Top Ten Times Marvel Destroyed It's Own History: Spider-Man Rankings

[Revolutionary_Jack]

All three of those stories were done, arguably, as a result of Jim Shooter pissing all of Marvel off with his ways. Marvel as we know it today is just a giant middle finger to Jim Shooter. You might be able to say that about the whole comics industry actually.

But I as a fan loved the Shooter era and miss it.

https://www.bleedingcool.com/2017/11...rvel-business/

Quesada has way more in common with Jim Shooter than either would care to admit. Both are EIC who liked to see themselves as "one of the guys" and so on. Jim Owsley/Christopher Priest wrote a great essay about Jim Shooter here:http://lamerciepark.com/legacy/comics/spidey.html

Shooter was a controversial man and I don't think seeing him with a halo is helpful or accurate. This was the guy who forbade any mention of homosexuality in comics, and this during the '80s and the AIDS crisis. He also did a number of commendable things like getting artists and writers royalties and helping to return original artwork (albeit after considerable external pressure).

I know a lot of people say that J. Jonah Jameson was based on Lee...but to me Jim Shooter was the most Jameson-esque of all Marvel EIC. And he has that similar mixed like-him-and-dislike-him sentiment that Jameson provokes in readers.


He also wrote out the plot for the Spider-Man Wedding Annual...and you know that plot is pretty aces and the Annual holds up better than any other Wedding issue of any superhero. It's the best superhero wedding story ever. And Shooter also wrote a good bit about Spider-Man in the Marvel Saga:

I've heard it said that Peter Parker's reason was that he was a nerd. Not true. Sure, some people thought he was anti-social or fixated on test tubes and formulas to the exclusion of real-life — but let's examine the evidence...He was good-looking. Even super-popular Liz Allan said so. He was even secretly stronger and more athletic (after the radioactive spider-bite) than Flash, which must have at last been comforting. And he wanted to join in with the crowd, have a normal high school social life, have fun.
— Jim Shooter, Marvel Saga: The Official History of the Marvel Universe, #22.

[Mister Mets]

That Busiek letter... wow.

Do you know of any resources I could check out — to read or listen— to learn more about Marvel's inner decision making processes? This is fascinating.

A recent one is the oral history of Marvel Knights.

https://www.marvel.com/oral-history-...k-Wvz3N17NBbyw

[Mister Mets]

Marv Wolfman believed Peter should never have left high school during his run...and that was well before the wedding. Stan Lee commissioned the story that became the first clone saga as a possible backdoor for Gwen's return...(had the Peter/MJ romance not been popular, that would have been it, Gwen would have come back right away). Fact is there had always been changes in Spider-Man before then and people didn't like those changes or saw it was best. The marriage, and the way it happened and so on polarized writers and editors, and radicalized those convictions.

There's also the fact that retcons and ideas like that in Marvel and DC became more common in other comics and continuities. X-Men undid the Dark Phoenix Saga and brought Jean Grey alive. Jean Grey's death was a "Gwen Stacy moment" in X-Men continuity. But not even ten years away, they retconned and undid it. They said that the Phoenix in that story wasn't Jean Grey. It was Kurt Buseik who came up with that. He was a fan who didn't like the Dark Phoenix and felt it ruined the story (as this fan letter he wrote confirmed: https://imgur.com/xrWq7Of). Buseik is another of those fanatics who believe Peter should never have left high school. So you had bad practices coming in as Silver Age nostalgics and so on became set and hardened against changes, vampirically sucking at the new in favor of the old.

After seeing COIE and the Post-Crisis Superman, the Death of Superman and so on, and Jean Grey's resurrection, that may well have led Spider-Man writers to go, if them, why not us. But Spider-Man did hold out for a fair bit longer than others.

This is very subjective, but I think a difference is that Peter graduating high school and the death of Gwen were positive developments for the series, and therefore retcons weren't necessary.

In both cases, the tradeoff was worthwhile. Peter got older, but stories of him in high school were replaced by stories of him in college, and Marvel was able to tell stories of a Peter Parker who had been Spider-Man for more than two years.

Gwen's death swapped out an okay comics character for tremendous pathos, and a sense of unpredictability for the entire Marvel Universe.

There were gains with the marriage, but in my view, it wasn't worth the cost.

[Scott Taylor]

Quesada has way more in common with Jim Shooter than either would care to admit. Both are EIC who liked to see themselves as "one of the guys" and so on. Jim Owsley/Christopher Priest wrote a great essay about Jim Shooter here:http://lamerciepark.com/legacy/comics/spidey.html

Thats a fair assessment, in my view. Brevoort really comes across similarly, too, but Quesada seems more likely to be flexible in a Shooter-esque way in spite of obviously having his own priorities. Interesting essay, some of that I had heard in the wonderful "Comic Creator's on Spider-Man" book.

