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

[Miles To Go]

"If you don't like it, don't read it or dwell on it."
Ironic, no?

There's a difference between dwelling on an opinion, and dwelling on how much an ongoing narrative affects one's enjoyment.

With someone's opinion, you can disagree with it and leave it at that, but an ongoing narrative that discards twenty years of canon and moves along like nothing prior was consequential to it is going to evoke emotional responses and affects how they view the franchise. You can't entirely disagree with the narrative and leave it at that because to do so would mean either becoming wilfully negligent on what comes next (like I am with Pokemon after the Orange Islands or pretending everything after Batman#50 doesn't exist), or no longer investing in the franchise/narrative and thus cannot be in a position to judge whether it's good or bad years down the line when you feel compelled to debate the highs and lows of the era with someone.

I too dwell on OMD, but I enjoy the current product...it's not entirely ideal for me as I'd much rather the last ten years be erased or at the very least modified to suit a marriage narrative in the manner Superman Reborn did to N52 continuity, but I'm getting the most out of what's come after.

[WebSlingWonder]

There's a difference between dwelling on an opinion, and dwelling on how much an ongoing narrative affects one's enjoyment.

With someone's opinion, you can disagree with it and leave it at that, but an ongoing narrative that discards twenty years of canon and moves along like nothing prior was consequential to it is going to evoke emotional responses and affects how they view the franchise. You can't entirely disagree with the narrative and leave it at that because to do so would mean either becoming wilfully negligent on what comes next (like I am with Pokemon after the Orange Islands or pretending everything after Batman#50 doesn't exist), or no longer investing in the franchise/narrative and thus cannot be in a position to judge whether it's good or bad years down the line when you feel compelled to debate the highs and lows of the era with someone.

I too dwell on OMD, but I enjoy the current product...it's not entirely ideal for me as I'd much rather the last ten years be erased or at the very least modified to suit a marriage narrative in the manner Superman Reborn did to N52 continuity, but I'm getting the most out of what's come after.

That's all well and good: but enabling people to still be bitter about the last ten years does not help either.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

...

All due respect. Let it go. I know that some people are tired of this debate and so on, or feel there isn't anything new. Me, I don't see how complaining about OMD is any different from complaining about Avengers #200 or Chuck Austen's X-Men, or for Lois Lane fans, those '50s comics which still colors how a lot of people see her even today (and which certainly inspired the character assassination in Superman: Truth)...the major difference is that those comics were eventually overturned, but had they remained in place, there would still be kvetching and justifiably so. But I can well imagine that for a lot of people even that and other stuff is tired and dead.

I have sympathy for people who don't or can't separate different pieces of an ongoing series when later installments recontextualize past ones, since I'm very much that way myself. Reading old ASM issues, it bugs me knowing that OMD happens in the characters' future, to the point that I "have" use the escape hatch that Spider-Girl and RYV also use those back issues as part of their continuities, so I'm "really" reading about the MC2 and RYV characters, not the 616 ones.

See to me...OMD only ruins stories going forward...it doesn't affect my enjoyment of earlier issues. It only creates problems when I see stories allude to stuff that happen in the marriage continuity but the allusion refers to an emotional context and characters so alien and foreign from the current continuity, that it makes it impossible to read. The only way Post-OMD is enjoyable is if you come in cold and read just Slott's run and don't read any stories before that. I mean that's the audience it was made for. The problem is that this isn't sustainable, because comics readers aren't small kids, they are a minority, and I am not even sure if there is such a thing as a "casual" comics reader for 616 Continuity, and if there is they will be reading stuff like Miles Morales, Spider-Gwen and USM. Earlier casual comics readers read the newspaper strip...though obviously that has shrunk to a smaller number now.

