Why does he have so few great stories?

You'd think with his level of popularity he'd have the Batman effect where so much talent is thrown at him he'd get a long list of top tier comics, but even before Spidey comics went to shit almost everything was just "pretty good"

Because since he's their flagship character, people in charge have a very specific mindset about how he has to remain and in turn this led to a fanbase that want to roll back the clock on him and his supporting characters.

But Batman's a bigger flagship character for DC than Spider-Man is for Marvel and he doesn't have that problem.

I enjoyed Bronze and Silver age ASM a lot, OP. I like Miceline and Stern’s stuff too. How far back are you going, and what Batman stories are you talking about?

>I enjoyed Bronze and Silver age ASM a lot, OP. I like Miceline and Stern’s stuff too. How far back are you going,
I've read Silver/Bronze Age Spidey and while most of it is good, nothing ever stands out as "this is one of my favorite comics of all time." It just manages to stay solid for an impressively long amount of time.

>what Batman stories are you talking about?
There are plenty. Off the top of my head: TDKR, Year One, Gothic, Gotham Central, Ego, Prey, and anything by O'Neil/Englehart/Grant/Moore/Gaiman/Morrison

His entire first like 25 YEARS of comics is worth reading. That's not "so few".

ditko era is legendary for sure. lee/romita is still top tier but noticeably a step down and features some seriously cringe 'hip' lingo. I thought I was going to die every time mary jane called someone dad. I'm only on 1980 so far but apart from a couple places in conway's run and a decent idea here or there it's pretty derivative.

Cause he’s not that deep of a character. He’s a quip machine. He’s more for the younger comic reader. Not at all edgy or anti hero, so they can’t do a dark story with him.

Reign is an underrated classic

The stories PAD did on Spectacular are fantastic in my opinion but that's just me.

Spider-Man can be scary! You think Venom is a big bad guy? Look out world!

>Not at all edgy or anti hero, so they can’t do a dark story with him.
You should really read some of his comics user.

That's the thing, Spider-Man has a ton of super solid adventure stories. Like you can recommend a run on him, but it's hard to point out individual story arcs that stand out really well as a classic of the medium.

So he's the equal to Wonder Woman in that the amount of great runs they have is impressive, but they are lacking the genre-defying arcs that other characters in their brand have?

>There are plenty. Off the top of my head: TDKR, Year One, Gothic, Gotham Central, Ego, Prey, and anything by O'Neil/Englehart/Grant/Moore/Gaiman/Morrison
>Spider-Man has a ton of super solid adventure stories. Like you can recommend a run on him, but it's hard to point out individual story arcs that stand out really well as a classic of the medium

If I were to hazard a guess, based on the Batman examples, Spider-Man just has had a solid book almost continuously. he hasn't had a problem evolving with the time or hasn't needed to that much. There's been no reason to update or re imagine him really. Those Batman titles that do exceedingly well are largely attempts to look at different perspectives of Batman, to see him through a different filter. And the reason those projects get thumbs up is usually to appeal to broader audiences. And once again just a guess, but in comics Spider-Man has had to suffer through that particular problem less than anyone. His story, his motivations have been clear, solid and relatable for years, decades. He hasn't needed those stories to boost or reinvigorate interest in his comics. So instead what you get is just a steady progression of at least pretty good Spider-Man stories instead of the rare exceptional one that comes with trying to delve into some "never before" explored aspect of the character.

Or it could be like Grant Morrison says, the original run set the bar so high that there isn't really anywhere left to go.

He has great stories: the problem is that for the longest time, Marvel didn't give a fuck about getting them collected.

Fuck, "The Child Within" story is still never seen a TPB release and the Tombstone Saga is only half collected!!

Pretty sure Spidey merch outpaces Batman by a wide margin.

l o l
o
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You are fucking retarded my friend

That’s debatable, both are absolute pillars for their respective companies, but Batman is central for DC as a whole, Spidey May have a few more toys and shirts, but Batman’s crap is seen almost everywhere, I don’t see much love for Spidey these days.

it's what people talked like back then.

WW doesn't have good runs

>I thought I was going to die every time mary jane called someone dad.

I would die if MJ called me "dad."

>Or it could be like Grant Morrison says, the original run set the bar so high that there isn't really anywhere left to go.
Yup. Last truly great Spider-Man book with Peter as a central character was Blue and that was a recap of better stuff.

Pérez and Azzarello would like a word with you.

Batman wasn't as consistently popular as Spidey. Batman's sales rose during Adam West show, then kept on declining until 89 movie and then rose again during new 52.

It's also due to the way the company/editorial directions went for both companies during the 80's to the 10's.

