Is Spider-Man the best-designed superhero of all time?
By PumpkinBomb 28 Comments
His gadgets lend themselves to originality.
There's only a certain amount of variability one can write into a fight sequence. Generally, this depends upon the environment or the villain of the week, but at the end of the day, most of them are just going to end up pummeling the opponent into semi-consciousness. Not so with Spider-Man. Spider-Man's web shooters allow so much more individuality than the average superhero - their functionality is only limited by the author's ability to come up with uses for sticky threads. They're a single simple, intuitive gadget that allow (near) flight, mobility, shield-making, imprisonment, blinding, holding doors shut, neutralizing guns, pulling people out of danger, making trampolines, tripping people, diverting missiles, insulating oneself against Electro, clubbing people, leaving messages, catching falling girlfriends... He interacts much more with his surroundings than other superheroes. And he doesn't need a massive utility belt to pull it all off; he can perform amazing stunts on a photographer's wages. The fact that this gamut of abilities is limited by the number of canisters he has left lends them an underlying tension that prevents him from just spamming webs like a mutant. And his wall-crawling abilities grant him a much more interesting three-dimensional world than his street-bound counterparts, without making him just another flying person.
His powers allow him to logically avoid injury.
If you think about it, there's something a little strange about superheroes going out to fight crime every day for fifteen years and coming home intact. If you look at the most successful superheroes, almost all of them have abilities that let them logically remain alive. Wolverine has a healing factor. Superman's practically invulnerable. Captain America has an impermeable shield. Batman's covered in Kevlar. Peter Parker's spider-sense and reflexes allow him not to be hit in the first place. In a world where people are running around with adamantium bullets and shooting laser beams out of their orifices, near-precognitive abilities prevent Spider-Man from being turned into a puddle of goo. Captain America should have been sniped a thousand times in World War II, but Spider-Man's power set contributes to an ongoing story without letting the character feel immortal. His spider-sense also fulfills a number of other useful story functions by detecting malevolence as well as incoming projectiles, and his accelerate healing rate lets him recover from severe beatings in time to be barely presentable at work.
He's strong enough to matter... and weak enough to be vulnerable.
Spider-Man's raw power is considerable. Unlike most highly-trained human characters, he has the speed, strength and durability to be valuable fighting almost any class of enemy. He can tangle with anyone from the Juggernaut to a carjacker without feeling out of his element, and is a valuable addition to almost any team-up. But unlike some superheroes with a similar level of brute strength, he's always in a distinct amount of danger. Although, as I mentioned, his spider sense and reflexes justify his survival, but we never get the sense that he's just waltzing along shaking off punches like raindrops. He has to take the effort of trying to avoid every blow that comes his way, and doesn't have a phenomenal success rate. There's rarely a supervillain fight in which he isn't punched hard enough to knock Aunt May's head clean off, and - given his lack of armour - it wouldn't be at all implausible to kill him with a submachine gun. It's hard to be worried about the Thing in a fight, but Spider-Man's mix of strength and fragility lets him contribute without ever letting us take him for granted.
He's plausibly smart.
Spider-Man occupies that rare niche in comics: that of being extremely clever within the bounds of normal human intelligence. Unlike many other "brilliant" heroes - Reed Richards, say, or Batman - Spider-Man's intelligence has definite limits. His accomplishments are pretty much confined to the invention of his webs and spider-tracers, neither of which are impressive compared with most of his fellow heroes' creations. What we do get from the comics is that he's very smart - certainly much smarter than the average citizen, particularly some of his enemies - but we don't get him flinging beakers around and muttering about unstable molecules and beating Doctor Doom at chess. When he uses science to defeat a supervillain, we can generally follow what's going on. There's no need for suspension of disbelief in regard to his intellectual abilities, and that makes him much easier to see as a real person.
His costume ("uniform"!) is a thing of beauty.
There are a number of iconic costumes in comics, but his takes the cake. It's one of the most beloved symbols in pop culture, and you can't go outside on Halloween without seeing lots of little Spider-Men running around. It's less complex than Batman's and less campy than Superman or Wolverine's. It doesn't have unnecessary accessories, high-tech components or pouches. The primary color scheme makes it clear that he's a hero, the full-face mask actually makes it reasonable for his acquaintances not to recognize him, and the big eyes give him a sense of youth and emotion despite his hidden face. As for the innumerable little lines - well, inkers have to earn their money.
Peter Parker aside, the core design of Spider-Man is nothing less than amazing. His adaptive powers, ability to avoid injury while remaining vulnerable, raw potential power, reasonable intelligence and terrific costume have given subsequent writers the raw material for countless great stories without being constrained by plot holes like so many other well-known superheroes. As far as power sets go, I think Spider-Man's is the best.