Is Spider-Man An Incompetent Hero?

[oldschool]

I respect your sentiment and I think yours is probably the majority opinion of comic fans. I don't think it's entirely wrong, but I also think it's incomplete.

On the surface, it's true that Spider-Man has saved New York and the world many times before. However, I think that ignores the blowback from some of his methods. Would he have even needed to save the world or NYC in the first place if he had somehow dealt with his enemies more efficiently? What if he had somehow dealt with Doc Ock, Norman Osborn, and Miles Warren effectively? I don't mean he'd have to kill them like the Punisher. But say the first fight was the only fight they had to have. Then some of those feats wouldn't be necessary. Is it really that heroic for him to solve a problem that he created due to the unintended consequences of his own tactics? I'm not saying that makes him a bad guy, but I think that's just another sign of his incompetence.

So, by your logic, the Avengers are incompetent for not "dealing more efficiently" with Thanos, Ultron or any of their enemies?

[Prof. Warren]

I'm glad you brought up Batman because there is one key difference between Batman and Spider-Man. Batman actually does scare people. He uses intimidation, fear, and psychological tactics to accomplish his goals. You could make the case that Gotham City doesn't have as much crime because people are scared of having to deal with Batman. Remember that scene in The Dark Knight when that criminal ran away because he saw the bat signal in the sky? That's something Spider-Man never inspires.

Now I don't deny that Batman's methods aren't as effective as they could be. Just throwing criminals in Arkham doesn't work. However, you could make the case that because Batman scares away all the common criminals, the only ones left for him to battle are the truly deranged types. So it makes sense that Gotham's major criminals would be the Jokers and Penguins of the world.

I get that no hero can be truly "competent." However, I would argue that Spider-Man's incompetence is far more egregious compared to most other heroes.

As others have noted, Batman's scare tactics haven't done much good as Gotham is still a **** hole of epic proportions.

And why would you want Spider-Man to be anything like Batman anyhow? That's ridiculous. Batman's Batman. Spider-Man's Spider-Man.

One is a creature of the night. The other is your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man.

Despite their different approaches, neither one is going to effectively deal with their villain problem as long as their publishing existence is ongoing.

Having villains running around is what keeps them both in business, after all.

[MarvelMaster616]

So, by your logic, the Avengers are incompetent for not "dealing more efficiently" with Thanos, Ultron or any of their enemies?

With the Avengers, a different logic applies. The Avengers deal with far greater threats that are much harder to adapt to. Ultron, Thanos, and Kang are not like the criminals that Spider-Man faces. They're not prone to intimidation or influence of any kind. They are like forces of nature, powerful beyond the capacity for any human mind. There aren't too many ways to efficiently deal with those kinds of threats. The Avengers can only do so much to adapt. It's so much that they're incompetent. The enemies they face only permit a certain degree of competence. For the Avengers, competence is keeping the planet intact. By that measure, they're competent.

Spider-Man's goals aren't quite as extreme. From the beginning, he seeks to stop the kind of crime that killed his Uncle Ben. That crime is not like Ultron and Thanos. He deals primarily with other people and there are things you can do to deal with those people. Peter, as smart as he is, doesn't know how to deal with people in an effective way. He opts for the worst possible approach to dealing with these people. The Avengers may stave off Ultron and Thanos, but they rarely ever make them stronger as a result. Spider-Man's methods embolden his enemies, give them a common threat, and annoy them to a point where they'll be that much more determined. So by that logic, Spider-Man is indeed more incompetent than the Avengers.

[Prof. Warren]

With the Avengers, a different logic applies. The Avengers deal with far greater threats that are much harder to adapt to. Ultron, Thanos, and Kang are not like the criminals that Spider-Man faces. They're not prone to intimidation or influence of any kind. They are like forces of nature, powerful beyond the capacity for any human mind. There aren't too many ways to efficiently deal with those kinds of threats. The Avengers can only do so much to adapt. It's so much that they're incompetent. The enemies they face only permit a certain degree of competence. For the Avengers, competence is keeping the planet intact. By that measure, they're competent.

