He's been my favourite comic book character (or at the very least tied with Batman) ever since I grew up reading the Ultimate Spider-Man series but since September I've had a Marvel Unlimited subscription so I've taken the chance to read more mainstream Spidey comics. The classics like The Night Gwen Stacy Died, Spider-Man No More, Nothing Can Stop the Juggernaut and The Kid who Collects Spider-Man all hold up really well (the last one got to me a bit). After reading them I skipped ahead to the 90s stuff and quickly came to the conclusion that the writing was awful at that point so I skipped ahead again.

The JMS run people go on about was a really mixed bag for me, I really liked that he was actually letting Peter grow out of the status quo (becoming a teacher, having all his family know his secret, properly joining the Avengers and then unmasking to the world in Civil War and facing the consequences in Back in Black) but The Other was a weak supernatural retcon of his origin story, Sins Past was an awful retcon of who Gwen Stacy was and One More Day/One Moment in Time were a convoluted and god awful excuse to retcon away all the character development/story progression I'd enjoyed and take Spidey back to the down on his look photographer status quo (clearly Marvel should leave the retcons to DC, in all fairness to JMS apparently executive meddling was to blame for two out three of those).

After that I enjoyed some of the newest comics as well: Spider-Man Blue, the Gauntlet, No One Dies, Big Time and Ends of the Earth are all well worth reading. On the other hand Spider Island, Spider-Verse and Superior Spider-Man were all way too outlandish for my tastes despite Dan Slott still writing them well.

Long story short storytelling in the mainstream Spider-Man comics has some good highs that show him off as a really great character but also some really weak low points and unless you're a huge fan of the character I'd say you should read selectively to avoid the latter.

The #Ultimate Spider-Man comics are still the definitive take on the character for me, they're a complete story from start to finish with (near enough) consistent great writing that distils, modernises and offers interesting twists on the best stories and characters from the 616 comics starting with the best origin story in comics and carrying on right through until it delivers a genuine final ending the likes of which is pretty rare for an ongoing comic character. The films haven't quite done him justice yet so I'd say the Ultimate comics are the place to start for everyone who likes the character (and for anyone writing the MCU film and in need of inspiration for that matter).