 Spider-Man as a character is one that I feel like is consistently being played on the loop. It feels like every time this character shows up, he's stuck in high school. Almost every single Spider-Man adaptation starts out with Peter still in high school. You could probably count on four sets of hands how many Spider-Man adaptations have Peter start out this way. Toby, Andrew, Tom, Spectacular, Ultimate, The Ultimate TV Show, The Terrible 2019 Show, and probably much, much more. Which I suppose is fair for some of these, a lot of them are origin stories. Toby was a lot of people's first time seeing Spider-Man, including me, so it's fair that he has to be in high school so we can show him actually becoming Spider-Man. But from Toby onward, it sort of feels like there's less and less of a reason for Peter to be so young all the time. Sometimes I wonder what the MCU would have been like if Spider-Man just showed up, but he wasn't as young as Holland. Maybe he's a college student, or maybe even a bit older. In all the tired stories of high school Peter we've heard a million times have already passed through him. It's not to say that some of them aren't good stories, of course. I still enjoy all of Spectacular Spider-Man despite half the story, including high school. But these stories aren't made better by the fact these characters are locked into a school. It's the fact that these characters are even together in interacting in the first place and dealing with the consequences of one of their friends being Spider-Man. As long as you have these characters in an environment where they can interact with each other, it doesn't really matter where they are. That's one of the things I love so much about the MTV Spider-Man that just came to Disney+. They were in college, so they could hang out way more due to a looser schooling schedule, instead of being tied down by 8 classes in a row all day, and you just have to hope your friends are in some of them. And they cuss in this show. It's awesome. I literally gassed when I heard Mary Jane say the word bitch. I lost my mind. I've heard her midterm as a real bitch. But anyway, the core issue with a lot of recent Spider-Man media writing is that they don't really allow the character to change for very long. But before setting him back to where he was when we first saw him, you can only replay the glory days for so long before I want to watch something else. And this resetting either happens with reboots or just within the story itself, like with MCU Spider-Man. Watching all the MCU Spider-Man movies back to back, the core lesson feels about exactly the same each time. Peter is too naive and he has to become more mature. I love a lot about those movies, but they're a staple of my issue. Spider-Man is constantly losing character progression and establishment, which brings me to one of my favorite versions of the character that I've seen in years. Peter B. Parker is my favorite version of Spider-Man. Peter B. Parker is what Rocky VI is to Rocky I. You guys aren't old enough to have seen Rocky, so go watch all of Rocky to justify that one quip I just made. Well, Peter is usually either 15 or 20 in high school or college, or just starting out with Mary Jane or whatever. Peter B. Parker is over twice the usual age. This man is about 40 or 50, and he's definitely seen it all. You know Aunt May? That old raggedy woman who's been on her last leg's last leg for years? He's out of shape, he's out of his over-replayed glory days, and he's not held back by comic writers that want to break him up with Mary Jane over and over. The only obstacle that holds Peter back isn't reboots, or out-of-character choices, or bad writers. It's himself. After several years of being together, MJ wants to move on to the next stage and have kids. But Peter isn't ready for that. He's scared. You see, Peter B. Parker was at that stage that comic book Peter was once at. He's already gotten past marrying Mary Jane, and he almost had a baby with her. We were this close. The baby just didn't make it. But since then, Peter's marriage was literally erased by the devil. His whole world was rewritten. He was made younger, Aunt May's alive again, and him and MJ can't keep their relationship going on in between writers. Hell, I'm pretty sure that in the new Spider-Man run, they literally did a time-jump. And after the time-jump, Peter and MJ were just broken up, no explanation given yet, and MJ literally had kids with another man. I fucking hate these people. Anyway, as I was saying, many Spider-Man readers feel like they've been fighting to have Peter pick back up where he last was, with Mary Jane about to have a baby. Hell, it makes it even worse that there was an alternate universe Spider-Man comic where the baby actually made it, and grew up to be Spider-Girl, and fans loved this version of Peter within these comics. And they're tired of seeing this same Peter fall back down the stairs over and over and over again whenever they get switched to a new writer. They just want him to get to the second floor already. But this Peter isn't that same stair falling down Peter again. He might not look like it, but this is actually a fresh new Peter. And he's so close to the point that people have wanted him to go back to for years. And he actually progresses as a character, and the change is real. You can see it. One of my favorite things about this version of Peter is that he actually feels like he should be teaching Miles. See, a lot of Miles Morales' interpretation so far has kind of felt shoved in. Originally, Miles Morales wasn't even supposed to meet Peter. A lot of people forget that his original origin is that he's supposed to take the mantle after the death of Peter Parker, and never even hang out with the guy for more than five minutes outside of interdimensional crossovers. But sometimes, Peter is just alive when Miles Morales gets Spider Powers, which results in a not fully cooked yet Spider-Man trying to teach another new Spider-Man how to Spider-Man. But into the Spider-Verse, it mashes these two common Miles origins into one. Miles still takes the mantle from a dead Peter. But Peter, even if it's not the same one, still has to teach him how to be Spider-Man. This version of Peter actually feels right to teach Miles. He's seen everything, he knows everything, but he's out of his prime, and that still makes him liable to make mistakes. Plus, it's incredibly refreshing to have these characters be so different in age to each other. If your Miles isn't at least ten years younger than your Peter and your Peter mentoring Miles' relationship, I don't want it. They should feel like father and son, not brothers in terms of age. When having Miles be incredibly young compared to Peter, works so well for Peter's arc as a character. The whole reason Peter's relationship went under was because he didn't want to have children yet, so now he's forced into a situation where he actually has to be around a child he doesn't even want to stick around with it first. This slowly progresses into Peter seeing the value in their relationship, feeling good about Miles, and actually caring for Miles when he really needs it. It's through Miles that Peter realizes the value in having a child, and it all comes together when Peter can't help but tell Miles that he loves him and that he's so proud of him. It makes this profession of his pride to Miles so much more heart-wrenching when you realize that Peter thought he was going to have to sacrifice himself to save the universe just minutes earlier. He thought Miles wouldn't be enough to save the universe and he thought he failed as a teacher. So when he sees a different Mary Jane, he tells her that he's sorry for failing her, because in his own sad way, that's the only closure he's going to get before he sends himself off to die. At the end of the movie, Peter changes. He's sent back off to his own universe, but this time he has faith in himself. He has faith that he can actually change as a person, and he knows there's not going to be several flights of stairs to fall down to reset him afterward. He knows he can change, and at the end of the movie, he's finally given the courage to do so. So now that I've shown you the man who could climb the stairs, let's finally get to the man who can't. It's so stupid that even Jerry Conway, one of the most influential Spider-Man writers of all time, agrees with the sentiment that Peter needs to keep falling down the stairs. I already made a tweet about this, but the fact that Peter B. Parker even exists debunks the idea that Peter needs to be young to be appealing, because young people only want to see themselves in a young Spider-Man or whatever. I am only 19 years old, and I find Peter B. Parker to be one of the most relatable and appealing versions of Spider-Man out there. I don't care if he's more than 20 years older than me, I see a lot of myself in him. Sad, not sure where life is going, unmotivated, and most importantly, burnt out. I love Spider-Man, but there's a reason my special interest has shifted way more from the character and more towards the costumes of Spider-Man. It's because sometimes the person under the mask is the same one I already know everything about, because he won't change, he's just the same man who can't stop falling down the stairs over and over and over again.