Warning! Spoilers for The Amazing Spider-Man #2 ahead!
The latest issue of The Amazing Spider-Man adds a new job to Peter Parker’s ever-growing resume. It’s hard to think of a hero in the Marvel Universe that’s had a harder time staying employed than Spider-Man, but that just means Peter has one impressive job history.
After decades of being a popular hero, Spider-Man has properly entered the public consciousness. He’s such a pop culture figure at this point that even non-comic fans associate his secret identity, Peter Parker, as being a freelance photographer for The Daily Bugle. Peter became so successful as Spidey’s photographer that villains would actually target him in order to get to the Wall-Crawler. Peter also put together a coffee book of all the pictures he took of Spider-Man and generated a substantial income from that.
But it’s been a long time since young Peter Parker was a freelance photographer making money off of his heroics. He’s had several jobs since then and just got a new one in The Amazing Spider-Man #2 by Zeb Wells and John romita Jr. The newly-reformed Norman Osborn is in charge of watching his grandsons, but Norman has business to take care of and hires Pete to be the kids’ babysitter. Peter is reluctant to take the job, but he doesn’t necessarily have a choice. Based on some decisions he made previously, which still haven’t been revealed, Peter has had a hard time finding work. He’s also ostracized his friends in the process, and apparently owes Norman a favor, to boot.
This isn’t the first time Peter has had kids under his care, either. During J. Michael Straczynski’s run on The Amazing Spider-Man, which was also drawn by John Romita Jr., Peter became a high school science teacher. It was actually one of the more fitting jobs Peter has had in his career. With Peter’s science background and the difficult time he himself had in high school, he’s the perfect choice to be able to not only teach kids but also mentor them through the trauma of being a teenager in high school.
But that’s not all Peter has done with his scientific knowledge. He’s also been a research scientist and inventor at Horizon Labs. Then, with the help of Otto Octavius, Peter became the CEO of his own multi-billion dollar corporation, Parker Industries. He was also the editor of the Science section of The Daily Bugle for a time. And this is just in the main universe. It doesn’t take into account the jobs Peter Parker had in other universes. In the Ultimate Universe, he began working at The Daily Bugle as a web designer and not as a photographer. So it doesn’t matter which version of Peter Parker fans are talking about, Spider-Man by far has the most impressive resume of the Avengers.