My big problem with OMD is that in terms of long-term serialized continuity, the Spider-Man who started in Amazing Fantasy #15 doesn't really have a proper ending and conclusion since that character died in that story. My personal cutting off point is Matt Fraction's To Have and to Hold and Sensaional Spider-Man #40. But neither are entirely sufficient. In terms of publication history, Post-OMD Spider-Man has no direct claim or lineage to the Spider-Man of Amazing Fantasy #15. The Married Spider-Man does...and when they erased that marriage and basically created this utter piece of crap explanation, they pretty much created their own Post-Crisis Spider-Man...except without the satisfaction and freshness that the John Byrne Man of Steel and Post-Crisis DC era actually started with. It's literally the worst idea of a reboot since all you can do is spin wheels and distract people from the fact that

A) there's not going to be any change going forward, not even illusions of it, with the only real suspense and hope being teasing a reversal and return of the marriage.

B) the entire set-up, where Peter Parker is locked in a fantasy a la Brazil or The Truman Show is entirely demoralizing and depressing,

C) You are creating out of entire cloth in a writer's room a status-quo that is not organically built on top of, or extend stories from the earlier writer...and as such you are basically creating a version of Spider-Man and his mythos that never existed before.

The only way to resolve B) and C) is to have Post-OMD Peter and MJ remember the Pre-OMD world. The problem is that once that happens, there isn't too many satisfying ways to keep Peter and MJ unmarried, uncommitted (at least permanently) and on friendly enough terms that they still can be in a relationship off-and-on, but that Peter can date other girls...it would make Peter look like an adulterer. I mean as it stands, Post-OMD Peter Parker is a womanizer and he's basically Ross-from-FRIENDS, a character who is now utterly re-evaluated and revealed as the piece-of-crap that he is but that's a memo that Quesada and Slott didn't get. Since OMD, Peter has dated/had casual sex, and random encounters with...that Michelle Girl, with Felicia Hardy (as friends-with-benefits), Carlie Cooper, Lian Tang, Cindy Moon, Bobbi Morse. In that same time, Mary Jane has dated two guys...Bobby Carr, and Pedro Oliveira (and since Pedro is portuguese for Peter...it's basically a rebound for Peter). And in comic book time, OMD-OMIT happened I guess two years before the current status-quo, so 6 girls in 2 years after a breakup with this intense live-in love affair and so on and an extended period of post-breakup blues...and a period of time when his body was hijacked by Dr. Ock. Yep, Peter's a casanova. And comic book time means this will be reset and updated so basically...Peter will be mid-20s, no older at 27 at the latest. Now Peter and MJ are dating again, but if they have Peter and MJ break-up again, or get back with Carlie and Black Cat and so on...or date other random girls here an there going forward...that problem will become bigger. The fact is that Peter was always the marrying kind, always wanted relationships, and he isn't a womanizer type. Having him and MJ get married settled that but once you remove that and basically use that as an excuse for Peter to start dating as many girls as he wants and keep him young and so on...eventually there will be more and more girls while he stays the same, and he's going to look like a creep.

Are you that different? From my experience, the pro and anti-OMD camps are both extreme views that are based more on personal preference then any hard evidence or logic.

I am different because my argument is based on facts, grounded in empirical reasoning and actual publication history of the character, and also the cold fact that the marriage was popular when it happened and remained so, and it certainly didn't cause any problems with sales and creating new stories and characters. It also didn't prevent young audiences from relating to Spider-Man. I am a millennial, born a year or so after Spider-Man Annual #21, and I related to Spider-Man as a kid because he got married. The entire logic of OMD and BND rests on the assumptions that readers like me do not exist. They never had an argument for people like me. The whole idea that Spider-Man should be single to young audiences and so on is based on the idea that the marriage made Spider-Man unrelatable to young kids. When it did no such thing. Quesada and others pretend that OMD and so on was disliked by long-term fans and so on but would be liked by younger readers...when what it did do was piss off milennials. I mean the whole argument trotted out about the marriage that Quesada used is "one generation selfishly claiming a character and preventing others from knowing the character as he was originally conceived"...well Quesada and his generation (baby boomers and post-baby boomers) are denying future generations access to the greatest and longest-sustaining status-quo in Spider-Man, one that owing to the fact that it existed when the comics market is bigger than now, was read far more widely than Post-OMD Spider-Man ever will. The married Spider-Man appealed and was liked by new readers far more than old ones.

