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hellzyeahwebwielingessays · 4 years

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Superior is INDEFENCIBLE Part 2: Odds and Ends

Part 1

As a little follow up to this post I want to wrap up some defences I have encountered for both Superior #2 and the Superior storyline in general.

To start with we have more hypocrisy from the man I once admired as he tried to defend his position on Superior.

He was challenged on his primary argument that Peter and MJ’s separation justified her obliviousness now that they are back together; for further details see the above linked post.

In response to this challenge he said:

“I think there is more to my argument then "They've lived apart for a year" and her relationship with him during that time doesn't have to hold relevance to their relationship after being apart.”

Like…this guy was for fucking real.

OF COURSE their relationship back then is going to hold relevance to their relationship after being apart.

Obviously with the benefit of hindsight Nick Spencer’s run proves this to be the case. And you can refer back to my prior post where I dive deeper into the topic.

However, in that post I was talking about the specific nuances of Peter and MJ’s relationship.

What’s mind boggling is that in the above quote he’s making an even bigger reach. Jesus Christ OF COURSE their past relationship is going to hold relevance for their then-current one.

That’s how relationships work!

FFS, romantic or otherwise everyone’s relationship with everyon else is shaped by the past. This is like arguing Peter hating Norman for killing Gwen Stacy doesn’t have to be relevant to their relationship after his return to the Clone Saga.

I mean shit dude, Peter’s high school romance with Betty Brant was relevant to their romance after he graduated college!

This is how all types of relationships work. You don’t just jump in after awhile, start fresh and then nothing from the past has any bearing on the present. Even in the most positive of scenarios the fact that you are getting together again would still be shaped by the fact that you liked each other in the first place.

And for the life experiences those two shared that’d go a thousand fold.

Now let’s move on to some over miscellaneous comments sent to me a looooooooooooong time ago.

I’ve had this stuff in my drafts for years!

For the sake of catharsis I’ve decided to clear it out. It revolves around Superior Spider-Man and the comments I’m responding to were made before the original volume ended in 2014.

“Rob Wrecks wrote:Why would Aunt May even react to it? She doesn't even know the identity of Spidey now.”

In Civil War she was able to tell that the Chameleon, a MASTER of disguise who was being more subtle than Otto was, was not her nephew.

Whilst she might not know he is Spider-Man she knows her nephew so she should react and become questionable regarding his change in demeanor and behavior. What’s the old saying ‘A mother always knows’.

“As for MJ, they aren't even married anymore either. Sure she remembers who is under the mask. But I doubt she's gonna bring trouble on herself for prying.”

I address a lot of this in this post.

Basically, not being married anymore has nothing to do with it. This woman lived with this man for years (five to be precise) and had a very close relationship with him which involved countless tragedies and traumas. That doesn’t just go away. This is to say nothing of the fact that she has known this man for about 10 years and has been his friend and girlfriend during that time. In fact in Stern’s run when she knew who he was but didn’t let him know, she was depicted as knowing him better than anyone and was able to read him as a book. This was back when they weren’t as close as they are now, hadn’t known each other for as long and she didn’t know him as intimately as she would later come to down the road. In ASM #290 Peter himself says MJ knows him as well as he knows himself and this was before the marriage.

Even in Slott’s run this depiction of Mary Jane knowing Peter better than anyone else was highlighted in various stories like Spider Island, a time travel arc, Alpha, and a Lizard arc at HORIZON labs.

In JMS’ run Peter and Mary Jane were shown to be somewhat in synch even though they were separated at the time and had been for a long while going back. This was showcased in ASM V2 #50 and they had been effectively separated with minimal interaction as far back as ASM V2 #13; arguably even issue #1.

And yet she understood him and knew him very well, falling back into synch with him when they reconciled. Yes there was some awkwardness and them getting to know each other again but it was not on the same level of Otto guzzling champagne, creating spider bots, talking in a manner which was unlike the way he’s ever spoken before and MJ just wondering passingly then dismissing it. This woman has lived through the Chamelon, robot parents and clones and lives in a world where friggin Skrulls have invaded.

This out of character behaviour should send off alarm bells. She DOES clock something is off in Superior #10 but only when he says a phrase she’s never heard him say before. He was doing shit MUCH more out of character before then and she was dismissing it.

Later she was STILL dismissing the notion that Peter wasn’t himself as merely crazy on her part.

Again this woman knows Peter can be/has been cloned repeatedly. This woman even for awhile believed Peter himself was a clone so she knows even memories can be replicated. But Peter is acting so obviously NOT himself that it’s practically SCREAMING at her that she should get this. In fact Peter’s ghost point this out which is Slott lampshading the situation. That doens’t make it good writing that’s just pointing out how bad your story is.

“Hasn't she (I'm guessing he's referring to Aunt May?) been focused lately on her new marriage though? I don't read enough of Spidey these days so I'm only going with bits and pieces I've read about here and there.”

What does being married recently or focusing upon it have to do with anything?

In Civil War she was focused upon not dying because Peter’s ID reveal had upended her life.

If you are someone’s MOTHER and have raised them all their life you will absolutely be able to tell when something is wrong, when they are in fact not the real deal.

“As for MJ, who would she go too? Not like anyone would likely believe her unless she had a telepath scan her mind.”

Who would she go to? I dunno maybe the fucking Avengers or Fantastic Four who are Peter’s friends and team mates. Or maybe not go that far why not go to Black Cat, Human Torch or Daredevil . These are all people whom she knows (at least vaguely in regards to Daredevil) personally and have access to technology that can prove things one way or another.

Even if you argue that it’s not fair bringing in the wider Marvel Universe, Black Cat, Carlie, HORIZON labs, the Bugle staff and Scarlet Spider are all Spider-Man franchise characters.

“Now there could be a possibility she's making a list of his behavior and the like and is just waiting for the right time to say something when she knows she's less likely to die from it.

Maybe Slott's just got something going that'll eventually be revealed? Who knows.”

Oh boy, that didn’t stand the test of time did it?

This is just shitty analysis on principle. It hinges upon blind faith and writing stuff in your head about what characters are doing behind the scenes.

There was NEVER an indication MJ was doing anything like that and her actions actually contradicted event he idea of her doing any of that stuff.

The net responses are to the statement that Doc Ock was a gentleman who would treat women with respect.

“Keyword there, 'was' a gentlemen. I can imagine after years of defeats at the hands of Spidey, certain habits would change and he wouldn't care anymore.

It could have just been a subtle change that no one really noticed. He did try and end the world before #700 if I recall right.”

You need to SHOW those habits changing. The last major Doctor Octopus story before BND was in JMS’s run when he was very much a gentleman. You can’t just say his illness and defeats suddenly transformed him into a would be rapist. It’s utterly out of character for him. It’d be like bringing back Ben Reilly and making him a mass murderer. WHY is he a mass murderer.

(Fun fact. The stuff I bolded about Ben Reilly was something I wrote at the time. I kept it in because of how sadly ironic it wound up being…fuck Clone Conspiracy seriously)

Ending the world before #700 is one thing IN Doc Ock’s character. He is egotistical and wants acknowledgement of his genius.

Superior depicted him going against a character trait he’s always had. In his origin story, when he was ‘courting’ Aunt May, when he was involved with Stunner and Lady Octopus and the like he has always been show to have a respect for women and not had to resort to cheap ploys to woo them.

In Superior he was trading off of MJ’s relationship with Peter and Peter’s memories to basically abuse this woman. That is beneath Doctor Octopus. He is an intellectual a man for whom such actions are debase, the realm of the common thug whilst he is much more he is DOCTOR OCTOPUS.

BTW in Web of Death it was established that Doc Ock probably would not target MJ or Peter’s family even though he knew Peter’s identity.

So for him to suddenly switch to ‘I’m gonna fuck his girlfriend to get one over on him” is again utterly out of character.

‘Web of Death’ was co-written by Tom DeFalco btw, who established Otto’s origin. Thus the argument is flying in the face of someone who helped define the character with no explanation at all.

Slott had done this with other characters like Ashley Kafka.Suddenly the most naively compassionate woman in the world who believed she could redeem CARNAGE is saying this lesser serial killer is a complete monster. That is piss poor writing.

Even if Slott WERE to establish and show how Ock went from one extreme to the other it doesn’t make it a good idea. Doc Ock would be rapist is a lot less interesting than Doc Ock the lone super villain who is part gentleman and part humanitarian with a respect for women. If this was Norman Osborn in Peter’s body, or Electro, or Shocker I’d believe these actions.

The topic then changed to Carlie Cooper’s depiction in Superior as a goddam idiot who isn’t even telling MJ Peter might be evil. “Red Hood wrote: Carlie and Wraith followed Ock’s paper trail because she knows for fact that peter parker doesnt have the money to fund his own private army, the reason she hasnt said anything is because it's not such a good idea to go pointing fingers without absolute truth, remember eddie brock and how he was so sure about the sin eater?”

Carlie’s investigation was going incredibly sloooooooooooooooooowly. Not only was it dull reading, but it made her completely unsympathetic. Why not warn Mary Jane by saying “Look before he died Doc Ock told me he and Spider-Man had swapped bodies. I’m not saying Peter IS Doc Ock but just....be careful MJ”.

Or why not inform the Avengers or Fantastic Four about this. Sure the Avengers gave him a physical but they wouldn’t know what to look for. And why is Carlie Cooper all of a sudden saying “Wait I KNOW Peter doesn’t have this kind of cash so this is a big clue that he isn’t himself.” When her first big clue should have been that time Spider-Man SHOT SOMEONE IN THE FACE!

“also peter and mj arent married anymore.”

See above.

You don’t just suddenly fall out of knowing someone if you’ve been THAT close to them and known them for that long just because suddenly you are not married anymore. She has deduced subtle differences in the Chameleon and clones before this but Ock is NOT being subtle whatsoever. He isn’t even talking the same way he normally does. And Mister Red Hood even says so himself, Carlie can tell right way. His co-workers whom he’s known for LESS THAN A YEAR can tell something is up. But the woman who’s been closer to him than ANYONE in his life, she can’t tell. That is bullshit of the highest order.

“1. mj and peter arent married anymore, idk if they were married in identity crisis but remember how after the deal with mephisto they were separated for x amount of years before she even came back to new york, i can see her not being able to tell peter is acting different at that point. aunt may and the avengers though don't get a pass especially when carlie who knew him the least could tell right away.”

See above.

When you separate from someone you’ve been that close to those feelings don’t just disappear. This is especially true of people who’ve been through immensely traumatic events together. Soldiers often find that only fellow soldiers, specifically ones who were with them in combat, can truly understand what they went through and how they felt. It creates an emotional/mental bond. Same thing here. Peter and Mary Jane went through Venom, Kraven’s Last Hunt, the death of Harry, Gwen, aunt May, Ben Reilly, the clone saga as a whole, Civil War, Peter’s OWN death, Maximum Carnage and so on. They’d have that kind of connection I was speaking about, you don’t just forget it to the point where you let MASSIVE differences in behaviour slide, especially massive differences in behaviour which are different to the way he was acting LAST WEEK!

“3. Also i don't think his [Doc Ock’s] actions are entirely out of character, i mean he was dead, then revived, beat down for several years into a dying body. given time to think about all the things you would do if given another chance i dont think its out of the question for doc to say "great, second chance at life with a movie starhottie gf". also if you'll threaten the city, then the world, then mind swap with someone i dont think having sex is that big a stretch.”

See my comments above why this IS out of character for Doc Ock. Again this isn’t just him wanting to get laid this is him potentially date raping an innocent woman. You need to SHOW the progression of that change

And rape in comic book fiction is understood to be worse from the reader’s POV than the various Saturday Morning Cartoon style crimes he’s pulled.

The next comment was in response to the public’s indifference towards Spider-Man shooting Massacre in the face! “7. As far as no one caring about massacre, didn't he break out a few times and inflict his namesake? no one is going to care that a killer like that gets shot, humans aren't dignified at all. i can see aunt may saying something but no one else is going to be like "oh great that killer is back in jail, too bad all criminals break out" no they're going to be like "finally someone put down this thug, maybe my life or someone i care about will be spared from him at least in the future" and maybe it was caught on security cameras or phones but maybe they deleted it, i mean spider-man just shot a dude in the face and if he wanted there would be nothing anyone could do to stop him from putting the hurt on someone else”

This is just rubbish.

No one is going to care? For God’s sake the police in real life get reprimanded for using unnecessary force.

The law is the law you CANNOT publically execute an unarmed man. And my point was no one, not even Mary Jane or Jonah, were reacting to this mind-blowingly out of character action on the part of Spider-Man. Maybe they do not care that Massacre was killed but they should be wondering “Jesus that’s not like Spider-Man at all”. This was Spider-Man becoming absolutely EVERYTHING Jameson ever falsely accused him of and no one reacted. And I am sorry but the attitude of ‘human’s aren’t dignified so they’d react like THIS” is extremely broad and generalised. This would be a major talking point and a major issue. This is EXACTLY what the entire ‘Civil War’ debacle was about. Super heroes running unchecked doing as they pleased. It’s been what, a year tops Marvel time since Civil War? If that stuff was deleted YOU NEED TO SHOW IT. The cover story is that EVERYONE in that massive crowd covered for him. That is in no way shape or form how humans actually act. And who would there be to stop like a teenager or a kid or a lone person in the crowd from tweeting “OMG Spider-Man just shot this dude” or uploading a video or picture. They were CHEERING him on they wouldn’t be afraid of him being reprimanded. Once something like that hit the internet it’d spread like wildfire, it wouldn’t be something that if immediately taken down would die away, especially when THE NEWS was stating Spider-Man had ‘neutralised Massacre’ and then Massacre shows up dead, WTF would the public THINK happened?

“Aaron Alexander Luthor wrote: Superior is an excellent title, but I feel you approached it having already made up your mind. Doc Ock NEVER attempted date rape, and I don't know where you get that from”

Boy, I wonder where I got the idea of Otto trying to rape MJ from? What an obviously ‘excellent’ title.

Trying to sleep with Mary Jane whilst tricking her into thinking he is Peter Parker then that is categorically trying to date rape her. He didn’t go through with it because he discovered he could just wank off to her memories (I can’t believe I wrote that) but that is exactly what he was trying to do. Maybe to HIM he didn’t think of it as rape but yeah that’s exactly what it was.

“He ripped off his own shirt, not hers.”

I honestly have no idea what he’s talking about here btw.