Well part of the issue is that Marvel is fucking terrible at collecting their classic runs and stories in trade format. With a character like Batman it's pretty easy to collect most of not all of his iconic stories going back to the eighties. The Dark Knight Returns, Year One, Arkham Asylum, Dark Knight Dark City, etc. How many of Spider-Man's classic stories have been collected in trades, and how many of those trades are still even in print? Ironically, The X-Men are the only brand I know of who've consistently had fairly good trade support from Marvel, the rest are periodically left to the dogs or only reprinted years later in prohibitively expensive hardbacks.

Because everything until the 90's was great. Batman just lucked at an has like ten good stories people talk about and that's it.

Spider-Man is unique among the top-tier superheroes (with the exception of maybe the FF) in that his earliest comics were masterpieces nobody has been able to top, just copy/update. With the others, they had to be shaped over the years by various creators to their more or less definitive forms. Superman in the silver age; X-Men in the bronze age; Batman in the copper age.

Just because Slott has had a death-grip on the main Spider-man comic, it doesn't mean that the character is used up. USM was a brilliant book until the Death of Spider-man.

He's not wrong though. I mean it was a fact in 2014, but I forget what movies and shit have come out since then. Also I'd argue that while bats has more iconic stories (works better in trades) spidey has better overall issues even if the quality of story is lower if you pick up a random issue you're more likely to enjoy it than if you pick up a random bats issue. It's apples and oranges apart from the merch/sales shit. Spidey clearly sells more. But in general they make sense, spidey is lighthearted but pulpy/disposable fun and bats requires more attention bu holds up better to re-reads. In general.

Because every time a writer starts to take Spidey in an interesting new direction Status Quo kicks in and undoes it because Marvel is absolutely convinced that what fans want is more stories about Peter being a basement-dwelling virgin who works for the Bugle.

90% of the best Spidey Stories were from the first 15 years or so of his existence but y'all dont read those because you think its some goofy silver age batman tier shit
Im on issue #55 rn and loving it

That is what most fans want.

Ross andru's brilliant angles and perfect geography of NYC didn't impress you? He wasn't paired with the best inking or writing but fuuuck man its so good if youre a native or know the city especially compared to the slew of marvel artists that never bothered and just drew him floating above a vague cityscape rather than battling within it as befits his powers

There are massive gaps in spider-man reprints its really quite Bullshit. Seems omnibus and epic collections wont take you much further than the death of gwen

Her early dialogue was a real trip. She even rubbed off on Gwens speaking manner a bit. She explains herself here

Everyone wants peter to be the lowest paid type of scientist, while his wife MJs modeling career flounders as they raise baby Mayday and Pete takes Miles on as a sidekick and hooks him up with a Bugle job.
Well, thats what I want anyway.

More 70s Batman needs to be reprinted desu
For Pete its the mid-late 70s and 80s that need some love. Although ive noticed its been a minute since the late 80s/early 90s stuff got reprinted, but at least it got reprinted in the first place..

>using that misleading as fuck graph that only counts licensed products and was released the same year as a Spider-Man movie
u havin a laf?

>until the Death of Spider-man
I think that even his dead was a good story, but really sad that he really died there.
I would really enjoyed konw that shield managed to fix'd him up and faking his dead, while training him secrectly.

>USM was a brilliant book
USM was mediocre as Hell

Except the lower chart is data from 2013 and tracked anything with the character's name on the packaging/product.
Shit dude you're some special kind of retarded.

It still only tracks the sale of toys, which is idiotic to pretend represents everything

Spider-Man is written like a soap opera. There's rarely any big self contained stories to point to because he thrives in an episodic format with a slowly progressing status quo. It's why Clone Saga (eight years worth of issues crammed into two years where nothing ever moves forward) and post OMD (Peter can't move forward anymore) have been such problem areas for the character. Once he stops moving forward for long enough, his books feel awful to read.

>He’s a quip machine.
He HAS to quip. If he did not, he's literally nightmare fuel character, creeping here and there with giant bug eyes.

People seem to not pick up on the fact that he moves like he's a creature out of Jacob's Ladder.

>There are plenty. Off the top of my head: TDKR, Year One, Gothic, Gotham Central, Ego, Prey, and anything by >O'Neil/Englehart/Grant/Moore/Gaiman/Morrison
Meh, I prefer Ditko ASM to all those.

Spider-Man’s first good run changed the entire concept of what capes could be. WW ain’t got shit.

He is autistic.

Don't waste your time.

>he'd have the Batman effect where so much talent is thrown at him he'd get a long list of top tier comic


Writers want the batman gig, writers want the spiderman payment and nothing more, there's very few top writers that are really into spiderman, for most Fantastic Four is way more interesting.

