I feel up until parker industries, Peter never grew up?

[WebLurker]

I think you're confusing the words responsible and mature.

Okay, my mistake.

I'm not arguing that career choice has any bearing on maturity (I mean I guess it does a little bit, but that's not what I'm trying to say at all) - instead, I'm stating that career choice is a huge part of being responsible, especially in Peter's case since he clearly has a lot to offer for the world. You can't deny that Peter using his intelligence to help people all over the world by building solutions to problems like global warming, creating cures for illnesses like cancer, using his profits to fund charities that help bring people out of poverty, etc. is much more responsible than Peter looking out for himself by being a photographer/teacher or something.

"Yes, we can deny it, my precious, we can, gollum, gollum," to paraphrase a Lord of the Rings character. Seriously, though I feel like its a false dilemma here; that he must be where he is not to be living up to the responsibility angle of the story, when they've been doing that for years without having him be a 1%-er. Does that make any sense?

And there is literally no other way that he can be a greater force of good, at least not that I can think of.

Ultimate Spider-Man: Requiem #1 and 2 make a case against that, IMHO.

Also, you're trying to balance Peter's motivation to be responsible, with the meta perspective that you want him to be grounded in normal life. I think that shows why it's a bad thing for the character. Not only did I show (in the wall of text of mine) how Peter was never an "everyman" in the first place, but the fact also remains that writers should be striving to write characters according to their motivations, not the writer's own preferences - because then you're not writing the actual character anymore. In Peter's case, if you start mixing up his responsibility to do as much good for the world as he can with your preference of having Peter live what you think a normal life would be like, then you're compromising his character motivations. Because Peter has never showed that he'd sacrifice an opportunity to help other people so he can preserve the normalcy in his life - in fact, he's shown the opposite numerous times! And then there's the fact that, while you may not be able to relate to a Peter who is a successful inventor and entrepreneur, plenty of other people can relate to this Peter better than any status quo before it (as someone who wasn't bullied in high school, has never faced monetary issues, and has a life that revolves largely around scientific/engineering disciplines, I find college/Horizon Labs/PI Peter by far more relatable than any other status quo) and there is no reason to think that successful entrepreneurs don't exist in the normal world.

I would argue that the "everyman" is a key part of the characterization and that by loosing that, the character is eroded. It also seems to be my observation that most iterations of the franchise indicate or outright say that the billionaire CEO life is not what he wants and and that he seeks normalcy in his personal life..

TL;DR:

- you're confusing the meanings of mature and responsible

Okay.

- PI Peter is indubitably most responsible of all

Debatable.

- "balancing" character motivations and out of universe story preferences leads to stories with plot driving the character rather than the other way around (which is, funnily enough, something I see often as a criticism of Slott) and not really writing the character anymore

My position is that PI is not a logical continuation of the story, so I see it as problematic and driving from plot alone (which you disagree with). (Ironically, I think on another thread, Slott himself indicated that he sees Spider-Man as not belonging in the PI setting; that the story is putting in a "fish out of water" world.)

- Peter was never a true everyman, so Peter being a successful inventor is hardly a huge step for the character, especially if the relatable aspects of his struggle are kept and expanded upon (ex. How does his traditional struggle to balance work, family, and superheroing change when his company is also his responsibility? etc.)

All I can say is that the character's long history has been consistent on the point that he lives a lower-middle-class lifestyle and seems to prefer that. So, yeah, I think he is a true everyman. He's historically been one of the most down-to-earth characters with a lot of material contrasting his humbler personal life with the more over-the-top superheroics.

- this helps us keep a relatable character while also strengthening the theme of responsibility, instead of partially making Peter a hypocrite in order to keep a status quo more suited to the interests of some

I don't see how making him Tony Stark 2.0 makes him relatable or saves him from being a hypocrite (esp. the former).

To be honest, you didn't bring up anything I hadn't addressed in my long ass essay length post. If you read it you can probably see all the arguments I outlined here as well as a lot more.

Well, you're coming from a position that's so alien to me, it's kind of hard to even have a beginning place. I feel a bit like I'm trying to argue that Sherlock Holmes is a master detective and not a lucky quack; it's like franchise 101. Even if you don't agree, does that analogy make any sense (or why people would think that the "everyman" Spider-Man is truer to the spirit of the character)?

[Alan2099]

So, if a supervillain showed up tomorrow and burned Spidey's entire company to the ground, Peter would suddenly be less responsible and mature?

[SpideyCeo]

Im just gonna say, you dont need to be a poor clumsy underdog to be a everyman. Heck you can be rich and still an everyman in a fictional sense. This is pretty much what Danny Rand the Iron Fist Runs off on.

[Bor]

And you'd still be entirely mistaken.

Like seriously where is your evidence for such a thing?

What my evidence is that profession and maturity can be related?
Common logic?

As I have already said several times now, and you seem to not understand it because you want a conflict for some reason, the two can certaintly be related.
Its has nothing to do with certain professions being more mature then others, but that "growing up" can be that instead of just doing the same job you did as a 15 year old that is relatively easy for you to do, trying something that is more difficult or more in line with your dream job can be maturing.
Is that allways the case? No off course not that is why I said its debateable if that is the case with Peter here.

But saying the two can not be related at all is to me rather narrow minded and somewhat childish.

[SpideyCeo]

Peter is not a "true everyman", he just lives one because hes emotinally crippled to inner city youth mindset and lives an eternal teenage/college soap opera.

[WebLurker]

Peter is not a "true everyman", he just lives one because hes emotinally crippled to inner city youth mindset and lives an eternal teenage/college soap opera.

[Spidercide]

Peter as a CEO is off-model for the series. But it's intentionally and knowingly off-model, a "fish out of water" or "reversal of fortune" storyline with a beginning, middle and end planned out in advance.

The real trick is going to be getting back to basics after this. Will he be "plain old Peter Parker" again, or "former world famous CEO Peter Parker"?