“Mary Jane had/has mentioned several times that there is something wrong with him and that she thinks there is something strange going on, he also hasn't spoken to her in weeks in the time frame of the comic.”

Yes MJ has noticed passingly things are wrong but then he feeds her a line and she buys it or otherwise she dismisses it herself. This in monumentally out of character for her given her history and makes her incredibly stupid, which is the ONLY way this title could have worked out. Again, she lives in a world of Skrulls, clones, LMDs and shape shifters one of which is literally an enemy of Peter’s and has tried impersonating him multiple times (targeting her specifically twice). But she either doesn’t clock anything is wrong or doesn’t really react when she does. And he HAD spoken to her within weeks by the time or Superior #2.

“Same goes for Aunt May, he visited her the first few weeks as Parker, and hasnt spoken to her since. He is basically ignoring the people in Peter's life, and they have taken notice.”

See my response about Aunt May not knowing. Again, this woman RAISED him and she could tell when the master of disguise who was being a lot more subtle about impersonating Peter was not her son/nephew.

Also he wasn’t exactly ignoring the HORIZON labs staff was he?

“When he killed Massacre, some of the civilians were shocked and appalled, but when the police investigated all the officers on the scene lied for Spidey, because they think he did the right thing. That is why the only officers still interested are Carlie Cooper who does know, and is ACTIVELY trying to prove it isnt Peter, and Captain Watanabe aka The Wraith”

My point about NO ONE taking photos, tweeting, facebooking or whatever still stands as does the security cameras thing and the fact that Massacre was TRYING TO GET PUBLICITY. Again with Carlie why is she not warning SOMEBODY at this point. It isn’t like they wouldn’t believe her after Massacre. It isn’t like Spider-Man isn’t acting weird. It isn’t like body swapping is a legit THING in the Marvel universe. For God’s sake this happened to Captain America!

Kaine, the CLONE of Peter Parker with identical memories and everything. In the Sibling Rivaly crossover between Scarlet Spider and Superior Team-Up even HE couldn’t tell that Peter. Was an imposter This guy doesn’t just know Peter well, he IS Peter. And Otto was ranting none too subtley about how Kaine has bad blood with HIM. He doesn’t say he’s Doc Ock but he’s conveying unsubtly to Kaine that he is not Peter Parker and he is not TALKING like Peter Parker either. When his CLONE is still operating under the delusion that he is Peter Parker that’s put it beyond doubt this was ridiculously contrived.

“BTW, Carlie and MJ have talked about the suspicious way Pete has been acting, Carlie just hasnt told MJ directly.”

WHY didn’t Carlie tell MJ! And WHY were she and Peter noticing Peter’s different actions yet being totally blasé about them.

FFS in ‘Kraven’s Last Hunt’ MJ and Peter had been married for just 2 weeks and in that time she was able to deduce from his actions that the guy in the Spider-Man suit was NOT Peter. In the Mark of Kaine an identical clone of Peter approaches her and she is ultimately able to tell (twice) that he is not her husband. And she did this whilst pregnant and stressed out from a life or death situation to say nothing of the fact that Aunt May had recently died which would be weighing on her mind. Yet in Superior her mind was clearer and she was still buying this was Peter. This is enormously bad out of character writing for her

“As for the Avengers scans, it wasnt that no one could read them, its that they all came back NORMAL.”

No, the scans DID NOT come back normal at all. Doc Ock looked at the scans and could TELL something was not normal because he saw ghost Peter was in his mind. Yeah there was a tiny inconsistency in the brain waves but why the heck weren’t there people on the Avengers team that day to take note of stuff like that. Cap, Wolverine, Black Widow and Thor are obviously NOT going to be able to properly read this scientific equipment like Iron Man or Hank Pym or the Beast. ANY of those guys would’ve been able to tell but no only the Avengers who categorically would not be able to properly read the brainwaves were there. Why? Why get the unscientific Avengers? Because of plot contrivances is why.

And where were the telepaths? One telepathic scan from SOMEBODY should have told all. And again these tests come back normal....no one thought he could be a clone? Spider-Man has joked to these people about his clones, they know about them. Correct me if I am wrong but at the time of the Avenger’s physical of Peter wasn’t there a character involved with the Avengers who was supposed to be the living universe? SHE couldn’t tell Doc Ock is Spider-Man? The universe literally didn’t know this?

“Even Dr. Strange and Wolverines tests all came back regular.”

If Dr. Strange with all his power wasn’t able to deduce the truth that’s even MORE contrived!

And what the heck were Wolverine’s test? That he smelt the same? Of course he would.

“There was a tiny inconsistency in the brainwaves, it wasnt that no one could read it, its that it was so small that no one would even take notice of it, except for Peter or Ock if they were to look for it.”

See above for why this is bullshit.

“And the Avengers are STILL very suspicious, if you read the current titles.”

At the time a ‘current title’ was Superior Team Up #1.

In it the Avengers told him they were wrong to put him in probation and are still just ‘suspicious’ when he INVADED SHADOWLAND WITH AN ARMY!. Because THAT’S so usual for Spider-Man right?

“You're entitled to your opinion, but you cant just make up facts and call it a discussion. I get the impression that you a)Havent read the whole series; b) Had already made up your mind before reading the issues you have read; and c) Havent read the companion stories (i.e. Avenging Spider-Man, Superior Team-up, Hickman's Avengers titles). If you look at the story as a whole, its actually quite good.”

Said the guy who got all the above information I outlined WRONG.

From a technical point of view it doesn’t make sense, it uses contrivances and out of character writing to keep it going. You want to write Doc Ock as Spider-Man. Okay then don’t surround him with people who should be able to figure this out. Or say there is some kind of device redirecting their attention.

Don’t have Doc Ock not act like Doc Ock because that defeats the point of the exercise. Don’t go for deliberate sensationalism or crass storytelling which was essentially everything revolving around him hooking up with Mary Jane and then the oh so lovely page of the Superior Spider-Wanker.

That issue in particular even resolved itself in a contrived manner. Doc Ock begins uttering gibberish which recalled One Moment in Time about “we cannot be together because it’s an unsolvable equation blah blah blah”.

Basically he is saying “I can never be with you because of the danger I put you in”; which is Slott using the character as a mouthpiece.

In the next issue Otto began courting a student at his college because consistency rocks. Even Ghost Peter is out of character at this moment “WOW Ock you did the one thing I could never do and walked away from Mary Jane”. Peter is right he probably can’t walk away from Mary Jane but...does he WANT to? Where the heck is this coming from? What is worse is that it’s so unnecessary. There was a MUCH better explanation for Ock breaking up with MJ. If Ock were in character he could just come to the conclusion that sleeping with MJ under these circumstances would be wrong and beneath him hence he wouldn’t go through with it. If Ock was out of character as he was in their issue but still vaguely in character he could just come to the conclusions that since accessing Peter’s memories he’s begun to have genuine feelings for MJ and doesn’t just want to fuck her, it would involve him having a relationship with here which at this point in time he is incapable of, he doesn’t know how to handle it. I will wholeheartedly admit I was not jazzed about the concept of Superior from the outset. If nothing else I want to read about Peter Parker not Doc Ock and if I did want to read about Doc Ock AS Doc Ock, not as Spider-Man and not as an rotting body.

An arc in a comic is one thing doing this long term all the problems I foresaw have come up as well as some I didn’t even predict. This could have worked if Doc Ock was separated from Peter’s supporting cast who should be able to tell something is amiss but then that defeats a lot of the point of the story. It was a lose-lose situation.

People can enjoy garbage if you want but don’t call it gold.

Part 1

#The Superior Spider-Man #Superior Spider-Man #Dan Slott #otto octavius #Doc ock #Doctor Octopus #mjwatsonedit #mary jane watson #Aunt May #May Parker #Mary Jane Watson Parker #MJ Watson #Peter Parker #Spider-man #Civil War 2006

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loopy777 · 4 years

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Peter parkers main 3 love interests is generally accepted as Gwen Stacy, Mary Jane Watson and Felicia Hardy/Black cat. Taking your favorite/best written portrayals of each of them as a starting point, what would you say is the biggest strenghts and weakness of each of them as a permanent Romantic partner to peter on a romantic writing level, and a overarching plot writing level?

Hm, this might get complicated. I guess I’ll take it character by character.

Mary Jane

MJ is my preferred romance for Peter, and my favorite portrayals of her are the Spectacular cartoon, the Ultimate comics, the Renew Your Vows AU, and the mainline comics- in that order. (I also like Michelle from the MCU, but I don’t consider her Mary Jane Watson. Michelle just happens for share a nickname with her. For some reason.) The thing that I think helps MJ rise above the rest if that I don’t consider her to have been created as a love interest. Yes, I know, she was literally created to be the Veronica to Gwen’s Betty, but that’s the thing- she wasn’t really intended to be the winner, from what I’ve read. She was meant to be a challenge, a brief diversion, and only accidentally wound up as the winner due to the chaotic nature of comic book production.

As such, MJ has a resilience that most love-interests don’t. Even when she wasn’t dating Peter, the character was able to stick around and continue to develop. She was able to leave the narrative for a while, possibly with no intentions from the writers for her to return, and yet she did and extra layers were added to her character as a result. Even now, her marriage to Peter was sold to the devil as part of a writer agenda to make Peter swingin’ and single again, and yet she’s stuck around and the character has continued to find places in the story. What hasn’t killed MJ has made her stronger, and if she was always intended to be the Final Girl, then I don’t think she would have gotten the opportunities. Sure, it’s a messy history of character development and retcons if you look at it in detail, but that’s true for any comic book character that’s passed through multiple hands and lasted more than a decade.

Within the story itself, I like when MJ is spunky and able to roll with Peter’s life as Spider-Man. I like when her career, whether it’s acting or something else, is only a modest success if a success at all, to fit with the whole Everyman theme of the Spider-Man stories. I’m fine with her feeling stress or angst because of Peter’s heroing -- after all, Peter gets so angsty about he quits every five years or so -- but I do want her to generally buy in to the whole thing; if she’s in love with Peter, she’s in love with the dedication that makes him use his powers for others. I also like when she’s portrayed as an old hand at dealing with the superhero life and gets to meet the other heroes, despite not having powers. It can be contrived when she gets involved with Peter’s adventures, but I do think it can be a great angle, as she can provide even more of an Everyman perspective to the proceedings.

(I haven’t played the PS4 game, and I recognize that making MJ a reporter is an easy way to get her involved, but as I’ve said before, I always feel like making the Love Interest a journalist is rip-off of Lois Lane. I’d like to see a bit more creativity in such things. Personally, I someday want to pitch a ‘Mary Jane: Agent of SHIELD’ book to Marvel where she works in SHIELD’s public relations office in New York.)

In terms of personality, I think the Spectacular cartoon nailed exactly what I want. The show didn’t get to the really juicy stuff of a romance with Peter or her knowing his secret identity, but her every scene felt perfect to me and she really did add a nice dynamic to the cast. I think the Ultimate comics captured a good depiction of the character dealing with her background as an abused child from a broken household, but I think it missed the mark in the whole ‘Brainy Janey’ thing where she was supposed to be a nerd like Peter. It felt like little was done with that, and Peter still eventually emerged as smarter than all the other students anyway, so I’m not sure what the goal was. I prefer the idea of MJ putting on a facade of a Cool Extrovert to cover her angst.

Gwen

Gwen is odd to me in that I mostly know her as Dead Love-Interest Walking. The only times I feel like I’ve experienced her as a real character are the Spectacular cartoon and the Ultimate comics, and my understanding is that neither captures the character as portrayed in the comics. Comics Gwen was the acerbic rich girl who evolved in a sweet rich girl. Ultimate Gwen was a punk rock rebel with a sense of justice. Spectacular Gwen was a sweet nerd who pined after Peter. (I don’t remember much about Amazing Gwen, other than the moment of her death and her glaring dad.) All of those are a bit different, but I feel like the only thing they all have in common is that they’re a girl who Peter falls for before he eventually marries MJ.

To that end, though, I think that’s enough to define Gwen as something of a fantasy. She should be The Ideal Love-Interest, which is not to say that she should be some kind of flawless angel, but she should be what most people’s fantasy should be of a great girlfriend for Peter. She should be a smartie like him, and either be sweet enough for them to be natural buddies or else spiky enough for them to be rivals with romantic tension. Or, like Ultimate Gwen, she should be interesting and living an exotic lifestyle but Good in a way that makes her uncomplicated for Peter to love.

And, in the end, the romance with her should always fail. Perhaps due to her death, or perhaps due to other factors if we don’t want her to be Dead Love-Interest Walking. Either way, I think she should be the precursor to Peter’s true love interest, with whom he has a messier romance that eventually becomes a perfectly-fulfilling endgame. Gwen should be the person we all think we’re going to marry when we first start dating, but later comes someone else and a more adult connection where we end up with someone we never would have imagined when we were young and naive.

Felicia

I hate to say it, but Felicia should be Catwoman. She’s the naughty, slightly dangerous lady who’s super sexy and is always offering an exciting time. She’s the love interest for the superhero side of Peter’s life, a wild fantasy of leaving all the concerns about Peter behind and just being a fun adventurer all the time with a hot cat-chick by his side. But, because such fantasies are always false, there needs to be a problem with Felicia that ultimately makes her a poor match for Peter. Usually, it’s her morals, where she’s fine with theft or violent revenge or other compromises that Peter himself fights against.

Ironically, the version of Felicia I’m most familiar with is nothing like this. That’s the 90′s cartoon, of course, where she’s mostly a version of Gwen Stacy. There’s a bit of it when she becomes the Black Cat, but her grand romance was with Morbius, and my memory is fuzzy enough that I’m honestly not sure what the short-lived romance with Spider-Man was really like. Honestly, I’d look at the animated Felicia as more what to do if anyone wanted to give Gwen superpowers. XD

But as far as my ideal depiction, I like a Black Cat who’s a thief, but not a full baddie. She should walk moral line and sometimes cross over, but not in a big way. (I’m not really a fan of Dan Slott making her a full crime lord who wants revenge on Spidey, but I admit I didn’t read the storyline. I hear it worked pretty well in the Silk comics but didn’t otherwise make a whole lotta sense.) She should be flirty and sassy and clever. I like when she comes on so strongly and so quickly that she flusters Peter. And I also like when she has superpowers, because that more firmly puts her on that side of things, as compared to someone Peter could bring into his civilian life. Peter’s civilian life should always be in conflict with his life as Spider-Man, and his love-interest should always play into that dynamic.

