His uncle got murdered and his first girlfriend got her neck broken and one of his enemies is the Kingpin of underworld crime...so yeah, I don't mind adult themes here and there but the whiney-poo police would start crying about it.

Why not both? I like a mix of light hearted stories in addition to the dark stories. I feel if you only do dark stories you box the character into a corner. I feel the same about Daredevil & Batman. There are IMO only a few characters that should be dark all the time. Spawn. Ghost Rider. The Spectre.

Why not? I wouldn't want dark stories exclusively, but I do quite like some of the darker stuff like Kraven's Last Hunt, Torment, the Sin-Eater storyline, or Back in Black. As @rags says above, the pivotal events in Peter Parker's life are pretty much all couched in violence, so darker storytelling is certainly not out of place in Spider-Man.

You can have the dark events; but, Peter is pretty much a glass half full kind of guy, despite that, incessant whining not withstanding (well, in the Bronze Age, at least). I don't think you could really do a cynical Spider-Man and have it be very engaging, for long. Same with captain America (especially Cap). Cap has his depressed side (survivor's guilt, man out of time); but, on the whole, he rises above.

Superman you can't really do "dark," as a character, without changing his fundamental character. You can plunge him into darkness, have the world turn on him, drag him through the sewer; but, his moral compass will always point him to doing what is right, no matter what. I think that is what so many writers miss with him. They talk about him being too perfect and too hard to write. That's a cop out. What they usually mean is they are not capable of writing a virtuous character. He makes mistakes, you can throw obstacles in his path, have him suffer a crisis of faith; but, you then pull him out of it through the lessons and examples of his human adoptive parents. Terry Pratchett understood it perfectly, in his Discworld character Captain Carrot Ironfoundersson. Carrot is a human, raised by dwarves. He is over 6 ft tall (his dwarf name translated as "headknocker"), is amiable and sees the good in people. So much so that they often rise to meet his expectations because they can't fathom someone so guileless. He genuinely is interested in people of all kinds and speaks to them with courtesy and respect and they return it in kind. It is alluded that he is the rightful ruler of the city; but, he hides any evidence of that because he doesn't think people should do things because a king tells them to do it; but because it is in their best interest and for the common good. He is very much like Superman, yet he has been placed in darker stories, has had to make hard decisions, has blind spots, yet he stays true to who he is and triumphs because he is a true hero and that's what heroes do. To me, that is Superman.

Spidey is a trickster; so, you can play more with darkness and light; but, he is a trickster who was raised with good values and he can only be so dark. He may face dark people and situations; but, he will not be dragged forever into the darkness; he will counter it with light.

How dark though?

I don't think I want to see the level of Batman broodiness and grittyness. He has that. I wouldn't be opposed to some more darker stories but like, I feel if you want that, you tune in to Venom and Carnage and what is currently happening in comics. There is no need to drag Spidey into that any more than needed (maybe he makes the odd appearance there but to do a whole dark Spidey series might be too much).

I wouldn't be opposed to some sort of "elseworlds" or "alternate reality" tale that looks at a darker story that is maybe set outside the current universe. The problem is, they need to have a really strong writer. If they go too far, fans won't appreciate it. It is a tricky task, one that I feel would really propel a writer/artist team if they were able to do it well. 

I count Gwen as his 3rd girlfriend.  He was pretty serious with Betty Brant for a couple of years before she got too neurotic to deal with (one major reason I preferred the Betty on the 1967 TV cartoons-- she was a MUCH-nicer girl).  And he hit it off with Mary Jane Watson the moment they met.  But he never quite got as serious with her as he did awhile later with Gwen... HIS stupid mistake! Gwen was NOTHING but trouble the whole time they were together.

It looks to me like they overdosed on both Venom and Carnage for quite awhile. Now there's this King In Black business with evil grins of super-long tooth abounding yet again. So 'dark' would have to involve a solid quality story as opposed to this by-the-numbers (evil leer, long tongues, evil eyes, big muscles, large body counts) extreme marketing formula. The original Steve Ditko Spidey had a lot of darkness which gave it that something extra; a hero who could feel guilty, doomed and cursed!

This totally ripped and rad 'dark' stuff? This I'm mostly allergic to... all thirty plus years of it.


Although I am glad it brought a couple '60s reprints I wanted tied-in through the True Believers line.