No it isn't.

the Captain Universe and Ezekiel stuff is an example of Spider-Man as a fish out of water. PI has not been played that way.

It looks to me like there are two very different viewpoints regarding the core of Spider-Man's character - is it to be the relatable everyman for the rest of his life, or is it regarding his struggle to fulfill his responsibility to the world (even at great personal costs)?

Clearly, these two are very different, and upon this issue, they are completely contradictory. If you think Peter should always be an everyman, despite the fact it makes little sense when the abilities and motivations of the character are considered, then you will dislike Parker Industries. If you think Peter should dedicate his life to fulfilling his responsibilities, and use all his powers and abilities to do so despite the personal cost, then Parker Industries is a great step forward for Peter.

I'm not sure how these two viewpoints can be reconciled, but as someone who is clearly a proponent of the latter, here are my thoughts:

First of all, the notion of Peter being an everyman never really made sense to me. Sure, Peter has always been a relatable personality, and will always continue to be, but I'm not sure how people think his life has been in anyway typical of the average person (even excluding the Spider-Man bits). He was an orphan raised by his elderly aunt and uncle, witnessed the death of his uncle, married/had a long relationship with a model, released an acclaimed book, worked at one of the largest companies on Earth (Stark Industries), has an IQ over 250 (Einstein's was less than 200), been to different worlds and dimensions, built his own inventions and has alternated from being homeless to being middle class to being very well off to being a billionaire, etc. These types of experiences fundamentally alter a person's perspective, and to further an illusion of Peter being an everyman requires all character development of his to be continuously thrown out of the window so that he can never learn from these types of experiences. In the modern, globalized world, the average person is probably an IT support worker in China or something, which Peter obviously can't be. If we look in America, we see that startup culture is becoming a lot more prominent and popular around young American college grads in STEM these days, so Peter creating a successful start-up could be extremely relatable (and inspirational) to a lot of people. Sure, these things might not be what YOU mean by everyman, but the word means different things to different people based on their perspective and life experiences, so that makes defining a character as being an everyman even harder to successfully do, as this will change from writer to writer.

Furthermore, I think continuity supports Peter's transition to being an extremely well off scientist, and now a billionaire technologist/inventor entrepreneur. Despite popular opinion, he hasn't really been set for too long as just a smart blue collar worker. He has been involved in his studies for nearly 300 issues (graduated college in ASM 185, dropped post graduate degree in around ASM 250, but returned to college on numerous occasions past that) and there's been over 100 issues of Spider-Man being a full blown researcher and scientist (Slott's run, part of JMS' run, and also the short-lived Tri-Corp era). Overall, he's spent at least 350-400 issues either studying science or being involved in science - that leaves less than half his run as a blue-collar worker. I guess the AU Ultimate Spider-Man stories kinda lead more towards that notion of Peter ending up as a blue collar worker, since his IQ was 146 (compared to 250+ in Earth-616) and he never really took as much interest in science (most of his inventions were based off his dad's research instead of his own ideas) but he was still on the scale of being a genius so not having him pursue a science career would still have been a transgression of his character even there, if not one quite as large as it is in 616. He clearly both has the motivation (love for science and engineering) and the ability to succeed and thrive in scientific/engineering disciplines, so it makes no sense for him not to become well off with his own abilities.

Of course, there is also the fact that his responsibility would also have naturally pushed him towards a career as an inventor or philanthropist entrepreneur, since these careers give him the opportunity to use his vast intellect to help those in need (by building products that save lives, creating free sources of unlimited renewable energy, or even products that help people on their everyday lives, etc.) or use money he earns to fund efforts to cure diseases or fight poverty (like the Uncle Ben Foundation currently does). Furthermore, he could use these resources to upgrade the crimefighting and/or people-saving abilities of himself as well as his fellow heroes, thus helping even more people around the world. That positions Parker Industries and other scientific/engineering disciplines as the responsible choice for Peter to make as well.

Anyways, considering how often he has worked on science, I don't think it's too late at all to further push him in that direction by letting him actually act according to his built in character motivation (as a scientific geek) and do his DREAM JOB, while also helping him further fulfill his responsibility. It fills TWO important aspects of the character in one stroke.

Actually, doing the research on this has made me further realize just how OOC those issues with Peter as a blue-collar worker/"everyman" are. Considering how those issues kinda coincide with the worst years of Spider-Man's character (Clone Saga, homeless era, etc.) I think it would be better just to forget about them, lol. (IMO)

Maybe I'm just a little bit biased, since I don't really relate with the stories of Peter struggling with money or working a blue-collar job personally, and, if anything, I'd relate more to a Peter who is very well off and working in a scientific/engineering field as an entrepreneur, but I don't think that's the main reason behind my thoughts. I've said earlier that I don't think characters should strive for relatability as a major character trait in this creative environment where almost all heroes have some aspect of it. In my own fictional preferences as well, I don't find my ability to relate to a character to be a major aspect of my enjoyment - rather, I find the plot and character development to be much greater draws, since almost all characters relate to me in some aspect, while none can be completely relatable. In order to keep Spider-Man's enduring popularity, I think some relatable aspects (like his humorous personality, struggles with balancing the various aspects of his life, etc) should continue to be kept, but they should no longer be the main theme of Spider-Man. Instead, we've only got two options - responsibility or youth (which I didn't touch on before since I don't think many comic fans would like it, although Marvel clearly promotes it most to casual audiences through movies, shows, and games) - to be core concepts of Spider-Man. Personally, I would hate to see Peter regress back to school and become an inexperienced goofy hero (ex. USM TV show) and lose all his character development, so I'm voting for responsibility.

