Why Does my Autie Daughter Love Spiderman

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Spiderman is now all hyped up and marketed everywhere but I loved all Marvel Comics characters for years before any moviee came out. They were like my other family.

It wasn't that easy to find a Marvel toy before the movies but Spiderman stuff was easier to get than the other Marvel characters. So I had Spiderman stuff around the house. My autistic daughter liked him a lot and kept taking my Spiderman stuff and keeing it with her. Now that Spiderman stuff is everywhere, I bought her a Spiderman toothbrush and toothpaste. She was so happy.

Is it because his face is only two big yellow eyes? A simple face?

I'm glad she loves him. I still love Marvel even though I quit reading the comic books after I came home from school one day to find that my mother had burned every single one of my comc books, except for Avengers #4 which wasn't with the rest at the time of the slaughter.

'cause he's cool?

I used to wear my spidey suit everywhere when little.

The Spiderman movies were terrible, just terrible.
But when I heard Venom would be in the third one, I was excited, I thought it might actually be good.
Until I heard who they got to play Venom.
Look at this guy:

What genius looked at him and thought, "Hey, you know who would be perfect to play him? The guy who was Eric on That 70s Show! Cause you know, they totally didn't make jokes about him being skinny on like every other episode, he is totally not notorious for being small and skinny, he would be perfect to play one of the most muscular villains in comic book history."

can your daughter understand the story? how old is she? i like spiderman because he, the boy who changed after the spider bite, used to be a geek and then he was a hero. a change of miserable geek life into wonderful life full of free possibilities.

Spiderman (and other superheroes) are fantastic!

The goodies are good.

The baddies are bad.

There are no shades of grey.

It's predictable - the superhero will always save the day and justice served!

Helen

You obviously never read the Spawn comics, the most awesome super hero ever.
Things ain't so black and white for Spawn (except for his suit).

I think everyone can relate to the idea of living behind a mask when we're out in public. I would be very interested in knowing whether or not your child is able to pick up on such symbols, though. Have you tried asking her? What she likes about Spiderman?

Hmm, it just dawned on me. I was a humongous Power Rangers fan... Spent all my money (which wasn't a lot in the grand scheme of things) on Power Rangers toys, saw the TV show and all. I had absolutely no interest in other fictional characters. Makes me wonder...

That IS part of the formula for a popular book. *I* should have thought about just writing such a book. I would have come out with harry potter LONG ago. The idea of a picked on orphan that finds he is part of another picture(rich, powerful, etc) with a few friends that go on and become famous, isn't really that unusual. And ACTUALLY, I guess superman, spiderman, and batman WERE basically orphans. They were ALL either rich or powerful, etc... I don't know about batman, but the OTHERS were certainly ridiculed.

I loved Spiderman, when I was little.

On a sunconscious level, it may well be that Peter Parker doesn't has the greatest life, always being moaned at by his boss, bullied when he was at school, but when he is Spider-man, under a mask, he has a free rein. Yes, JJJ may despise him, and that may sometimes go against him, but on the whole, he does what alot of kids want to do; be a superhero. When he takes the mask off, his enemies (apart from Venom) don't know who he is, and there are few consequences to his actions as a hero (well, that girl did die, but that was a one off, big storyline).

It may also be that he is pretty cool.

Like a lot of Stan Lee's creations, people who have problems, or are discriminated against in any way, can connect to Spider-man. The X-Men and Hulk being other examples. Stan Lee just thought at the time that it would be cool if a geek was a hero, or if superpowers were genetic, or if a hero had a split personality. He probably didn't realise at the time how many people would associate themselves with fictional characters who are different.

Again, it may be that he is pretty cool.

Well, actually, Superman was only powerful physically - he always resisted the idea of using his physical strength to become wealthy and powerful (fairly simple - to get started, take a lump of coal, and squeeze until it becomes the world's largest diamond...). Also, while he had been orphaned, he didn't know that until he was a teenager - as far as he was concerned, Jonathan and Martha Kent were his parents.

Peter Parker was never rich. Until he married supermodel/actress Mary Jane Watson, he lived with his aunt and uncle, then in a tiny apartment in a crappy building in a bad part of town. And while he was far stronger than the normal people around him, he only used that strength in costume, fighting other superhumans, amongst whom he wasn't all that strong. His only edges were the webbing, the agility, and the ability to use his words as a weapon, making enough smart-alec remarks to piss his opponents off (thus reducing their ability to fight well).

Batman does fit your thesis, however...

Yog-Sothoth, Spawn isn't a hero - he's an antihero. He doesn't set out to save anyone - he opposes the plans of Hell because he's still pissed off about being cheated in their original deal. If they had given him what he thought they were, he'd have wound up leading the Hosts in battle willingly. (Oh, and it's not surprising you feel drawn to Venom - not only does he have the same antihero vibe going on, but Todd McFarlane created Venom when he was doing Spider-Man, before resigning to go create Spawn over at Image.)

M daughter never read a comic book. She is very disabled, too hyper aware to be calm enough to fiigure out how to do very many normal things. So maybe there's just something so cosmically wonderful about Spiderman that she just felt the vibe.

It's hard to say what will capture an autistic person's interest and why. For example, my brother doesn't understand why I like anime so much. I think we just like what we like and that's all there is to it.

Star Wars Episode V was on this afternoon, and my mum asked if I had grown out of that sort of thing. I said I don't feel the need to grow out of this sort of thing. I like what I like, be it animal psychology or comicbook heroes from the 1940s, and I feel no need to justify it to anyone.

Spider Man is magic. Spider man is everything we would all like to be, and he gets the pretty girl in the end.....so it's one dream if you're a boy, and another if you're a girl, but either way, you're a winner. We all like to win. Spider Man NEVER loses.

That's a pretty good reason.

Btdt

I can't answer definitively but I did have a similar liking for the Teenage mutant hero turtles when I was a kid. ('hero' because the UK banned the word Ninja in the early 90's) I didn't follow the stories or even know the character names, but I think it was a mixture of the 'cool' voices and the colours and sounds. It always made me really excited! This was when I was about 2/3 years old!