Shooter was a controversial man and I don't think seeing him with a halo is helpful or accurate. This was the guy who forbade any mention of homosexuality in comics, and this during the '80s and the AIDS crisis. He also did a number of commendable things like getting artists and writers royalties and helping to return original artwork (albeit after considerable external pressure).

I know a lot of people say that J. Jonah Jameson was based on Lee...but to me Jim Shooter was the most Jameson-esque of all Marvel EIC. And he has that similar mixed like-him-and-dislike-him sentiment that Jameson provokes in readers.

So overall - progress occurred during his era? Sounds that way.

He also wrote out the plot for the Spider-Man Wedding Annual...and you know that plot is pretty aces and the Annual holds up better than any other Wedding issue of any superhero. It's the best superhero wedding story ever. And Shooter also wrote a good bit about Spider-Man in the Marvel Saga:

He's a good writer. One of the best on Legion of Super-heroes, for one. Way ahead of where the other DC books were at during the 1960s.

I've heard it said that Peter Parker's reason was that he was a nerd. Not true. Sure, some people thought he was anti-social or fixated on test tubes and formulas to the exclusion of real-life — but let's examine the evidence...He was good-looking. Even super-popular Liz Allan said so. He was even secretly stronger and more athletic (after the radioactive spider-bite) than Flash, which must have at last been comforting. And he wanted to join in with the crowd, have a normal high school social life, have fun.
— Jim Shooter, Marvel Saga: The Official History of the Marvel Universe, #22.

Hehe. The version of Peter that appeared in Amazing Fantasy #15 was a little like what Shooter describes as the nerd version that some people saw. But ultimately I think Ditko fleshed Peter out into more of a normal teenager. Then Romita saw this and enhanced it in his run with the character, perhaps going a little too far and almost making Peter a hearthrob. I feel it was Conway that brought Peter back to his roots and made him more of an everyman, with the death of Gwen Stacy instigating that shift. He went from having the perfect, classic girlfriend in Gwen to having the imperfect more modern one in MJ.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

This is very subjective, but I think a difference is that Peter graduating high school and the death of Gwen were positive developments for the series, and therefore retcons weren't necessary.

That's a fairly cunning way to arrive at a more or less arbitrary conclusion and stopping point -- Retcons weren't needed until the marriage, but even if there were changes and progress before the marriage those didn't justify a retcon even if there were writers then who wanted it.

Some things aren't subjective. Some 810 issues' worth of content in 616 Marvel Alone with a married Spider-Man and Mary Jane as a default status-quo can't simply be written off. That is the longest lasting status-quo in Spider-Man and it attracted several generations of new and young readers. The marriage as a status-quo lasted longer than high school, and college...and currently it still has the record over post-OMD which is admittedly at the half-way mark but the marriage happened in a period where the comics market hadn't shrunk as much as it did today. It was more heavily read than the current era and it will remain so. Fundamentally, in a sales sense, and in terms of audience reach, and in overall solvency of Spider-Man's brand, the marriage worked.

Gwen's death swapped out an okay comics character for tremendous pathos, and a sense of unpredictability for the entire Marvel Universe.

Okay...and what did OMD swap out and return in place? Because one thing is for sure...Post-OMD Spider-Man is damn sure not unpredictable. As Erik Larsen (no fan of the Marriage) pointed out:

The biggest problem — in the future — would be that it would be hard to play some of these same notes again; that "Aunt May is too fragile to handle the truth about Peter being Spider-Man" or that "Peter needs to protect his secret identity in order to protect his loved ones" when we've seen both of those played out in print...After the marriage and the efforts made to undo it, why should we, as readers, believe any relationship he has in the future will ever lead to him getting married again? They're pretty much told the readers that Peter's life is never going to progress past a certain point.
— Erik Larsen, on the Post-OMD Status Quo of Spider-Man

As soon as Peter graduated high school, and went to college, readers expected and were promised that they would see Spider-Man grow up. Comic Book Time delayed that a bit but didn't entirely dial away that promise. And the nature of Peter Parker, being from a literary perspective a more defined and three-dimensional character than Batman and Superman are, means that there are hard rules about what you can do with that character. There is always a limit of how many relationships Peter can have before he goes from "unlucky with women" to self-pitying womanizer. Having him go back and forth between two or more girlfriends makes him the same, and also raises questions about his fidelity. And from a merchandising standpoint you can't sell too many action figures of Peter's civilian girlfriends. All the marriage did was settle the romantic side of Peter's life. But everything else: work/life balance, career, ambitions, responsiiblities, supervillain issues, and so on...those remained in place. Fundamentally the marriage was entirely consistent to the illusion of change. That's why it was able to generate so much content. It didn't actually resolve Peter's basic issues, and it showed marriage not as a happily ever after end-state but an active daily adventure.