So long as Pro-BND and so on do not address readers like me and acknowledge my existence and so on, and present a new defense based on the idea that there were young readers who related to a married Spider-Man and so on...there's not going to be any consensus. The only consensus that both agree on is that OMD is a terrible story and the worst Spider-Man story ever and I can't imagine it being nice for people who like Post-BND and Slott to accept and acknowledge that OMD and OMIT are terrible but are essential to their enjoyment of Slott's and other stories, and both are fundamentally more important than Slott's stories ever could be.

[Miles To Go]

All due respect. Let it go..

Dude, I was agreeing with you.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Dude, I was agreeing with you.

I know that, and I am glad...but look I can argue and defend myself. I don't like the idea of piling on another poster, on my behalf. Just as I have a right to protest OMD and so on, others have a right to protest me and my posts and express dissatisfaction at continuing that argument. I made a bunch of other statements and ideas, you can argue that you know.

[WebSlingWonder]

I know that, and I am glad...but look I can argue and defend myself. I don't like the idea of piling on another poster, on my behalf. Just as I have a right to protest OMD and so on, others have a right to protest me and my posts and express dissatisfaction at continuing that argument. I made a bunch of other statements and ideas, you can argue that you know.

I actually really respect that stance. That's more level-headed than what I was being. I apologize for my snarkiness and dismissive attitude.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

I actually really respect that stance. That's more level-headed than what I was being. I apologize for my snarkiness and dismissive attitude.

See we can in fact agree to disagree. In my defense, while OMD arguments are old hat here...it's not to me because until the last few months (you can tell if you hit my profile that I signed on to CBR recently), I never debated this online. I was one of the readers who dropped 616 completely when OMD happened. I followed happenings in comics presses and I did read up Slott's Dying Wish and the first two issues of Superior Spider-Man before dropping it. But it's only when Nick Spencer came back that I actually started catching up on Slott. Knowing that the entire horrible era now has a definite close makes reading it a more tolerable experience. And then I saw old arguments defending OMD and so on come and in the meantime I had done research and I thought I could find new arguments to counter it. That's all.

I mean the fact is you are going to get a lot more new voices to hate on OMD as time passes.

[Miles To Go]

Sorry Jack, I meant well and didn't intend to baby.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

...

It's not me you should be apologizing to. You were trying to help me you know. I recognize that.

[Scott Taylor]

B) the entire set-up, where Peter Parker is locked in a fantasy a la Brazil or The Truman Show is entirely demoralizing and depressing,

C) You are creating out of entire cloth in a writer's room a status-quo that is not organically built on top of, or extend stories from the earlier writer...and as such you are basically creating a version of Spider-Man and his mythos that never existed before.

The only way to resolve B) and C) is to have Post-OMD Peter and MJ remember the Pre-OMD world. The problem is that once that happens, there isn't too many satisfying ways to keep Peter and MJ unmarried, uncommitted (at least permanently) and on friendly enough terms that they still can be in a relationship off-and-on, but that Peter can date other girls...it would make Peter look like an adulterer.

Just to touch on this - even if Peter and MJ remember OMD and the timeline that is now gone they still are under the current timeline rather than the old one. That doesn't have to change. So they aren't actually married now, even though they were. No papers, no rings, no wedding. Didn't happen. So Peter would not be an adulterer. They might think twice about reprising the marriage for a new reason though - they know the devil will fight it. To me thats a more interesting reason for them not to be together than "oh, I don't know, your past and my past and commitment and stuff, blah blah blah"

[WebSlingWonder]

See we can in fact agree to disagree. In my defense, while OMD arguments are old hat here...it's not to me because until the last few months (you can tell if you hit my profile that I signed on to CBR recently), I never debated this online. I was one of the readers who dropped 616 completely when OMD happened. I followed happenings in comics presses and I did read up Slott's Dying Wish and the first two issues of Superior Spider-Man before dropping it. But it's only when Nick Spencer came back that I actually started catching up on Slott. Knowing that the entire horrible era now has a definite close makes reading it a more tolerable experience. And then I saw old arguments defending OMD and so on come and in the meantime I had done research and I thought I could find new arguments to counter it. That's all.

