For practically my entire life, Spider-Man has been one of the most popular superheroes of all time (consistently in the top 3 with Batman and Superman), he’s also been my favourite superhero since I was five. Over the holidays I re-watched all the movies (though I still haven’t seen No Way Home), played both Playstation (Insomniac) games and got the Spider-Gwen omnibus, suffice to say I submerged myself in the Spider-Man universe and came out with a lot of thoughts about what Spider-Man means to me and why he’s been consistently so popular.
A few years ago I wrote a twitter thread about the wide appeal of Spider-Man and posted an edited version of that to this blog, it’s a little simplistic and years later I have a lot of different thoughts that I want to dive into. In that post I spoke about his relatability so let’s start there.
Before he becomes Spider-Man, and afterward when he’s not being Spider-Man, Peter Parker is just a regular guy and he gets his superpowers by sheer accident which is unique among the other heroes he shares the top spot with. Let’s go through a few of his counterparts: Batman’s ability is arguably being rich and been taught by people older and wiser than him, Superman is an alien, The X-Men are born that way, Thor’s technically an alien while also being a demi-god, Ironman is rich and smart, Black Widow is a highly trained assassin, Captain America is a literal super solider who got frozen in ice and is Wonder Woman even human? Unlike all of these characters, Peter Parker is just a guy who trips and falls into acquiring superpowers, and though he’s sometimes portrayed as a bit of a genius he’s still just some guy. He has bills to pay, is constantly worried about his rent, is struggling to juggle his social life with his work life, is terrified of letting people down and hating how it’s inevitably going to happen, he’s always trying to do the right thing while secretly scared that he’s messing it up and he makes stupid jokes to hide his insecurities. Haven’t we all been there, haven’t we all experienced these things and feelings? And that’s what really sets him apart from the rest. Spider-Man/Peter Parker has real world problems, on top of his superhero problems, and they affect his life as much as the superhero problems.
Also, it’s weird how revolutionary it feels that a superhero has a job and is actively worried about making rent, but it really is groundbreaking because we’ve never seen it before (I’m sure there are other superheroes out there that tackle this issue but they aren’t as big as the aforementioned characters).
But relatability is only half the story. I’m not ever interested in a character just because I relate to them, there has to be more to it, they have to symbolise something and boy does Spider-Man symbolise a whole lot of things so why don’t we talk about a few.
Let’s start with relatability and what that means within the themes and symbolism of Spider-Man. There’s a scene in Into the Spider-verse where a character, kind of as an aside sort of joke, says that we all have the ability to be Spider-Man but it’s true. Peter Parker only becomes Spider-Man through sheer chance, and it quite literally could have been anyone else. And outside of the text of his origin story, Peter Parker could be anyone, there are millions of people out there just like him. But that’s not addressing the paraphrased quote in full. In a sense, we do all have the ability to be Spider-Man, and by that I mean that we have the ability to do what we can to help others and work to make the world a better place.
And that brings me to the next theme I want to explore, responsibility. At this point, we all know the famous Uncle Ben line “with great power comes great responsibility”, but we haven’t really dug into what that means. Of course it means a lot of things to different people but I can only speak for myself and so I will. Whether you like it or not, we live in a society, we as a species are communal, and we need other people in order to survive. In my ideal world everyone would receive everything they need and would give what they could according to their ability. But outside of my own ideological beliefs, if we want to continue comfortably for many years, centuries or millennia to come, we are going to have to collaborate and help each other. All that is to say that you have a responsibility to the society you live in to do what you can to leave it better than how you found it.
So where does that leave Spider-Man/Peter Parker and how does that make him popular? It means that he’s just like us but he’s the best possible version us, he’s who we hope to be. He’s not perfect, he messes up a lot, a whole lot, to the point where it’s an integral part of his character, but that’s part of the point. He’s smart, he’s nerdy, he’s funny, he’s awkward, he’s sarcastic, he’s unreliable, he’s a hero and he’s doing his best just like the rest of us.
The Captive Returns 