Spider-Man's goals aren't quite as extreme. From the beginning, he seeks to stop the kind of crime that killed his Uncle Ben. That crime is not like Ultron and Thanos. He deals primarily with other people and there are things you can do to deal with those people. Peter, as smart as he is, doesn't know how to deal with people in an effective way. He opts for the worst possible approach to dealing with these people. The Avengers may stave off Ultron and Thanos, but they rarely ever make them stronger as a result. Spider-Man's methods embolden his enemies, give them a common threat, and annoy them to a point where they'll be that much more determined. So by that logic, Spider-Man is indeed more incompetent than the Avengers.

First off, no to the bolded. How many Avengers enemies have come back stronger and more determined after their defeats. A lot. Ultron, Kang, Masters of Evil, the list goes on.

Secondly, you REALLY don't seem to get Spider-Man. If you think Spidey annoying his enemies is a problem, you aren't really with the spirit of the book. Spidey is the Bugs Bunny of superheroes. Annoying his opponents is as much a part of his crime-fighting arsenal as webbing or wall-crawling.

[DieHard200904]

It's one thing to have to deal with consequences. That's an unavoidable part of life, even for a superhero. The issue I have with Spider-man is that he keeps suffering from the same consequences. He never learns from them. He never adapts his tactics. I get that he has a brand and Marvel has an interest in maintaining this brand, but it really is regressive in the grand scheme of things. Not learning from mistakes and consequences doesn't make someone more relatable. It just makes them incompetent.

That's not a problem with Spidey so much as it is a problem with the writers/editorial deciding on doing another Clone Saga Event, or a repeat of old material? Remembering Uncle Ben? He will do that because it's his base inspiration in 616. Look, if a character by his ongoing nature really bothers you how things repeat every now and then, there's other characters, or even other fiction for that matter. I thank Marvel for some of their awful moves with characters, Spider-Man included, because it was during those times that I stopped buying and got a hold of other written fiction like Dune, Ringworld, Plot Against America, Bourne Novels, etc..

[Vegeta]

As others have noted, Batman's scare tactics haven't done much good as Gotham is still a **** hole of epic proportions.

And why would you want Spider-Man to be anything like Batman anyhow? That's ridiculous. Batman's Batman. Spider-Man's Spider-Man.

One is a creature of the night. The other is your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man.

Despite their different approaches, neither one is going to effectively deal with their villain problem as long as their publishing existence is ongoing.

Having villains running around is what keeps them both in business, after all.

Exactly, Batman is not in anyway more effective than Spidey. He dressed as a Bat because "criminals are a cowardly superstitious lot" but they are still shown committing crimes, they still attack him, etc. The costume has provided no deterrent. nor his other methods. Crime is rampant, mob bosses continue to operate in the city, the police force is still corrupt. Gotham is always depicted as a nightmarish place to live in, it's not a shining beacon of hope like Metropolis.

But Batman is a GREATER failure, due to his motivation. Batman is driven by vengeance over the loss of his parents, Spider is driven by guilt. Therefore, to satisfy his motive, Spidey only has to SAVE lives. Batman, on the other hand, must PUNISH criminals. However, due to his code of "no killing" Batman cannot ever truly and finally punish these foes. Thus, he cannot ever truly accomplish his goal. His villains will eventually escape, recruit more henchmen, and the endless cycle of crime in Gotham continues. Ultimately, if vengeance upon the criminal underworld is your M.O. then the Punisher's methodology is what the vigilante should adopt.

[oldschool]

With the Avengers, a different logic applies. The Avengers deal with far greater threats that are much harder to adapt to. Ultron, Thanos, and Kang are not like the criminals that Spider-Man faces. They're not prone to intimidation or influence of any kind. They are like forces of nature, powerful beyond the capacity for any human mind. There aren't too many ways to efficiently deal with those kinds of threats. The Avengers can only do so much to adapt. It's so much that they're incompetent. The enemies they face only permit a certain degree of competence. For the Avengers, competence is keeping the planet intact. By that measure, they're competent.

Spider-Man's goals aren't quite as extreme. From the beginning, he seeks to stop the kind of crime that killed his Uncle Ben. That crime is not like Ultron and Thanos. He deals primarily with other people and there are things you can do to deal with those people. Peter, as smart as he is, doesn't know how to deal with people in an effective way. He opts for the worst possible approach to dealing with these people. The Avengers may stave off Ultron and Thanos, but they rarely ever make them stronger as a result. Spider-Man's methods embolden his enemies, give them a common threat, and annoy them to a point where they'll be that much more determined. So by that logic, Spider-Man is indeed more incompetent than the Avengers.

