Spider-Man: Life Story By Chip Zdarsky & Mark Bagley

[PCN24454]

Are you forgetting MJ never bought that Kraven was Peter for a minute in KLH? You're doing her character a great disservice assuming she's that naive.

She thought it was him for five seconds. She quickly realized she was wrong, but she still thought it was him.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

She thought it was him for five seconds. She quickly realized she was wrong, but she still thought it was him.

This kind of weird logic never fails to amaze me. Peter after being bullied saying in AF#15 "I'll show them" and then his actual actions as Spider-Man isn't revenge but basically becoming a proto-Justin Bieber. And yet the likes of Slott think "I'll show them" is signs of Peter being a supervillain and a school shooter type (based on the utterly false idea that bullied kids are likely to be shooters or most shooters are bullied kids).

This devolves even further as time passes and now MJ mistaking Kraven for Spider-Man for two panels is enough, for some, to overwrite her actual actions and decisions.

Reading comprehension has really fallen by the wayside.

[Miles To Go]

She thought it was him for five seconds. She quickly realized she was wrong, but she still thought it was him.

That still wasn't a minute. Don't move the goalposts.

[NC_Yankee]

This kind of weird logic never fails to amaze me. Peter after being bullied saying in AF#15 "I'll show them" and then his actual actions as Spider-Man isn't revenge but basically becoming a proto-Justin Bieber. And yet the likes of Slott think "I'll show them" is signs of Peter being a supervillain and a school shooter type (based on the utterly false idea that bullied kids are likely to be shooters or most shooters are bullied kids).

This devolves even further as time passes and now MJ mistaking Kraven for Spider-Man for two panels is enough, for some, to overwrite her actual actions and decisions.

Reading comprehension has really fallen by the wayside.

I have long believed that for whatever reason Dan Slott liked Spider-Man but did not like Peter Parker ( he compared him to Charlie Brown), and wanted him fighting crime and jumping around from lady to lady, instead of being steady with say MJ or Felicia. As for Bullied kids being future psychos that concept has been pushed by the Entertainment Industry and politicians since Stephen King wrote Carrie in 1974. Of course, it is much worse today. Why? You used to see people overcoming bullying. I think of Can't Hardly Wait' ( boy did I find Jennifer Love Hewitt hot), where a bullied kid became a millionaire and dated a supermodel while the primary bully lost his job in a gas station. This idea is something I like about reading ( pre and post- Slott) Amazing Spider-Man ( as opposed to him in The MCU or The Avengers), Peter Parker who was disrespected, by others, still ends up with the supermodel ( MJ).

[PCN24454]

This kind of weird logic never fails to amaze me. Peter after being bullied saying in AF#15 "I'll show them" and then his actual actions as Spider-Man isn't revenge but basically becoming a proto-Justin Bieber. And yet the likes of Slott think "I'll show them" is signs of Peter being a supervillain and a school shooter type (based on the utterly false idea that bullied kids are likely to be shooters or most shooters are bullied kids).

This devolves even further as time passes and now MJ mistaking Kraven for Spider-Man for two panels is enough, for some, to overwrite her actual actions and decisions.

Reading comprehension has really fallen by the wayside.

What are you talking about? You went into a long spiel about something that ultimately wasn’t very important.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

What are you talking about? You went into a long spiel about something that ultimately wasn’t very important.

I am saying that your argument that focuses on the lone panel in isolation and not the whole sequence is a very poor approach to reading a scene.

[boots]

I am saying that your argument that focuses on the lone panel in isolation and not the whole sequence is a very poor approach to reading a scene.

or...it could be that more than one interpretation is not only valid, but preferred

[Revolutionary_Jack]

or...it could be that more than one interpretation is not only valid, but preferred

More than one intepretation is valid but you have to ground it overall in what's in the scene and context. Take stuff out of context and you get distortions, misinterpretations, and you end up caricaturizing big scenes, characters, and moments.