[Spidercide]

The core of Spider-Man is the gr8 pwr=gr8 resp thing but ALSO that he is an everyman. And they are intertwined. We all have responsibilities in our lives we have to juggle. Sometimes we fail, other times we succeed, other times a bit of both. Spider-Man spoke to people because he was like them. He was larger than life because he was a superhero but really compared to DC characters, or even the FF, he was more like one of them, one of us. His story is not of someone who will change the world like Superman’s story where he is a saviour for mankind, or Batman’s story where he is the sole redeemer of a broken city, or Wonder Woman’s story where she too is champion of equality.

Spidey is just a guy. Your friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man, just helping out and doing his best like the rest to make ends meet and build a good life for himself, like most of us. The blue collar superhero. He isn’t trying to save the world, just the people who live in it as best as he can.
He’s not about fulfilling his responsibility as a hero and damn the costs. He’s about trying to live up to ALL his responsibilities. Therein lies the drama. How well will he manage it this time? Its just that being a hero is the biggest one that requires the most sacrifice, like being a doctor or a cop.

So really the 2 viewpoints you listed are not anethma to each other but rather complimentary.

But they do render him as a internationally famous head of a tech conglomerate anethma because it goes against the everyman aspect of the character.

It is also rather undermining of the idea of his company being an extension of the theme of responsibility when he didn’t actually found it or build it up himself. Hell the degree he has wasn’t even earned by him.

Now is Peter a dictionary definition of an everyman? No.

He is an everyman relatively speaking. He was an everyman in the context of what would fly in a 1960s superhero comic book. He was more of an everyman than his peers in the MU and DCU that’s for sure.

What him being an everyman really means though is that his stories tend to stay grounded and deal with human problems common to many (though not all people). You could for example take his role as a hero to be allegorical to the job of a police officer, fire fighter, doctor, soldier or some combination thereof, all of which are fairly common professions.

I also find the logic that believing Spider-Man is about responsibility = you must like Parker Industries to be faulty.
Peter can be about responsibility but not be a famous tech conglomerate. It was never a case of the series solely being about power=responsibility so the character must adjust the scale of his responsibilities dependant upon how powerful he is.

Case in point in the 1990s he got literal cosmic powers. For a while there he was THE most powerful superhuman on Earth, or one of them anyway. And the story really was there to just have him get philosophical about how he should use his powers and to ultimately underline that whilst he is a true hero worthy of such power due to his inner nobility, it ultimately didn’t suit him. He was more suited to fighting crime on a smaller, more personal scale.

Like I said, Peter didn’t earn Parker Industries, it was handed to him by Doc Ock.

Peter on his own could never have created something like Parker industries, he isn’t business minded person.

At the same time in superhero stories writers have to seek a balance between respecting the various core philosophies of the character (in this case everyman+responsibility), respecting the character’s established history and abilities (Peter being very intelligent) and also adhereing to the creative necessities of the franchise.

With the latter an example would be if Superman cured world hunger, global warming and various other ailments the world at large faces. His powers would allow him to do that and his moral mission would certainly mean it’d be in character for him to do such a thing. But to do that would be disrespecting the real life problems it’s solving (much like how superheroes didn’t just end WWII) and would make the world unrecognizable from the one we live in and thus less relatable and interesting. Seeing a fantastical figure in a relatively normal setting is more impactful to readers than a fantastical entity in a fantastical setting, or at least that was the point of the character’s invention.

Another example would be the Joker and other villains not being given the death penalty or Reed Richards not creating flying cars. We have to suspend our disbelief in regards to these things for the sake of keeping the fictional universes functioning. After all if every bit of pseudoscience in the MU were to be treated realistically things like terminal illnesses would be eradicated through cloning and other stuff like that. And if all super villains who deserved it got the death penalty who would the heroes fight?

People get cynical over such things but in all seriousness would any of us honestly find it particularly entertaining if every super villain was reformed or killed in some way and the heroes engaged in ‘talking’ and ‘social acitivism’ to relieve the problems of crime rather than superheroic action sequences of death defying clashes of will between the forces of good or evil?

Judging by the massive box office returns of the various superhero movies out there and the massive audience of children, teenagers and older people alike I’d say no. A movie where Iron Man tries to rationally talk down his enemies might initially be refreshing due to the novelty but when push comes to shove having that as the norm for most characters would be boring as ****.

Moving on the idea of it being atypical of him being married to a model has always been a false narrative. There are a lot of models out there, and given the competitiveness of the industry not all of them make it. It’s not that being a model is all that uncommon a profession but that being an A-list model is, when for Peter his wife had that status only briefly and only as part of a larger arc wherein she was set up to lose that job.
Unless you meant it was atypical for him to be married to an attractive woman…

Again Peter is a down to Earth ordinary guy RELATIVELY speaking in the context of superhero comics. You can bend that narrative but not break it.
At the end of the day Peter had a common job, had to pay bills like the rest of us, had to juggle social and romantic and family obligations, and dealt with other hardships we usually face in life. At most things got abstract such as during the Clone Saga, but even that whilst unrealistic on a surface level was about addressing questions of personal identity which most of us deal with in our lives as well as the idea of brotherhood. Most people have brothers and deal with sibling rivalries.

The PI thing goes to ridiculous extremes as it makes him internationally famous and a 1%er.

Hell you brought up him being an orphan raised by elderly people but even this isn’t really that uncommon. Maybe not the thing most people go through but not really uncommon. To all intents and purposes it equated Peter to an adopted child. Lots of adopted kids and orphans out there after all.

Moving on his Webs books really wasn’t ‘acclaimed’ it stopped making him money pretty fast and Roger Stern even did a story illustrating it in the cheap book section. He just released a book of photos is all which a) many photographers do and b) was again part of an arc that built up his successes before bringing them crashing down.

Not to mention lots of people write books. Lots of people even make a career out of it just as lots of people are photographers. Peter just published the one book that was hot for five minutes.

Where was Peter’s IQ stated to be 250? Even if true again, relatable in a RELATIVE sense. This is superhero comics after all. Same goes for his inventions. The inventiveness really was more a conceit to give him tools in his superhero life. He needed web-shooters and sometimes needed to invent plot devices to defeat enemies.