>USM was a brilliant book

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA no.

I am pretty sure Morrison was offered Spiderman too, and he said he prefered to write X-Men bexause all you can do with Spiderman is villain of the week stories.
He didnt want to write about him fighting Dr Octopus or the Green Goblin.

His pitch was for Peter to meet a version of himself who didn't marry a wonderful woman and actually had to deal with losing his loved ones, finding happiness in the fantastical adventures above New York. The other Peter was basically a stand-in for Ditko and the idea was to explore the man and the legacy that grew beyond him, accepting that Ditko is a person to be admired despite his weirdness and that Peter had grown beyond that into a more inspirational figure. It sat on the shelf for a while and Grant eventually fell out of live with the idea.

If you picked up on the fact that post-OMD Peter is an even worse version of the alternate Peter without any self-awareness, you'll understand why Grant will never write Spider-Man.

Because they rather make 800 different clones of him (sometimes literally) and use him to give them a rub rather than thinking of anything new or interesting for him instead. See: Miles Morales and Silk for the most recent examples.

>all you can do with Spiderman is villain of the week stories.
I think this is the ultimate answer to OP's question. Spider-Man is perfectly suited for small, fun stories, but isn't well suited for the big ones that get turned into trades like he mentioned

You can absolutely do bigger stories with him, but Marvel's been afraid to ever push Peter too far forward since the 70's. If the book was handled like an Ishinomori comic or, say, even Dave Sim, we would have reached the end of Peter's journey by the 80s even at a conservative pace. Happily ever after? Finally cornered after losing everything? Somewhere in between? Doesn't matter, but we'd be there. ASM has very intentionally covered maybe 100 issues of actual story over 800, the last 400 especially (the last 100 even moreso, you could pretty much just skip it). Peter CAN work in arcs and big storylines, but Marvel refuses to let him.

>TDKR, Year One, Gothic, Gotham Central, Ego, Prey, and anything by O'Neil/Englehart/Grant/Moore/Gaiman/Morrison
So, you want it spoonfed to you in well-promoted one-shots and limited series?

Here is the thing: Marvel has different policy regarding their flagship character - they let PR department run the show far too often, which is why Spidey's publication history is a mess compared to solid B/C-lister like Daredevil.
In order to get to great Spider-man's stories you actually have to read his ongoings and do a lot of research. What comes to mind immediately when I think of best of Spidey:
>The Kid Who Collects Spider-Man
back-up story for Amazing

>Kraven's last hunt
The story was originally published in Web of Spider-Man #31-32, The Amazing Spider-Man #293-294, and The Spectacular Spider-Man #131-132. t. wikipedia

>Death of Harry Osborn
Spectacular #200. Not the main title. And it had build-up for, like, 20 issues (pic related is from one).

>Revenge of Green Goblin
has 3-issue mini followed by ASM v2 #25 and concluded in PP:SM #25

cont.

>Web of death
2 issues of amazing, 2 issues of spectacular, bestest Otto Octavius ever, Slutt can suck my dick

>Millar's Marvel knights - Spider man
this one is actually like the ones you named - at least, it's easy to follow - the first 12 issues is a self-contained story, and it's a fucking miracle

>practically anything by Zeb Wells (pic related), especially Birthday boy
Zeb Wells is not a big name, he never was on ASM, Birthday boy is a backup story for issues of both Spider-man and Wolverine

>Clone saga: Lost years and Revelations
great writing, two self-contained minis, marred by association with Clone Saga

>MC2
great book that run for 10 years buuut it's an alternative universe, casuals don't want to know about it

>JMS Spider-man
Fucking finally, a good writer who wants to butt heads with editorial and PR department in order to make a good story. His run got raped at least twice - Sins Past (that he hoped would be retconned but it never was) and One More Day (which is considered to be the worst arc in history of Spider-man, and JMS wanted his name off it). Still, considered best Spider-man there is.

I could go on, but you get my point, I think. If you want good Spider-man, you have to find it yourself.

leah. was from an annual, right?

Lost Years really is a good mini. Cheesy at points, but good.

Looking back at Clone Saga, you just have to feel bad for everyone involved. 4 books a month without a solid plan was way too much. You really can't blame DeMatteis or even Mackie for how quickly things got fucked.

>In order to get to great Spider-man's stories you actually have to read his ongoings and do a lot of research
This is always a good thing to have for one of the biggest names in capeshit - a massive barrier to entry for anyone who wants to get into their comics

> “The Child Within/The Harry Osborn Saga” – Spectacular Spider-Man #178-184

From there somewhere. I just saved the page on my hard drive.

