Spiderman is rubbish

I recently swore off comic book films. They're not grounded in reality and often don't follow the conventions of film, tv etc. Physics? Psh. Who needs physics. Realism? PAH.

But I thought there may be hope for the 90s Spiderman cartoon. I watched this in my teens and loved it. So a few weeks ago, the GF and I downloaded it and began working through it.

I quickly reached the conclusion that it's not very good. This may well be because of Sam fucking Rami. Since those awful spiderman films it's hard to ignore bits where Aunt May guilt trips Peter or Peter starts going randomly emo for no aparant reason.

My biggest problem was a bit of a revelation for me, though. I've come to the conclusion that Spiderman is a really shit superhero.

Austin Powers had a lot to do with this. Specifically this famous exchange from International Man of Mystery:

Dr. Evil: All right guard, begin the unnecessarily slow-moving dipping mechanism.
[guard starts dipping mechanism]
Dr. Evil: Close the tank!
Scott Evil: Wait, aren't you even going to watch them? They could get away!
Dr. Evil: No no no, I'm going to leave them alone and not actually witness them dying, I'm just gonna assume it all went to plan. What?
Scott Evil: I have a gun, in my room, you give me five seconds, I'll get it, I'll come back down here, BOOM, I'll blow their brains out!
Dr. Evil: Scott, you just don't get it, do ya? You don't.



Why is this relevant to Spiderman? Because he keeps getting captured. His captors always strap a bomb to his arm, want to hold him to ransom, try to reveal his identity or something that leads to him escaping in a really contrived fashion. Why does this keep happening? Because fake peril is a great way of concealing the fact that Spidey can't really do anything.

Let's run through Spiderman's powers quickly:

1)Spiderman can stick to walls.
This is.... fairly useful. I suppose. I can't really see many real world applications. The creators seem to be aware of this as well and have to create a load of flying villains and fights on rooftops to compensate.


2) Spiderman can shoot webs from his wrists.
This used to swing around the city. In much the same way as a normal person would use... a car. It's also used to tie up bandits. I suppose that's... sort of useful but most other superheros don't appear to need to do this. Admittedly, the webbing is often used to stop falling debris and things, which is the one instance where it does something that couldn't also be done by a normal person.


3) Spiderman is hyper agile
Know who else is hyper agile? Gymnasts and martial artists. Spiderman's hyper agility is never really portrayed as anything other than being really gymnastic. Although he tends to do a lot of pretentious flipping all over the place.


4) Spiderman can sense danger
This is a tricky one because it *could* be a game breaking power because depending on how you define "danger" it allows you to sense villains, bullets speeding towards you, people who don't like you etc. etc. The problem is sensing danger can't actually happen so it's not a power based in the real world. As a result of this, the writers of Spiderman pretty much make up what the Spider Sense can and can't detect as they go along. There's one bit where Venom blocks his Spider Sense because the Venom symbiote has bonded with Spidey previously. It doesn't block Spidey's ability to see him so why is it affecting this other sense?

Basically the only things the Spider Sense is ever used for is to notice when he's about to be shot at or a missile is about to explode nearby or something. In other words, this potentially game breaking power could be replaced by the Keeping An Eye On Your Surroundings power.




So, to sum up. Spiderman never really does anything useful that couldn't be done by a talented gymnast/martial artist other than catch falling debris with his webs.

Now.

As a direct result of this, all the normal people in New York are... kind of scaled down, competance wise. The villains always capture Spider Man rather than killing him (which they always have ample oppertunity to do.) Also, buildings always fall on people who never run or dive for cover, they always just look up at the building falling on them with a blank look on their face.

Mostly, though, no-one ever does anything in the Spiderman universe other than Spider Man and the villains. No civilians ever push a mate out of the way when they're about to be crushed by a building. No-one else ever tries to tackle the Shocker (because if they did, they'd win. The Shocker is a monumentally terrible villain) no-one does... anything.

This was all sparked, by the way, by watching bits and pieces of Daredevil, who everyone knows is a terrible superhero. He's blind! He's so blind he can see! He has magical seeing powers! Oh, and he can... use sonar. I suppose. Which is sort of useful... I suppose.

Marvel superheroes are just shit, aren't they...