correlation is not causation, judging by reader comments over the past 15 years, a good part of the reason is that Marvel is now treating Peter - and only Peter - as an episodic character, even though his original appeal (in fact, Marvel Comics’s original unique selling point that allowed them to overtake and surpass DC) was that he is a serial character whose adventures take place sequentially and the previous issue informs the next issue. DC was the company with episodic characters - any status quo change was an “imaginary story” - but now Batman is far surpassing Spider-Man sales because DC is heavily leaning into serial stories.

My opinion is Quesada’s and Brevoort’s reign (and Slott’s far too long tenure on the title) have done more harm than good to the long-term health of Spider-Man because they removed the reason why readers engage in his adventures. Readers want to know Peter’s stories count - that if he defeats the Green Goblin in one issue and locks him in Ravenscroft, the next issue doesn’t start with the Peter and Gobby as best friends laughing over a beer. It’s why so much of the criticism of Wells’s run so far is centered on the time skip with no explanation so far for why Peter’s status has shifted so drastically. It’s difficult to engage in his stories when the characters are so drastically changed since we last saw them and the reader has zero motivation or backstory to help the reader make narrative sense of where the characters now are in their lives.

People excuse sliding time scales. But how can Peter be attending his senior prom for the first time when it’s his eighth prom? High school events like prom, graduation, moving to the next grade, summer vacation, only happen once or a handful of times. This is why you won’t see Peter in high school in the next MCU film. It’s why you didn’t see Tobey’s Spider-Man in high school in Spider-Man 2 or 3. It’s why Miles is no longer 13 and is now 18/19.

But adult characters can have infinite jobs or relationship breakups or summer vacations because there isn’t a firm, finite framework like high school imposed on them.

I’d also argue that Daniel Craig’s Bond was turned into a serial character. The next Bond will be a reboot.

[Frontier]

I find the opposite. Ash is meant to develop more than Peter. You should never expect a mainstream comic book character to develop.

Heck, Peter still has the same moveset he had in the first comic book as though nothing had happened since then.

A lot of them do though.

Peter has a baseline powerset but what matters is how he applies them and out-thinks his enemies. It's not like a tokusatsu show where he's expected to get upgrades every quarter.

[Alan2099]

When most of his most well known stories feature him as an adult.

I don't know why you would think that's funny. Doesn't every always mention how great a job Stan and Steve did setting up Spider-man and his world? It just makes sense that people would want to go back to such a beloved and iconic version of the character.

There have been a lot of great Spider-man creative teams since then, but nothing has ever reached the legendary status that Ditko and Lee produced.

[Matt Rat]

I don't know why you would think that's funny. Doesn't every always mention how great a job Stan and Steve did setting up Spider-man and his world? It just makes sense that people would want to go back to such a beloved and iconic version of the character.

That version had a beginning, a middle, and an end.

All those people are obsessed with is the middle.

[Lee]

People excuse sliding time scales. But how can Peter be attending his senior prom for the first time when it’s his eighth prom?

Because it's not real.

[Malachi]

People and their consuming habits are changing. Old soap operas who lasted for decades are ending and no new ones are replacing them. People have now gotten acess to these huge backlogs of content. They don't need to be entertained regularly by the same show at the same time. Now we can choose when to consume and how much. Even shows on streaming platforms that release new episodes weekly are often not viewed weekly or at the same day every week. People might save up 2-3 episodes or a whole season before watching.
The same with Marvel unlimited. Now a reader can get those 60 years of stories with easy acess. When I started reading I had to hunt back issues at small dusty stores. The occasional yard sale and brothers of friends who where selling their collections. It was patchy and very hard.

Pokemon and Ash is anamoly. But it's also constructed and geared differently. Ash himself is a cipher. There to show us different Pokemons and their world. The new characters might add stories with an start, middle and end. Otherwise Pokemon is to sell Pokemon products. If it was compared to Spider-man it is as the villians was the main selling point and Marvel wanted us to pick up say toys, games and movies with these villians.

One Piece would be a better analogy for what Marvel wants to accomplish. Thousands of chapters with a snail pace. Some evolution in characters. Mostly getting new toys and learing about their powers. Yet there is growth and progress for the characters. But I would say that this is more closely to the model Marvel wants. Of course One Piece is ending. It is the work of one person(not counting his team in this example) and not a company.

[Alan2099]

That version had a beginning, a middle, and an end.

All those people are obsessed with is the middle.

If you're going to set a story sometime, of course you have to set it in the middle. In the beginning, nothing has happened yet and in the ending it's all over.

[TinkerSpider]

Because it's not real.

Yes. Precisely. It would lack verisimilitude.

And that throws readers out of the story and causes them to stop engaging, because the stories don’t matter. The character’s lives are nonsensical.

[Matt Rat]

If you're going to set a story sometime, of course you have to set it in the middle. In the beginning, nothing has happened yet and in the ending it's all over.

Except Lee and Ditko, the 'ideal' of so many of these fans, didn't do that. They specifically had Peter go through all stages of a hero's journey and emerge from it having accomplished a milestone the same as us all, and would go on to achieve many more milestones as he progressed through his adult life.

There is no permanent 'middle' in the Stan/Steve era.

There was no permanent 'middle' in Spider-Man's story arguably until OMD.

There isn't even a permanent 'middle' in Ultimate Spider-Man

Some of the only books that are exclusively about a 'middle' (Spidey, Marvel Adventures, IDW Spider-Man), aren't around anymore. I love the newspaper strip, especially for the marriage, but I'd even say that ran with a permanent 'middle' after 1987 right through until Stan's passing and it folding in 2019.