Reed Richards wrote:
I get that they're a facet. Everything is about relationships, depending on how you define the term, but 'integral'? I disagree. Yeah, they can be cool story elements, Peter Parker is profoundly influenced by his relationships and romances, the X-men over the years have been like a junior high school study hall full of hormonally jacked up adolescents. Supes has Lois, lots of DCers have wives or sig ots. Batman has lots of ladies in and out of costume. This is really just semantics over the uses of major and most. Judge Dredd don't need no ladies bringing him down. Just blast some lawbreakers.
Of course, not EVERY character has them. Some aren't human, some would be plain gross ( there's a scene in ultimate x-men where blob is slobbering over a girl that's just plain wrong).
But for many characters they wouldn't be who they are without their relationships, and spiderman and superman fall right into that category. It's not a requirement for all characters, but even for ones non human ones like the silver surfer, their entire reason for being what they are is because of a romance.