Instead now there's no illusion of change. There's just no change...

[Snoop Dogg]

Ditko Peter was a nerdy but awesome little prick. So in other words, he was Ditko. Romita Peter was Archie because of John's romance roots. They handled such a drastic change really well, though.

Shooter, like every other editor, had his ups and downs. Other editors aren't fascists and have as many dumb rules, but Marvel needed a guy with rules back then to learn how to get books out on time. While I would never put him on a pedestal because he was a bad collaborator and signed off on one of the worst ideas in Marvel history, I generally don't think poorly of him because he made John Byrne mad a lot and wrote my favorite single issue of a comic.

[Snoop Dogg]

It's certainly an interesting topic of discussion, whether or not marrying superhero Archie is a worthwhile play. Maybe rushing into an abrupt marriage for a PR stunt less than three years after the Green DeFalco threw Mary Jane off a bridge and turned her into a new character was also a worthwhile play. Only time will tell.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

It's certainly an interesting topic of discussion, whether or not marrying superhero Archie is a worthwhile play.

Peter was only superhero Archie for a quick ten issues or so before settling with Gwen in Stan Lee's era. The fact that MJ wasn't forgotten right away kept that love triangle alive in theory but Peter was steady with Gwen. Likewise, in Lee-Ditko's era, everyone talks of Liz Allan as a love-interest even if she and Peter never even dated. Peter was always the guy to make a choice and commitment.

Maybe rushing into an abrupt marriage for a PR stunt less than three years after the Green DeFalco threw Mary Jane off a bridge and turned her into a new character was also a worthwhile play.

It wasn't Defalco who did that. Mary Jane's backstory as a child from a broken home was first suggested by Marv Wolfman who in #191 and #192 had Mary Jane mention in a thought bubble that her parents were divorced. Roger Stern was the one who came along then and suggested and created her entire family background. The whole sister Gail and so on. That was first referred to in Stern's greatest Spider-Man story, ''The Daydreamers'' (ASM #246).

Defalco merely built on and elaborated on what came before, like all writers did. His main innovation was the idea that Mary Jane knew at some point (he never said when, that was Gerry Conway) during their relationship that she knew Peter was Spider-Man.

This whole idea that MJ became a new character all of a sudden is an easily disprovable falsehood and demonstrably not true.

Only time will tell.

Time did tell...20 years, 810 issues (minimum) across all 616 Spider-Man stories. That's more stories with Peter and MJ together in a serial continuity than Lois and Clark. More stories than the number of issues in Fantastic Four.

Nothing with that much content is by any sane standards, a failure.

[WebSlingWonder]

Peter was only superhero Archie for a quick ten issues or so before settling with Gwen in Stan Lee's era. The fact that MJ wasn't forgotten right away kept that love triangle alive in theory but Peter was steady with Gwen. Likewise, in Lee-Ditko's era, everyone talks of Liz Allan as a love-interest even if she and Peter never even dated. Peter was always the guy to make a choice and commitment.



It wasn't Defalco who did that. Mary Jane's backstory as a child from a broken home was first suggested by Marv Wolfman who in #191 and #192 had Mary Jane mention in a thought bubble that her parents were divorced. Roger Stern was the one who came along then and suggested and created her entire family background. The whole sister Gail and so on. That was first referred to in Stern's greatest Spider-Man story, ''The Daydreamers'' (ASM #246).

Defalco merely built on and elaborated on what came before, like all writers did. His main innovation was the idea that Mary Jane knew at some point (he never said when, that was Gerry Conway) during their relationship that she knew Peter was Spider-Man.

This whole idea that MJ became a new character all of a sudden is an easily disprovable falsehood and demonstrably not true.



Time did tell...20 years, 810 issues (minimum) across all 616 Spider-Man stories. That's more stories with Peter and MJ together in a serial continuity than Lois and Clark. More stories than the number of issues in Fantastic Four.

Nothing with that much content is by any sane standards, a failure.

You keep saying 810 issues: where are you getting that number from???

[Revolutionary_Jack]

You keep saying 810 issues: where are you getting that number from???