I mean the fact is you are going to get a lot more new voices to hate on OMD as time passes.

All that is true. Spencer's run is a god-send for bringing people back to why Spider-Man is indeed the world's greatest superhero.

Virtual high-five?

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Just to touch on this - even if Peter and MJ remember OMD and the timeline that is now gone they still are under the current timeline rather than the old one. That doesn't have to change.

True enough. My ideal scenario is Pre-OMD Peter and MJ being in some corner of the Spider-Verse returning and telling everyone that the Peter we've seen since OMD is not the one true Peter Parker but another alternate version, and that Mephisto's deal merely switched and transferred both to other dimensions. That is my dream scenario but I don't think it will happen. Doing so would go down better than the Clone Saga, because...the idea that the Peter we've seen OMD is not the real Peter Parker is harder to contest than telling people that the Peter who faced the Burglar in #200, stared down the Juggernaut, romanced Black Cat, fought the Owl/Octopus War, met the Kid who Collected Spider-Man, wore the Alien Costume, fought Firelord, the Sin Eater, killed Charlie, married Mary Jane, got buried by Kraven, faced off Venom, buried Harry Osborn and so on...is not the real Peter Parker but a clone. Instead we're telling people that the Peter who romanced Carlie Cooper, got brain-jacked by Dr. Octopus, committed plagiarism, had a bunch of rando love affairs, became a millionaire tool and so on...is an alternate version of Peter from another part. He is a Peter Parker but not the Peter Parker from AF #15, which is pretty much true in essence.

OMD is impossible to accept because it's telling us that Peter and MJ didn't marry and that the marriage was not relevant to KLH, the Venom Saga, the Clone Saga (whose whole raison d'etre was finding a way to do single Peter Parker after he got married) and so on. It's telling us ultimately that the Peter and Mary Jane who remained faithful and devoted to one another after Kraven, after Venom, during Maximum Carnage, the insanity of the clone issues, Identity Crisis, the entire death/separation, Doomed Affairs, and so on...and of course To have and to Hold and Web of Romance weren't married...and that's just impossible to accept.

Virtual high-five?

Up top!

[Miles To Go]

True enough. My ideal scenario is Pre-OMD Peter and MJ being in some corner of the Spider-Verse returning and telling everyone that the Peter we've seen since OMD is not the one true Peter Parker but another alternate version, and that Mephisto's deal merely switched and transferred both to other dimensions.

That's been my long-standing headcanon for Renew Your Vows. And still is.

[WebSlingWonder]

That's been my long-standing headcanon for Renew Your Vows. And still is.

Yes! Spider-Man Reborn needs to happen.

[Mister Mets]

Uncle Ben's death is not intentional, nor is Gwen Stacy's death (and even that one has an air of ambiguity to it). In the case of that one it's unambiguous that Peter killed someone and saying otherwise is I think close to Zack Snyder's description of "manslaughter not murder" when describing Batman's conduct in BVS.



There has never been an instance where a 20 something kid who suddenly became a captain of industry lost it all, and few months later became a national disgrace for a plagiarism scandal (for which Peter is obviously guilty since he never turned in his graduate degree when he had the chance) lost everything ever recovered and bounced back. Academically Peter's reputation going forward will be tainted and have a black mark with all his future contributions and so on having questions raised about it.



Winston Churchill was an aristocrat born rich and was a servant to the British Empire...he comes from a class and lived in an era where a good part of England's political and social class had a black mark on them...and where such stuff wasn't held against them. There's nothing to compare him with anyone from a more contemporary era and to someone from a very low class.



