Mary Jane Watson/Parker Appreciation 2019

[Miles To Go]

2018 brought MJ back into Peter's orbit and back as a prominent love interest. What has 2019 got in store for her?

[Miles To Go]

We're already off and running...MJ showed up in the daily strip today, looks like she'll be partnered with Luke Cage to help free Peter from the grip of the Purple Man

[millernumber1]

2018 brought MJ back into Peter's orbit and back as a prominent love interest. What has 2019 got in store for her?

Hopefully great things! Like...marriage! (Okay, that is almost certainly not happening, but I can dream! And at least Newspaper MJ is still married to Peter!)

[Revolutionary_Jack]

I think MJ's fortunes will depend on

1) Chip Zdarsky's LIFE STORY, the story of what-if Peter Aged. What is going to be the story's attitude to the Peter/MJ love story?

2) Tom Taylor's run on FNSB. Taylor is a fan of Mary Jane and he wrote Clark and Lois well in Injustice comics flashback issues, and other couples.

3) Wherever Spencer's run goes with them back together.

2018 confirmed that Mary Jane is the most profitable supporting character and most prominent love interest. She was the playable character in Spider-Man PS4 and that was the fastest selling PS4 game, and there's a new generation of Peter/MJ shippers thanks to that game, since a lot of people loved that version of MJ and that romance with Peter. ITSV also showed the Adult Spider-Man for the first time in any movie and both Peters are married to Mary Jane and that movie last I checked did 200 million dollars on a 90million dollar budget.

[Restingvoice]

I first saw Mary Jane in Web of Spider-Man. Out of all redhead childhood crush, she's the hottest, often drawn in a mini dress while hanging out in their apartment.

bab2e9c9ba2402645c06ea8058822921._SX1280_QL80_TTD_.jpg

Later on, during the McFarlane era, they also like to write and draw a glimpse of their sex life, and her dress gets racier, which as a kid/preteen I was surprised that's it's included in a comic. Just like most parents, mine thought comics are just for kids.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

I first saw Mary Jane in Web of Spider-Man. Out of all redhead childhood crush, she's the hottest, often drawn in a mini dress while hanging out in their apartment.

bab2e9c9ba2402645c06ea8058822921._SX1280_QL80_TTD_.jpg

Later on, during the McFarlane era, they also like to write and draw a glimpse of their sex life, and her dress gets racier, which as a kid/preteen I was surprised that's it's included in a comic. Just like most parents, mine thought comics are just for kids.

Peter and MJ getting married was often an excuse used by writers and artists to make MJ this sex object and so on, since they can use marriage to deal with all kinds of sexy stuff and fairly believable reasons why she would be in nighties and so on around Peter (since you know they're married and it's in the Bible that a married man can have sex with his wife so it passed the moral test). On one hand that's pretty male gazey, but on the other hand it did make married life look great and awesome (albeit idealized), and that's something that no superhero comic ever did before.

Compare that to Superman and Lois, where even after they got married you never got a sense of sexiness in their home life, whereas that was always part of Peter and MJ's love story. I mean canonically, MJ is the woman who deflowered Peter at the end of ASM#149. Even Post-OMD, in Spider-Island, the real reason why MJ got Spider powers and lasted so long was the fact that as Slott had Reed said, she and Peter "shared a toothbrush" since during their (long live-in relationship Post-omit, which sounds stupid every time I see it and makes no sense), they had so much sex that she acquired immunity from...contact with him (which seems to be a joke at Spider-Man:Reign).

Ta-Nehisi Coates said it best (https://www.theatlantic.com/entertai...love/384860/):

His marriage was a rejection of the macho ideal of romance—which reigns even among nerds—and it mirrored and confirmed my own budding sense of what love was at a very young age.

I wouldn't argue that the Parker-Watson marriage was always well-written and well-drawn. The "super-model" angle felt unnecessary, as did some of the porno-lite art. (It's good to see Kubert, here, depicting Watson the way women actually tend to look.) I won't defend the '90s, which were not a good period for the writing in the Spider-Man books. But in a genre aimed at young males, it is very hard for me to come up with a more mature, and I would say healthy, vision of what a marriage should look like.

[Restingvoice]

Interesting read, but... what is the macho ideal of romance?

Although MJ was very clearly an object to the male gaze, reading it back as an adult, or even back then as a teen, I never really feel she's objectified in the way that is offensive, maybe because it makes sense in context of their marriage as you said, and also because I find Peter Parker sexy.

He has a great body and often drawn shirtless or in his underwear in their home, and he also suffer from clothing damage while in battle. So I guess they really did make an ideal fanservice that's not random.