He never worked for Stark Industries.

Yes he’s been to different worlds and dimensions and I think you will find many Spider-Man fans complain about that stuff much as they do about the PI stuff. Moreover that’s superhero fantasy stuff, that’s almost inevitable in the course of his life due to the genre, it really shouldn’t count when evaluating the character on a deeper level or at best should be taken as allegorical to more realistic things.

As for moving up the social ladder, again this happens to people all the time. He’s never actually been homeless except in literally the worst John Byrne issue of John Byrne’s crappy out of character almost got the character cancelled piece of garbage run on the character. Counting that is like counting the Teen Tony stuff for Iron Man…or Sins Past.

He’s also only ever been a billionaire in the very status quo we are discussing. Seems circular to justify the status quo by citing said status quo no?

The only other times he was well off again lasted very briefly and were part of storylines designed to build him up in order to bring him down again. One of those times was again in Byrne’s garbage ass run. The other time was in Michelinie’s run where Peter wasn’t exactly rich. They could afford a nice apartment is all and didn’t have to scrap by. That was the extent of things. Hardly unrelatable, lots of people are in such a position.

[Spidercide]

“These types of experiences fundamentally alter a person’s perspective, and to further an illusion of Peter being an everyman requires all character development of his to be continuously thrown out of the window so that he can never learn from these types of experiences.”

What are you talking about?

How does one learn from temporarily having a nice apartment?

Is he inventive? Yes but again most of his inventions do not have practical applications on a commercial level or else could be dangerous to commercialize.

He tried and failed to sell his web-shooters and really if he did that he’d lose a massive edge on his oppoenents and be disadvantaged since they could turn them against him, figure out a weakness to them or other people could use his inventions for harmful activities.

His other inventions tend to be one off plot devices.

Even so, again to make him affluent off of these inventions would undermine the core philosophy of the character as an everyman. You can be abstract with it, you can bend it to a point, but never too far. When he was the Hornet he didn’t even invent that jetpack himself, Hobie Brown did.

In fact Identity Crisis provides an apt example of how you cannot screw too much with the necessities of the genre or the series. Realistically it’d make sense for Peter to simply change his identity and not go by Spider-Man again, alternating his 4 other identities as needed.

They provided a massive advantage to him if for no other reason than he could side step public mistrust and better protect his identity.

But the series is about SPIDER-Man so he must retain that identity and we just have to roll with it.

Pretty much every instance you cited as examples of Peter not being an every man fits under the umbrellas of ‘suspension of disbelief’ or else there is nothing to actually LEARN from them.


Now yeah is the ‘average man’ Chinese? Maybe. But not only is that an unreasonable thing to bring to the discussion given how Spider-Man was created as Caucasian in 1962, but more importantly Spider-Man is an American character primarily aimed at an American audience. By this logic the ‘average man’ doesn’t have basic liberties like freedom of speech either.

Not to mention that frankly Spider-Man should not contort himself to being whatever the modern day dictates as ‘everyman’. If we did that for him and most other characters then it’d be a case of changing a broom head and broom handle. Eventually you lose the original thing wholesale and have something unrecognizable. Best to modestly update where needed but in all other ways keep the character true to his roots, especially since he’s been telling one continuous narrative since 1962 (well, really it ended in 2007 because of BS but that isn’t the point right now).

“If we look in America, we see that startup culture is becoming a lot more prominent and popular around young American college grads in STEM these days, so Peter creating a successful start-up could be extremely relatable (and inspirational) to a lot of people. Sure, these things might not be what YOU mean by everyman, but the word means”

If success didn’t make him a 1%er style of rich, eradicated most financial concerns from him (which to say is common in 2017 is a joke, mass poverty is still a big thing) and his company was domestically based in NYC and fairly small I wouldn’t be opposed to that.

The flaw in the argument is that

a) It is not a small or modest company it is probably the largest and one of the most internationally famous tech conglomerates in the world providing tech everyone in developed countries uses to the point where Peter Parker’s name is literally a verb, and

b) Again HE DIDN’T MAKE THIS COMPANY!

Doc Ock funded, founded and developed the company and when it was torn down in Volume 3 he also manipulated things from behind the scenes to make it a success on a large scale again.

Peter was not the person actually building up the company.

And more poignantly who he is as a person is someone who literally could not do that. he doesn’t know anything about business, he doesn’t have business skills and he doesn’t have the temperament that business minded people need to have. Mary Jane? Sure. Peter Parker? Hell no.

Now sure the definition of everyman will change from wirter to writer…to an extent.

This is not to an extent. This is beyond the pale. I am not calling Peter a 1%er as hyperbole. That is literally what he is. And by no rational definition can a 1%er be the everyman because on a purely mathematical basis 1% is by definition exceptional, i.e. the oppositie of the common, majority, or ‘every’.

As for being involved in his studies, dude you can be a student in higher education AND be blue collar you know. My grandfather was one of the top electrical engineers in the country and he migrated here as a kid, lived in pretty low class conditions and did a day job whilst he studied at night school…whilst also learning English…from the newspaper.

Hell Peter went to college off the back of a scholarship for goodness sake.

Now yes, Spider-Man was a researcher and scientist for many issues under Slott’s run. Again, this doesn’t mean you are not the everyman on a personal level. Many people work in science jobs.

I do not think Spider-Man being anything other than blue collar or working class is anethma to the character but there is a world of difference from him moving from working class/blue collar into middle class as a researcher (for a bullshit magic science lab which was utterly unrealistic) and becoming a internationally famous owner of the world’s largest tech company worth billions of dollars!


Its not an anything goes situation you know. It isn’t a case of he can move from one social strata to another therefore screw it he can be Steve Jobs/Mark Zuckerberg.