#thekingofwinterblog

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hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger · 5 years

Text

Spider-Man: Life Story #4 Thoughts Part 3: Pathetic Parker

Aaaaaaand finally....let us discuss you know Peter Parker.

Or the stand in for him in this mess of a mini-series.

Positives should be gotten out of the way first. I like the new Spider-Suit’s look. I’ve liked all the suits’ looks so far.

Okay cool we’re done now with positives.

Soooooooooooooooooooooooooo...Peter is dating Jessica Drew huh.

Hahahahahahaha....fuck off.

Jessica Drew technically speaking existed in the 1960s but only because Bendis picked a random girl from a Ditko issue and decided he would make her his new original character (who was a rewritten Jessica Drew stand in...) Jessica Jones...which happened in the 2000s.

Remember how I said the Stark thing was remixing stuff from the 2000s and how this probably references the Ultimate Clone Saga?

Well between that stuff, the inclusion of Parker Industries, a obvious reference to Slott’s ‘No One Dies’ buzz word, and now Jessica Jones Zdarsky has entirely collapsed the ONE consistent thing about his writing in this series.

You can read my past posts on this series for more detail, but in a nutshell, this series is utterly convoluted in it’s premise and confused in what it wants to be.

However the ONE utterly consistent thing about it was the fact that it remixes elements from Spidey stories that happened in the decade each issue was covering.

Until now.

Now in fairness Parker Industries was a 2010s thing that debuted in the 1980s. I let that one slide a bit because I guess the idea was if Peter age 30 had money and time he could have a company by age 37 which would be in the 80s. Okay I guess.

But with all that other stuff...this issue isn’t remixing 90s stuff it’s remixing 90s and post-90s stuff so what the fuck is the conceit of the story again?

It’s anything Zdarsky wants whilst mostly remixing stuff from every decade per issue oh and Spider-Man ages in real time I guess and mentions various wars.

I (and others) have talked about how this series is fanficion. A time honoured tradition of fanfiction is the wacky indulgent ships that occur.

In professional works though these are best avoided, see MockingSpider.

That’s what Jessica Jones and Spider-Man being a couple is. Yeah she had a crush on him in high school.

Now tell me anything else that’d serve as a basis for their relationship instead of her being with Luke?

How the fuck did this even happen? At least with Peter and MJ you have canon as a roadmap. In this series...nothing. Peter and Jessica just hooked up somehow in the last 11 years!

What’s so insultingly asinine about this ship is that it emphasis another person who is conspicuous via her absence.

So...where the fuck is Felicia!

I know that the important life events of Spider-Man can be debated up to a point.

That point doesn’t cover though whether Black Cat is relevant of a mention or not across his ‘life story’.

No shit of course she is!

But she wasn’t mentioned in the 1970s when she debuted. She wasn’t mentioned in the 1980s when she became a regular. She wasn’t mentioned in the 1990s.

Surely in a world where Spider-Man’s marriage to MJ falls apart and he’s dating a private eye that should be fucking Black Cat not a character who wasn’t even invented until 10 years later! I mean c’mon Black Cat BECAME a private eye in the 1990s!

And wouldn’t that have been way more dramatic too?

In the 1980s instead of Peter being allegedly addicted to a costume or neglecting his family to clean up radiation or asking his wife to kill him if he turned into a brain munching alien the root of their break up involved his affection for Felicia?

I mean c’mon the symbiote was framed as a response to a mid-life crisis, a sexy platinum blonde who actually wants to hook up with Spidey not Peter isn’t prime real estate for a story about a superhero’s mid life crisis? Even the Incredibles did that!

And wouldn’t that have been more worthy of drama in this issue than literally 2 panels of Jessica Jones establishing they’re shagging but also he’s neglectful and she dumped him. I mean at that point you might as well have just had her be a private eye he hired and dropped the romance completely it served no purpose at all.

One aspect of the story that I will praise Zdarsky for even if I think he got it right by accident is that without his family Peter couldn’t keep on going as Spider-Man.

MJ, May, etc, they keep him together, he needs people, he’d fall apart without them.

Running out of gas as he did in this story could be seen as a reflection of that depending on future issues. Or it could just be he’s old and tired and don’t you know all superheroes would feel that way at age 48.

Too bad that seems rather at odds with issue #3 where he was a neglectful jerk.

Another problem inherited from issue #3 was the issue of Peter’s diminished prowess in his old age.

Remember how he wanted the symbiote to stay ‘relevant’ because he was slowing down.

Okay so it’s been 11 years later, he’s held onto Parker Industries and...he’s just accepted he’s gotten slower and weaker.

Remember how issue #3 implied he had a nano-weld suit.

Okay so he’s had 11 years to improve on that tech and...he hasn’t.

In fact his current outfit looks less high tech even.

Now brace yourselves because I’m about to do something nuts and call upon Dan Slott continuity as reference material.

In Slott’s run Peter with HORIZON labs and Parker Industries tech was able to whip up a variety of costumes for himself. These included nanotech.

In fact his MAIN suit in ASM volume 4 was nanotech armour that came complete with all sorts of gadgets.

Are you telling me that a Peter Parker with even greater years of scientific knowledge and experience, with even more time and resources, across 11+ years NEVER made technology like that?

He NEVER invented tech that could offset his diminished powers?

Seriously?

IRON MAN had strength enhancing armour in the 1960s and that technology got illegally distributed to countless people, hence we got Armor Wars. Even that aside there is countless inferior technology that could increase strength, speed, agility, etc, let alone protect from knock out gas.

But Peter in LF is such a jackass he...never employed this. He never considered this. He just let himself grow weaker and more vulnerable?

Either he’s stupid or he’s a sellout on Ben and May’s morals of responsibility because he had a death wish hence he never upgraded.

I mean Jesus Christ the Hobgoblin found a way to make the Goblin serum SAFE. Peter couldn’t investigate that avenue as a way to spike his power levels? Friggin Norman Osborn was in his 40s when he got the formula and it made him almost on par with Spider-Man.

It gets even stupider when you consider Peter hands over his mantle to Ben Reilly.

Ben is physically the same goddam age as Peter. In fact considering he clearly doesn’t crime fight as much as Peter does or else ‘Red Mask’ would be more famous, Peter if anything would be in better shape. So Peter is giving the mantle of Spidey to a less experienced, weaker 48 year old man who’s ALSO got diminished strength and speed.

But it gets worse.

He doesn’t just hand the mantle of Spidey to Ben. He hands Parker Industries over to him. You’d think this is a case of him passing it on to his relative Ben Reilly right?

Nope.

He wants Ben to...literally become him.

Peter wants Ben to literally pose as him forevermore and run his company.

This is the most gamebreakingly stupid thing in the entire issue.

Ben having Peter’s notes doesn’t mean he’ll be able to pose as Peter.

He doesn’t know the in jokes Peter has with people. He has 0 experience of running a big company.

He has less scientific knowledge and experience.

He will be way worse in business negotiations because he hasn’t got the measure of people.

And he’ll be seriously stressed out because unlike Peter who just knows this stuff Ben will have to study for a lifelong performance as Peter Parker every moment of every day.

Not to mention is no one going to notice the sudden disappearance of Ben Reilly?

Didn’t he have friends or colleagues of his own like Lori from the start of the issue?

Peter starts the comic determined to not allow Parker Industries to fall into the hands of the war profiteer Tony Stark but by unloading his entire company onto Ben Reilly he’s placed it in a hugely vulnerable position that makes it MORE likely that it will be absorbed into Stark International.

Oh and of course there the teeny tiny problem of PETER AND BEN NOT LOOKING ALIKE!

Now realistically Peter and Ben Reilly, having lived such different lives, would look similar yet different, like identical twins. Identical twins might look the same at age 1 but they really wouldn’t at age 30 if one of them was a desk jockey and the other was a soldier.

But you know artistic licence and suspension of disbelief can bypass that.

What cannot be bypassed is when Mark Bagley is drawing both characters on the same page in the same panel and you can tell that they clearly look different to one another. Their faces, hair colour and hair styles are not the same.

Did Peter’s notes include the correct shade to dye his hair too?

But the biggest aspect of this which is betrayal pornoigraphy for Peter’s character is between handing over the reigns of Spidey and P.I. to Ben...how...the...Hell...is...that...at.all...responsible?

He claims that he can’t give up his responsibility but he can ‘shift it to where it matters’.

What a crock of shit. That’s some lame ass lawyer talk for giving up and letting someone else do your job for you.

In the 90s Clone Saga Peter’s retirement was justified. He had impending parenthood as a responsibility and he and his wife had nearly broken in recent months. In Spider-Girl he got his leg blown off and had a 2 year old child to care for.

In this? His ex-wife and children are doing just fine without him as far as we know but the city still needs Spidey and P.I. still needs Peter Parker.

So no, retirement under these circumstances is irresponsible and utterly unjustified.

Not to mention wouldn’t BOTH Peter and Ben being heroes be more responsible? Or at least have Ben take over hero work and Peter runs P.I., possibly training Ben up.

There is also this bullshit that because Peter is so loud and public Ben could never live up to his potential.

I’m sorry but what is it with the Spider-Man fandom’s obsession with the idea that success = owning your own business.

As if that is the one and only way Peter or Ben could fulfil their scientific potential. Why not work for Reed?

Why not work with a Think Tank?

Why not start up a company in a different country and establish that Ben is indeed Peter’s relative. He already had his last name in issue #2!

Hell the argument that if they both started up companies and 2 Spider Heroes showed up it’d raise questions doesn’t consider the ideas that:

a) Ben could WORK for Parker Industries, thereby allowing Peter to be in the lab as he wants or Ben handle the lab work

b) They could SHARE the Spider-Man identity, which if anything would help maintain their secrecy

Finally this issue (and the last one) on the recap page and at the end of the story pushes some toxic, dated, bullshit narratives regarding MJ:

a) That it was grief alone that hooked up Peter and MJ

b) MJ is Peter’s Plan B

c) Peter cannot be married/have kids and be Spidey

d) MJ wouldn’t stay with him if he’s Spider-Man, hence he only regains his family by retiring from Spidey

I’ve seen an assessment of this story that argues that issue #3 as the halfway point was the low point from which the character will gradually fight back.

In a sense issue #4 goes along with this idea. Peter is at his lowest in issue #3 and his happier by the end of issue #4.

But the narrative structure of this series, wherein each issue is a snap shot of his life in each decade leads me to think that we’re unlikely to have 2 more issues of ending on gradually happier and happier notes.

Rather I think this issue is giving a pretence of happiness before it comes crashing down next issue and then in issue #6 we will get our happy ending or a bittersweet exit.

Regardless writing these long ass posts has actually soured me even more on the issue.

It’s another shit show I’m afraid.

P.S. The solicit read:

“THE REAL-TIME LIFE STORY OF SPIDER-MAN CONTINUES! Spider-Man’s life enters the 1990s! The COLD WAR is no longer cold as PETER PARKER returns to a world gone MAD! But will he let that madness infect HIM and his family?”

Where the fuck was any of that in this story?

Peter didn’t have a family, Peter didn’t return from anything, and the only madness to be found was in Ben and Otto.

#Spider-Man: Life Story #Chip Zdarsky #Mark Bagley #Spider-Man #Peter Parker #mjwatsonedit #Mary Jane Watson #Mary Jane Watson Parker #mj watson #Ben Reilly #Clone Saga #Jessica Jones #Black Cat #Felicia Hardy

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mrsspidermanmaryjanewatsonparker · 6 years

Link

...let’s do this...

“Dan Slott’s decade-long tenure on writing Spider-Man recently came to an end, swapping the prolific writer out with former Captain America/Secret Empire scribe Nick Spencer. The first issue of his and artist Ryan Ottley’s much hyped run, Amazing Spider-Man #1, took Peter Parker back to the basics. The hero has lost Parker Industries, is under investigation for academic fraud, was fired from the Daily Bugle, and other New York heroes hate him because they think he’s buddy-buddy with Kingpin of Crime turned New York mayor, Wilson Fisk.”

First of all Peter lost Parker Industries during Slott’s run so i dunno why this ‘article’ is framing things as though that is a development from Spencer’s run.

Second of all heroes hate Spidey because Kingpin made it look as though they were friends, its not as though Spider-Man really was friend with Fisk as this article frames it.

“The issue ends with the two kissing and Peter declaring that this is “their story,” emphatically saying what the suspicions have been for some time: the new run of Amazing Spider-Man will begin to undue the events of the controversial “One More” and “Brand New Day” storylines that Slott became infamous for, which saw Mephisto destroy Peter and MJ’s marriage in exchange for bringing Aunt May back to life.”

*pinches bridge of nose* ohmygodohmygodohmygod.

Okay so...Dan Slott WASN’T RESPONSIBLE FOR OMD OR BND!

M**********r Wikipedia could have told you that! HOW?! HOW do you not know that Joe Quesada wrote OMD!

HOW do you not know this piece of comic book osmosis that everyone knows! My God!

Furthermore aunt May didn’t effing die in OMD. That was literally the point. They mad ethe deal to SAVE her from death. Not undo it!

I know people who’ve not even read the story and THEY know that!

Also Dan Slott became infamous but it had nada to do with OMD but other stuff.

Also also the story hasn’t shown or promised to undo anything yet but clickbait gotta clickbait.

Also, also, also UNDO ISN’T SPELT THAT WAY!

Holy fuck how do you write for the front page of the biggest comic book news site, get paid for it and not spell check shit?!

“And like those now infamous wedding issues for Batman and X-Men, the move to bring Peter and MJ back together doesn’t really work. There are couples who’ve gotten back together after a time apart, but the issue itself piles so much misfortune on Peter’s doorstep it feels like Peter should be looking into a therapist or anxiety medicine instead of making out with his ex.”

-Is what someone who’s never read Spider-Man would say.

