Last edited by Celgress; 06-12-2018 at 11:40 AM.
"So you've come to the end now alive but dead inside."
Kraven's Last Hunt wasn't a payoff to anything specific. Neither was Dark Knight Returns or Watchmen. Or Year One.
Honestly this is true of a lot of comic book stories but we accept it when the stories are good. The marriage issue was pretty hohum, which is its biggest problem. For a big event book of that scale it was crazy hohum.
I wonder what would have happened had the marriage taken place as an integral part of Kraven's Last Hunt.
Every day is a gift, not a given right.
Still comes across as something of a hissy fit to me. If somebody at Disney approached me and said - "hey I've read some of your fan stories, great stuff. Would you be interested in writing Darth Vader? The only catch is this will be an alternate version of Vader that was never crippled during his duel with Obi-Wan." Now, while I greatly prefer classic Vader I would think, I love the character enough to make him interesting in any incarnation. Furthermore, this gives me the chance to think outside the box come up with something new and exciting. I certainly wouldn't say "unless I get classic Vader hell no". But hey, maybe I'm just more flexible in approach than most comic book pros.
"So you've come to the end now alive but dead inside."
Maybe.
But Alfred wasn't introduced until four years into Batman's existence . . . and then as an overweight comic relief. You can tell a Batman story without Alfred, but you can't tell Batman's story without him.
I don't know that that makes anyone really foundational to Spider-Man other than JJJ, Aunt May, and Uncle Ben, but I'm not sure there's a hard time limit on when these things can become integrated into the mythos.
I think even integral is not quite the right word (it's also confounding that Spider-man *is* foundational to Venom), although maybe the difference I'm perceiving is so small that it's not worth quibbling. I think of Venom a lot like the al Ghul family for Batman - one of the few later additions that managed to weave itself into the fabric of the character to the point that everyone knows about them as well as the original villains.
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There are a lot of ways to discuss foundational elements, but the one I'd stick with would be:
1. Would a reasonably created* new comic or book series, TV show or movie of our hero omit that element in the opening arc? If so, would they feel the pressure or need to introduce that element in the second book/comic arc/movie/episode? If the element doesn't need to appear after awhile, it's not foundational.
There are obviously different ways of deciding what is foundational, and I'm open to other definitions, but I think this gets at, for comics and superheroes, what you cannot strip away if you re-launched the character. For Spider-man (IMHO), it's some sort of experiment (updated appropriately to meet the state of the art) giving him his powers, Uncle Ben's death via Peter's intransigence, the widowed Aunt May having trouble getting by on her own, JJJ - the boss who has a soft spot for the man but hates the hero, SM being Peter's outlet for the emotions he cannot get out in his civilian life, and villains whose origins are similarly scientific in nature. That's it for me (no, I don't think Norman is foundational - there was a lovely 23 year period where he wasn't around and the books didn't suffer for it - although I suppose one could try to split hairs and call the rotating Goblin legacy a foundational element that was kind of ruined when Norman came back and made all other Goblins secondary). I think you can strip these pieces away as the character grows and develops, but you can't start w/o them.
*YMMV, but assume the creators and executives are passionate about the character and not putting out a movie to keep the rights away from Marvel (*cough* Fantastic Four *cough*).
Green Goblin is a special case. Like it or not among the general public Norman is seen as Spidey's nemesis. Therefore I contend he is an integral part of the mythos.
Sonic - Dr. Eggman (although I prefer his old name of Robotnik)
Mario - Bowser
Superman - Lex Luthor
Batman - Joker
Spider-Man - Green Goblin
Sure you can have a successful adaption without these characters in the opening chapter at least, but to make the story whole they have to eventual show-up.
"So you've come to the end now alive but dead inside."
I'm prone to agreeing with you (especially about Robotnik vs Eggman), but I think GG is probably the one of those that is least clear (I think even if you believe these are all clear, if you'd consider GG to have the closest competition of those five) or at least most malleable. One can imagine Norman showing up in the MCU as an Avengers villain rather than in the SM movies (or not showing up at all), not appearing in Into the Spider-verse, and not appearing in any comics for a couple years (he probably needs to cool off a bit after GDS). I think, in that case, the public opinion might shift away from Norman (not sure where it'd shift - Toomes?, Otto?) who was big in the Raimi movies but mostly just a background presence in the Webb movies. Maybe?