That's your right. Totally fair.
What you say is true if people know Spider-Man exclusively from AF#15 onwards. The fact is they don't.
Ever since the 1967 Cartoon Series and its catchy theme song, the majority of people come to know Spider-Man, as they do Superman and Batman, from childhood, at the age of 1-4, and they know him when they are far too young to follow and understand the stories or comics. My 4 year old nephew doesn't know Spider-Man is Peter Parker but he loves playing Spider-Man toys, and considering the way he usually has Iron Man and others bowing down before his Big Spider-Man toy (in proportions picture Galactus and the MU), he probably doesn't think he's a teenager or so on, heck he doesn't even know what teenager means. The 1967 cartoon theme song became popular and came to be covered by people who didn't see the cartoon and it's used as a popular children's song. Not once in those lyrics is Peter Parker's name mentioned. Spider-Man's fame in Japan is tied to the Supaidaman show, not Peter Parker behind that mask. And yet that show inspired Power Rangers and so on. And it was rooted specifically in the appeal of the costume and its design. Ditko, not Lee.
Then you also have the other phenomenon on YouTube and others where a bunch of crude 3d animation for toddlers flourishes (
https://mashable.com/2017/02/22/spid...e-kids-videos/), where Spider-man and Elsa from Frozen have a romance. Which at the very least does suggest that even small children think A) Spider-Man is a grownup, B) Romance is part of Spider-Man's appeal.
It was in merchandising and such licensed stuff that Spider-Man became to known to people. Are you going to tell them that this isn't the true or real Spider-Man. I don't think so. You and I both like the PS4 game, right? Do you know that only 50.3% of the people who bought and played the game completed the story (
https://comicbook.com/gaming/news/ma...mpletion-rate/). Most people who bought and played Spider-Man on PS4 just played it for the open-world swinging and combat, and not for the story.
Fundamentally, in order to sell, the story doesn't matter. Spider-Man would sell in toys and merchandise even if the comics shut down tomorrow, as it is, which by the way is a possibility.
If the story of Spider-Man and Peter Parker needs to be told in any kind of whole way, you do need Mary Jane.At the same time, let me say, that MJ is a supporting character, and as such if she were to be the lead in her own right, apart from Peter Parker, she won't be interesting either.
Like Bendis in Invincible Iron Man tried to make MJ work as a supporting character in Stark's corner and it didn't work. Aside from verbally making fun of Tony's pretentiosuness and snobbishness, there wasn't much there for her to do.