Spidey legacy a tangled web of superpowers

During a tense moment in Jon Watts' superhero reboot "Spider-Man: Homecoming," Peter Parker's high school bud Ned (Jacob Batalon) picks up one of Spider-Man's wristband web-blasters and fires off a timely discharge of the sticky substance.

Hardcore Spidey fans know this shouldn't be possible.

In Stan Lee's original Marvel Comics, Parker designed the web-blaster's trigger so that ordinary people couldn't fire it and possibly use it against him.

A single Spidey fingertip supplied the 50 pounds of pressure necessary to activate the trigger, something regular human fingers can't do. (I know these things because I read Spider-Man comics on their original run during the 1960s.)

One of the biggest flaws in Sam Raimi's original "Spider-Man" trilogy (2002, 2004, 2007) had Parker shoot the webbing out of his wrists as an organic substance generated within his genetically altered body.

Really? Could a teenager's genetically modified physique mass-produce the 160-kajillon fluid tons of webbing Spidey dispensed to stop that runaway New York subway car in "Spider-Man 2"?

More to the point, having Parker invent his own web-slinging devices allowed him to augment his freakish gift from Mother Nature, thereby teaching adolescent Spidey fans they shouldn't rest on their natural talents, but build and improve on their innate abilities.

These Marvel guys were smart and knew what they were doing.

Raimi's Spider-Man botched it.

Plus, as I have written before, if Raimi's Spider-Man stayed true to his physical arachnid origins, his webbing would not have come out two holes in his wrists, but from another orifice difficult to show in PG-13 movies.

<i> Dann Gire's column runs Friday in Time out! Follow him on Twitter at @DannGireDHFilm.</i>