It has convinced me it was out of character for him, at the time of the incident, but I understand a little better why it was done.
It mostly is a following and lead-up to a re-imagining of Spidey in "Ultimate Spider-Man" by Brian Michael Bendis (the great Brian Michael Bendis) and makes a great attempt at tickling your funny bone while alerting your sensibility about how Spider-Man was conceived and what his purpose in the Marvel U is, both as a story point and a character. He's a fantastically, original, plot, and this article proves it.
Introducing: The Amazing & Spectacular Spider-Man
Here's a taste:
This isn't a view of Peter Parker's situation and appeal which Spider-Man's co-creator Steve Ditko would have accepted as valid, though I doubt anything as crass as "popular appeal" would have been held to be pertinent by him anyway. According to Blake Bell in his "The World Of Steve Ditko" (*3), Mr Ditko was, from 1965 onwards, determined to act according to his Objectivist principles to recast Peter Parker from woe begotten loser to the master of his own fate. And so, for example, Mr Ditko had Peter Parker graduate from High School in "Amazing Spider-Man" # 28, and 10 issues later he had so removed Peter from the role of sympathetic everyman that Parker was contemptuously expressing his opposition to confrontational youth culture. Mr Ditko's Spider-Man would therefore be an independent-minded adult standing apart from, and indeed looking down upon, the corrupt society he inhabited.
Which explains why for me the appeal of Spider-Man as a character starts to fray in the mid-'60s, even while the Lee/Ditko team had almost a full year of Spider-Man tales before them. Because I don't believe that Spider-Man is a character predicated upon the need to change and develop, and I certainly don't believe that transforming Peter Parker into a poe-faced Objectivist sitting in judgement on the rest of we subjectivist masses would be a very good idea at all.
Indeed, as far as I can see, the very notion of "development" is inimical to the functional integrity of Spider-Man as a character. For Spider-Man was designed both by intent and chance to represent the specific moment when adolescence and its' increased potency begins to intrude upon the certainties of childhood. And the further from that moment the character's "growth" is allowed to stray and "develop", the less unique and fascinating Spider-Man becomes, and the more Peter Parker's alter-ego becomes just another superhero amongst ten thousand other superheroes.
Yeah, that's just a taste, that's not even the whole thing. Like I said, it's lengthy. That's not even 1/4, LOL!
-Ult
[Edited on 14/5/10 by Ult_Sm86]