Oh, man. I get really unconfortable with this notion.

"Genius" is a word that should be saved for Albert Einstein, Mozart, Stephen Hawking...but, your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man? I dunno...

Okay, so maybe I've just got stiff fingers, but when I make a fist, then extend my thumb and index & pinkie in the traditional web-shoot gesture, my middle fingers start pulling down toward the base of my thumb automatically.  Keping them in the fist-closed position strains the back of my hand.  I find it easier to fold my fingers over my palm and not bend the joint closest to the nail.  The sound of one hand clapping, basically.

JB's answer works for me (and my stiff fingers!).

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Oh, man. I get really unconfortable with this notion.

"Genius" is a word that should be saved for Albert Einstein, Mozart, Stephen Hawking...but, your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man? I dunno...

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Right from the start it was emphasized that Parker was super smart and an outcast at school largely due to that fact. At the age of sixteen (or less, if we really pay attention to how much time lapses in the first story) he makes the web-fluid and the web-shooters. Later he makes the spider-tracers.

Smacks of genius to me!

Flavio, I have no problem with Peter Parker's genius, given the world he occupies.  The Sandman took some night-school courses that allowed him to design and build a costume which, with the press of a button, would release chemicals that altered the consistency/properties of his sand form.  The Sandman is just about the biggest mug in the Marvel Universe, and he's building complicated armor with push-button technology in the world of the 1960s.  And Spider-Man outsmarts him regularly. 

Are Mirror Master, Captain Cold, Heat Wave and the rest of the Flash's rogues genius inventors?  They would be if they lived here!  In Flash's world they're just clever bank robbers.

Peter being a genius high-school student is business as usual.  Peter being a genius pizza delivery guy (as in Spider-Man 2) is ridiculous.

Given the specialist rule, Parker should never be as smart as Reed Richards or Tony Stark, but he should be up there with Hank Pym, T'Challa, Hank McCoy, and a host of secondary brilliant scientist types in the MU.

There is a very obvious reason why Peter wouldn't sell his web fluid formula (and, yes, it WOULD have lots of commercial potential, on the field of law enforcement, for example): Because he would lose one of his best weapons against the criminals.

He is certainly aware that the minute a web shooter becomes commercially available EVERY SINGLE supervillian would get his hands in one of those and develop countermeasures. Even use it against Spider-Man himself (who, as you must remember, isn't strong enough to break his own webbing!).

To me, that question is as absurd as "why doesn't Tony Stark sell his Iron Man armor?" Yet you don't see anyone asking THAT!

Brian Hague brings up an excellent point about why it's a bad idea to overthink a lot of things.  Take Hawkeye for an example: how does he have the know-how to design his trick arrows?  How does he have the resources to build them?  Well let's have Tony Stark design and build them.  Hawkeye then is a specialist in the delivery of the payload provided by someone else.  But then why doesn't Stark just incorporate the payloads into his armor and develop a delivery system that would carry them farther than Hawkeye's bow, and with computer-assisted aiming, and target-lock tracking?

And Hawkeye just got asked politely to retire, because now all he brings to the table is his attitude. 

Thinking things through to their "logical" conclusion is just about the most illogical thing to do with comics!

Hrm. I don´t know...

Leastways, the Spider-man I first met (70s/80s) was closer to being lab assistant to these guys (Curt Connors´s for instance).

Peter isn't going to come in and instantly become someone's contemporary.  A genius still needs to learn.  They don't come into the world fully formed and with every answer to every question in their specific field.  Peter was helping Connors because he knew he was the Lizard.  Peter was learning from Connors because he was a student.  I don't think he was just a simple lab assistant.

All this debate about whether or not Peter Parker is a genius says one thing:

He should have stayed what he was when created: a teenager!

As a teenage genius, still in high school or early college, it's perfectly acceptable to see Peter as someone of genius level who has the potential to (in a future that the comics should never reach) become a Reed Richards or a Hank Pym.

That's the big problem with having him age. A teenager with certain problems is one type of character, while an adult with those same or similar problems is a whole different story. That's why Lee and Ditko made him a teenager, that's why he WAS, when properly portrayed, debatably the best character in superhero comics.