The Four Color Media Monitor

Yet another example of "critics love, casuals hate" in the world of entertainment.

In the 2010s, in the comics industry
Critics are usually people closely aligned with the stuff they criticize. They already have link-minded people in editorial and other administrative positions who are trying to produce the material they prefer. The critics exist only exist as watchdogs to make sure the material being produced remains on-message. Critics are also important because they are who the
REAL CUSTOMERS of American comics publishers by and large. They are often educators or other people in academia who order graphic novels or ask that students read them for class.

Superior Spider-Man, which many fanboys found themselves liking, because the story that created him the story was okay, is on-message. The critics subscribe to
Cosplay philosophy regarding popular characters. Spider-man is just a set of powers. Anyone can be Spider-Man. Get with the Spider-verse, bro.

Superior Spider-Man s on-message because critics are hungry for more flawed, brooding and reluctant superheroes. Some casual fans are too but that's another story.
In this day and age, the idea of any man doing something altruistic is no longer believable--he must be fucked up in some way. It is more believable that he is secretly a villain...as we've seen with the recent treatment of Captain America, Cyclops, Iron Man, and Reed Richards.

Something like is Spider-Man for people who don't believe in heroism . To people who don't really believe in heroism, which includes many "critics", there's nothing specific that makes a superhero a hero. Anybody with the right powers and an ulterior motivation could do it.

Unfortunately, we live in a time when all altruism is dismissed as virtue signalling and anybody who cares about anything beyond oneself is dismissed as an SJW. The current motto is that with great power came putting great blame on everyone else besides oneself while tweeting all day.

Comic book critics come in all stripes - including anyone who wants to start their own blog or webpage or youtube channel. Look at Meyer's Perversity in Comics youtubing for example.

If you look at the most recent treatments of Captain America, Iron Man, and Reed Richards, they are not secretly villains. Their current writer, Dan Slott, is treating Richards and Iron Man as pure hero in the current revivals; Iron Man as villain was an old plot, from the Civil Wars era, and even then he was more misunderstood George Bush than gloating evil mastermind. Captain America secretly a villain is a misunderstanding of the Secret Invasion storyline; it was about an alternate reality version of Steve Rogers, one raised and twisted by Nazis or nazi analogues to feel loyalty to their cause despite his misgivings, and was at its core about the personality traits and core beliefs, the strength of will and idealism and loyalty, that made Steve Rogers a hero. It was a confused and ill-coordinated story, but not a nihilistic one.

Comic book spin offs are an old old story. Before the Spider-worse, there was the Marvel Family, the Superman Family, the Batman family, the Green Lantern Corps, - every successful superhero has all or most or multiples of an opposite sex version, a junior version, an ethnic version, a villanous version who shares his origin, and animal versions. It is a law of comic book nature dating back to the 1940s, to which Spider-Man succumbed later than most. Dr Octopus seeking redemption and to make up for old wrongs by acting spidery is nothing new. And what fan does not take some secret, even if embarassed, pleasure in seeing Spider-Ham hanging out with Spider-Gwen?