Like Peter went though a lot of bad stuff in ASM volume 5 #1 but:

a) Asshole please, this is nowhere near the worst most stressful or therepy worthy shit Peter has lived through. Supporting his sickly recently widowed mother figure financially whilst going to school, getting bullied, having a crappy boss, dealing with an unreasonable girlfriend and ALSO fighting crime in a city that feared and hated him for no reason. THAT is anxiety and that is also known as the start of Spider-Man’s entire story you fucking hacks!

b) So when you’ve had an awful day and everything has fallen apart getting TLC from someone you deeply love and who deeply loves you...doesn’t make sense. Okay sure.

c) Justin Carter where the fuck did you learn how to read subtext? Shit, nevermind the subtext, where did you learn to read the text bro! The story spells it out for you. Peter’s life is bad, he keeps making the same mistakes again, he wants things to change to be better. So he steps up to the plate and puts the effort in to MAKE it better, specifically by chasing the thing he wants most, the thing he’s yearned for and literally dreamed about (as CLEARLY SHOWN on the first effing pages!). He reunited with the love of his life. For the fuck is that something that DOESN’T work!

d) Exempting the X-Men wedding the Batman wedding issue in my observation totally worked from a characterization pov even if it wasn’t the result fans wanted to deserved.

“Peter and MJ Are A coulee Again! And It's The Wrong Move...”

It isn’t the wrong move and I see no reason why anyone should take this article’s claims that is is seriously when it can’t even spell the word couple!

“Like all relationships, the ones between superheroes and their non-powered partners are full of drama. In the decade since their split, Peter and MJ had many relationships that provided what neither could offer the other at the time. MJ got to date men who were reliable and had the stability that Peter couldn’t entirely provide, and Peter was with those who were more accustomed to or in the line of superheroic work as he.”

Go fuck yourself CBR seriously.

Let’s start with Peter. What in the flying fuck is this shallow, Celebrity gossip rag, juvenile, simplistic, unlearned horseshit of a mentality towards superhero relationships over the last several years that has the absolute biggest hard on ever for the idea that heroes have to date heroes.

Especially Spider-Man.

Whenever the mere idea of Spider-Man dating another hero crops up that is literally the ONLY thing people talk about.

They have so much in common because they are both heroes.

Well shit...why doesn’t he date literally any of the women in the multiple Avengers teams he was a member of. No Carol Danvers doesn’t count, it was one date.

I’ll tell you why.

Because if any of these jackasses knew what the fuck they were talking about with Spider-Man’s character, both in terms of who he is as a person and the entire concept behind him, they’d know that civilian women are both his preference and more in line with the idea of him as a hero who could be you.

YOU in the real world do not date goddam superheroes. You date normal people. Therefore Spider-Man also dates normal people.

‘But what about Black Cat’, I hear you cry out.

Yeah Felicia let’s talk about her for a second shall we.

Felicia, the cat burglar costumed criminal. The one who tried to trick her boyfriend into a life of crime literally the issue after they hooked up.

Felicia, the woman who recoiled upon seeing Spider-Man’s real face.

Felicia the woman who lied and went behind Spider-Man’s back to get super powers that literally caused him cosmic bad luck even after they broke up.

Felicia, the woman who jeapodized Peter’s secret identity multiple times.

Felicia, the woman who literally got in bed with a mercenary (in every sense of the word) in order to frame Spider-Man for murder by seducing him.

Felicia the one and only girlfriend Peter had before he got married who was a fellow costumed person...and she was literally named after something that brings you bad luck.

It’s ALMOST like it was doomed to fail from the start.

It’s ALMOST like it was intended that way.

It’s ALMOST like it was a great big subtextual commentary about how Spider-Man is better off with normal non-costumed women.

Oh...but if only there was some kind of page or panel clearly spelling out the idea that Felicia the costumed person was wrong for Spider-Man but someone else, someone normal, someone rooted in the real world with all it’s relatable problems and activities, was right for him...

...if only...

And if only the comic book run most guilty of shipping Spider-Man with a costumed person post-OMD which was initiated by a hack writer had itself a page or panel spelling out that Spider-Man dating costumed people because they ‘get’ his lifestyle more doesn’t mean jack shit, showcasing even they recognize it to be a stupid shortsighted attitude to Spider shipping.

IF.ONLY!

Let’s move onto Mary Jane.

MJ dated exactly 2 men during the decade after OMD. Bobbi Carr and Pedro the fireman who was literally a poc fireman version of Peter.

Reliable and stable huh?

Tell me how exactly is the life of a rising A-list movie star ‘reliable’ or ‘stable’...even aside from the fact that he was a drug addict?

Tell me how exactly is the life of a firefighter whom would be rushing off whilst on duty and risking his life A LOT be stable for poor Mary Jane’s anxieties over his safety?

What? Reliable is steady job+regular hours?

That’s what Peter couldn’t provide so this reconciliation is bad?

...Didn’t Mary jane literally WORK for goddam Tony Stark, the globe/galaxy trotting superhero Avenger leader who went into a coma then disappeared?????????

And she took that job by effing choice? AFTER breaking up with Pedro the fireman?

How much ‘reliable stability’ does she really want or need?

Because assholes MJ dated and was married to Spider-Man for fucking years. And she liked it. Are we just IGNORING that?

Like assholes that wasn’t even the thing that they broke up over. MJ didn’t break up with Spider-Man in OMIT because he was unreliable and didn’t provide stability. She accepted that. She accepted that shit even in the nuclear levels OOC flashback sequences to their aborted wedding.

She broke up with him because it endangered her family. THAT was the rationale. THEN she got back with him in Superior. THEN she broke up with him at the end because she wanted normalcy but then she literally said pages later that she’ll never get it because she lived in NYC and because guys like the Goblin wouldn’t care if she was dating Peter or not. THEN she threw away normalcy by working for Iron Man FFS. THEN in Red Goblin she claimed she couldn’t be with him because I don’t even know, some bullshit about feeling guilty that she was keeping him away from being a hero.

So the stable reliability argument holds no goddam water to her pre or post OMD characterizations.

Basically the above paragraph boils down to:

“Peter and MJ getting back together is bad because they dated people who could offer them the stuff that neither could offer the other, even though there is nothing indicating either wanted that stuff in the first place.”

“Not all of these relationships were perfect, but they were signs of real change, something that isn’t typically allowed in big two superhero comics, or at least, not in any lasting, meaningful way.”

No they weren’t. They were signs of Marvel putting the characters on rotation because they axed the ACTUAL meaningful change that was the pair getting married and committing to a longterm permanent relationship that lasted 20 years.

Hence why literally none of these relationships had ANY lasting impact upon either character.

MJ was unchanged by Bobbi Carr dating her beyond it prompting her to return to NYC, i.e. return to her old status quo.

Peter was unchanged by Carlie Cooper, Liaeean Teaaen, Mockingbird and Silk. I mean my God this article bangs on about how Mockingbird was so important because she provided something Peter otherwise couldn’t get from MJ but the seires literally handwaves away their relationship. They don’t even get a major break up scene or issue. It’s just. “We broke up, brief flashback. That was it.”

“The last couple of times that Peter and MJ broke off their romantic relationship — after that one time Doc Ock jacked Peter’s body for over a year — it was because she didn’t want his, frankly, ridiculous life as a superhero to define hers.”

The article says the last couple of times they broke it off then lists one example because what is counting.

And as I said that was NOT the reason they broke up after superior. Hell they didn’t even really break up that time. Otto broke up with MJ in Superior ‘2, then she called him up to break up with him many issues later then she went to Peter when he got his body back to give a break up speech to someone she wasn’t even dating!

“More, she didn’t want to keep risking the danger the comes from being close to a superhero.”

And then she went to work for an even more famous superhero who didn’t even have a secret identity and who have much more powerful enemies many of whom would’ve targeted him even if they didn’t know he was Iron Man..before re-entering his friendship group in from Power Play onwards thus rendering her entire rationale for breaking away moot....not that it made any sense to begin with.

“If anything, his life has become even more crazy since their split, since his teacher is the Lizard and he’s a roommate with Boomerang.”

The Lizard was his teacher in the silver and bronze age too you goddam hacks and having a villain for a roommate is NOT crazier than your body being stolen by a villain for God’s sake.

“Both of those situations are going to end pretty badly, and that’s coming just before the “Spidergeddon” event that’ll bring together the Spider-heroes of the multiverse yet again in a fight for survival against evil vampires.”

I didn’t know CBR could see the future and also apparently knows that despite all current evidence to the contrary that Spencer would be doing a tie-into Spider-Geddon.

“Fans of Peter and Mary Jane as a couple aren’t exactly hard up for a comic about their exploits. The Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows series may be set in a new universe, but it’s been quietly operating as a book for the two to be happy together. Not only do they have a daughter in that universe by way of Annie Parker, the three of them are a crimefighting family where Annie is Spiderling, and MJ gained powers of her own and became Spinneret. ”

STFU CBR.

a) EVERYONE knew RYV had a limited shelf life

b) RYV is about Peter and MJ are a superhero family, which is a cool concept but also not what a lot, probably even most Spider-Marriage fans want to see. They want to see Spider-Man with a non-powered MJ in the main 616 universe because that is the original real versions of the characters and that dynamic is innate to the inherent concept of Spider-Man as a relatively realistic guy

c) RYV places a lot of focus upon Annie, probably more than on Peter or MJ, especially after the time skip

d) NOBODY who loved RYV was going to simply accept it as a suitable substitute for 616 Spider-Man and MJ not being together. Because as much as we love RYV Peter and MJ those are not THE characters. The specifics of each version of each character carry different emotional investments for the readers. And Marvel knows this hence why they didn’t permanently replace the 616 Spider-Man with Miles Morales, just the other Peter Parker Spider-Man who sold less and had been around for a mere 10 years. It is also the reason why Spider Marriage fans didn’t just say “Oh well at least I still have Peter and MJ in USM and Spider-Girl’ after OMD

“Even if Renew ends and is considered no longer needed, it’s provided the most logical endgame with the best outcome one could think of. Doing that all over again in the 616 universe comes across as redundant and the only thing it really does is reduce the amount of Spider books on the market.”

This one is a real headscratcher.

RYV is not the logical endgame because MJ with powers is not the logical conclusion. Merely ONE conclusion.

FFS RYV isn’t even the same as Spider-Girl despite the premises being similar.

You can take the same broad ideas and do them suitably differently.

Like I dunno exploring the inner dynamics and ups and downs of a couple who do not have a kid?

Focussing mostly upon that as opposed to the kid and all three of them working out how to fight crime together.

Not to mention from this point to even get to RYV (even pre-time skip RYV) would take effing years. Peter and MJ just got back together but it’s a write off because we’ve already seen Peter and MJ with an 8 year old kid so fuck following the trajectory that might get us there?

What kind of nonsense is that?

CBR nonsense, that’s what.

Just like the ‘it will reduce the amount of books on the market’.

Well fuck dude we used to have FOUR Spider-Man books every goddam month about literally the same version of Spider-Man. then 10 years later we had 1 book about Marvel Adventures Spidey, 1 about a high school Spidey, 1 about Mary Jane, then 3 about an adult married Spider-Man.

I THINK we can be okay with a Spider-Man who’s dating or married to a normal woman and another one where he is married to a super powered version of that woman and they are raising their teenage super powered daughter FFS.

And even if we do unfortunately lose Renew Your Vows the argument of ‘we’d be losing a Spider book’ doesn’t even hold up THAT much because...WE ALREADY HAVE TOO MANY SPIDER BOOKS!

Amazing Spider-Man TWICE a month.

Spectacular Spider-Man

Miles Morales

Spider-Gwen

Venom

Scarlet Spider

And soon to come

Spider-Geddon

Spider Force

Spider-Girls

Yet more bullshit I’m sure.

Like I don’t want to lose RYV but dear God we’ve already got TOO MANY Spider books as is.

“And it may have been better for them both to just stay friends, or at least not jump into getting together again so amazingly fast.”

10 years isn’t amazingly fast bro.

So to sum up this article is hot trash that utterly failed to justify it’s own stupid title.

Or maybe it just chronically misspelled it’s own title. Who effing knows. But burn it with fire either way.

#amazing spider-man #feature #Spider-Man #cbr #Comic Book Resources #mjwatsonedit #mary jane watson #Mary Jane Watson Parker #one more day #dan slott #nick spencer #Black Cat #Mockingbird #Bobbi Morse #Felicia Hardy #Superior Spider-Man #spider-man renew your vows #Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows

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mrsspidermanmaryjanewatsonparker · 6 years

Video

youtube

Let’s debunk this shit.

First off...why should we, on the topic of Spider-Man, actually place stock by the guy who has in the past argued Sins Past is as, if not more, bad than One More Day when anyone with an ounce of knowledge of how writing craft works would realize this is abjectly false. As a story the flaws in Sins Past amount to it inserting something into the past that doesn’t fit at all. One More Day by contrast not only does this but needs to violently ignore 45 yrs of established characterization to even function and even then it fails since it needs to contradict its own narrative.

Oh and you know MovieBob is the guy who said ‘That Spec cartoon wasn’t as good as people make it out to be. People like it more for what it could be than what it was.’...WTF was he even watching.

But let’s dive into some more specifics of Bob’s argument.

“OMD ‘needed’ to happen.”

This is objectively untrue.

Let’s give the benefit of the doubt and say what Bob meant wasn’t so much that Spider-Man needed to make a deal with the Devil but rather it was necessary to get rid of Spider-Man’s marriage.

I can’t bring myself to do a 3000 word essay on why the latter alone is idiotic, sexist, myopic and utterly false but here is a cliffnotes version.

There are 2 fundamental problems with Bob’s line of thinking.

The 1st is that to end the marriage you needed to outright alter Spider-Man’s history via a soft DC style continuity reboot thus creating in a literal sense an alternate universe version of Spider-Man who’d just never been married in the first place.

Put simply Spider-Man’s marital status could’ve been ended in universe through numerous methods that avoided that. He could’ve gotten divorced. The US government as some kind of petty revenge upon Spider-Man turning on the Registration Act could’ve legally annulled his marriage along with certain other legal aspects of his life. There could’ve been a reveal that due to a legal loophole nobody realized at the time technically speaking Peter and MJ had never been married in the first place despite believing they were.

None of this would’ve fixed the most egregious contrivance of OMD and OMIT, that by simply never having been married magically this = Peter and MJ would break up. You still need to justify THAT separately which OMD didn’t even attempt to do. OMD in isolation erases their marriage but it doesn’t explain or justify why doing this would mean they are now no longer in a relationship. OMIT tried and miserably failed to do that because once again it required the abject ignoring of decades of established (and logical) characterization.

But what should we expect from the guy who in another video once said Superman would be a jerk if he married Lois Lane because of the stress and dangers it’d expose her to, specifically comparing it to real life people who’s jobs offer comparable examples. ‘Superman would never put Lois Lane through that’ said Bob (though I am paraphrasing I admit.

