So reading some of the early Lee/Ditko pages. Peter doesn't seem so shy as many interpretations have him. Like Lee has him walk up and ask Liz Allen in the first page out on basically a date. That's not something I or many could do. Not to mention Peter doesn't really hide his new courage as literally anytime Flash pokes fun at him, Peter insults him right back in front of everyone.
I saw this ask come in and got totally excited about it because yes, that’s it, exactly, that’s what bothers me about so many more modern takes on Peter Parker, because in 616 he’s not a guy who couldn’t summon up the courage to talk to a girl or talk back to someone who insulted him. There’s a really great article about Spider-Man Homecoming called The New Post-Racial Spiderman Ignores His Jewish Superhero Roots written by Noah Berlatsky that explores the Jewish roots of Spider-Man in relation to Homecoming’s choices to purposefully erase that (notable following Andrew Garfield’s openness about how his own Jewishness informed his performance as Peter Parker and retrospectively with Into the Spider-Verse’s Jewish Peter B. Parker) and casts a very specific light on what could be the subtext behind his 616′s classmates’ dislike for Peter:
Parker fits Jewish and immigrant stereotypes in one other way — he is loathed. His classmates despise him. The reason for this dislike is never articulated. It seems to come out of nowhere — unless you read Peter as Jewish, or as an immigrant outsider. Then suddenly, the classmates unmotivated animosity resolves into prejudice.
There’s also a lot of visual shorthand going on in the very first Spider-Man page in Amazing Fantasy #15, though, filled with pop culture tropes that have long since gone out of fashion:
Not only are we told Peter’s unpopular, we’re shown it through the designs. How do we know Peter’s bookish? He’s wearing glasses. He’s the only brunet on the page – even the other dark-haired kids are raven-haired, and look at Peter compared to flaxen-haired All American-looking Flash Thompson, the popular kid. He’s holding school books when no one else is. We’re informed from this first shot that is serious and bookish compared to his more frivolous classmates. He “wouldn’t know a cha-cha from a waltz.” Look at even how he’s dressed compared to them: the dark colors compared to Liz’s red getup and Flash’s purple pants and striped sweater. He’s clearly a Serious Boy. And that’s part of my problem with how the Raimi films have pushed, in the public perception, this image of Peter as a sad sack nerd because I don’t think the important thing here is that Peter is a nerd, precisely: it’s that he’s an outsider. Something has to mark him as different than the other kids.
And Peter’s confidence level clearly increases greatly after he gets his powers – which, like, who’s wouldn’t upon being able to suddenly bench press a truck and dodge a bullet? – but I don’t think he started from a place of zero confidence. I think he had all this stuff inside and the spider really frees that in him, but it doesn’t turn him into a different person entirely. And one thing I’ve pointed out before that I think is really pretty key to Peter’s personality: Peter’s good with women. He’s friends with plenty, including exes, of course, but I think there’s this false wish male fulfillment angle that gets played when people are talking about Peter Parker’s romantic relationships because there’s this idea of him as the nerd and then the women he gets involved with are all beautiful – Gwen’s described as a beauty queen, Felicia’s super elegant and sexy, Mary Jane is a literal supermodel. But it’s not that Peter gets the mega-babe because he’s the main character and it’s not the male wish fulfillment trope of “average guy gets beautiful girl” – Peter attracts women because he’s charismatic and romantic and charming. Like you said, one of the first things he does in canon is approach a popular girl and ask her out, and this is before the spider’s bite. And he gets turned down, true, but it was still a brave thing to do to put himself out there. Then only a few issues later, after he starts to notice Betty Brant, this happens:
(Amazing Spider-Man #7) I mean, this is some forward kind of behavior. He’s very flirtatious here, especially for someone who has never had a girlfriend before – the eye contact, complimenting her perfume, inviting her to rest her head on his shoulder and calling her “baby.” It’s some smooth stuff from a teenager. Then there’s Dorrie Evans, Johnny Storm’s girlfriend a the time, who was very charmed by Peter’s gentlemanly demeanor and remarked several times that she wished Johnny could be “more like that nice Peter Parker” while trying to make him jealous. (It should also be noted Dorrie regularly criticized Johnny for “flaming on” all the time so uh there’s some stuff to get into there, metaphor-wise.)
And the start of Peter and Gwen’s comics romance is pretty hilarious because it’s some “I loathe you I love you” stuff until John Romita sweeps in and things get romantic, but Peter is pretty explicitly not shy around her:
(Amazing Spider-Man #34) He’s a definite flirt. He’s also, at this point, getting described a lot as handsome – Gwen at one point thinks he’s so “manly-looking” and at one point Peter gets offended when he thinks there’s a girl who is asking him out for his brains – and not for his looks.
“Take away his looks… and his brains… and he’s nowhere!” (Amazing Spider-Man #54) So it’s also clear in the text that somewhere between high school and college, Peter got Hot, on top of his generally being an irrepressible flirt. And more than talking about when Flash pokes fun at him, Peter verbally spars with J Jonah Jameson fairly early on in canon – not as early on as he starts displaying this confidence with women, granted, but it’s really one thing on the confidence scale to ask out a girl in your class or have a fast comeback for your classmate, but it’s an entirely different one to talk back to your boss.
In my opinion this is where the relatable superhero label starts hurting the character, because he really isn’t that relatable when you get down to it: he’s a hot super genius who almost always has a smartass comeback, and that’s on top of all of his superpowers.
