#they're keeping the spirit of the spider man mythos alive

[guardianbee]

reading into the gwenverse and spider-gwen: shadow clones back-to-back was such a bad idea because now I can clearly see they keep rehashing the same shit over and over and OVER again, ideas and character beats that were already done and done BETTER in the earlier runs.

Gwen wants to be normal but she can't be normal. She and her dad fight about her being Ghost Spider. She and MJ fight about her commitment to the band. She contacts Reed about technology to advance the arc's plot. And these are literally the ONLY relationships they commit to continuing (and in terribly superficial ways) that are not 616!Peter. She hasn't interacted with Miles in any meaningful way in ages! She thought about calling Harry ONCE about 15 issues ago and hasn't thought about him since! Glory (who was actually her closest friend on The Mary Janes) hasn't spoken a word in issues, and forget Betty lmao. Her world is so empty because every writer refuses to expand it AND continues to just create alternate copies of Gwen and "develop" the relationships between them that it feels borderline masturbatory.

You can't claim that Gwen lives in this "low-super" world and then continue to put her in these very "high-super" situations, such as the debacle with the 616!Jackal, the King in Black arc, everything related to the Spider-Verse and her pretty sizeable appearances in those issues, the GWENVERSE (which had another terrible villain based on influencer culture that they gave a half-assed sympathetic backstory to, FYI), and now the Shadow Clones. Over half the time she's not even on her earth anymore! If the writers can't find a way to make earth-65 interesting because they either don't know how to deal with Gwen's public identity OR they're bad at writing any decent character introspection or building up relationships readers actually WANT to read about, then either retcon that shit or just abandon earth-65 altogether and have Gwen become a permanent transplant to 616 (not my ideal scenario but better than them pussyfooting around with cloning or multiverse hijinks while giving Gwen the same problems without resolving shit).

Spider-Gwen worked when she was grounded in HER world. When there were consequences to every act she committed as Spider-Woman. And sometimes those consequences were very steep. She went to jail! She developed feelings for her best friend and she couldn't date him because half the general public hated her! A local gang tried to kill said best friend and her bandmates while she tried to let loose for ONE fucking night! While Gwen's fate as a superhero was and is still fantastic, the problems she faced were relatable and made her endearing, problems tied to themes of responsibility, guilt, rejection, acceptance, and balance. But ever since her constant back-and-forth between earth-65 and earth-616, she's lost that relatability, and the problems she currently faces are so divorced from reality and tied up in meta-commentary that unless you're insane like me and have deep knowledge of Spider-Man lore, you're gonna be lost practically all the time. Hell, even WITH my knowledge, I'm just baffled by these creative choices! While I acknowledge that the Gwenverse and Shadow Clones arcs are committing to this idea that Gwen could have been anything on earth-616 but her death ultimately upended her possibilities, that's not the only idea worth a damn. AND (and), that idea was ALREADY done and done better in the original Spider-Gwen run, making these series feel redundant and self-indulgent.

anyway make Spider-Gwen relatable again and develop an interpersonal relationship that's not her dad, MJ, or fucking Peter Parker 2k23

#the current state of comics is deplorable man #just so EMPTY #where is the DEPTH!!! where is the HUMAN EMOTION!!! #thank god for the itsv trilogy and insomniac spider man #they're keeping the spirit of the spider man mythos alive #i'm about to start catching up on Miles' current run I pray to GOD it's better than what I just endured #spider gwen #spider gwen: shadow clones #gwen stacy #posts on the run #text post #into the gwenverse