It's #149 and Mary Jane has the honor of officially making Peter Spider-Man in a way that even the spider never did when it bit him.
That's certainly true. It's a fact that while Peter's high school days are often revisited they tend to have some updates like Learning to Crawl inserts smartphones and other stuff in the L-D background but Peter's college era is often done in a Romita style throwback without any real updates.So my nitpick is more than anything else born of the place where Sins Past puts Peter and Gwen. One of the problems I see about writing 616 Gwen nowadays is that she’s such a product of the 60’s, and has been death for so long, that she cames out as an anachronism.
Like if it was in the 90s then the Coffee Bean gang should look like FRIENDS or Seinfeld. Spider-Man: Blue, To Have and to Hold and the flashbacks in Sins' Past has a strong late-60s and 70s vibe and look. The only time you got to see Peter's college era shown that way is the MTV Spider-Man cartoon and that lasted for one season...and Gwen wasn't there.
Peter was originally supposed to be the father but Quesada vetoed that saying he didn't want to suggest Peter and Gwen had premarital sex or didn't use protection (because if it's set in the 90s then its Post-AIDS so Peter should be using protection). Quesada then suggested Norman as the babydaddy which JMS said yes to...and man these two guys were just the worst fit for each other.It isn’t something that I care about, but Sins Past stating that it didn’t happen kinda of took me off balance, besides, it was a cheap way of getting rid of the chance that maybe Peter was the father
Sins' Past isn't the first time you had a plot like this. According to Jim Shooter, Bill Mantlo once pitched a story about Felicia Hardy having Peter's illegitimate child. Shooter told him to his face it ain't happening. Pointing out that doing so would bring the wrath of the Bible Belt down on them and scare away all the people who are marketing Spider-man's license for kids. Marvel signed contracts with companies using the license that they would never have Spider-Man get into plots like that. Incidentally Spider-Man PS4 had a plotline like that with Felicia Hardy scaring Peter about maybe having his kid and Peter's all scared and panicked about it. That turned out to be another Black Cat con...