I made that tally myself in this post here. That post actually included the relationship as a whole. i.e. Peter and MJ as a couple, either dating or marriage and I included all continuities both 616 and AU basically showing that the Peter/MJ is much bigger and more prominent than the Superman Lois relationship in terms of content and longevity alone.

For this sake, I am giving the tally just for the marriage:

616
Amazing Spider-Man :Peter and MJ get engaged and married from #292 to #545. (253 issues)

Spectacular Spider-Man: Peter and MJ are married between #131 to #263 (End of Vol. 1), (132 issues)
Peter and MJ are married for Paul Jenkins entire 27 issue run in Vol. 2 (27 issues)

Marvel Team-Up
Peter and MJ are married in Vol. 2 which goes for (11 issues).
Peter and MJ are married for in Vol. 3 (25 issues)

Annuals and One Shots and Miniseries
Amazing: 14 Annuals (Vol. 1 from 1987-2007), 3 Annuals (Vol. 2 from 1999-2004): (17)
Spectacular: 7 Annuals (From #7-#14), (7)
Sensational Spider-Man Annual #1 (To Have and to Hold) (1)
Total: 25 Issues

Miniseries and One-Shots: Parallel Lives, Hobgoblin Lives, Soul of the Hunter, Spider-Man: Blue, Revenge of the Green Goblin, The Final Adventure, Web of Romance, Spider-Man/Human Torch Issue #5,
Total: 8 Issues

Web of Spider-Man: Peter and MJ are married from #32-129 when it ended and go rebranded as Web of Scarlet Spider (97 Issues)
Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man: Peter and MJ are married for entire 24 Issue Run of Vol. 1 (24 Issues)
Marvel Knights: Spider Man/Sensational Spider-Man: Peter and MJ are married for 41 Issues (41 Issues)
Peter Parker Spider-Man: Vol.1 (98 Issues) and Vol. 2 (57) both showed a married Peter and MJ (155 Issues).
Spider-Man Unlimited (12 Issues, multiple volumes showing the marriage)

That number adds to 810...but that's only when I stopped counting. I am sure it's much more than that. My feeling is less than thousand and I was hoping for 500 but the number became bigger than that. I mean I haven't counted Peter and MJ's appearances in other Marvel titles at the time and so on. Stuff like New Avengers, or Slott's Avengers The Initiative which started out Pre-OMD and became Post-OMD midway.

[Snoop Dogg]

The backstory isn't making her a new character, that was just adding backstory. The idea that the original version of the character was a mask created in response to all this new stuff was. It's not a bad strategy, they did the same thing with Magneto and Bucky, among others. Make an entirely different character using the original stuff as your clay. But in this case I just don't like it. That's just me. But the idea behind the Parallel Lives retcon is so bad I'm still amazed it was printed.

By the 80's, the character had a love interest for every era. That was an established part of the ride. It didn't have to be, but maybe the time to consider locking things down on such a big part of the title wasn't when you had a book that couldn't go three years without changing hands with no end to publishing in sight.

[Scott Taylor]

Parallel Lives was the only time I was disappointed in Conway outside of the original Clone Saga. Both of those stories had so many bad ramifications and seem to have justified many bad decisions with Spider-Man.

For me, marriage should turn the screws more on Peter and make his stories more interesting. He needs supporting cast members to protect, especially those who do not know his secret identity. Cast members that he genuinely cares about and is committed to protecting. Right now the status quo feels like he protects everyone in New York at about the same commitment level, it seems. Which makes him feel more generic and effectively lowers the personal stakes for him.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

The backstory isn't making her a new character, that was just adding backstory.

You only add backstory if you want to make your character a fair bit more complex and shaded. Who wants the backstory of say Willie Lumpkin?

The idea that the original version of the character was a mask created in response to all this new stuff was. It's not a bad strategy, they did the same thing with Magneto and Bucky, among others. Make an entirely different character using the original stuff as your clay. But in this case I just don't like it.