Peter was never a researcher under JMS’ run. That was only a pretense by Tony. Peter was still a teacher during JMS’ run.

Dude Tri-Copr doesn’t count. He went there like 3 times in the entire run c’mon.

As for USM Peter, again, you are being waaaaaay too insular with your definitions. Being an everyman does not forbid him from being a scientist and his great intelligence was something established early on because lets be real 1960s comics weren’t that great at realism, having established that it got grandfathered in so now he’s a really scientifically smart person who is in most other respects a normal guy. He sucks at social stuff for instance.

[Spidercide]

So sure he could become WELL OFF. But PI isn’t well off. PI is him becoming a global figure who need never worry about money. He could use his skills as a researcher at Garrid as he did in the Clone Saga and still be a down to Earth guy working his 9-5 but it happens to be at a research lab.

Again, not exactly uncommon. Lots of people work in the sciences and in research. What would probably be better though is for him to be a forensic scientist.

You say his sense of responsibility would’ve pushed him towards being an inventor except we didn’t see that happen. Peter is tech savvy but his inventions tend to be small scale and situational at best. Moreover you keep presuming he has the skills necessary to be an entrepreneur when he does not. Wanting to help people with his inventions might be one thing but that doesn’t mean he can create a business. He lacks such acumen.

More poignantly much like Reed Richards you can’t have him actually succeed in helping the world with his inventions since it’d too fundamentally change the world he lives in and render it unrecognizable. See above.


Again, working in a research lab as his day job is fine. Trying to be a scientist to help people is fine. That keeps him grounded and down to Earth and relatable whilst staying true to his desire to want to help people (although again, forensic scientist, which would actually allow him to achieve stuff rather than generically research stuff with few results to show for himself) and makes sense in the context of his intelligence. But being Tony Stark is not fine. It is ridiculously too far.

You know what else really allows him to use science to help people?

Being a science teacher at a run down dangerous school full of vulnerable children whom he can help because he isn’t in it for the money, genuinely cares and also knows his stuff when finding qualified science and maths teachers is extremely difficult and moreso for impoverished schools.

Just sayin. That helps people a Hell of a lot too. And is also down to Earth and relatable.

I mean I keep coming back to this but it doesn’t stop being true. You can say the character could do all these things but in the context of the fictional universe you still shouldn’t take it that far. Every scientific contriution and every financial contribution Peter could make to make the world a better place is stuff that Bruce Wayne, Tony Stark, Reed Richards, T’Challa and Hank Pym could also probably do but they haven’t because you cannot alter the Marvel Universe too drastically from the world we live in. Which renders Peter’s efforts fruitless. Again I ask why couldn’t Reed Richards and Tony upgrade everyone’s tech so we all have flying cars that run off of renewable energy. Or in fact why doesn’t Superman cure world hunger or global warming or cancer? Because you do not mess witht he universe nor the creative philosophies of the character.

Meanwhile you could have him employ those skills on a smaller scale in a more relatable setting and have him actually achieve stuff. He could get a kid through his science exam. He could work with police to finger a crook based upon lab evidence.


Again, Spider-Man shouldn’t be a global superhero. It’s not the point of the character.





“Anyways, considering how often he has worked on science, I don’t think it’s too late at all to further push him in that direction by letting him actually act according to his built in character motivation (as a scientific geek) and do his DREAM JOB, while also helping him further fulfill his responsibility. It fills TWO important aspects of the character in one stroke.”


And screws up two other important aspects of the character.


The down to earth aspect and the neccissity of generating conflict in stories.


Newsflash, HORIZON labs half the time easily solved his problems through technology (which Spider-Man isn’t about) and the other times it didn’t solve the plot’s problems it was due to contrivance since it SHOULD’VE been able to.



I.e. no writer should do that.



You gotta keep the universe viable long term whilst also being true to the characters as people AND the philosophies of the franchise.






“Actually, doing the research on this has made me further realize just how OOC those issues with Peter as a blue-collar worker/“everyman” are. Considering how those issues kinda coincide with the worst years of Spider-Man’s character (Clone Saga, homeless era, etc.) I think it would be better just to forget about them, lol. (IMO)”



You need to research them again.


Spider-Man is a blue collar worker in Ditko and Romita’s runs, the Stern run and DeFalco’s and PAD’s runs. Those are some of the best years of Spider-Man.



Also can we stop broadbrushing the clone saga as end to end bad. It’s really a complete oversimplification. 1994-1995 sucked mostly. 1996 was mostly great in those stories Peter was a photographer and Ben was a barrista.



1997-1998 had Peter go back to college and also work as a freelance photographer. Again, down to Earth, again everyman.



1997-1998 kicked ass.



You know which eras objectively sucked **** as stories?



1998-2001



2007-now.



Again, redo the research. Peter as blue collar isn’t OOC for him at all (to be OOC it’d have to be something he’d NEVER do) and more poignantly it’s got little to do with the quality of the book..



Some of the best and worst runs have used that status for him.



Meanwhile the fanfiction dream science jobs at Tri-Corp and HORIZOn and Parker Industries have been objectively garbage.




For the record I also do not relate to Peter’s struggles.




I’ve NEVER related to Spider-Man as a character. I relate more to Superman than I do Spider-Man because Clark like me dealt with issues related to immigration identity.

[Spidercide]

I just like Spider-man more is all and can discern what the character/series is really about (because it’s patently obvious).



The notion of not striving for relatability is...illogical.




Most endearing characters in all fiction have had SOME aspect of relatability. In fact that was the deal with Marvel from day 1 in 1961.



By this logic Spider-Man should never have been invented.



In fact most heroes going for relatability went redundant in the 1980s when the first crisis hit and reorganized DC so their characters were more reltable too.



As for ‘no longer being the main theme’ of Spider-Man...just....no.



No series should sell out on what their main theme is. After 50 years especially it isn’t even viable to honestly change that, if it even ever was.



The character and series is defined now.