Yup, Marvel is retarded.

No, the story "Leah."
I checked, it's from Friendly Neighborhood SM Annual.

Spider-Man starts with a big recap oage for a reason. Really, all you actually need to ever read is Amazing Fantasy and ASM 1-33. From there you're good to go.

There's a difference between knowing who the character is, and being able to easily find highly praised stories/runs. The biggest problem for newcomers into comics is not knowing where to start; TPBs and OGNs are a huge boon for that

Ah, I remember this one. It's 2sad4me

I myself prefer this one - there's still hope for this kid.
(This is Peter Parker: Spider-man #35)

Spider-man tells this kid take care of his junkie mother,
do his homework and not to run with gangs.
Now when mother's departed he is going to live with a good family, and he shouldn't rely his imaginary friend Spider-man anymore

I love these kinds of stories, but they're so easy to write and a bit exploitative.

The idea is to just buy whatever book is currently running, unfortunately.

That's dumb. Say what you want about DC, but they give much more importance to the shit that came out a long time ago than Marvel does, who almost pretends nothing existed before 2010. It's like when some sort of "greatest hits" comes out, whether it be comics, music, or whatever, and it's super clearly biased towards the more recent stuff because they want you to think that it's better than ever.

Yeah, yeah. Still, PP:SM has a metricc ton of great self-contained stories, except I don't know where they start, because if you start that book from #1, all you'll find is just soulless crossovers with other 4 spider-books that ran at the same time.

Not this user, but going to recommend If This Be My Destiny and Death of Gwen Stacy

You know what else is dumb? Putting out 3+ Batman books, at least two of them twice a month, with no delusions of giving the reader anything worthwhile.

If we lived in a perfect world Marvel and DC would sustain themselves on original graphic novels, all of which are good. Instead we get this. And while the DC model looks more immediately appealing, the Marvel approach has its upsides. Namely, it's easier to pick up a book and just read. You can just pick up FF#1 and go. Avengers #1? Perfect, read it. Pre-90s Marvel #1s pretty much meant "Its okay to start right here." Meanwhile if you just skip to the recommended Batman reading list you miss out on tons of stories you might have enjoyed otherwise. If you read Adventure Comics for Aquaman, UH OH, it's Legion now, better switch books. Hope you know about and like the JSA, theyre taking over.

Both models are flawed but have advantages and both companies are doing a pretty shit job curating past stories while creating big events and arcs to resell current stories despite said format fucking most of these stories.

>You know what else is dumb? Putting out 3+ Batman books, at least two of them twice a month, with no delusions of giving the reader anything worthwhile.
The bat books are kind of shit right now, but it's not like that was an editorial decision by DC. Didio didn't sit down and say "we should put out some sub-par comics."

lol those are shit

The key reason is mainly that sometime after Ditko left, Stan Lee later put in an editorial policy of the "illusion of change" in order to avoid aging up the flagship characters.

It's why Ditko's seemed to move forward while everything after sometimes moved forward (Death of Gwen, etc) yet not at all during the late Silver Age to maybe the late 1970's. You don't really see Spider-Man really move forward after the Death of Gwen until maybe when he is in a relationship with Felicia Hardy (if you think about it, it's significant that he actually revealed his identity to her considering how many people he pushed out of his life) and his relationship with Mary Jane changed (once she revealed she always knew Peter was Spider-Man) and they got married.

Claremont got away with a lot more on X-Men because X-Men prior to him was maybe a C-list book. Sure there were times he couldn't control things (like how he planned to use Moore's Fury from Captain Britain but couldn't, or how Shooter wanted Jean Grey back), but arguably the X-Men moved forward a lot under him for a decade and a half. Ditko's run on Spider-Man lasted about 3 years.

>Spider-Man is perfectly suited for small, fun stories, but isn't well suited for the big ones that get turned into trades like he mentioned

Arguably you could say the same about Batman if everything from DKR onwards didn't exist. It's a matter of the right project at the right time. It's pretty obvious that with things like Spider-Man: Reign that Marvel wants to have stories regarded as well as DKR and Watchmen but they don't understand what made it work.

You know, I noticed funny thing: OG Peter was all pride, and dominance, and sanctimonious attitude that drove his peers nuts while Harry was this passive pushover who wanted his neglectful/abusive daddy's approval more than anything else, even many years after his death.

Now, Harry has two sons from two different women, and Peter has pic related.

Being Marvel's flagship character - not even once.

Someday a lot more people will be more critical of that run than they are now. It's just a matter of time.

