The thing is, Peter Parker has a pretty hard life. Not for a teenager; in general. Sure, some of the things that are hard about his life are a result of his age and relative lack of agency, but these are full-blown causes, not excuses. I wouldn’t want his life, if I were to pause and consider it. Which, okay, I would probably not do, because you can’t tell me it looks in any way non-awesome, what he does. But I should have paused, clearly. I mean, he’s got school and a flexible job, which, no big, but then he’s got this whole tight-rope double life that endangers his loved ones even as it drives subtle wedges between him and them. Plus, you know, fighting crime, already a full-time occupation by itself.

In a way, therefore, it’s like the first half of Irresponsible is a kind of love letter directly to Peter Parker, trying to get him to buck up, take a good look at himself and realize what a great job he’s doing. After all, the alternative is being a foreign exchange student who blows up cars with his mind to be popular! And in another way, the whole book felt a little like an apology to Peter, giving him lots of cool things to do and a pretty trivial bad guy to deal with, and maybe a girlfriend again. And it’s nice to see good stuff happen to Pete, because he’s the kind of guy who deserves it, rare though it be. But then, all this uninterrupted goodness leaves me waiting for the other shoe to drop, and drop hard. Because the individual days might be pretty good, but I would not want Peter Parker’s life. Not if I thought about it.