Spider-Man "needing" the Avengers is disgusting

[LordTrump]

Um.....did he need them in the 80s and 90s when he and the X-Men were so popular that they carried the company on their backs while the Avengers characters were so unpopular that they had to be cancelled and rebooted by LIEFELD!

I say this in response to both the Ultimate Spider-Man cartoon and Civil War, where his costume is designed by Iron Man and Captain America beats him up. This is why I despised the idea of Marvel getting the rights back.

Spider-Man is the company's central character, and to treat him like this is dumb.

[comicscollector]

Spider-Man have been a Avenger since mid 80s in the comics.

[Rob London]

Let's not throw the word "disgusting" around too much.

[Huntsman Spider]

Spider-Man have been a Avenger since mid 80s in the comics.

I thought he became a reserve Avenger in the 1990s. That aside, I find myself agreeing with the OP in the sense that Spider-Man on his own has long been the face, heart, and maybe soul of Marvel, far more so than the Avengers, who are comparatively Johnny-come-latelies. I also feel like in-universe, he doesn't get nearly the amount of credit and respect he deserves, even if that's been improving in recent years. He's the guy who's been out there fighting the good fight, doing the right thing even in the face of years of public distrust and lack of support from even his fellow heroes fomented by the words of certain media personalities, while with the exception of the X-Men and the Hulk, the big-time heroes like the Avengers and the Fantastic Four benefited from both the support and adulation of the public and the goodwill of U.S. authorities. Would any of them have been able to last in the face of years of the scorn and distrust and outright attacks from the public and/or authorities that Spider-Man (and the X-Men) had to put up with? If anything, the Avengers need him more than he needs them, especially in this day and age where so many of them seem to have missed the point about what it means to be a hero.

[comicscollector]

I thought he became a reserve Avenger in the 1990s. That aside, I find myself agreeing with the OP in the sense that Spider-Man on his own has long been the face, heart, and maybe soul of Marvel, far more so than the Avengers, who are comparatively Johnny-come-latelies. I also feel like in-universe, he doesn't get nearly the amount of credit and respect he deserves, even if that's been improving in recent years. He's the guy who's been out there fighting the good fight, doing the right thing even in the face of years of public distrust and lack of support from even his fellow heroes fomented by the words of certain media personalities, while with the exception of the X-Men and the Hulk, the big-time heroes like the Avengers and the Fantastic Four benefited from both the support and adulation of the public and the goodwill of U.S. authorities. Would any of them have been able to last in the face of years of the scorn and distrust and outright attacks from the public and/or authorities that Spider-Man (and the X-Men) had to put up with? If anything, the Avengers need him more than he needs them, especially in this day and age where so many of them seem to have missed the point about what it means to be a hero.

In the mid 80s,Avengers#236,Spider-Man is made a Avenger trainee and by the start of the 90s,he is made a reserve Avenger as you say.
Other than that i dont disagree with what you say,but i think that Spider-Man on the Avengers makes some sense.
Sure a argument could be made that characters without their own comics should be a Avenger before characters that already start in their own comics.But Spider-Man "juggling" abilities between being a super hero and having his life as Peter Parker,makes the adventures of Spider-Man in the Avengers not so far fetched and something that have been sort of being constructed in the narrative of the Spider-Man stories.

[RedQueen]

I've never seen him as an "Avengers character" because he's able to work independently for years before they had to save his butt a couple of times for whatever plot they wanted to make it look like peter had cool friends.

[Shirayuki]

If anything I would argue the Avengers needed Spider-Man, which is why Bendis put him and Wolverine on the team. I don't really understand where the notion that it's the reverse is coming from.

[The Negative Zone]

I like him teaming with heroes and being on teams. He's fun.

[SpiderClops]

If anything I would argue the Avengers needed Spider-Man, which is why Bendis put him and Wolverine on the team. I don't really understand where the notion that it's the reverse is coming from.

Yes.

10char.

[Cmbmool]

I have to say Spidey is great on his own and given his history...the Avengers need him more than he needs them.

[Ebony]

While I may not use his word choice I understand what he's saying. Spider-Man used to be able to handle many threats and villains on his own using his brain and his own skill set, but now he's in a constant team-up in his own book to solve a problem to a point he's almost a secondary character in his own title. I mean, we're talking about a guy who has the longest wing streak against the whole X-men team. One guy.

Now I'll give him a pass in the Avengers movie because basically he owned the fights he was in and well come on, It's Captain America. I'm not even giving Spidey a full win in the comics against Captain America, but yes the current cartoons to the comics Spider-Man is more of a tag team kinda guy than a solo act.

