Marriage! Marriage!
The most recent issue shows the storytelling advantages of having a Peter and MJ who haven't taken that next step. This is a different version of stories that can really only be done with a single Peter Parker, even if he's happily with MJ in a monogamous relationship.
Sincerely,
Thomas Mets
Talk about misrepresenting the issue.
1 - The issue is explicitly alluding and referring to the fact that Peter and MJ are a married couple whose status was retconned by an external inorganic retcon that has fractured the characters. It's not by any means comparable to the stories featuring Peter and MJ written before their marriage during the runs of Conway, Stern, Defalco and early Michelinie.
2 - Most of the emotions that the issue hits, and hits well, was done by JMS in his run featuring the marriage.
Regardless of the original intent of One More Day, I still think that it was more regressive than progressive, doing more harm than good in practically edging close to character assassination all for the sake of keeping an old status quo. I'd go so far as to say that the harmful effects can be felt in The Amazing Spider-Man even to this day.
Sincerely,
Thomas Mets
That story was seriously a dark time for Spider-Man fans. You’re not exaggerating when you say those effects are still felt to this day. There were plenty of fans that just flat out gave up on the title around that time myself included. Joe Q regressed the character so much and the preference that he has with keeping Peter his personal man child just got too weird for me. To this day, it still stands out as the single worst Spider-Man story ever and nothing else even comes remotely close.
Hopefully these recent events in ASM aren’t just another way for Joe Q and Marvel to tease fans and lead them
on only to to leave them hanging at the end.
Sorry. That mindset is wrong. You can most definitely tell high quality stories of this nature with a married Peter. Joe Q and company kept throwing this mindset at us saying that “the marriage holds us back” and that there were so many stories they couldn’t tell because of the marriage. Now honestly what high quality amazing stories have actually taken place because he’s single after OMD?
The problem that the character suffers from is that Marvel seems scared to let him progress and prefers him to be this man child who lives in his parents basement for the rest of his life.
Last edited by RD155; 09-11-2019 at 08:40 PM.
Doctor Strange: "You are the right person to replace Logan."
X-23: "I know there are people who disapprove... Guys on the Internet mainly."
(All-New Wolverine #4)
The very first images of Spencer's run is a homage to Fraction's ''To Have and To Hold" which is very obviously a story about a married Peter (and which Spencer hints isn't in continuity, since Peter says "he had a dream about how things should be"...thereby destroying the whole "Every story before happened" trash that Quesada and others sold).
I'd like to see you run rings around the Fraction story to make a case of how it could be the same without the marriage. And how Spencer alluding it isn't referring to the obvious fact that Peter and Mary Jane are one of the most iconic married couples in all of superhero comics.
At best, you can say that Spencer's run depends on the fact that Peter and MJ were married and that OMD happened, if only because he has consistently alluded to OMD and made that a key undercurrent of his entire run. It's a meta-commentary which Spencer does like to do, and does well. But that's not the same as saying it's the same as a Peter and MJ who never married or were always single and so on.
JMS mined the same fears and ideas, that Peter could lose Mary Jane multiple times in his run. It was what Doomed Affairs was all about. In fact, the whole Peter trying to make it to the airport to see off MJ alludes to Doomed Affairs, that later issue where Peter dropped off MJ at the airport and avoided saying goodbye to her outside the airport which also highlighted the changes in security after 9/11. That also alludes to the Peter and MJ's first kiss at the JFK airport lounge (obviously Pre-9/11 since nobody would be let in that way now).
spencer's first issue was explicitly about how the marriage is missing, complete with a closeup of mj's bare left hand. if omd didn't happen then spencer would have no need to dwell on why the previous writer's issues were missing something so you're comparing apples to oranges. the emotional beats could easily have been done within the marriage, see jms's doomed affairs for similiar emotional realizations.
as for this issue the story is about peter being unable to be with mj for an important event because his life as spider-man interferred. a variation of this story was told a gazillion times during the marriage.
I would say its less specifically a reference to Doomed Affairs and the JMS stuff, and I think commenting on the whole "MJ gets planed" trope. Because this has happened SO MANY TIMES with her its kind of funny now:
-When they first kiss right before the first Clone Saga
-When she leaves after the first marriage proposal
-When she "died"
-When she leaves to recover right before JMS' run
-Right after OMD/OMIT
-Right after Superior
-Now
Difference is that now we not only get to see them stay in touch, but that she's moving over into her own book rather than in a "waiting purgatory" for the moment, so her story is still continuing rather than being on pause.