While modern renditions of the theme song from the 1967 Spider-Man cartoon series often render the first verse as “catches crooks / just like flies”, the original lyrics state that Spider-Man “catches thieves / just like flies”. I kind of appreciate the directness there – like, this is a superhero who has a very clear idea of where his core competencies lie. Spider-Man deals with property crime specifically. Murderer on the loose? Sorry, folks – not his department!
maybe he just has a different method for each kind of criminal. catches thieves like flies, catches arsonists like mosquitoes, catches murderers like those tarantulas catch small vertebrates
Someone refusing to pay you money you earned isn’t a real problem? Spider Gwen clearly lives a privileged life if someone stiffing you on a paycheck doesn’t count as a real problem in her world.
It’s canon now: say hello to Spiders-Man of Earth-11580!!
He’s made of spiders AND he shoots spiders at people!
excuse me I love this
He’s a bunch of good eight legged boys.
This is body horror in ways I cannot even imagine. Not only is he made of spiders, he’s made of spiders who inhabit a hive mind and all process their surrounding as Peter Parker. Where they once Peter Parker? Where they tricked into thinking they always been Peter Parker? is there a human Peter Parker in this Universe? What happens when all or one spider’s find out? THIS IS THE IDENTITY CRISIS I AM HERE FOR.
also wouldn’t that attract the attention of the Secret Service? because that’s money laundering, which is literally right up their alley?
“Kids. Listen, you make good points, but let me put it this way. I’ve seen some shit. When one of my enemies found out who I was, he dropped my girlfriend off a bridge. By the way, lesson 3, once someone’s free-falling suddenly catching them makes for a loud snap if you can’t slow them down before stopping them.
That Avengers protection? Yeah, good luck with that when the Red Skull is in charge of the program. He was calling himself Dell Rusk. Can you believe that? The Red Skull got a high ranking position in the US government using an anagram alias. Also, you won’t remember this because the timeline was rewritten, but I’ve seen how good Avengers protection is when it comes to loved ones. Lesson four, steer clear of Mephisto, just in general.
Whole celebrity superhero thing, maybe reconsider that. Didn’t work out great for the New Warriors, even though like, that didn’t make any sense. I mean, Nitro was the dude who killed Captain Marvel. No, not her, the first one. He got cancer from saving people from nerve gas. Everyone cried. Especially me. Anyhow, why did everyone blame Speedball-et-all when a drugged up superhuman terrorist who killed one of our most beloved heroes (how do you kids not know who he is?) did the actual damage? Where was I…
The government! Fun fact. You know, I’ve talked to Reed Richards, and in most universes, Richard Nixon was impeached for something called the Watergate scandal, something about wiretapping and political adversaries, and not for donning the serpent crown and trying to usher in a nightmare apocalypse under the rule of Set, the demon-god of serpents.
And that leads us to lesson I’ve-lost-track, most of your heroes that are in their 30s and 40s have lived through massive trauma, and are aware of at least two person-replacing shape-shifting alien races (the better of the two doesn’t shove an acid-barbed tongue into your brain to consume your very being, by the way) so maybe nod along when the oldies go ranting about secret identities.
Oh yeah, and be skeptical of too-good-to-be-true outfits that come out of alien machines.”
Spider-Man is generally viewed as a fairly low-level superhero (probably confusing his street level adventures with being “low-level”), but every once in a while in a cross-over the writer will realize that superstrength, insane agility, precognition, endurance, wall-climbing, and an adhesive projectile with dozens of uses add up to an incredible power set and he absolutely trounces anyone but the more cosmic characters.
I feel like his spider-sense is downplayed in the most recent films, when that’s actually an incredibly strong ability vs multiple opponents, as well as making him impossible to surprise and pretty damn difficult to disorient (this is partly why I’m a huge fan of Venom’s ability to not set off spider-sense, because it disarms one of Spidey’s key abilities)
Also iirc the force of his adhesion to walls is canonically one of the strongest forces in the marvel universe, and it’s easier to break whatever surface he’s attached to (or break Spidey himself) than to try and detach him
His spider-sense, reflexes, and dodging ability, when remembered, are powerful enough on their own to put him above many Marvel heroes, which tend towards the “one power” model over the DC style “power suites.” The rest is just delicious gravy
On the street level, Spidey pretty much dominates all comers.
On the national level, Spidey is pretty much on par with the other heroes and villains and tends to make a really good showing of himself but really wishes he could go home.
The real problem is that Spidey leaves such a good impression that when a cosmic tier threat shows up he gets dragged into it and suddenly ‘proportional strength of a spider’ is bottom rung on the strength table and he’s the only guy on the field who isn’t nigh-invulnerable and yeah, he makes it through (and might have saved humanity along the way) but the next morning he’s still gotta go in to work with like half his ribs shattered and a lingering concussion.
Here’s from Civil War
When Reed Richards was on the side against Spider-Man and he realized how much he had underestimated the wall crawler as he knocked out the frontline protecting “Mister Fantastic”
Monsters and Stuff 