You're missing the point. So what about Batman being incompetent for not effectively dealing with The Joker, Riddler, Two-Face, Penguin etc? So what about Capt America being incompetent for not dealing with The Red Skull? Iron Man being incompetent for not dealing with The Mandarin or Whiplash? Boy, Superman must be really incompetent for never effectively dealing with Lex Luthor and Brainiac!

You wanna go "street level" like Spidey? OK. I guess Daredevil is incompetent for not dealing with The Kingpin or Bullseye then. Your argument about Spidey "emboldening" them holds little water; wise cracks or not the theory that if there was no Batman, there would be no Joker has been around forever regardless of the scale of hero and villain.

[SpideyCeo]

You people bringing up other heroes in comparison are kinda proving the tc right and being kinda self conscious about how spidermans hero saving methods are short sighted and flawed. Compare that to Superman, Or Green Lanterns and you see where spidey is faulty in his methods, even deadpool is more competant in his practical hindsight when he wants to be.

[DieHard200904]

You people bringing up other heroes in comparison are kinda proving the tc right and being kinda self conscious about how spidermans hero saving methods are short sighted and flawed. Compare that to Superman, Or Green Lanterns and you see where spidey is faulty in his methods, even deadpool is more competant in his practical hindsight when he wants to be.

The real issue is that how, in his own realm, does he perform. Overall, he does win and does save plenty of people, but as an ongoing hero, all is not 100 percent well for him really. Most of the complaints here are complaints about ongoing heroes and repeat villains, which in the main universe, is a certainty given that the creators do not want to go so far as killing and replacing villains over and over again, it's why they do the go to jail, escape, repeat routine.

[Vegeta]

You people bringing up other heroes in comparison are kinda proving the tc right and being kinda self conscious about how spidermans hero saving methods are short sighted and flawed. Compare that to Superman, Or Green Lanterns and you see where spidey is faulty in his methods, even deadpool is more competant in his practical hindsight when he wants to be.

I honestly can't begin comprehend what you're trying to say here.

Obviously, Spider-Man cannot accomplish things in the exact same manner as Superman or Green Lantern, because in both cases, these characters completely dwarf Spidey in their superhuman abilities. Superman can do practically anything, and Green Lantern has a magical dues ex machina around his finger. If anything, these characters aren't "living up to their potential," with that sheer amount of firepower at their fingertips, crime should be virtually non-existent in the DC Universe.

[MarvelMaster616]

Well I don't think I'm going to convince anyone of my sentiment for now. But I think the notion that I just don't "get" Spider-Man is a hallow excuse. I get that heroes can't be too good at their jobs. I actually did another blog post about that, but I singled Spider-Man out because he checks all the wrong boxes in terms of how he goes about his goal. Now I'm not going to compare him to Batman or Superman anymore. I think it's unfair to compare the two because that's just going to turn the discussion into an argument about Batman. I'd rather not have Batman derail this discussion. He does that enough in the Superman forum.

With Spider-Man, I think the problem is that he's never stopped to actually formulate a plan for how he'll make New York better so that people like his Uncle Ben don't die needlessly. He does what he does out of guilt. I understand that. That's a core component to his character and that shouldn't change. But is what he does actually making a difference in the grand scheme of things? Yeah, it works in the short-term, but is New York better off when criminals like Kingpin, Doc Ock, Shocker, and Vulture all have a common enemy to rally around? The fact that he's never seriously considered revising his tactics just makes him a hypocrite because it's so irresponsible. If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always gotten. I can totally understand why Peter chose his current tactics at a young age. He got his powers as a teenager. Naturally, he's going to slip up a few times. But he's an adult now. For him to not update his methods or try something different...there's just no excuse for that. I can't see that as anything other than incompetent and irresponsible.

[Huntsman Spider]

It is definitely food for thought, and while the point can be made that someone like Otto Octavius was a far more effective crime-fighter than Peter Parker was or is, Otto's methods were ultimately as counterproductive as Peter's. Peter aggravated his enemies, but the cruelty and viciousness with which Otto dealt with those same enemies didn't just inspire fear; in time, it inspired hate and even moral revulsion, that compared to them, the so-called "hero" was far more of a monster than they ever could be, and that led to his downfall as the not-quite-Superior Spider-Man.