It can still change and develop.E.g. Peter can become a parent for example.but the deeper themes cannot change. That ship sailed many decades ago.




So...no everyman as a theme is



a) Not something mutually exclusive to responsibility. A series can have more than one theme and philosophy you know


And


b) Isn’t something to be discarded (that’s just....I have no words....)




In summary and reiteration.



Spider-Man philosophically is about being down to Earth AND responsibility.



Responsibility doesn’t automatically mean he becomes a corporate CEO...at all, and it is not mutually exclusive to being an everyman either.




P.S. You say you find the plot and character development to be much greaer draws but ASM volume 4 has had poorly structured and written plots and little character development for Peter. He is hardly more mature than he used to be, let alone how he was in the JMS run. I mean you say you’d hate him to regress into a goofy hero ala USM cartoon but multiple issues of Volume 4 have essentially been episodes of the USM cartoon




P.P.P.S. Youth was and has never been an option as a theme for Spider-Man. if nothing else Spider-Man is an adult therefore he cannot be about youth.

And yet, as I showed, these two viewpoints clearly contradict each other in various situations. A responsible Peter would have established Parker Industries years ago in order to fulfill his responsibility to all those who need his help, but an everyman Peter would never have done so.

????


You literally never showed that at all.


You more or less just said they were anethma to one another.



As I showed above a 'responsible Peter' doesn't have to be responsible through owning a company and it's also NOT IN HIS SKILLSET to do that.


Again, not everyone can start a company. even if they have the money to do it they need business skills to do it.


Peter does not have those. That's okay. Mary Jane can't be a scientist either but she does have business skills.


It's also a pretty....insulting idea.


A rich powerful company owner is somehow more responsible than basically a beat cop who's actually out there directly helping people?


P.S. Peter's responsibility does exist on a global scale. In fact having this company by your logic makes his super powers redundant.

[Spidercide]

I think you're confusing the words responsible and mature. I'm not arguing that career choice has any bearing on maturity (I mean I guess it does a little bit, but that's not what I'm trying to say at all) - instead, I'm stating that career choice is a huge part of being responsible, especially in Peter's case since he clearly has a lot to offer for the world. You can't deny that Peter using his intelligence to help people all over the world by building solutions to problems like global warming, creating cures for illnesses like cancer, using his profits to fund charities that help bring people out of poverty, etc. is much more responsible than Peter looking out for himself by being a photographer/teacher or something. And there is literally no other way that he can be a greater force of good, at least not that I can think of.

Also, you're trying to balance Peter's motivation to be responsible, with the meta perspective that you want him to be grounded in normal life. I think that shows why it's a bad thing for the character. Not only did I show (in the wall of text of mine) how Peter was never an "everyman" in the first place, but the fact also remains that writers should be striving to write characters according to their motivations, not the writer's own preferences - because then you're not writing the actual character anymore. In Peter's case, if you start mixing up his responsibility to do as much good for the world as he can with your preference of having Peter live what you think a normal life would be like, then you're compromising his character motivations. Because Peter has never showed that he'd sacrifice an opportunity to help other people so he can preserve the normalcy in his life - in fact, he's shown the opposite numerous times! And then there's the fact that, while you may not be able to relate to a Peter who is a successful inventor and entrepreneur, plenty of other people can relate to this Peter better than any status quo before it (as someone who wasn't bullied in high school, has never faced monetary issues, and has a life that revolves largely around scientific/engineering disciplines, I find college/Horizon Labs/PI Peter by far more relatable than any other status quo) and there is no reason to think that successful entrepreneurs don't exist in the normal world.

TL;DR:

- you're confusing the meanings of mature and responsible
- PI Peter is indubitably most responsible of all
- "balancing" character motivations and out of universe story preferences leads to stories with plot driving the character rather than the other way around (which is, funnily enough, something I see often as a criticism of Slott) and not really writing the character anymore
- Peter was never a true everyman, so Peter being a successful inventor is hardly a huge step for the character, especially if the relatable aspects of his struggle are kept and expanded upon (ex. How does his traditional struggle to balance work, family, and superheroing change when his company is also his responsibility? etc.)
- this helps us keep a relatable character while also strengthening the theme of responsibility, instead of partially making Peter a hypocrite in order to keep a status quo more suited to the interests of some

To be honest, you didn't bring up anything I hadn't addressed in my long ass essay length post. If you read it you can probably see all the arguments I outlined here as well as a lot more.

Er...you can deny that.



Who the Hell said Peter was smart enough to solve global warming? Or cancer.



Reed Richards didn’t solve that one and he is undeniably smarter than Peter.



Same for ending poverty. Bruce Wayne and Tony Stark haven’t done this.



**** SUPERMAN hasn’t done any of those things.



And again by this logic you’ve just invalidated every Spider-Man story where he wasn’t working his ass off to become a great scientist. Which is...you can’t do that dude.




Your logic is further flawed when you say stuff like Peter is just looking out for himself by being a teacher or photographer.



a) As a photographer he supported himself and Aunt may and mary jane
b) As a photographer he has access to news which helped him in his various adventures
c) Being a photographer provded for himself which is something everyone needs to do to just, you know...survive
d) Being a teacher was something he did specifically to help impoverished inner city children



The latter is almost like Spider-Man wassimultaneously being an everyman AND responsible.



There is no other way that Spider-Man can be a greater force for good?



Yeah except for you know....scaring a lot of crime off the streets, preventing citywide or global disasters from suepr villains and looking out for humble civilians who are besieged by street crime which he can tackle more safely than the police or other emergency services.



God dammit GOD himself literally told Spider-Man he’s done good in the world and it’s fine and dandy.




You metric is again dismissing the contributions down to Earth people like fire fighters or teachers can do to help people. And saying Spider-Man is irresponsible for basically using his super powers.




Wanting Peter to be grounded isn’t a metaperspective.