Why?

If REAL people do that then why WOULDN’T Superman OR Spider-Man do so?

It’s a line of thought which amounts to Bob saying those people shouldn’t have marital relationships. And that is gross.

The 2nd problem with Bob’s ‘it needed to happen’ assertion is the notion that CREATIVELY it was necessary for the health of Spider-Man.

Let’s ignore how creatively (and financially) Superman has been on the up and up since 2016 when he got his marriage BACK.

Instead let’s consider for a moment...why?

Why CREATIVLY does Spider-Man need to not be married to work? Why does he need to be single for his long term creative/financial health?

There is no answer because the truth is he isn’t. Spider-Man’s love life is relevant only in so far as the series follows his life and not being asexual romance is a part of that. At which point if you are arguing for his long term creative health he needs to be able to swap out the women he’s going to be romantically/sexually involved with why then does that not also apply to literally every other character connected to every other part of his life?

It doesn’t.

It’s a bullshit argument born of an ignorant lack of questioning. It’s born of “Well it’s got to be this way because it’s always been this way and it’s worked that way.” Ignoring how it doesn’t and how you know...Marvel comics itself exists off the back of saying “Maybe it doesn’t have to just be this way. I don’t like that way in fact, I like the idea of trying it this other way.”

Spider-Man being single keeps Spider-Man stunted and in a state of doomed to failure. It literally renders his love life redundant because every reader (and this applied before 1987 when he got married, but applies a thousand times more now) knows his romances will never amount to anything and that they are glorified Bond girls. And I’ll be honest the substance (such as there is) in the Bond movies NEVER lies with the Bond girls with the sole exceptions of those few movies where they tease you with the idea that he has deeper feelings for them.

Then you have the fact that marriage as a part of most people’s lives and a responsibility is outright tailor made for the character who’s core concept is entwined around the interconnected idea of responsibility and being a (relatively) normal person. It’s not different to him graduating from High school or moving out of Aunt May’s house or getting a job.

But let’s look at the franchise in the wake of OMD creatively and financially has it been doing better than before?

LOL NOPE!

In 2016 we had the Power Play arc. This arc was THE Spider-Man event of the year. It tied into the previous Spider event of 2015, Renew Your Vows by introducing the incredibly powerful villain Regent who’s powers were that he had the powers of EVERY other hero virtually and in RYV took over all of NYC following killing the X-Men and Avengers on his own. It guest starred fan favourite Miles Morales, the first substantial appearance of the character in Amazing Spider-Man since his migration into the 616 universe. It also guest starred lead character of the MCU and (then) Marvel comics poster boy Iron Man fresh from his hyped up run under Bendis, the biggest name in comics of the previous 20 years. It also teased the appearance of the newest team of Avengers, a brand that has been huge since 2012 for obvious reasons. Oh and it featured the return of another fan favourite Mary Jane who was once more being used to tease the possibility of her and Spider-Man’s romantic reunion which had been a surefire way of raising hype for a story since 2008 onwards. Oh and it was clearly a tie-in to the international blockbuster and critically acclaimed movie, Captain America: Civil War.

And of course you had much promotion from the Marvel hype machine, Dan Slott interviews and the usual variant cover artificial sales inflation gimmick that had become common to Marvel.

Safe to say that this story was a big, big deal and sure to sell well right?

Well....it actually sold less than a barely promoted, run-of-the-mill ASM arc from 2005 by J. Michael Straczynski that featured in the first issue Tony Stark sitting on a chair sans armour and beyond that no guest stars....oh and there were no variant covers....and btw Spider-Man was married in it

. ...Oh....

But hey what about some OTHER Spider-Man stories since OMD. Haven’t THEY been creatively enriching?

I mean we had classics like:

The Lizard ruins the interesting humanizing aspects of his character when he becomes a cannibalistic monster who eats his own son and maybe rapes someone

Black Cat’s characterization gets flushed down the toilet so she can be an indulgent juvenile sexual fantasy for Joe Kelly who believes Spider-Man is fundamentally a man child Black Cat’s characterization gets shot to shit again by her ripping off Catwoman by becoming a gangster, something she has never held aspiration for before and seems to want to get involved in now for no reason at all beyond being angry that Spider-Man imprisoned her and exposed her identity that wasn’t even secret in the first place

Dan Slott who likes Doc Ock more than he likes Peter Parker decides to say screw it and make Doc Ock Spider-Man thus invalidating the entire reason he was hired, which is to write about Peter Parker. He proceeds to make Doc Ock a villain sue and cause readers to wonder if he’s this smart and this dangerous he lost so many times in the past at all? Also he tries to rape Mary Jane in issue 2 and then succeeds in maybe raping Spider-Man himself in the same issue and definitely succeeds in raping the only dwarf character in Spider-Man’s canon.

Spider-Man becomes like Iron Man thus invalidating the entire point of his character and reasons people like to read about him.

A mystery surrounding the Green Goblin’s identity that turns out to be the twist that he was Norman Osborn all along meaning this was a pointless mystery the whole time.

Ben Reilly finally comes back after 20 years but doesn’t act even a little bit like the character people knew and loved causing people to wish he’d stayed dead

Betty Brant is physically assaulted and Spider-Man tracks down the assailant but when he finds him lets him go (thus enabling him to assault other innocent women) because Aunt May guilt tripped him by saying he was a jerk at age 15 for allowing her, a 50+ year old adult and his parental guardian, to cope with Uncle Ben’s death alone on the night of his death.

Fan favourite Mayday Parker has her character now defined by the death of her father invalidating the entire point of her character which was the ongoing relationship between herself and her Dad

Every spider person ever fights a bunch of one note cosmic vampires across alternate niverses who are variant action figures of another one note cosmic vampire villain. The story is utterly reparative and makes Spider-Man play second fiddle to all the other characters cramming for panel time.

I could go on but I won’t.

To count the creative successful and enriching Slott and the post-OMD Spider-Man stories is a far easier task than to count the ones which are for the most part mediocre-God forsakenly terrible and miss the whole point of the various characters involved (most of all you know SPIDER-MAN himself!) because the latter is the norm post-OMD.

Tellingly both volume 1 and volume 2 of Renew Your Vows a book BUILT around the concept of a married Spider-Man have (when judged appropriately given their out of continuity status) garnered perfectly respectable sales (especially in volume 1) prior to their recent time skip (an ill advised move regardless of what the series was about) and critical acclaim. And critical acclaim from people besides Marvel/Spider-Man sycophants like CBR who have vested financial interests in positively reviewing the stories.

In fact there is a very strong argument in favour of Slott being the single most creatively damaging Spider-Man writer in history. The list of things that need to be FIXED because of his idiocy and incompetence is vast.

Moving on to Bob’s other points:

“Peter and MJ being together was a dumb stunt when the did it in the first place”

If Bob had you know READ the stories leading into the wedding he’d know

a) That relationship and marriage was being built up since 1984 albeit with the initial intention being Peter stranded at the altar.

b) A stunt isn’t rendered invalid merely because it is a stunt. A Stunt can make sense and with the build up the wedding had this was one such example

“The marriage generated very few decent stories that wouldn’t have worked just as well without it”

Here is a list of a FEW decent or above stories which in some significant way make use of the Spider marriage between 1987-2007

Kraven’s Last Hunt

Venom

ASM #400

Revenge of the Green Goblin

A Death in the Family

ASM volume 2 #49-50

ASM volume 2 #51-54

Sensational Spider-Man volume 2 #32

Sensational Spider-Man Annual 2007, the only Eisner nominated Spider-Man story ever

Spider-Man unlimited volume 3 #2 Story 2: Making Contributions

Eleven Angry Men and One angry Woman

Parallel lives

Spider-Man: the Final Adventure

Web of Death

Revelations the end of the Clone Saga

Spectacular Spider-Man #241

Spectacular Spider-Man #242-245

ASM vol 2 #39

Ultimate Spider-Man Anthology book: Five Minutes

I Heart Marvel Web of Romance #1

Spectacular Spider-Man #199-200

Spectacular Spider-Man #250

The Tombstone arc

Peter Parker Spider-Man volume 2 #14

Marvel Knights Spider-Man #1-12

Hmmm...it’s almost like Bob sucks at mathematics and story evaluation or something. Then again he did say there was no problem with Luke Skywalker in Last Jedi so you know...I should know better.

Oh and btw the whole ‘those would’ve worked JUST as well without the marriage’ argument is a double edged sword since there are literally less than 20 Spider-Man stories post-OMD that WOULDN’T have worked with a married Spider-Man and only one of them is good...and only if you also take entirely in isolation of Spider-Man’s wider history. Every other story with tweaks could work AS if not MORE effectively with a married Spider-Man.

If the argument is there should be no elements in a story that do not actively contribute to it then shit....why should Spider-Man’s SINGLE status be in a book? Why should Aunt May, Jameson or shitton else be multiple stories across the decades of Spider-Man? Hell by this logic Aunt May or Betty Brant are superfluous to ASM annual #1 which inspired part of Spider-Man 2.

“The Spider Marriage left the franchise spinning it’s wheel for a very long time.”

This is another lie. After Peter and MJ got married there was precious little wheel spinning. Almost immediately we jumped into ongoing stories involving Betty Brant, Joe Robertson, Peter going to school again, MJ and Peter’s finances taking a hit when MJ lost her job, Jameson being impersonated by Chameleon, Black Cat dating Flash, Peter’s parents returning and THEN you got the Clone Saga FFS.

Following that we got Norman Osborn running the Daily Bugle followed by the true wheel spinning garbage of the Mackie/Byrne run which was bad BECAUSE they axed the marriage. Following that when JMS took over his wheel spun for maybe 5 months tops? The rest of the time he reconstructed Peter and MJ and Aunt May’s characters, thrust forward with his Spider totem storyline and then began the slow build up to OMD starting with Peter becoming and Avenger.

There were few months were NOTHING was really happening and the number of issues where that was the case owed much more to the fact that the writers needed to pad out FOUR monthly titles each month!

“By contrast BND and Slott’s run has been good”

By objective writing standards this is a fallacy and Bob is offering no proof to this. He just says ‘it’s been good’. Except Bob’s word isn’t proof unto itself despite how much he must like to think so.

“Peter and MJ are more interesting now”

This is the proof Bob is not a...I don’t want to say he isn’t true fan. I rarely use that term. It’s more that he...isn’t an informed fan.

Anyone who knows any legit shit about Spider-Man could tell you Spider-Man is far from more interesting now than he was prior to BND.

Pre-OMD Spider-Man was the sum of 45 years of experiences. A 30ish average guy who’d been through Hell and a lot of battles and survived them and coped with that pain. He was a competent hero and a flawed human being who was just trying to look out for the little guy and take care of his family.

MJ meanwhile was a woman who’d also lived through Hell but demonstrated sheer steel by surviving it in spite of having no powers to fall back on. She’d gone from a carefree party animal who was seemingly selfish, to a hero in her own right who had an endless well of inner strength.

In contrast post-OMD Peter Parker is a man-child fuck up who illegally invades foreign nations with his giant G.I. Joe action figures whilst often playing second fiddle in his own fucking book to whatever guest stars want to steal the limelight. And he’s not believable anymore. He isn’t a grounded guy who copes with the shit thrown at him. He’s the guy who just shrugs off being killed, having his body stolen and his life upended by his enemy and then losing a year of his life.

That isn’t more interesting unless you are arguing being a Saturday morning cartoon character is inherently more interesting than being....welll actually inherently more interesting than being a certain character Stan Lee and Steve Ditko invented in 1962.

Which Bob plainly isn’t arguing because he’s also listing MJ as ‘more interesting’....how?

MJ isn’t even IN the book regularly any more so HOW could she be more interesting. Worse when she WAS in the book she had 2 roles. Ship tease the fans by being Peter’s friend and confidant (i.e. something she used to do BEFORE BND) or being a blind idiot in Superior which is NOT more interesting.

So what the fuck is he talking about?

I don’t know WHAT he’s talking about. But when you make a statement like: ‘on balance this story that eviscerated and betrayed everything about who Spider-Man is and invalidates his motivation from now on because he sold out in the biggest way possible, was on balance worth it because we got t see Doc Ock as Spider-Man try to rape people’ I certainly from WHERE he is talking from.

And the sun don’t shine there son.

#moviebob #bob chipman #Spider-Man #peter Parker #One More Day #Brand New Day #MJ Watson #mjwatsonedit #mary jane watson #Mary Jane Watson Parker

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mrsspidermanmaryjanewatsonparker · 6 years

Link

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“I was really enraged over “One More Day”. Having been on the Ditko side of the argument for so long, I finally saw that Marvel was totally against letting Peter Parker age and develop new stories. I had planned on protesting the books. But, then they hooked me with the creative teams. Then, they brought back Norman Osborn.”

Er no they didn’t they brought HARRY Osborn back...pointlessly....

“Plus, they were trying new stuff and it wasn’t terrible.”

By new stuff I wonder if they mean ‘Guess who this Goblin themed character is’ and ‘Oh no Spider-Man is framed’ or ‘Yuk yuk Peter just can’t get a date lulz!’

And by not terrible I wonder if they mean ‘Hey look it’s the Chameleon and his whole history with Peter Parker is being ignored so we can imply he’s raping a woman’ and ‘Here watch this woman take advantage of Peter when he’s drunk before turning on a dime into a racist and sexist sterotype of Latin American woman’ or ‘Let’s ruin the Lizard and Kraven’s Last Hunt for everybody’.

“What was going on here? Constant creative rotation to keep things fresh and lively?”

Fresh as in a fresh way to suck shit as inconsistent story and artistic beats pile up to insanity.

“Villains being reintroduced as the classic threats we know them to be?!?”

Because we didn’t have that before OMD and needed the marriage gone for that to be the case.

“Then, we got to see Marcos Martin and Dan Slott on the book. Spider-Man had entered into a new Golden Age. ”

John Romita Senior’s run was a Golden Age.

Roger Stern’s run was a Golden Age.

2004 was a Golden Age.

Mary Jane dates a loser cleberity because she’s out of character whilst Peter Parker invades people’s privacy which is even MORE out of character and here comes Mysterio alive and well ignoring everything we knew about him for the past 10 years isn’t a Golden Age. Its just hot trash.

“But, what of Mary Jane? She was Peter’s wife and the mother of their disappeared baby. Would we ever get some sort of closure? Hell no. What was more surprising was how little it mattered.”

