Wired sugarcoats the time when the Spider-family moved into Avengers mansion in 2005

Wired wrote about the history of Spider-Man and Iron Man's occasional team ups, telling that as seen today, any friendship between them draws from the cinematic universe. But then, they turn to and give a very superficial description of the time in 2005, when Brian Bendis and company were brewing up the awful House of M crossover, and Peter Parker, Mary Jane Watson and Aunt May Parker had to move into the Avengers mansion:

[...] For the general gist of their onscreen relationship, look no further than 2005's Amazing Spider-Man #519, wherein Peter, Aunt May, and Mary-Jane Watson-Parker moved into Avengers HQ. The relocation—and the unofficial merging of the Spider-Man and Avengers franchises—opened up a new swathe of story opportunities for Spidey and his supporting cast: Aunt May got to flirt with the Avengers' butler! Tabloids got to speculate that Mary-Jane was having an affair with Tony Stark! Everyone got to hang out with Wolverine, who was an Avenger then! Most importantly, though, Spider-Man got to spend time with Iron Man. In a turn of events that would likely bring out Bruce Banner's green monster of jealousy, this period of the Marvel comics saw Stark and Parker (Starker?) bond over a mutual love of technology to form a new friendship—one that came with cool new souped-up costumes. No one got the nickname "Underoos," but at least they got along.

And how does that make the story any good? Because it wasn't. J. Michael Stracynski and company's forced direction was mired in terrible taste, following Avengers: Disassembled and the forcing of Scarlet Witch into role of crazy scapegoat by Bendis. That Wolverine was made an Avenger only compounded the contrived tone of the direction, where the spotlighted protagonists were "street-level" heroes, or "instantly recognizable" figures like Logan and Spidey. Not to mention that armor-plated costumes for Spidey and others do not immediately equal a talented story

But, if this article is saying something, it's giving one more clue to where screenwriters are getting their ideas: from bad storylines. Someday, moviegoers are going to take a good look at the wellsprings and wonder if all these steps were worth it when the original tales are so dreadful.

Of course, this all happened just months ahead of Marvel's first comic book Civil War, which didn't exactly turn out the same as its cinematic counterpart. As that storyline developed throughout 2006, Spider-Man and Iron Man found themselves at odds and eventually came to blows. (That's just how things are settled in comics.) And subsequent circumstances in both characters' own series—Peter Parker's history got rewritten in 2007 thanks to a deal with the devil in Amazing Spider-Man and Tony Stark rebooted his brain from an old backup in Invincible Iron Man in 2009—mostly prevented any attempt at reestablishing their bond. Add to that many other end-of-the-world storylines, including the literal end of the world in 2015's Secret Wars, and any chance of Tony and Peter being best bros is pretty much lost.

So, no word on how awful the former story was, and how the latter isn't far behind? Not even the pretensions of Civil War and the political harm it did to superhero comics? Tsk tsk. I don't see the point of talking about this if they won't stress the bad that came from erasing Peter and Mary Jane's marriage, or how time-wasting it was to have Tony wipe out his own brain.

That's remained true right up to the present day. Indeed, the relationship, or lack thereof, between Iron Man and Spider-Man in the current Marvel comic book continuity would be unrecognizable to audiences leaving Homecoming. For one thing, Tony Stark is in a coma with two other people (one of them being Doctor Doom) pretending to be Iron Man as a result. For another, Peter Parker is presently a tech CEO in his own right, running Parker Industries and discovering that the whole "with great power there must also come great responsibility" thing gets even more complicated when part of your power involves running an international company that employs thousands of people around the world. Interesting storylines both, but neither of them lend themselves to a buddy comedy.

Neither of them are something consumers should waste money upon either, because of all the bad writing that's going into both of them. If Peter can't be married to Mary Jane, that takes away any effective impact the recent directions have had. The same when Tony is deliberately replaced by Marvel staff with a teenage black girl for the sake of representing "diversity". Yet none of the negative effects resulting from these editorial mandates comes up in the discussion by Wired's writer.

And as for the history of whenever Webhead and Shellhead would team up: apart from their meetings books like Marvel Team-Up, they don't consider that the former often was depicted wanting to work alone, feeling more comfy that way when he doesn't have to answer all the time to a higher authority, and that could sometimes be how the latter was depicted too. And whatever buddy relation the two had in the mid-2000s, it was contrived, and not worth the time of audiences seeking organic entertainment in a shared universe.