It has literally been a thing pointed out in the series, was the entire reason he was created and has defined his character.



He is the most human of the marvel super humans for this reason.



How did you miss that?




“Not only did I show (in the wall of text of mine) how Peter was never an "everyman" in the first place, but the fact also remains that writers should be striving to write characters according to their motivations, not the writer's own preferences - because then you're not writing the actual character anymore.”



You showed nothing of the sort as I myself in my own wall of text demonstrated.




The character is an everyman in a relative sense. You simply falsly codified everyman to = blue collar exclusively. Which is illogical.



Moreover by your logic Reed Richards, Tony Stark, Hank Pym, T’Challa, Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Martian Manhunter, the Flash(s), and many other characters should have fixed:



- Word hunger
- World poverty
- All crime
- Pollution
- Global warming
- Racial intolerance
- Prison reform
- Prisoner rehabilitation
- Al Queda
- ISIS
- Police corruption
- Instituted clean renewable energies
- Cured cancer
- Cured most diseases in actually
- Saved various endangered species
- Aided in making space programs and space exploration more poignant to everyday government practice
- Institutionalized global teleportation systems
- Invented Iphones and Facebook at least a decade or two before they showed up in reality
- Created global solutions to natural disasters
- Prevented WWII and the Holocaust
- Ended slavery
- Ended rape culture
- Figured out ways to ensure no one could affect an alien invasion
- Extended the life expectancy of a normal human being to well beyond age 100
- Achieved world peace in general




Because see ALL of those characters allegedly have motives on some level to hit many of the things on that list. And they also have the means to do it too.

[Spidercide]

Reed Richards invented a flying car running on renewable energy in the 1960s.



Cloning technology and Pym particles alone could save countless lives by either creating replacement organs, replacement bodies that psychics could transfer minds to or indeed performing internal microsurgery.




In fact many characters have reality warping capabilities or molecular manipulation abilities which would fix the whole damn world.




But by your logic they all were in fact NEVER ‘the actual characters’.



It’s almost like the motivations of the characters must be tempered by the inherent creative philosophies underpinning them as well as the narrative considerations or something.




It’s almost like Superman can’t end world hunger because then the DC universe would begin to egregiously not resemble our own.




It’s almost like writing having the Jackal try to take over the world even though his motives and abilities invite that fucks up his character completely because he was supposed to be a humble college professor who went nuts.



It’s almost like having the Inhumans be an allegory for people who face prejudice because of how they were born is asinine because it’s not what they are at all about.




Or something.




This is NOT a matter of preferences.



This is a matter of the philosophies underpinning the characters, the philosophies they were created and defined about.



For Spider-Man PART of that is being the everyman.




Every instance of Spider-Man NOT being the most powerful guy in the world. Every instance of Spider-Man struggling to pay rent, having trouble with his love life, not getting appreciated for his hard work, having to study, having to juggle work with other responsibilities, having to get chewed out by his boss, facing the realistic pangs of growing up, or of life in general.




And doing it without being a 1%er, without being globally famous or saving the world routinely.



THAT is what made Spider-Man the everyman.




His common day to day life experiences where he happened to be a superhero too.




Just helping out where he could, fighting the smaller street crimes because he could and because the little guys on the street like him needed help. Help that global and cosmic defenders like the FF, the Avengers or the Guardians were too distracted to fight, too beneath their notice or in the case of the X-Men too busy trying to fight for their rights and their survival.




But the elderly Smith couple who run the bakery on Avenge F where the neighbourhood is kind of rough and every so often someone who gets a hold of a gun decides to rob that bakery as a quick cash job?



Those guys have Spider-Man to watch their backs.




If he can he will almost always help those little people, those people like him who could be hurt by some ******* with a gun.





Why do you think Spider-Man battled gangsters during Ditko’s run so often?




Why do you think his life was fucked by making an all too human error over some tiny nobody crook who targeted some elderly suburban couple who just happened to be there.




Because a MASSIVE aspect of Spider-Man, indeed one of the key points of his appeal, was the fact that he was down to Earth. He was like you, like me, like most people.




Sure he was super smart, sure he had powers but that didn’t take away from his relative normalcy.





THAT is why Spider-Man is the everyman.




THAT is why goging global is so utterly thematically and philosophically WRONG for the character and the franchise.





Yes he’s about responsibility. But DOMESTIC responsibilities, responsibilities we have to ourselves, to our friends, our families, our fellow citizens.




Help if you can.




The message wasn’t it’s Peter’s responsibility to save the entire goddam world. That isn’t what Uncle Ben meant. You keep confusing that message that he has to do as much good as he possibly can.




NO.




The point is to use the power you have in your life responsibly.




If you are a parent or a teacher use that power responsibly.




If you are a superhero use your super powers to help people, to do things that others can’t or not as effectively.




Spider-Man has saved lives and money and property by doing this. He’s saved civilians from villains and criminals, he’s allowed police and emergency services to not waste time and resources or risk their lives.





The point wasn’t him sitting around trying to save the entire fucking world.





He was your friendly NEIGHBORHOOD Spider-Man for a reason.





Hell read the Cosmic Powers arc fromt he 90s. It goes into how ultimately Spider-Man is worthy of cosmic levels of power due to his inner nobility but that that power on a personal level does not suit him.




He is one of the common people and fights directly for them.




Keeping him that way isn’t compromising his motivations at all, quite the opposite. I do not think you truly grasped what said motivations are tbh.





Moreover let’s say yeah that is his motivations. Again, you’re presuming just because that’s his motivations to help a many people as possible that he should obviously go global, when he doesn’t have to. It’s more than good enough for him to defend one city as he does and more importantly having that aspiration doesn’t mean he’s CAPABLE of fulfilling it.





Like ****, did he even invent the Webware thing himself?





Because most of PI’s tech in volume 3 was stuff Otto invented.





