Quote Originally Posted by Kevinroc View Post
Bendis literally used MJ because Slott was going to send her to comic book limbo. (Too bad he never actually did much with her, but it's still better than comic book limbo.)
I mean the only way Bendis could have done much with her in an Iron Man story is to have her date Tony...which he absolutely did not want to do. I mean it wouldn't make sense from a character perspective, like why would a character, as per Slott, who left Peter and Spider-Man because she didn't want to be part of his superhero life...date an even more destructive drama-magnet who is also a proven alcoholic (like her father). I mean it wasn't too believable that she would work for Stark and Bendis had to destroy the whole club-owner status-quo for good to force her in a desperate 'Just when I thought I was out they pull me back in' moment. And Bendis didn't have a lot of interest in Tony Stark either, so he had Riri come in-between, and then the entire Stark Industries is run by women, with Amanda Armstrong and so on. So I think he didn't do too badly. Weirdly in that whole Regent story arc, Slott tries to hype and ship Tony/MJ more than Bendis did.

This is just my assumption and wish-fulfillment, but I think Bendis having MJ work as a corporate officer and so on, was a shot against the bow at Slott's business Peter storylines. He's basically showing everyone a story arc of Slott that would totally have worked and worked better with a married Peter. And of course by having MJ work and move up the corporate ladder at the same time as Peter's, he's basically ensuring that she remains Peter's equal, his match, and the whole Parallel Lives character development motif that's a big part of the character since Conway's story. I mean you could easily have seen MJ work Parker Industries and do the whole socialite and PR thing for Peter, and all the stuff that could have brought to their relationship and so on. Nick Spencer even refers to it in Issue #10 where MJ notes that she was briefly a part of Peter's wheelhouse but now they are back to the old setup an so on.