WTF does ‘it didn’t matter’ even mean in this context?

It mattered to most of the readers hence they kept teasing us with reconciliation to spike sales over and over again before just giving us an AU book...then bringing them back for real!

“ Does that say a lot for Mary Jane and her defined role in the Spider-Man universe. I venture to say that it did. But, why are now realizing the futile nature of Peter being married and its importance to Mary Jane?”

Yeah. It’s so futile to have character development for the lead and second biggest character that was the bedrock of 20 years of stories that by and large were better than the objective trash that followed int heir wake and fundamentally damaged both characters going forward.

“Mary Jane has always never made sense for Peter Parker or Spider-Man. It was wish fulfillment for a guy that went from puny nerd to crushing multiple samples of poon in a three year period.”

This sexist bullshit again.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and even if that wasn’t true Peter is himself attractive and even if he was ‘average looking’ someone as attractive like MJ would marry someone like Peter all the time in the real world.

It was their personalities and shared histories that made the relationship make sense.

To dismiss MJ’s backstory and the inter-personal emotions between them that made the relationship happen is ignorant and a clear sign of either not having read or not having paid attention to the material.

The hard truth is MJ pretty much ALWAYS made sense for Spider-Man. She wasn’t wish fulfilment she was her own well rounded character who organically developed in tandem with Peter, as Nick Spencer himself has corroborated.

“Gwen was his equal,”

How?

Gwen was more financially affluent than Peter, had a higher social standing afforded by her father’s job and their comparative wealth to Peter.

If we are talking her brains, Gwen wasn’t anywhere close to Peter’s league. Peter was the kid whipping up web-fluid in his bedroom as a teenager. Gwen was...someone who was in his science class. A statement that could apply to Harry.

“ Betty was the older woman and Mary Jane was the neighbor’s niece thrown upon him. ”

Betty was younger than him canonically Stan lee said so in a letters page but even if she wasn’t in the context of the times she wouldn’t been a few years removed from high school and Peter would’ve been a senior. Big whoop.

Betty’s place has little to do with her age but more to do with just being his first romantic experience.

As for MJ putting aside how she was retconning to not be his neighbour, that assessment for her character applies to the Silver Age and literally no other period of time beyond it. That was NOT her role in the Bronze age in the 1970s, the DeFalco run of the 80s and obviously not the time during the 1990s or 2000s when they were married.

WTF is with his toxic notion that a character is not allowed to develop FFS!

MJ hasn’t been the nieghbour’s blind date for him for the majority of her existence.

“Mary Jane doesn’t even show up until the classic final page of her debut issue. Sure, it’s one of the best entrances in comic history. However, Mary Jane already feels like a put on intruder into a world that she doesn’t understand.”

Correct and Norman Osborn wasn’t revealed as the Goblin until 4 issues before that, Gwen Stacy didn’t die until 7 years after that and Venom never showed up until 22 years after that.

I guess all that shit is irrelevant to the character and mythology of Spider-Man and is just totally optional and superfluous.

I’m sorry I never realized only the first 4 years and few months of Spider-Man mattered.

I never realized Venom, Hobgoblin, Carnage, KINGPIN and all the OTHER shit from after ASM #41 were ‘intruders’ in Spider-Man’s world.

Give me a fucking break.

“She spends the next year dancing through the comic and pushing off the boys. ”

And again, the early years of a character don’t = the inherent nature of the character that is never allowed to develop beyond that ever. If it did the X-Men would’t ever need Wolverine or Storm and Dick Grayson being Nightwing wouldn’t matter at all.

“Peter grows closer to Gwen until she eventually dies, then he’s forced back onto Mary Jane. ”

No, he and MJ over the course of 2 years of masterful stories by Conway gradually grow closer organically.

Can you spell ‘Gwen Stan’?

“Mary Jane rejects him, then he starts associating with related ESU students, Marvel Team-Up guest stars and the Black Cat.”

That’s YEARS later. Gwen dies in 1973. Peter and MJ hook up in 1974. They break up in like 1978!

“When all of those go into the crapper, Mary Jane shows up and he proposes. ”

Oh dear god this is a quintessential example of buying into Marvel propaganda.

That isn’t the sequence of events.

First of all MJ showd up DURING his relationship with Felicia.

THEN she revealed she knew he was Spider-Man and became his confidant.

THEN peter and Felicia broke up.

THEN he and MJ began growing closer and closer.

THEN he had one last fling with Felicia following a seeming rejection by MJ.

THEN he proposed to MJ.

All that shit played out between approximately 1983-1987. That’s about FOUR YEARS of publication with THREE titles running simultaneously!

“Parker gets rejected, then MJ accepts due to a pending marriage in the Spider-Man comic strip.”

Again no. Yeah the wedding we got occurred due to synching with the newspaper strip but the build up to it was in the works for years by DeFalco and Frenz who were in charge of the book and embellished by Peter David and other people on the satellites. It wasn’t intended as actually leading to them crossing the threshold as man and wife but the build up to make that happen and for it to hypothetically happen anyway still existed.

“That’s right, kids. Peter and Mary Jane only got married because Marvel wanted to tie it into an unrelated storyline in the national newspaper comic strip.”

Again that’s true but the build up for to nevertheless make sense in story was still there and still paid off 4 years of character development.

“The key point of Peter and MJ’s relationship was based on editorial interference. ”

Peter and MJ’s relationship began in 1973 nearly 15 years before they got married and it occurred out of a sincere desire by the writer to tell a story about grief.

“Tom DeFalco had actually spent a storyline early explaining how MJ figured out Peter’s identity, but kept it to herself. ”

Er...no he didn’t. He explained she knew his identity but never explained how.

And...this kind of egregiously undermines the central argument right here.

“Then, made a very reasonable argument for why she could like Peter as a friend. ”

And then along with Frenz his collaborator and Peter David spent the next 3 or so years developing their relationship as clearly much more than friendship so why is this fuckwit taking one line from ASM #259 totally out of context and ignoring all the stuff it led to.

Oh right....in order to support the argument via lying.

“Cut to two years later....”

It was more than 2 years.

“forced attacks and a second rejected marriage”

Forced attacked? Alastair Smythe made the natural presumption that MJ was affiliated with Spider-Man based upon his encounter with her in ASM Annual #19.

“then MJ is cool about dealing with Peter.”

No. MJ has a change of heart after resolving her commitment issues directly connected to her estrangement from her sister and her bad blood with her father which Peter helped her to resolve in the course of the story where she accepts his proposal.

Learn to read the damn stories!

“Why was it such a big deal? Why did we loft MJ up to this status that doesn’t seem deserved?”

Because it was wholly deserved based upon the actual stories that were written and not the propaganda assessment this article is pushing.

“The marriage issue is so confusing. It happened in the first Amazing Spider-Man issue I ever read and most of the imagery has come to dominate my opinion of Spidey through the years. Whether it’s the marriage nightmare with the villains attacking the guests or the robbery with Electro; these images are what I see in my head when I see Spidey. Everything after that point was an excuse to force MJ into action, whether it was Venom attacking for the first time or the creepy landlord stalking her. ”

Putting aside how ‘everything’would have to mean literally 100% of each Spider-Man story ever when there were many issues MJ either didn’t appear or had a small role...why would this be a bad thing?

You have a supporting character...they are important...they are used within the narrative...this is bad because why again?

The sexism and hypocrisy is strong with this point because half the time MJ gets shit because she didn’t do ENOUGH in the marriage. But when she is involved within the super side of things in some capacity it’s forced and bad.

How?

A super villain knows Peter’s identity and invades his home, targeting someone clone to him who he maybe lives with. That’d been happening since the silver age with Aunt May, Betty Brant and Gwen Stacy.

As for her getting kidnapped by a stalker, this happens in real life especially to women and famous people and famous women. Spider-Man is a reflection of real life so WTF is the problem with this? HOW is this forced.

“For next decade, everything became about MJ’s pregnancy, habits and constant fears for Peter.”

Again, ‘everything’ would need to mean 100% of stories.

MJ was pregnant for under 2 and a half years, not a decade.

Not every story revolved around her fears for Peter.

Her smoking habit lasted for less than 2 years too.

And there was after all a period of time when Peter wasn’t even the main character of the damn series.

And of course the notion of ‘everything’ or even ‘most things’ REVOLVING around MJ is bullshit because hate to break it to you but MJ was never the main character, Peter was.

Everything revolved around him and since she was his wife a lot of stuff revolved around her which is called ‘Godd Wrting’.

Notice how a shitton of screen time and subplots revolve around the wives of the main characters of drug dealer and mafia boss Walter White and Tony Soprano in the 2 most critically acclaimed TV shows of all time, Breaking Bad and the Sopranos.

USING supporting characters and giving them screen time is IMPORTANT!

It’s also the reason people hated Aunt May for decades until JMS started doing this in 2001! That’s near damn 40 years of Aunt May being mostly underutilized and useless to the point where people hated her and wanted her to die. THEN a lot of stories or story moments began involving or revolving around her and opinions changed.

“The comic was quickly becoming a relationship drama, when we weren’t dealing with fake robot parents, clones, the Superhuman Registration Act or Aunt May getting shot. ”

a) The dumbass who wrote this referred to events across the decade following the marriage and then included 2 things AFTER that point in time

b) This is again a lie it wasn’t a relationship drama

c) God forbid there be relationship drama in a book that heavily involved soap opera elements and also the real life of the hero who could be you, i.e. someone who has to deal with relationship drama a lot because most people in real life do

“Enough was enough, as the time came to re-evaluate what MJ brought to the team. ”

A grounding for Peter. Character development for him. Strong female representation. A human hero who didn’t need to fight villains to be heroic. A realistic flawed and complex human character in a series all about that? A confidant for the main character? An exposition device?

“The answer was that she is a party girl who worked better as an X Factor.”

Get fucked and read some comics beyond the Silver Age hack.

MJ STOPPED being a party girl or an X-Factor in 1973!

“The mystery created by Romita and Lee was long dead and that revealed something didn’t work. ”

It’s so interesting this author will quote one line from ASM #259 and then totally ignore the rest of the entire issues which developed MJ into a supporting character and confidant who mirrored Peter.

Because she just didn’t work.

Get fucked.

“MJ isn’t meant to be understood by Peter, she’s out of his league.”

There is no such things as leagues. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and any two people with enough time, compassion and empathy can come to understand one another. Peter came to understand MJ via her tragic backstory which echoed his own.

“Ultimately, what matters is that Mary Jane stays a viable character in the Spider-Man universe”

Which she was for over 2 decades and even longer before that when she stopped being a party girl.

“While she is a personality mis-match, she’s a life-long friend that knows a lot about the man behind the mask. ”

How are their personalities mis-matched.

“That kind of grounding is absent outside of a direct family tie to Peter. When MJ makes Mephisto end their marriage during “One More Day”, ”

GET FUCKED!

Mj doesn’t MAKE Mephisto do shit. This is yet more of the author swallowing and regurgitating Marvel’s sexist lies. Peter put MJ on the spot with an untenable position then she sweetens Mephisto’s deal. Mephisto made the offer though. MJ didn’t make anyone do shit, especially Mephisto. She just complied with his wishes.

“she whispers something that we don’t find out until “One Moment in Time”. Unfortunately, this twist is negated by the fact that Peter forces MJ to remember their life together as it was, but the duo chooses to split and move on.”

Fuck this article even fails to accurately represent the events of the bullshit storyt hat supports their claim.

MJ’s whisper to Mephisto takes places before he changes time and Peter forcing MJ to remember (more like he forces her to not forget) occurres for unrelated reasons after time has been altered. The two things aren’t directly connected.

Moreover the duo don’t CHOOSE to split, MJ leaves him.

At least represent the bs you are defending accurately.

“It’s a tricky setup, but it’s one that has led Spider-Man back to the promise of the early 1980s”

It’s not tricky it’s hacky.

It didn’t lead Spider-Man back to the promise of the 1980s because things weren’t written as well.

Moreover the early 1980s were when O’Neil was writing Spider-Man and the series sucked shit, why would you want to go back to that?

In fact even if it didn’t suck why would you want to go BACK to something antiquated as being 25-30 years old FFS!

“There are multiple people in his life demanding certain things, but they all want to push him forward. Even Mary Jane has setup her own business and works as an outside factor in Peter’s life.”

All of which didn’t require ending the marriage or a deal with Satan to facilitate.

“The book is “The Amazing Spider-Man” for reason and not “Mary Jane Knows Best” for a reason.”

Get fucked the book was never that during the marriage either.

“ Supporting characters work when they have a defined role for our central figure.”

You mean like a life partner, best friend, confidant and life line to normalacy.

“After a quarter century in the main book, MJ lost that focus and the story suffered.”

After what feels like a quarter century reading this article I feel like my brain has suffered from the lies and misinformation contained within it.

“While we have turned back the clock on that matter, something harsh remains. Why can’t a woman be on par with Spider-Man?”

She can be but when she is sexist jackasses like this knock her down and just plain lie, misrepresent or twist things to pretend things are untenably bad when they aren’t.

“ Much has been made out of his MC2 counterpart Spider-Girl. Sure, it’s his daughter as a legacy character keeping the identity alive, but she manages to find time for her retired father in her book. But, her book keeps getting cancelled and the readership of that title is a tenth of what Amazing Spider-Man pulls down. Point rested.”

Point no rested.

Spider-Girl suffered in sales because it was a female led book at a time when that wasn’t something the market was kind to. It suffered because it was a mass market book sold on the direct market. It suffered because it underined Marvel’s desired narrative and was spearheaded by a former EIC, people who traditionally generate a lot of bad blood courtesy of consequent editorial regimes who throw them to the wolves. It suffered because they wanted to promote another character with the name. It suffered because it was an out of continuity title.

It has shit to do with anything related in this dumpster fire of an article.

In summary:

This article is hot trash peddling sexist propaganda in line with a false narrative Marvel wants.

Kill it with fire.

But what can I expect from a writer who doesn’t even know Eddie Brock wasn’t a photojournalist or thinks Ned Leeds was ‘tricked’ into becoming the Hobgoblin.

#Spider-Man #mjwatsonedit #MJ Watson #mary jane watson #Mary Jane Watson Parker #Peter Parker #One More Day #Brand New Day #One Moment in Time

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mrsspidermanmaryjanewatsonparker · 6 years

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Can we also please kill the lie that OMD and Sins Past means J. Michael Straczynski run is worse Slott’s?

