I’m amazed this has to be explained every time. Daredevil canonically beat up the unbeatable android Ultron with a stick. And Luke Cage defeated Dr. Doom by doing something neither Reed nor even Ben tried: punching him over and over in the same spot. This is comics, baby.
"Squirrel Girl defeats Dr. Doom by mobbing him with squirrels" is my favorite example of this. Probably followed by, "rookie X-man Cannonball defeats alien Shi'ar superman Gladiator, to the complete surprise of them both"
Totally. I also loved spider-man fighting firelord who was a herald of galactus at the time, and beating him and the avengers being like "My dude wtf?!"
My favorite Spider-Man superpower is he always punches above his weight class in crossovers. He’s capable of losing to a 3rd string jobber in his own book because he’s distracted or has a cold, but once he’s in over his head, he is instantly a first stringer.
This was literally the case with that Cannonball v Gladiator conflict early. Gladiator's about to hit Sam with a killing blow and in a blind panic he uses his blast field to redirect the force of it back, nearly knocking Gladiator unconscious. Both of them are like, "WTF was that???"
There certainly have been numerous times where he's been on ad hoc Avengers/Defenders/etc. etc. lineups and basically been, "why am I even here, the rest of you people can destroy whole cities?"
One of my formative Spidey memories is from Marvel's old Godzilla series. Big finale, Godzilla vs the Avengers and the FF and SHIELD and Spidey lands on a nearby building and thinks "wellllllll maybe I can get some photos for the Bugle..."