[Huntsman Spider]

The funny thing is that in the 70s and 80s (and 90s, even), a guest appearance by Spider-Man or in a Spider-Man book was a surefire way for Marvel to draw interest in the then-new characters Marvel wanted to promote. Marvel Team-Up might as well have been named Spider-Man Team-Up, since with relatively few exceptions, he appeared in almost every issue, even if he wasn't necessarily the focal character of the story. That aside, thanks for the info on Spider-Man's involvement with the Avengers in the 80s, whiteshark, much appreciated; I guess you could say until he was made a reservist in the 90s, him teaming up with the Avengers after #236 was field training.

[comicscollector]

The funny thing is that in the 70s and 80s (and 90s, even), a guest appearance by Spider-Man or in a Spider-Man book was a surefire way for Marvel to draw interest in the then-new characters Marvel wanted to promote. Marvel Team-Up might as well have been named Spider-Man Team-Up, since with relatively few exceptions, he appeared in almost every issue, even if he wasn't necessarily the focal character of the story. That aside, thanks for the info on Spider-Man's involvement with the Avengers in the 80s, whiteshark, much appreciated; I guess you could say until he was made a reservist in the 90s, him teaming up with the Avengers after #236 was field training.

You are welcome.
Spider-Man wants to join the Avengers in issue#236 and 237 because he was invited by Thor in issue #221.Those stories were written by Roger Stern and had references to the stories of Spider-Man.
By the end of issue 237,Spider-Man joining the Avengers is declined by the Government,but Captain America and Wasp consider having Spider-Man as a Avenger Trainee and having had the aproval of Thor before shows that the majority of the Avengers team would consider Spidey as a member,thus why i think those issues as the first ones that lead to Spider-Man become a reservist Avenger.
Before Spidey become a reservist Avenger,there is another story arc that features Spider-Man in Avengers#314 to 318 as well.

[Digifiend]

The funny thing is that in the 70s and 80s (and 90s, even), a guest appearance by Spider-Man or in a Spider-Man book was a surefire way for Marvel to draw interest in the then-new characters Marvel wanted to promote. Marvel Team-Up might as well have been named Spider-Man Team-Up, since with relatively few exceptions, he appeared in almost every issue, even if he wasn't necessarily the focal character of the story.

Yeah, out of 150 issues, the only ones that didn't have Peter as a headliner were 18 (Human Torch/Hulk), 23 (Torch/Iceman), 26 (Torch/Thor), 29 (Torch/Iron Man), 32 (Torch/Hellstorm), 35 (Torch/Dr Strange), 97 (Hulk/Jessica Drew), 104 (Hulk/Ka-Zar), 105 (Hulk/Power Man & Iron Fist). That's only nine issues.

[Prof. Warren]

Um.....did he need them in the 80s and 90s when he and the X-Men were so popular that they carried the company on their backs while the Avengers characters were so unpopular that they had to be cancelled and rebooted by LIEFELD!

I say this in response to both the Ultimate Spider-Man cartoon and Civil War, where his costume is designed by Iron Man and Captain America beats him up. This is why I despised the idea of Marvel getting the rights back.

Spider-Man is the company's central character, and to treat him like this is dumb.

To perceive any of this as something to be upset about is even dumber, honestly.

Having his costume designed by Tony in the movies simply makes sense. It's not that Tony invented Spidey's costume (or his web-shooters), Peter did. Tony just gave him an upgrade that a kid from Queens could never afford. In the comics, we never bother to question how a teenager is so good with a needle and thread that he can create a fairly intricate costume on his own. And that's ok. Spidey's origin hails from a simpler time and we've just always gone along with it. But in live action, implausibilities jump out more. You can still suspend your disbelief, of course. In the Sam Raimi Spidey's, we just accept that Peter makes his costume and that it looks the way it does, even though he's a poor kid and we know that the costume he's wearing in real life cost hundreds of thousands of $ and required a team of skilled designers to pull off who had to go through multiple costly prototypes before reaching the final version. The Andrew Garfield films tried to make Garfield's costume more convincingly "homemade" but it was still a stretch.

Having Tony make Spidey's suit in the MCU is just a sensible way of making Spidey's duds look like the comics without requiring requiring any great suspension of disbelief regarding how this broke kid could possibly pull off such an outfit. It makes it immediately plausible. And on a character level, it also creates a bond between Peter and Tony, two science nerds.

As for Cap beating up Spidey, it's not like losing to Captain America is like getting taken down by, say, Speedball. It's Captain freaking America. And, at the point in the career that we see Spidey in CW, he's still a novice hero learning the ropes. On top of that, he still holds his own against Cap pretty well. And it's not as though he gets destroyed (far from it) and it's his strategy that enables Tony's team to take out Ant-Man.

Marvel is not treating Spider-Man poorly in any way. You're overreacting to imagined slights.