[boots]

More than one intepretation is valid but you have to ground it overall in what's in the scene and context. Take stuff out of context and you get distortions, misinterpretations, and you end up caricaturizing big scenes, characters, and moments.

true enough, but context still requires personal interpretation. that particular reading is not so far off that it’s impossible...it can still work (and superheroes are famous for constant retcons and reworking). i’ve never heard slott describe parker as a school shooter and can’t say i agree with that take, but it’s also not impossible that peter occasionally has a dark thought.

as an easy example; a line written by a showrunner, can end up meaning something totally different in an actor’s hands, then again once the director has a crack and once more in the editor’s room. that’s how art works. and that’s just in the hands of artists before it hits an audience of different language, socioeconomic and moral backgrounds some of whom may have seen the entire show, just that episode or gone so far as to read the series bible

policing the “true reading” of any art or entertainment , beyond being obnoxious, is futile

[Tendrin]

Al Ewing had a commentary on this kinda stuff in an interview recently.

Watching readers speculate on which Avenger would die was kind of fun. I did feel a bit bad that we'd be disappointing them in the end with a lack of death - that said, one of my pet peeves is people thinking their very subjective interpretations of the text, whether it's a solicit or a whole comic, are objective truths that must be bellowed from the rooftops as the one, true reading... so I didn't feel too bad.

https://www.cbr.com/avengers-no-road...ion-interview/

Also, Boots, your Private Message inbox is too full to accept more.

[boots]

Al Ewing had a commentary on this kinda stuff in an interview recently.



https://www.cbr.com/avengers-no-road...ion-interview/

Also, Boots, your Private Message inbox is too full to accept more.

cleared, mate

the cbr interface is not outdated and counterintuitive at all. nope. it'll be good at least all the way till 2005

[Revolutionary_Jack]

true enough, but context still requires personal interpretation. that particular reading is not so far off that it’s impossible...it can still work (and superheroes are famous for constant retcons and reworking). i’ve never heard slott describe parker as a school shooter and can’t say i agree with that take, but it’s also not impossible that peter occasionally has a dark thought.

Peter can have dark thoughts but at the end of the day, thoughts aren't actions. Assuming so, isn't all that far from Zack Snyder's thinking behind Superman and Batman in his terrible movies. What Peter does in AF#15 with his powers isn't getting revenge on people who wronged him or whatnot, he tries to monetize it and become a celebrity. That's not illegal or criminal at all. Technically speaking, that's far more legal than what he does as a superhero as Spider-Man. The point of his story is that doing the right, good and moral thing is hard and acting that way has consequences.

as an easy example; a line written by a showrunner, can end up meaning something totally different in an actor’s hands, then again once the director has a crack and once more in the editor’s room.

That's not remotely what I am talking about. There's a difference between interpreting the scene as critics and how collaborators and creators do it.

An actor will always find a way to make a scene or moment as believable, relatable or realistic as possible to illustrate a character arc, to show change, growth and so on. But that doesn't mean that they are overwriting or changing the actual action and consequence of what they are doing. Josh Brolin played Thanos as an earthy, affable, noble figure but he doesn't change the fact that Thanos is still a genocidal nutcase. He found a new way to make that kind of distant abstract and far-away villain type into someone audiences can know, relate to, even feel some kind of emotions towards.

policing the “true reading” of any art or entertainment , beyond being obnoxious, is futile

I am not policing anyone's true readings. I am merely calling attentions to the actual actions. Saying that Peter Parker in AF#15 had a chip on the shoulder and was a little troubled and unlikable both in that story and the Lee-Ditko era is fair. If you think that Peter Parker is a character who would be unlikable in real life that's fair too. You can say that. But if you are going to say that Peter Parker when he gets spider-powers is some kind of school shooter then you are going to run into the fact that what Peter does with the powers is becoming a celebrity hack who doesn't hurt anyone around him physically. You might have issues with celebrity and all that, but you don't get to equate that with actual violence.