The fact is that Mary Jane wasn't a party girl since the end of The Night Gwen Stacy Died. The minute you saw that iconic epilogue where MJ stays with Peter after he lashes out at her, it's impossible to believe or accept that there wasn't something more to her. And letters from Conway's run bear that out:

"Mary Jane is fast becoming my favorite character in the SPIDER-MAN book. This issue [ASM #127] reinforces that...Mary Jane has shown us all that her egotistical, sarcastic self was merely a put-on for a very tender-hearted interior; as Joni Mitchell said, in Clouds, "And if you care, don't let it show..." M.J. isn't as rock-hard as we all thought — she's covering up; she doesn't want to be weak...but she is. I can admire her, because for all her insecurities, she actually gives of herself, and has devoted almost all of her time to Peter in a vain attempt to cheer him up. M.J. is a real heroine, the best Marvel's got. Without her, would there even be a SPIDER-MAN worth reading? Probably not."
— Bob Rodi, Letter to the Editor, "The Spider's Web" Column, published in Amazing Spider-Man, #132 (May 1974)
"There was a time when it upset me even to see Peter speak to her, and now I’m beginning to think that if Peter ever unburdened himself (secret identity and all) to anyone, it should be Mary Jane."
— Nan Brower, Letter to the Editor, "The Spider's Web" Column, published in Amazing Spider-Man, #139 (December 1974)

Readers already predicted then what direction she would take in the later Spider-Titles.

Wolfman created that entire wacky proposal to write her out of the book and have relapse to Lee-Romita's character, and he had to rake her character over the coals and eventually he had to add in a sympathetic motivation because people saw right away what he was doing, so he put the divorce background. Then Stern brought MJ back, not with any real plan to make her and Peter a couple but certainly as an ex-flame and friend, and so on. Since Stern was all about plugging holes, he needed to answer why Aunt May believed MJ was right for Peter...so he had May say, "You two have lost so much" and invented her background. Where and how he would go from there is impossible to know.

That's just me. But the idea behind the Parallel Lives retcon is so bad I'm still amazed it was printed.

I personally liked it. And it pretty much checks out and works on rereading in the Lee-Romita era. (There's apparently just one thought bubble with MJ in that time so there's not a lot to contradict). And most of the Conway era, but perhaps not the Wein-Wolfman era. I mean read MJ's first appearance in #42-43 where she takes Peter to go see the Rhino...her knowing that it's Spider-Man makes that work. There's also this amazing commnt in ASM #87 when Gwen goes nuts at the idea that Peter could be Spider-Man:

Mary Jane: "Wow Gwendy, you sure can pick 'em. He's either a masked menace or a psycho case, take your pick!"
Gwen Stacy: (tears in her eyes) "Shut Up! No matter what he is—what he's done—don't you dare talk about him like that!"
Mary Jane: "Okay, Tigress! He's all yours!"

I mean if you read that with the retcon it just makes it hilarious and snarky. Like MJ is trolling Gwen for not being able to handle Peter's double life...

By the 80's, the character had a love interest for every era. That was an established part of the ride. It didn't have to be, but maybe the time to consider locking things down on such a big part of the title wasn't when you had a book that couldn't go three years without changing hands with no end to publishing in sight.

Except Mary Jane was always number 1. Even back then. She appeared alongside Peter in the hostess commercials. And she was there with Peter on a double date in Superman Vs. The Amazing Spider-Man, the first inter-company crossover where she and Peter go double-dating with Clark and Lois (essentially canonizing them as "the couple"). She was also there in the newspaper strip which had a wider reading public at the time than regular comics did around the world.

[Inversed]

616
Amazing Spider-Man :Peter and MJ get engaged and married from #292 to #545. (253 issues)

This is just a minor point, but I would probably say the era of #454 (v2 13) to #491 (v2 50) wouldn't count since that was when MJ was "dead" and then left so they were essentially separated for that period. They were technically considered still married, so it could work either way, I just think the number becomes more accurate for the ones where they're actually together.

I personally liked it. And it pretty much checks out and works on rereading in the Lee-Romita era. (There's apparently just one thought bubble with MJ in that time so there's not a lot to contradict). And most of the Conway era, but perhaps not the Wein-Wolfman era. I mean read MJ's first appearance in #42-43 where she takes Peter to go see the Rhino...her knowing that it's Spider-Man makes that work. There's also this amazing commnt in ASM #87 when Gwen goes nuts at the idea that Peter could be Spider-Man:

Mary Jane: "Wow Gwendy, you sure can pick 'em. He's either a masked menace or a psycho case, take your pick!"
Gwen Stacy: (tears in her eyes) "Shut Up! No matter what he is—what he's done—don't you dare talk about him like that!"
Mary Jane: "Okay, Tigress! He's all yours!"

I mean if you read that with the retcon it just makes it hilarious and snarky. Like MJ is trolling Gwen for not being able to handle Peter's double life...

Which is ironic considering MJ not being able to handle his double life is what took her so long to fully accept Peter as the one she loved.

[your_name_here]

I see OMD being reversed or at least...revenged. Mephisto pops up a lot and teased. The powers the be MUST know it is hated.

It’s comics, so it’s inevitable that one day a writer will undo something.