Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-11276487-20131125022524/@comment-1458758-20131222200028

Nausiated wrote: However as an adult, I look to the entire history of Spider-Man since 1962 and the character has always been about Peter always being the under dog. If Peter had things going his way, things got stagnant. If he kept the wife, if he had the kid, heck if you want to go back and talk about keeping Gwen Stacy alive even... These were all things that put Spider-Man in a dead end. With happiness from some place else, he can then probably get over the loss of his Uncle Ben. If he loses sight of the "Great Power/Great Responsibility" thing then why even be Spider-Man? The fact is, Peter's sense of responsibility and the regret for not being able to save the lives of those he lost along the way is what drives him to continue being Spider-Man.

The problem there is, he then always ends up the underdog in the same way and it's boooooring. Just because a character has happiness doesn't mean they can't still be the underdog, and it doesn't mean he'd lose sight of what he learned from Uncle Ben just because something makes him happy. By that sort of logic, Peter himself could be some psycho constantly seeking his own downfall just to make sure he's not happy enough to forget Uncle Ben, and that's the problem. There's never an idea of "What Fresh Hell is this?!" It's always the same hell, it's always Uncle Ben's death and Aunt May.

They never let him face a new sort of challenge that isn't 'Fixed' in some way later.

As for One More Day, that's even worse. It's not even forcing Peter into the same old Underdog position, it's a literal reset to before he married MJ. You can't make him face the sorrow of losing his child/wife because he doesn't even remember it. If you wanted to kick him again, kill Aunt May, keep the miscarriage, make him miserable, but don't back pedal him to being some 25 year old man-child.

There are ways to continue Spider-Man as Spider-Man without retracing old work. In his career, Peter has made two or three fixed points, Uncle Ben dies, He becomes Spider-Man with the Good Old Mantra, Gwen Stacy dies. Not to mention dozens of smaller points, like the Green Goblin, Venom, Ben Reilly etc. Why can all these things stay and exist under the blanket of Spider-Man canon, but things like being married, having a kid or such can't?