Peter Benjamin Parker. Raised in Forest Hills, Queens, NY. High school student, college student, scientist, one-time CEO and billionaire. Oh, also he’s Spider-Man. Spider-Man debuted in 1962, co-created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko as a departure from the general trend that cast teenagers as side-kicks to the main heroes. Here was a 15-year-old kid, who was his own hero. Since his first appearance on Amazing Fantasy #15, he has become one of the most popular comic book characters ever. The Amazing Spider-Man comic book was, at the time of it’s “cancellation”, the highest numbered comic in circulation, spanning 50 years and 700 issues.
Spider-Man’s popularity is very quantifiable. At an estimated $27 billion, Spidey is the second highest grossing media franchise based on a comic book, ahead of such heavy hitters like Batman and Superman (and behind only Transformers, if you can believe it). Spider-Man has one of the biggest fandoms in comics and the general nerd-dom and this comes with a special problem.
Spidey fans have a tendency to pick a particular version of the character and hold that version up as the definitive “Spider-Man” and any take that deviates from this is wrong. They have even gone after writers they feel have “done wrong” by this phantom standard (Dan Slott is a regular recepient of online abuse). Now, for a while this was localized to the comic pages and conventions. Then Hollywood happened.
In 2002, Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man was released to critical and commercial acclaim. This spawned a very successful trilogy of movies with an average box office total of over $800 million per movie. Since then, thanks in the most part to Sony’s incompetence, there have been two reboots of the character: first, Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Man in 2012; then Tom Holland’s Spider-Man, which is the current movie Spidey and the first one in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU).
Different sides of the fandom have taken a liking to different Spider-Men, which is not a problem in and of itself (I personally have no preference, but I don’t judge those who do). The problem arises, and it always does, when people try to judge one Spider with another and proclaim with certainty that a certain Spider is faulty. What usually happens is fans of Tobey’s Spider-Man (called “Raimi stans”) will attempt to judge every successive Spider by the standards of that one, while simultanously holding the view that their Parker is perfect and without flaws of any kind. Another quite popular method of disparaging is claiming that Tom Holland’s Spider-Man isn’t true to the “spirit of the character”, and if you dare disagree you will be accused of not being a true fan, or you’ll be told to “read a comic”.
Now, I’m not saying that any one is perfect; all have fallen short in some way or another. Some (Andrew) are hampered by the quality of their movies (TASM2 was so bad). But what happened to “live and let live”? Why must there always be battle lines drawn for every single thing? You have to choose, and if you don’t, if you choose not to engage in the self-destructive bickering, then you’re seen as “not enough of a fan”. And, of course, this is not limited to actor choice or movie preference. Even whether or not you like a particular story arc in the comics is seen as a divisive issue. I’ll admit that some of the creative decisions made by writers have been questionable (Cindy’s origin and initial character come to mind), but there’s no need to start a war over every character decision you don’t agree with. You don’t have to love every single part of the character. It’s okay to have bits that don’t sit right with you (I still have issues with parts of the Ezekiel arc), but being able to maturely express displeasure about certain things is the cornerstone of fandoms.
Peter Benjamin Parker is an inspiration to billions of people around the world. For people like me, he makes life worth living. But when everyone has a hot take, the fandom feels less like a collective of like minds and more like a collection of people itching to start fights.