Going back to Peter's methodology and how flawed it is in regards to the goals he repeatedly states he wants to accomplish, I'd say the bright costume and constant quips and jokes actually do serve a purpose. A lot of the villains or criminals Peter faces off against are the kind of people who'd strike out at anyone in their path, with no regard for consequences or casualties or collateral damage because they just don't give a f*** about other human beings. Spider-Man "giving them a target" actually makes a degree of sense in regards to saving lives because the villains or criminals that are focused on taking him out are focusing on him and not randomly lashing out at anyone else in their way, they're not going after innocent bystanders just to amuse themselves. He's a target, he's a showboat, he draws their attention so that their attention will be off innocent people and those people can therefore get to safety more easily.

As for "Parker Blowback," that's true to an extent, but then damn near every long-lasting superhero has developed many bad cases of blowback because their enemies are often the type of people who feel entitled to do and get whatever they want, and they'll make anybody who gets in the way of that pay, even if it means going through perfectly innocent and uninvolved people, whether unconnected bystanders or people emotionally closer to the hero, to get that payback. In the first Spider-Man: Homecoming trailer, Vulture makes himself pretty explicit when he tells Spider-Man that if Spider-Man gets in his way, he'll not only kill Spidey, he'll also kill everyone Spidey loves or cares about. That's the type of enemy superheroes, specifically Spider-Man, end up dealing with, the kind of people who don't see other people as people, but as potential resources or tools or obstacles --- resources or tools to be disposed of when their usefulness is outlived, obstacles to be removed --- and they have no remorse for the lives they take or ruin in the process of getting what they want. Simply choosing to oppose such people makes someone a target, and that ultimately isn't on the person opposing those people as it is on those people themselves for their sick sense of entitlement and their apparent belief that nobody else's rights or needs matter compared to their own. That's not to say Spider-Man couldn't do things better or more efficiently, especially with the amount of experience and knowledge he should have accrued in a decade-plus span of crime-fighting, but in the end, it's the villains and criminals who choose to act with no care or regard for the lives and rights of anyone besides themselves that are to blame for whatever innocent casualties get racked up by their actions, not by Spider-Man's attempts to stop them from hurting or killing (more) innocent people.

[SpideyCeo]

I honestly can't begin comprehend what you're trying to say here.

Obviously, Spider-Man cannot accomplish things in the exact same manner as Superman or Green Lantern, because in both cases, these characters completely dwarf Spidey in their superhuman abilities. Superman can do practically anything, and Green Lantern has a magical dues ex machina around his finger. If anything, these characters aren't "living up to their potential," with that sheer amount of firepower at their fingertips, crime should be virtually non-existent in the DC Universe.

Spiderman has proven to be smart enough to dave new york from a invasion of all his super villians and worst enemies by having the power of friendship by his side with the other heroes or his own genius with his newest invention parker particles. I think the more a character like spidey and batman stick around as long as they have, they dont have any problems playing above they're super buddies that stop cosmic threats on a daily bases.

Spider-Man is a character with a perpetual thumb up his behind not taking advantage of his poyential because hes written lazily.

[Mister Mets]

Plenty of others have pointed out the flaw with the Batman's better because he scares his enemies argument- there's no evidence from the text that this was actually effective. The main knocks about Spider-Man not being effective are mainly about the requirements of serial fiction, where the hero can't resolve all of his problems, and the popular bad guys keep returning.

An added factor is that Peter hadn't really had the resources to try to change the world until relatively recently. He had a middle class income and a secret identity to preserve which limited what he could do in terms of bringing the fight to his enemies.

[Alan2099]

With Spider-Man, I think the problem is that he's never stopped to actually formulate a plan for how he'll make New York better so that people like his Uncle Ben don't die needlessly.

What do you want him to do to prevent people like Vulture, Shocker, and Dr. Octopus from coming back again and again? Shoot them in the head? Lock them up forever in his secret underground jail? Manufacture Spider-robots and have them patrol the city as his own personal army?

Spider-man isn't looking to be some great world changer or leader. He's not trying to change how the game is played. He's just trying to do his part and help out the best he can. He doesn't have the ego to think he should be the one to change everything.