In the case of KLH, if you are going to say that Mary Jane initially confused Kraven for Peter that's fine because she didn't get a good look at him and he just came in. But to extend that and say that would confuse that for an extended period of time is going entirely against the emotional logic of that scene and the story itself. Mary Jane's reaction is central to the overall theme of that story...namely that Kraven is not in fact the "superior" Spider-Man, that Spider-Man inherently is not about superiority. Mary Jane abhors Kraven-in-the-black-costume violently attacking those would-be assaulters. She rejects and condemns that and says it isn't Peter. The emotional logic of that is so clear that there's a What-If comic about KLH that shows MJ as a widow committing herself to clear Peter's name from being tarnished by Kraven's actions.

[boots]

Peter can have dark thoughts but at the end of the day, thoughts aren't actions. Assuming so, isn't all that far from Zack Snyder's thinking behind Superman and Batman in his terrible movies. What Peter does in AF#15 with his powers isn't getting revenge on people who wronged him or whatnot, he tries to monetize it and become a celebrity. That's not illegal or criminal at all. Technically speaking, that's far more legal than what he does as a superhero as Spider-Man. The point of his story is that doing the right, good and moral thing is hard and acting that way has consequences.



That's not remotely what I am talking about. There's a difference between interpreting the scene as critics and how collaborators and creators do it.

An actor will always find a way to make a scene or moment as believable, relatable or realistic as possible to illustrate a character arc, to show change, growth and so on. But that doesn't mean that they are overwriting or changing the actual action and consequence of what they are doing. Josh Brolin played Thanos as an earthy, affable, noble figure but he doesn't change the fact that Thanos is still a genocidal nutcase. He found a new way to make that kind of distant abstract and far-away villain type into someone audiences can know, relate to, even feel some kind of emotions towards.



I am not policing anyone's true readings. I am merely calling attentions to the actual actions. Saying that Peter Parker in AF#15 had a chip on the shoulder and was a little troubled and unlikable both in that story and the Lee-Ditko era is fair. If you think that Peter Parker is a character who would be unlikable in real life that's fair too. You can say that. But if you are going to say that Peter Parker when he gets spider-powers is some kind of school shooter then you are going to run into the fact that what Peter does with the powers is becoming a celebrity hack who doesn't hurt anyone around him physically. You might have issues with celebrity and all that, but you don't get to equate that with actual violence.

In the case of KLH, if you are going to say that Mary Jane initially confused Kraven for Peter that's fine because she didn't get a good look at him and he just came in. But to extend that and say that would confuse that for an extended period of time is going entirely against the emotional logic of that scene and the story itself. Mary Jane's reaction is central to the overall theme of that story...namely that Kraven is not in fact the "superior" Spider-Man, that Spider-Man inherently is not about superiority. Mary Jane abhors Kraven-in-the-black-costume violently attacking those would-be assaulters. She rejects and condemns that and says it isn't Peter. The emotional logic of that is so clear that there's a What-If comic about KLH that shows MJ as a widow committing herself to clear Peter's name from being tarnished by Kraven's actions.

dude, you don’t get to champion context by removing the context from my reply. especially when that reply is still scrollable above yours. it...just..it just doesn’t work

as for the boundaries of context and interpretation, that’s where we mainly disagree. it’s possible (but improbable and undoubtedly rare) for someone to read the entire spider-man series and feel he’s a bad person or a criminal. i have no interest in changing those people’s minds

but i am genuinely interested in the school shooter angle (in a morbid way) where can i read more about that?

[boots]

Al Ewing had a commentary on this kinda stuff in an interview recently.

https://www.cbr.com/avengers-no-road...ion-interview/.

no doubt a lot of creatives feel this way

my signature says it all, troo beliebers

[emmafrosting]

IMG_20190508_171637.jpg

variant cover for issue #3 by ACO