You know Otto? The guy who FOUNDED Parker Industries and then made it a ssucceess behind the scenes in Volume 4. NOT Peter Parker.

[Spidercide]

“And then there's the fact that, while you may not be able to relate to a Peter who is a successful inventor and entrepreneur, plenty of other people can relate to this Peter better than any status quo before it (as someone who wasn't bullied in high school, has never faced monetary issues, and has a life that revolves largely around scientific/engineering disciplines, I find college/Horizon Labs/PI Peter by far more relatable than any other status quo) and there is no reason to think that successful entrepreneurs don't exist in the normal world.”


Relatability is determined by majority.


Successful entrepeuners are not the majority.


And most people are not involved in the sciences but most readers of Spider-Man still related to him early on and in later years.


But the issue isn’t relatability.


The issue is no different to say playing Superman as an outcast and outsider alien who feels islated from humanity, a god among them. Or playing Wonder Woman as an elitist, a misandrist or the lone woman among a nation of misandrists who does NOT hate men....or as Xena.


That is to say the issue is about the deeper philosophies of the character.


I respect you personally might enjoy this status quo for Spider-Man. that’s a-okay. Enjoy what you want.

That doesn’t mean that it’s right for the character to ever be this though. Again, this isn’t preference, this is literally one of the defining themes of the character.


“- PI Peter is indubitably most responsible of all”

I just disputed it so...it clearly isn’t.

Hell how many times in this run has Peter basically acted like akid playing with his toys, talking smack like a kid or indeed doing objectively irresponsible things like INTERFERING IN THE POLITICS OF WARRING AFRICAN NATIONS!


“ "balancing" character motivations and out of universe story preferences leads to stories with plot driving the character rather than the other way around (which is, funnily enough, something I see often as a criticism of Slott) and not really writing the character anymore”


Rubbish.


J.M. DeMatteis, Tom DeFalco, JMS and a whole host of other writers wrote Spider-Man as down to Earth and an every man for decades. Putting aside the quality of their runs they wrote chiefly CHARACTER driven narratives not plot driven ones.


SLOTT writes plot driven narratives. In Clone Conspiracy Spider-Man for no reason with NOTHING showcasing his change in attitude suddenly believes that the Gwen clone was effectively the real deal.


In Superior Spider-Man every character had to be stupid in order to facilitate the plot of Doc Ock being Spider-Man to continue.


In No One Dies Peter is driven to extremes by an event which realistically would NOT drive him in that way because it’s


a) No different to other experiences he’s been through before
b) Doesn’t mean much on account of him not knowing Marla very well
c) Is literally having him commit to something he committed to in his origin story


Compare and contrast that garbage to

- The Kid Who Collected Spider-Man
- The Alien Costume Saga
- Kraven’s Last Hunt
- Amazing #400

THAT is character driven narratives done right. NOT plot driven ones.

“- Peter was never a true everyman, so Peter being a successful inventor is hardly a huge step for the character, especially if the relatable aspects of his struggle are kept and expanded upon (ex. How does his traditional struggle to balance work, family, and superheroing change when his company is also his responsibility? etc.)”


Peter was a true everyman. You are simply using a nonsensical and restrictive definition of everyman to mean ‘blue collar’ whilst illogically taking the superhero aspects of his life as literal when they are at best allegorical at worst present as this is a superhero story. It’s not truly about the superhero stuff it’s about the stuff APART from that.


Saying Peter isn’t an everyman because he’s visted other dimensions is as illogical as saying the X-Men aren’t allegories for people who deal with prejudice because in real life there would be legitimate reason to hate and fear mutants as they really are dangerous.


You must learn there is both allegory to be had here but at the same time inherent philosophies and narrativee necessities to these characters that must be balanced.


At the same time those ‘relatable aspects’ of his personality are intrinsically altered when he’s Bruce Wayne and Tony Stark.


Hate to break it to you but as a globe trotting company owning billionaire you don’t need to struggle for moeny. Your ups and downs aren’t really all that severe. Your time is taken up and you have little privacy because now you are a straight up celebrity.


Which you know paints an even BIGGER target on Peter’s loved ones, targets he can’t do much about since he’s probably not going to be all that close by to them when he’s a jetsetter.


AND, by your own logic you’ve completely screwed up the fact that Peter being a hero is actually not only redundant under this scheme but worse actively irresponsible.


He doesn’t need to superhero now because his time doing that would take away from the good he could do behind a desk ordering aid to poor countries.


And when he globe trots he doesn’t really know the locals all that well, he doesn’t know the players or how to fight crime in those places beyond emergencies he happen to come across.

[Spidercide]

Basically you took the very concept of Spider-Man, everyman superhero driven by a sense of responsibility and completely warped it into Peter Parker billionaire scientist and philanthropist who is going to irreparably alter the world...oh and I guess he has superpowers too or something.



I mean Jesus Christ under this scheme the supporting cast become basically pointless. There is a reason Iron Man’s adventures involve supporting cast who essentially just work for him or in Batman’s case his supporting cast are just other superheroes.



All this and you claimed that if every character is in some way relatable then it makes no sense to make a big deal out of that since it’s no longer unique....dude...this direction makes Spider-Man a hard rip off of Iron Man, Batman and Green Arrow. Like to the point where the books and creators are admitting the parallels.



When Spider-Man was you know, Spider-Man, he wasn’t unique but only because OTHER characters were inspired by him. He was the OG.


“ this helps us keep a relatable character while also strengthening the theme of responsibility, instead of partially making Peter a hypocrite in order to keep a status quo more suited to the interests of some”



This helps to fundamentally break the Spider-Man character who was never a hypocrite because you fail to recognize being smart doesn’t mean you can make a global business and that helping people in your day to day life from street crime which is besieging them is also monumentally responsible.



Who is also not particularly relatable because now he is absolutely not down to Earth at all.



Or to sum all of this up:



You fundamentally do not understand Spider-Man as a character, series or a concept.