Hollywood actors and media celebrities are not the same thing. Those are careers with ups and downs, setbacks...."you're only as good as your last film" and so on.

In the case of Peter Parker, he's a scientist. That means reputation, accountability, credibility, and integrity. In Parker Industries he commanded his own business. So that means profits and so on. Peter being a honest scientist who destroyed his business and fired and laid off employees for the greater good...is an example of "good people not being good at business" and so on, but it also means that socially Peter would always be seen as the loser, and Robbie Robertson calls him out for laying people off. He's no longer the working-class hero once he employs and fires actual working-class people, regardless of his good reasons for doing so. As a scientist, that plagiarism thing, which he is totally guilt off...in the sense that anyone in real life who profits of a degree they knowingly know is not earned by their own efforts would be treated that way...that stuff will be there for good.

The argument that Peter Parker will never be able to recover his reputation is an interesting one, and as far as I can tell, a new one. The novelty of it does negate one element of it. How can anyone that it is widely understood that Peter Parker will never be able to recover his reputation if no one else has articulated this yet?

It may be difficult for Peter to recover his reputation, although that has the potential for an interesting story. If he weren't a superhero, this would be the setback in a biofilm, sort of like Steve Jobs after he got forced out of Apple, made some ugly and public comments regarding his ex-girlfriend and the paternity of their child, and bombed with the launch of the NeXT computer. America is full of interesting comebacks, and a truth is that someone who was at the top and fell is more likely to reach those heights in the future than a random person at the bottom of an industry.

True enough. My ideal scenario is Pre-OMD Peter and MJ being in some corner of the Spider-Verse returning and telling everyone that the Peter we've seen since OMD is not the one true Peter Parker but another alternate version, and that Mephisto's deal merely switched and transferred both to other dimensions. That is my dream scenario but I don't think it will happen. Doing so would go down better than the Clone Saga, because...the idea that the Peter we've seen OMD is not the real Peter Parker is harder to contest than telling people that the Peter who faced the Burglar in #200, stared down the Juggernaut, romanced Black Cat, fought the Owl/Octopus War, met the Kid who Collected Spider-Man, wore the Alien Costume, fought Firelord, the Sin Eater, killed Charlie, married Mary Jane, got buried by Kraven, faced off Venom, buried Harry Osborn and so on...is not the real Peter Parker but a clone. Instead we're telling people that the Peter who romanced Carlie Cooper, got brain-jacked by Dr. Octopus, committed plagiarism, had a bunch of rando love affairs, became a millionaire tool and so on...is an alternate version of Peter from another part. He is a Peter Parker but not the Peter Parker from AF #15, which is pretty much true in essence.

OMD is impossible to accept because it's telling us that Peter and MJ didn't marry and that the marriage was not relevant to KLH, the Venom Saga, the Clone Saga (whose whole raison d'etre was finding a way to do single Peter Parker after he got married) and so on. It's telling us ultimately that the Peter and Mary Jane who remained faithful and devoted to one another after Kraven, after Venom, during Maximum Carnage, the insanity of the clone issues, Identity Crisis, the entire death/separation, Doomed Affairs, and so on...and of course To have and to Hold and Web of Romance weren't married...and that's just impossible to accept.




Up top!

How would the swap work exactly? What happened to the Peter and Mj who made the deal with Mephisto? Did they just find themselves in an empty hotel room with everything the same?

Readers have also been used to the idea that the Spider-Man in adventures published decades ago had to experience things slightly differently than in the comics due to the anachronisms in the sliding timescale.

"a marriage with Scarlett Johansson"

Thats got to have left a mark!

We've been around the horn so many times about OMD that all there is left are sides to take. The arguments have been had. One of the huge reasons I wish it were just completely erased (ala Byrne's reboot) and irrelevant to the current status quo is that it would then go away and stop causing these arguments.

We would just have different arguments.