Can we also please kill the lie that J. Michael Straczynski run is worse Slott’s because of Sins Past and OMD?

Because it’s objectively not true.

I’ve already addressed how it’s really not fair to blame OMD on JMS because it was more Quesada’s story than his.

Sins Past on the flipside is a story that yes JMS SHOULD be blamed for and has major problems but probably not in the ways you think. And as bad as it is there are Slott stories that match or exceed how bad it is and deal as much if not more damage to the Spider-Verse than it.

Let’s first contextualize some things. Sins Past was a story that like OMD had editorial interference. As intended by JMS he wanted the Stacy twins to be the children of PETER and Gwen not NORMAN and Gwen. Much like his original resolution to OMD editorial stepped in and wound up playing damage control, one of the few times I will thank Quesada.

At the same time (unless I am mistaken) editorial also SUGGESTED that Norman be used as a substitute for Peter as opposed to just telling JMS he couldn’t do a story about Gwen’s secret pregnancy.

Then again JMS and editorial figured it wouldn’t matter because even way back in 2004 when Sins Past was being published they knew they were going to do SOMETHING to cosmically retcon Spider-Man’s history and thereby erase the marriage. JMS wrote Sins Past with the presumption that he was going to be able to erase it from existence when all was said and done. This was part of his anger when OMD happened the way it did.

But hey, this doesn’t exactly redeem the story JMS actually wrote right?

It’s still got a lot of problems and is still the worst story under his run that he is genuinely to blame for.

And what are the ways in which the story is bad?

Well:

It turns Peter and Gwen’s relationship into a big fat lie because Peter never knew the ‘real Gwen’. She was lying to him and realistically not going to be acting the way she normally would because she was both pregnant, lying about it and naturally worried. And after the pregnancy she was now a parent which naturally changes your outlook on life…oh and she was still lying about their existence. Peter’s relationship with Gwen was formed during two big extenuating circumstances during which Gwen was unlikely to think, feel or act in ways she ever had before or probably ever would again.

By extension of Gwen’s pregnancy and parenthood now retroactively dominating most of her canonical history WE the audience never really got as good of a picture of who Gwen was a person before she was thrown into this exceptional situation. Which is on the one hand okay because you can say that of countless characters, the problem being that with Gwen the original intention was for that to NOT be the case. Instead of now knowing who Gwen is and how she’d act under certain situations we now only know those things within the context of when she was pregnant/had recently had children and was lying and stressed out over it

Gwen’s pregnancy makes no sense. You have to get ridiculously loose with the actual amount of time that events are supposed to unfold across including when exactly Gwen gave birth. Moreover we were privy to Gwen’s inner thoughts multiple times across her history and got exactly zero indicators that she was dealing with a stressful pregnancy.

This goes well beyond MJ retroactively knowing about Peter’s identity. We didn’t get as good of a look into MJ’s head during the Silver (or even bronze) age and MJ had at least plausible grounds to deny and suppress the truth to herself. If Gwen was fucking PREGNANT that isn’t something that you could as easily say ‘oh she was just suppressing that it was happening behind the scenes’. Not with the degree of access we had to her private life.

More egregiously though Gwen was clearly NOT pregnant. Look at any given image of her from the period she was allegedly pregnant and she is very obviously not showing. Sure, some women do not show when pregnant as a quirk of their or their child’s metabolisms. But they do when it’s fucking TWINS.

The retcon in one way makes Gwen stronger and more admirable as a character for dealing with this huge burden on her own but it also makes her as a person look really, really bad. I’m not talking about sleeping with Norman, or lying about that. I’m talking about expecting Peter to be a father to her children. Okay, maybe that one is forgivable. She’s a young kid in a big stressful situation she is not prepared for at all. But even if you run with that idea…why does she abandon her kids by returning to the United States without them and even risk her own life by going to the fucking SAVAGE LAND when she has two babies in another country relying upon her to return for them?

It gets worse when you consider she had multiple clones all with her memories who also never mentioned or seemed to give a single shit about their CHILDREN. Some of those clones matured further into adulthood than Gwen so there is really no excuse. Even if they argue that those children are not theirs because they’re just clones of their mother, fucking TRY to help them and check up on them. They’re goddam babies!

The story makes no sense for Mary Jane, undermines her relationship with Peter and makes her look really, really bad as well.

Whilst forgivable it is somewhat undermining to Peter and MJ’s relationship that MJ would spend years lying to Peter about Gwen and Norman’s affair and her pregnancy. Although it does speak volumes that Peter forgives her for it relatively quickly.

What’s more irksome about the story is the implication that MJ wonders if Peter loves Gwen more than her when he doesn’t and she does know that. But okay, you can No Prize that one.

What’s NOT forgivable though is how MJ apparently never told ANYONE about this situation. Not Peter, Ben Reilly, Gwen’s clones, Gwen’s extended family whom she was friends with, the police, child services, NOBODY.

Basically MJ in spite of knowing that there were two children out there in another country who were now orphans didn’t even try to look in on them or put someone else onto doing that.

She just ignored them. In doing so she condemned them to be raised by their abusive father Norman Osborn. MJ didn’t even tell her best friend Jill Stacy about Gwen’s children when Norman revealed he was still alive in the 90s. Wouldn’t she have PRESUMED Norman would have found those kids?

MJ let two innocent children out to dry because of this retcon.

The story straight up rewrites history because it takes panels from ASM #121 and depicts them with different dialogue and body language that never happened but needs to exist to facilitate the retcons

The story does not adequately justify Gwen’s attraction towards Norman or even explain when exactly it happened

And yet in spite of all this you know Sins Past up until the big reveal was actually a really, really good story. The mystery was gripping and the subject matter highly appropriate to Spider-Man. Mostly good dialogue as always by JMS and beautiful artwork by Deodato Junior.

Those are the big problems with Sins Past. Notice something? I didn’t mention Gwen and Norman sleeping together or Gwen cheating on Peter.

Wanna know why?

Because they’re not what’s wrong with the story.

Gwen was established as being attracted to older men way back in the 1990s and it is far from unrealistic for her and Norman to make a mutual mistake and sleep together.

It’s pure soap opera and that’s very much in line with Spider-Man. It isn’t spinning the relationship positively and encouraging other 19 year olds to sleep with men old enough to be their fathers who are also actual friends of their father and also the parent of one of their friends whom they had dated recently. The opposite is true if anything considering how Norman is clearly framed as utterly evil and despicable and Gwen as someone who made a big, stupid but common and human mistake.

As for Gwen cheating on Peter I guess that depends upon your definition of cheating but by my standing that would require her and Peter to actually BE in a relationship of some kind.

At the time Gwen canonically is supposed to have slept with Norman they were not. They’d been on one or two dates and that was it. They were not a couple and were not going steady or serious about one another at all. Peter was in love with her but he wasn’t in a serious relationship with her.

So Gwen wasn’t cheating on anyone.

Also across the years I’ve not really liked how Gwen is the one who’s demonized for the ‘affair’ with Norman.

Like…she was literally 18 or 19 years old at the time the story happens, 20 at a push.

Why the fuck is SHE the one who gets blasted for sleeping with Norman when he’s the grown ass man in the situation. Shouldn’t it be HIS responsibility to NOT sleep with the girl young enough to be his daughter, is the literal daughter of one of the people from his social circles and close friend of his son’s?

I know, I know…he’s evil.

But just because one person is evil in this situation doesn’t therefore make the blame attributable to the other non-evil person there.

Sins Past is bad because it’s retcon doesn’t make sense and equally importantly is damaging to the characters and narrative. NOT because it features a young girl sleeping with an older man after being on 2 dates with another man.

Here is the thing though, it was ignored pretty much immediately and so aggressively makes no sense and just does not fit into the canon at all that it’s actually not that hard to simply ignore.

It does NEED to be retconned out don’t get me wrong, but you can sort of cordon off the story and then continue reading with little difficulty.

The same cannot be said for Slott’s run.

Here is a BRIEF list of the crap Slott has pulled:

· Portraying Doctor Octopus as a rapist

· Presenting Peter as a manchild who is mentally 15

· Having Peter interfere illegal in the affairs of foreign countries

· Removing Norman Osborn’s powers

· Killing off Doc Ock, making multiple Doc Ock clones and then making one of those an alt-right allegory in league with effective Nazis, HYDRA

· Having Mary Jane victim blame Spider-Man by breaking up with him (when they were not together) after he was abused by Doc Ock in Superior

· Portraying Otto as BETTER than Peter during Superior

· Implying Peter was willing to endanger a child’s life for his own sake when he made Doc Ock’s hand shake during surgery in Superior #8

· Killing off MC2 Peter Parker and thereby invalidating the entire point of Mayday Parker as a character. She is driven by being the daughter of Spider-Man and her relationship with her father. See also removing her iconic costume

· Making Ben Reilly into a straight up asshole villain

· Retconning the death of Gwen Stacy so that Gwen died hating Peter Parker and was conscious when her death came

· Killing off Ashley Kafka AFTER portraying her as believing a villain was irredeemable. For context Kafka believed CARNAGE was redeemable!

· Wasting the 50th anniversary of Spider-Man on a worthless character like Alpha solely to launch a spin-off mini-series

· Destroying Peter Parker’s everyman status by making him an internationally famous rich guy in charge of the world’s biggest tech conglomerate

· Shipping him with Mockingbird in direct opposition to both characters’ established characterizations

· Introducing Silk who despite zero combat experience was better at superheroing than Spider-Man himself oh and also had the power to compel Spider-Man to sleep with her against his will...which would be yet more rape

· Ignoring Black Cat’s history by pretending she had a secret identity (she didn’t) and then making her into a murderous psycho crime lord for irrational reasons even though she’s supposed to be morally grey

· Frequently portraying Spider-Man as secondary in his own title and requiring help from guest stars and team up characters

· Portraying MJ as weak willed, stupid, shallow, and passive even though she’s absolutely none of those fucking things

· Presenting Silver Sable as an school girl with the hots for Spider-Man, again against her characterization and ruining the unique professional relationship they shared

· Ruining the unique character of Phil Urich by just turning him into ANOTHER cackling Goblin villain

· Doing a story about Betty Brant being assaulted wherein Spider-Man decides to let the criminal go because Aunt May guilt tripped him. How did she guilt trip him? By claiming he was irresponsible when at age 15 he wasn’t there to comfort her, a 50-60 year old woman the night uncle Ben died

· Portraying EVERY character as unrealistically idiotic in Superior Spider-Man in order to ensure that the Doc Ock could remain Spider-Man

Now...tell me again how JMS is worse?

#j. michael straczynski #Dan Slott #Spider-Man #Peter Parker #Gwen Stacy #Norman Osborn #Green Goblin #The Green Goblin #Doc Ock #Doctor Octopus #superior spider-man #The Superior Spider-Man #otto octavius #Black Cat #felicia hardy #mjwatsonedit #MJ Watson #mary jane watson #Mary Jane Watson Parker

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mrsspidermanmaryjanewatsonparker · 7 years

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One of my pet peeves is when fellow Spider-Man fans argue that Peter and Mary Jane not being together romantically will condemn them both to a lifetime of eternal misery or when people argue that their love and marriage have survived too many hardships in the past (such as the tragic loss of their baby daughter in particular) for them to ever break up.

Peter and Mary Jane are my favourite fictional couple of all time (always have been, always will be) and I want them to love each other and for them to be together until the stars turn cold and falls out of the sky but I refuse to accept the notion that they are each the other persons only sources of happiness. Also there is no such thing as a point of no return were a couple can no longer decide to end their relationship ever because of having endured too much together. That is not how relationships work, that is not how humans work!

Mary Jane could live a perfectly fulfilling life without Peter! She doesn’t need him but she chooses to be with him because she loves him and being with him makes her happy! That is a good thing dammit!

Peter once believed that Gwen was the love of his life and that he would marry her. Following her death he became depressed and sincerely questioned if it would ever be possible for him to love another person like he loved her, a most realistic concern after suffering such a devastating loss. But his life went on and we all know the answer to that question.

Later in life he even started to question if his relationship with Gwen, (the very person he once thought of as the love of his life) would have lasted even if she had lived, thinking that he and Gwen just weren’t compatible enough for their relationship to survive in the long run and that he most likely still would have ended up falling in love with Mary Jane regardless.

If he lost Mary Jane too it would probably be even more devastating than when he lost Gwen, but he survived that loss and he would ultimately survive losing Mary Jane as well.

In summary: I want to think that Peter and Mary Jane stays together because they love each other and want to spend their lives together and not because they each represent the other persons only chance of ever finding happiness.

For me a big part of the appeal of Pete/MJ is that they’re both flawed, messy, real-seeming fictional people who work hard for their relationship, which by definition means that, yes, they could split up. That’s something that can happen with real people, even ones who love each other very much.

To be fair, I think a lot of fans (including me sometimes!) use “Peter and MJ would never break up!” as hyperbolic shorthand when what they mean is, “Okay, I can see xyz scenario where Peter and MJ would split up and it would make sense, but not because Peter gaslights MJ into agreeing to a deal with the devil who then alters reality so that a brick falls onto Peter’s head the night before the wedding because Marvel thought Peter getting a divorce would age Spider-Man too much, are you f***ing kiding me–”

Yeah I think a lot of the miserable without each other stuff is an interpretation/no prize style fix fic of the terms of whatever the Mesphito deal exactly is. Supposedly they’re supposed to unfulfilled without each other per the deal, but because OMD is a piece of shit comic we never really delve into how (except for oddly a small tease in the deadpool/spider-man comic of all ducking unlikely places). Especially since if we accept current events in the comics as the canon they’re supposed to be doing fairly okay (Peter is a goddamn billionaire and MJ’s doing her own thing with Tony and pals).

My personal interpretation of that is the deal is doing more than affecting than romantic lives and is undermining them in other aspects in the long term (they’re stuck in a perpetual one step forward two step back thing-Peter’s company will be lost and he’ll be poorer than before, MJ’s acting dream keeps getting snatched from her despite the obvious successes she’s had there on top of how every time they get closer to together some outside force intervenes and pushes them apart etc.) Although full disclosure, for the time being I’ve dropped Slott’s amazing run.