You don't go into making a single franchise a fifth of your regular output thinking you're making worthwhile stuff. The Batbooks may as well be coal shoveled into the metaphorical furnace. If quality mattered they wouldn't be flooding the market with them.

Batman is Hamlet
Spider-man is Catcher in the Rye

How do we solidify Peter as a young, sexy college professor?

I mean, look at his history with academia
>considers dropping out of high school and doesn't even think of college because he is all alone, arms full of sick aunt
>it's presented as the worst choice he can make
>all works out in the end, he cures his aunt, finishes school, gets scholarship at ESU

>fast forward to the end of college
>he passes his finals but drops out of grad school because Felicia is in hospital, and he has to choose 2 out of 3: making money to pay for her treatment, being spider-man and his academic studies. His reasoning is that he can get his degree in a year if he really tries, and he needs money right now
>It's presented as a hard, ugly choice he has to make

>fast forward many years of being Jolly Jonah's freelance fucking slave

>he stops a mass shooting in his high school, and it turns out to be a kid that got broken by years of bullying while teachers did nothing
>so he becomes a teacher that does. In school, he mostly helps bullied kids and helps the brightest ones to get college scholarship like he did (at least it's confirmed with Jordan Harrison)
>he isn't directly involved in science but he is the one who kickstarts best and brightest now

>post-OMD

>LOOOL WHAT A LOSER, CAN'T EVEN GET A JOB AS A LAB ASSISTANT, GO HUMILIATE YOURSELF IN FRONT OF JAMESON SOME MORE
>got a job at Horison because Jonah's wife knew people
>Otto got a PhD in cybernetics while in his body, and Peter doesn't even know cybernetics enough to understand what it is about (his field is chemistry/radiation)
>Otto founds a megacorporations that Peter proceeds to sink with no survivors
>LOOOL WHAT A LOSER, GO HUMILIATE YOURSELF IN FRONT OF JAMESON SOME MORE

All things but post-OMD considered, making him a college professor is the only way that is truthful to his character from the beginning all the way through to Back-in-Black.

>>post-OMD
>>LOOOL WHAT A LOSER, CAN'T EVEN GET A JOB AS A LAB ASSISTANT, GO HUMILIATE YOURSELF IN FRONT OF JAMESON SOME MORE
>>got a job at Horison because Jonah's wife knew people
>>Otto got a PhD in cybernetics while in his body, and Peter doesn't even know cybernetics enough to understand what it is about (his field is chemistry/radiation)
>>Otto founds a megacorporations that Peter proceeds to sink with no survivors
>>LOOOL WHAT A LOSER, GO HUMILIATE YOURSELF IN FRONT OF JAMESON SOME MORE

You know, every time I start thinking I've been too hard on Slott's run I see something like this and remember I've gone too easy on him. Marvel too.

Been thinking about reading all the way up until Slott's run from the very beginning. Is it worth it?

Most of the way, it will be worth your time. But the 90s had some dark times. Also, there was a time that Spider-man had something like half a dozen titles at once.

That stopped being true when Marvel decided to smother their most popular brands to shill MCU.

It looks like that's stopped but it's gonna be a minute before you see Spidey backpacks everywhere again.

No, Spider-Man merchandise was still being done. X-Men merchandise got reduced.

I know Spectacular is a thing but what else is there?

Amazing Spider-Man
Spectacular Spider-Man
Web of Spider-Man
Spider-Man Unlimited
Spider-Man (later retitled Peter Parker: Spider-Man)

I remember following ASM, Spectacular, Web of, Just Spider-man, and reprints of 80s and 60s Spider-man at the same time.

Oh right, Peter actually graduated high school and went to college, when's the last time that happened to a young hero in their ongoing book? You know, as opposed to off panel when they've been forgotten about for a few years.

>The legend of the Arachknight

Spiderman has many more great stories than Batman has

Sure he does buddy

DCfags are too obsessed with everything being a short story to sell in Graphic Novel form. Marvel doesn't work that way, they do long over-arching runs that are good overall but hard to just take a random section of it out to read individually like a lot of Batman stories.

Cause he's a shitty character that appeals to the lowest common denominator.

I'm up to 173 and it's definitely worth it. Post-Conway it starts spinning it's tires. But I see people consider Stern to be in the top 3 Spidey runs so I'm excited.

To other anons, outside of 90s hell and the end of JMS/OMD isn't Spidey supposed to be pretty consistently great starting with Stern?

I'd say maybe decent? I know of people who complain about DeFalco's writing but I was okay with his Spider-Man work. And PAD's Spectacular was decent too even if it got dark a lot of times.

>What is Kraven’s last hunt?
>What is The Death Of Gwen Stacy?
>What is Sin Eater?