I agree. Marvel made a significant mistake having Pete marry and then throwing in the whole "baby" thing if they didn't plan to have him age. It's the Simpson's conumdrum. The show's been on, what, twenty years or so? And how old are Bart and Lisa? Does Maggie talk or walk? Grandpa Simpson is still alive?
This is the problem of creating ageless characters. There's a good reason in fiction that marriages and babies happen at the END of the story, not the beginning. Marriage marks a certain passage, as does the birth of a child. WHile those stories were certainly poignant, they were never sustainable unless Marvel wanted to take a different course with Pete. DC, facing the aging of its Golden Age Heroes, allowed them to age (sort of) and brought new characters onto the stage. Alan Scott as GL? Forget it! He's old, we have Hal Jordan now! Jay Garrick as the Flash? Screw it! Bring on Barry Allen!
About the only two DC characters, if you notice, who did NOT get replaced were Superman--but he's an alien and, well, super, so you could explain away his failure to age. But Bruce Wayne? He's a normal guy. But his sustained popularity (unlike the earlier versions of GL and the Flash) maintained even when the super hero genre, generally, fell out of fashion. So, with continued popularity came a desire NOT to replace Bruce, but to string him along as a non-changing albeit mortal, man.
Since comics' silver age, it's even proved hard to replace established heroes. Even after all the horrible things Hal Jordan did, they brought him back. Even though Barry Allen seemed to have joined Gwen Stacy and Uncle Ben as the only two truly dead people in comics, they brought him back. Captain America got around the whole "age" thing by conveniently being frozen. But now...did anyone doubt they'd bring Steve Rogers back at some point? Thor's a God, so immortal. Wolverine has morphed into this unkillable creature, so maybe he gets by as well, but the other non-ridiculously-superheroes? Leave their aging to What Ifs and Alternate Worlds tales.
If Marvel had been committed to allowing Pete to progress along a natural arc, none of us would have been reading Pete as Spidey. We'd be reading about Mayday as Spider-Girl or some other dude who would have taken up the mantel as Pete likely would have retired back in the 90's. But given that Marvel is shooting for a specific demographic group, teen and 20's males, it was hard to let him age. Even the 40-something readers are probably more interested in reading about a swingin' single Petey than a married Mr. Parker with mortgage on a house in Queens and a mini-van (having traded in the Spider-Buggy). While that might be interesting to read about, that's not Marvel's vision--nor was it Raimi's in creating the film version of the character.
So, I don't view what Marvel's done as a "regression" so much as an inevitable re-boot. While I wish Pete never would have gotten married (for reasons I have expressed elsewhere) and especially to MJ (ditto), once Marvel did it, I wish they'd have stayed clear of babies and done the decent thing and killed MJ off. I would have enjoyed reading stories about a guy who, because of his own mistake, "caused" the death of his Uncle Ben, who inadvertently killed his one true love (Gwen), and who then lost his wife because of responsibilities as SM. Now that would have been a trully messed up, internally tormented dude to read about. As I've said, I didn't like HOW Marvel handled OMD/BND, but I'm glad Pete's back and recognizable to me. And I'm glad Aunt May is there as well. And, just as an aside, while JMS is a teriffic writer, I so hated the Other story line and the Sins Past storyline, and making Pete a teacher at his old high school, that his whole run is a disaster in my view. He messed up the whole origin story and he sullied Gwen's memory. So, I dug him on Thor, but he wrote about a Peter Parker (of course the "Benjamin," while a nice tribute, was a later addition to canon) I neither recognized nor truly enaged with. I know that plenty of others, who joined the stories later than I, feel differently because they've always known a married Pete, always believed that MJ was "the one." But folks who pick up the character now, post-BDN, will have their own, different take on the character. That crowd, especially if they came to the character through the movies, probably would much prefer organic webbing as well. Or, to those horrified by Pete's drinking or sleeping around, what if THAT turned out to be the character's "evolution"? That's change. That's arguably an evolution of the character. He was a conservative, nerdy dude and now he's a swinger. Maybe Wolverine and Ben Grimm get him to start smoking cigars too. Maybe, without Aunt May to remind him of his responsibilities, Dead Pool and Luke Cage get him into the "Hero for Hire" business so he can support MJ's lavish lifestyle. Thats all change, evolution.
I think the reality is that tastes change. None of us can lay claim to being a "real" fan or having the "definite" understanding or interpretation of the character. We can just express our preferences.
In one respect, we'd all like to see our favorite characters follow an arc in life not unlike our own--at least to a point. I suspect at some time, we yearn for our more youthful days, so we want to see Pete not as a 45 year old guy with teen-age kids and a mini-van, but as a youthful adventurer.