But otherwise yes. The above. What makes both Peter and MJ interesting as characters is that they actually have flaws and their own characters outside of one another. And those flaws complement each other in a very real way that works for a relationship that feels organic. But MJ is such a developed character she can (and does) support stories without needing Peter’s presence to make us care about her. Or in other words, she’s the mythical strong female supporting character who’s life does not revolve solely around her love interest.

I have to disagree with the points made here. Esepcially the OP...a lot.

First of all...actually there is such a phenomenon wherein a couple will not break up. Different humans behave in different ways...but if you know enough about psychoplogy you’d know actually a lot of human behaviour can be predicted if you have a detailed enough psychological profile. And part and parcel of that is consistent behavioural patterns. The nature of comics essentially means we know EVERYTHING about a character because we live in their heads and are privy to all relevant information about them. Consequently by and large for the characters who’ve been around long enough and in enough situations we know what they are going to act most of the time. In theory if you knew as much about a human being the same would apply. In fact most of the time when we see people act in ways we didn’t expect or claim human behaviour is unpredictable or ‘people change’ the truth is that’s just us trying to explain behaviours that we didn’t know would happen due to a lack of information. We don’t know what exact variables are bouncing around and influencing someone’s thoughts and feelings which would lead to them acting a certain way, or don’t know that person’s behavioural history well enough to have seen a certain action coming. But we do with many fictional characters which means you cannot simply treat them psychologically or emotionally the same way you’d treat a real person and have them act arbitrarily differently because ‘humans don’t workt hat way’.

Which brings us to this point. When people have been in a relationship for a long enough amount of time and endured certain things that act as bonding experiences it becomes less and less likely that they would split for various reasons. One of which being that they are among the only people who understand what it was like to go through said bonding experiences which can take the form of traumatic experiences. This is why veterans or war or even of the police, specifically ones who’ve fought together are often so close and stay friends for most of their lives following a traumatic event.

So in Peter and MJ’s case your talking about people who’ve lived though shittons of tragedies and hardships indivoidually and faced obstacles to wanting to enter into a relationship together. MJ was almost pathologically opposed to any form of commitment due to a traumatic upbringing but still renegaded on that because of her feelings for Peter, an event which occurred following the knowledge that her very life would be at risk through association with him. You cannot sell short how big of a deal for someone in her position thus its a testament to the degree to which she wanted to be involved with Peter, even when she was trying to actively stop herself from being so.

Your talking about someone who for years knew fully well from first hand experience that she was going to deal with being stood up, with a lot of worrying and that she could be killed at any time and her actual biggest issue with getting together with him was worrying that she’d wind up trapped and miserable. But in reality she gained a lot of emotional fulfilment from being involved with Peter even though it actually required MORE commitment than her mother or sister or brother-in-law ever had to deal with. Those issues for her stemming all the way back to childhood (you know the shit which absolutely stays with you in life) was so deep rooted that she was still tempted to run away the night before her wedding but never did.

She had other options at her disposal. Any number of people with money, security or almost anything she wanted would’ve liked to date her or be in a long term relationship with her but she never went for them. At that point you are dealing with someone who is very, very, very seriously dead set on being attached to the person they want to be with.

And then on top of all this your dealing with people who’ve been through multiple immensely stressful and traumatic bonding experiences over the course of several years and both have a consistent track record of responding to such tragedies and traumas by growing closer together never apart. As an acquaintance of mine has said, conflict in life and in marriage either drives you apart or closer together.

Sure, enduring a miscarriage doesn’t mean 100% two people aren’t going to split up. But in Peter and MJ’s case you aren’t dealing with JUST that you are dealing with that on top of everything else in their lives and relationship and then they went ahead and had even more of that crap thrown at them after the clone saga and during the JMS run. In fact they were much closer after the miscarriage and during the JMS run than they’d been even before, highlighting what I said before about how they react to tragedies and traumas.

And here is the thing, the OP and other observers making similar points are making the error of not actually looking at the specifics of the Peter/MJ relationship but rather utilizing knowledge garnered from most people’s relationships, normal relationships. I’m not suggesting Peter and MJ have some sort of magical miracle romance or anything but it is precisely because of their lives before and during their relationships and the tragedies and traumas they faced that it is illogical to judge them the same way you judge most people’s relationships. It’s atypical even for the closest real life equivalencies such as police officers and their spouses.

So yes in fact in real life and in fiction even moreso you can definitely say past actions inform how someone is going to act now or in the future. And in this case your essentially dealing with two people who’s relationship on an emotional level doesn’t erode as crap keeps getting piled on top of it but consistently actually deepens. Could there be something hurtful enough to facilitate them ending their relationship? Maybe...but realistically its very unlikely unless they just fundamentally change as people. The notion that their relationship will end b because they get fed up with the lifestyle one another have led up until this point is ridiculous or they go through something really hurtful and traumatic is essentially ridiculous. When you’ve got people who stayed together and grew closer after multiple kidnappings, multiple near fatal attacks, stalkers, home invasions, the belief that one another were dead for 2 weeks-six months and then a miscarriage which was just the chrery on top then yes...ending it due to something like that is something that would’ve happened a long ass time ago, not at the end of over 5 years of marriage and 10 years of friendship. That is in fact extremely unbelievable and realistic.

Moving on lets talk about the nature of need here.

MJ chooses to be with Peter because he makes her happy. So...she does in fact needs him to make her happy in regards to romantic/emotional fulfilment. She doesn’t need him for financial support, security, or the kind of fulfilment she gains from acting or the dignity that comes from having a career.

But...is she deep down happy with that stuff alone sans whatever fulfilment she gets from Peter? Not exactly no. Check the JMS run. MJ had a well earning career. She could be with her friends and family from NYC if she wanted and if not plenty of people in LA to hang around. She had a certain degree of fame and she lived in luxury. And she was...totally miserable. In fact before Gwen died we know MJ loved to party but actively chose to cut back on that because of her relationship with Peter. She decided that she was going to implicate herself in his life in the 1980s stories despite having a lot of those same career options and knowing the baggage Peter came with. As frustrated and upset as she got upon losing a lot of her success she prioritized her marriage above those things and made sacrifices for it’s sake.These are not merely the actions of someone who finds someone else makes her happy but clearly finds great fulfilment from said person.

I’m not saying MJ NEEDS Peter to survive and that she’d fall apart without him. But am I saying that she would be without a certain large source of fulfilment in her life without him? Or that Peter to her is much more than someone she loves and who makes her happy but whom she doesn’t exactly need as part of her life? Or that without him there would essentially always be something missing in her life she’d want to fill? Yes to all.

Indeed the idea MJ gets this type of deepset fulfilment from her relationship with Peter goes a Hell of a long way to explaining exactly why she has a Job-like patience and tolerance of the massive stress, danger and traumas that comes from being his friend, lover and spouse and why she made an exception for him as far as her commitment issues were concerned.

That doens’ make MJ weak or dependant at all. Different strokes for different folks and some people simply need certain fulfilment in their lives through a romantic relationship.

Now moving onto Peter...this is where the OP is really getting ridiculous.

Yeah Peter Parker, aged 19-20 years old tops who’d dated exactly 3 girls in his whole life and one of those was just a handful of casual dates thought that Gwen Stacy whom he’d known for at most a year and a half (as in had known her face/name for that long, not actually befriended, dated or been in love with her for that long) thought Gwen Stacy was the love of his life and the person he would marry...without telling her his secret identity.

It’s almost as though he was a young and naive idiot who whilst genuinely in love with someone for the first time ever and built it up to unrealistic levels in his head and heart precisely because he didn’t know any better. Peter didn’t have puppy love but...he kind of had the equivalent except he genuinely was in love with Gwen.

Simply put he was a very inexperienced naive kid who didn’t really know what he was doing...also he was like super stressed most of the time trying to save the world but that isn’t the point really....

Now yes after he died he did question if he could love another person like he loved Gwen and he was depressed.

And he got through that and did eventually love somebody like he loved Gwen. As in it was Mary Jane. As in this wasn’t him merely ‘moving on’ it was him moving on with someone very specific who helped him in very specific ways. More than once the Spider-Man narrative has made the clear cut point that Peter would have REMAINED depressed, and wouldn’t have moved on and would’ve gone off the deep end if it wasn’t for Mary Jane’s presence in his life at that time. He didn’t simply work to get over it and allow time to heal all wounds. From the moment Gwen died it was Mary Jane’s support and presence as a friend in his life which enabled him to survive losing Gwen that way. Conveying it as a simple case of someone losing a loved one and moving on like many people do is belying the actual specifics and realities of the situation as it was presented.

To reiterate Peter only moved on from Gwen the then love of his life because

a) He was making a bigger deal out of their relationship than was warranted and

b) Because Mary Jane herself was the one helping him to move on and was the person he moved on to. Flash Thompson and Aunt May weren’t the ones who were going to see him through that crisis

Att he same time....where precisely did Peter ever once say even if Gwen had lived he and MJ would’ve wound up together anyway? Never in all my years have I ever encountered such a story or moment.

The closest things I can think of are Webspinners Tales of Spider-Man where Peter wonders if he and Gwen would’ve stayed together if she’d lived or Web of Romance where he compares MJ to Gwen and says Gwen would’ve needed him to protect and support her most of the time whereas MJ didn’t because she was a stronger person.

The latter doesn’t really support the OP’s statements as it has nothing to do with Peter questioning if he and Gwen would’’ve been together later in life but is simply observing how MJ and Gwen cope differently and maybe that MJ is a better match.

The former however does have Peter questioning if him and Gwen would’ve stayed together...and not coming up with an ironclad answer. But even putting that aside that was a late 20s/early 30s year old Peter Parker who’d done a Hell of a lot of growing up since the days where he was dating Gwen Stacy as a much more naive kid. Of course he’d wonder if he and Gwen would’ve gotten married if she hadn’t died. He has hindsight on his side at that point and lacks youthful naivete to cloud his judgement.

The OP’s point was Peter thoguth Gwen was the one and only person he could ever be with but she wasn’t and he even questioned it as such therefore the same logic should apply to Mary Jane or any woman he was with. But this again takes a broadbrush 1:1 approach to both relationships.

Mary Jane and Gwen and their respective relationships with Peter are immensely different. Just because Peter at one point believed Gwen was the one and only person he’d ever love and no one else could compare and was proven wrong doesn’t mean that in reality he’d be wrong for holding the same belief about Mary Jane at a much later point in life. Because again it’s coming from a completely different place in his life and from an entirely different emotional level.

So no. If Peter lost MJ he would absolutely not survive that loss the way he survived Gwen. Because again...he only survived losing Gwen because of Mary Jane. People forget this but Peter is someone who isn’t at the end of the day a great loner. He really does need people and I don’t just mean for the sake of emotional fulfilment. Peter didn’t just love MJ or feel she made him happy. He literally needed her presence in his life as proven by stories like Kraven’s Last Hunt, ASM #150, the Clone Saga, Doomed Affairs, etc. MJ was vital to keeping him afloat and he’d have gone down a long time ago without her influence.

So yeah Peter and MJ do stay together because they want to and because they love one another. But more than likely when you break down the characters and their experiences, especially in Peter’s case...yeah. Actually there probably isn’t anyone else for either of them. Not at the very least to fulfil them AS much as they would otherwise be in one another’s company.

I know we like Peter and Mj becuase they are more realistic and try to make things work but...honestly there comes a point where you really do have to look at the charaacters and what they are and have dealt with and see them for how they’ve been defined.

Sure their relationship is messy and requires them to work hard in spite of character flaws. But it honestly at this point (or rather before OMD anyway) would be immensely difficult to believably and yes realistically split them up

The only way to do it is if you have them completely change in their personalities and lose the very aspects that one of them loved about the other. And outside of very mean spirited stories where they have kids who are violently killed or where Mary jane is victimized in some way (which Marvel would never due out of fear of the PR and the desire to keep using the character for branding purposes) those changes aren’t going to happen. Marvel would of course never change Spider-Man permanently in any significant way to the point where he loses his personality because again branding.

But if we’re talking about stuff we’ve already seen before now, if we’re saying they remain essentially the same in their personalities and they go through similar tragedies and traumas as they’ve gone through up until now and those things break them up...Hell no. they aren’t going to split up over that stuff. If they were it would’ve happened decades ago. It’d have to be something really extreme or out of the ordinary like one of them being rendered disabled and blaming the other or something. But even that...I don’t buy they’d do that given the losses they’ve endured already. Losing your kid is so much worse than that.

As for the ramifications of OMD...as I’ve said before OMD is a different continuity from pre-OMD Spider-Man and furthermore is literally a consistent series of OOC BS moments stretching across years. Sure if we look at the current stories and say Peter and MJ are perfectly happy without one another...but it isn’t that that proves that actually they are fine without one another. It just proves how deeply the post-OMD comics misunderstand the characters and the series. This stuff has little to do with OMD and actually goes back way into their histories, for example in the JMS run BOTH of them were miserable and missing each other a Hell of a lot.

We never even SAW either of them post-OMD all that upset that the most significant romantic relationship in their lives which was stated in and out of universe to be tantamount to a marriage. Not once. We hit the ground and Peter is macking on some stranger and MJ is dating some loser actor. Not even a hint of them being upset over breaking up and we’ve to this day never seen anything accurately reflect the realistic sadness either would feel, even if this was like a fairly standard relationship.

To reiterate, I’m not saying Peter and MJ have some kind of miracle magic romance where everything is lovey dovey all the time. But I’m just saying because of who they are and what they’ve been through yes it is actually very difficult to dream up a realistic scenario wherein they’d believably break up like many people do. Because many people have not lived thorugh what they have and have not developed their personal relationships in the same ways.

@horselover107 I don’t disagree with your last paragraph but I think there is a difference in discussing a character’s creative standing and issues of mental/emotional satisfaction and fulfilment. Similarly someone doesn’t need their lives to REVOLVE around someone they love for that person to still be fulfilling in their lives and the most important person or aspect to it. MJ herself acknowledged this as such. She acknowledged Peter was more important to her than anyone or anything else in her life but that didn’t mean everything she did hinged upon taking him into account or that she didn’t have her own things going on. Ditto for Peter. He’s acknowledged MJ as the person he loves most and needs in his life but he has other shit to do as well. But that doesn’t mean that for MJ there would be a big hole missing in her life without Peter leaving her at least never as happy as she would be with him, or that for Peter he wouldn’t eventually fall apart without MJ supporting him.

#mjwatsonedit #mary jane watson #Mary Jane Watson Parker #Spider-Man #Peter Parker #Gwen Stacy

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