you now have an endless amount of felicia stories that can be told by pulling from the crime boss arc, even more than the thieves guild connection, so at least jed can do more than heist plots for 12 issues
you now have an endless amount of felicia stories that can be told by pulling from the crime boss arc, even more than the thieves guild connection, so at least jed can do more than heist plots for 12 issues
I don't blind date I make the direct market vibrate
He did want to use her at first, she was a big part of Big Time and Superior, but then by the end of that they had her do the "get on a plane" schtick again and was basically out of the book for the rest of the run except for Power Play and Go Down Swinging. Which I think is ultimately due to him thinking he did everything he wanted/could do with her, and so decided it would be easier to not find reasons to get her involved. I feel like if he did know what Spencer was planning, he found out long after he already wrote the script, just because nothing that happens there really connects to what Spencer did, to the point where he had to retroactively come up with a reason afterwards why *now* of all times was when they decided to reconcile.
The transition would have been easier if Peter and MJ romantically connecting at the end of "Threat Level Red" and the beginning of "Go Down Swinging" has not been tainted by MJ freaking out at Peter's costume and pushing him away again. Spencer had a lot to fix with that scene, but he was able to pull another moment from that story as the catalyst for their reunion. "Life is short and you are hot" is how I best sum it up (and it's a Doctor Who reference to boot)
it wasn't about the tease it was about immonen drawing more yummy smooches mwah mwah mwah
I don't blind date I make the direct market vibrate
But that's the thing. You talk about how he wrote her out after Superior, but he still wrote her fairly regularly. The cameo at the beginning of vol. 3, RYV, Power Play, and GDS. (I'm not going to count various alternate appearances in Spider-Verse. But I am counting RYV as RYV-MJ was a major character in that story, and it ended up tying into Power Play in a way that is still unexplained.)
Superior? Where MJ kind of left Peter to pick up his messed up life to shack up with "Pedro" the firefighter?
Man, that was a trip .
Yeah, or even if you had them making out but Peter cut it off because he hears sirens outside or something, because then you could buy her hesitation slightly bit more. Just looking at the costume and freaking out makes no sense, especially when literally the last issue had MJ covering for Peter, picking up his clothes, and telling him she missed all of that. Very awkward inconsistencies.
I'll give you RYV, but even then that would still only be 3 story arcs, about 14 issues within 4 years, so I wouldn't necessarily consider that fairly regularly.
(I didn't really count minor cameos like at the beginning of Vol. 3, the beginning of Clone Conspiracy, or beginning of Fall Of Parker)
But that's the thing. Minor (slightly off-panel) cameos was basically how they built up MJ's importance during the Lee/Ditko days. (There's a reason Gerry Conway thought the character should have been more important than she had been.)
Even when MJ had been shipped off to Iron Man, she would still appear in Slott's ASM run. She had a significant role in three storylines after her exit in Superior, and made several noticeable cameo appearances in other stories (as we have noted). Including one that came out directly after her "exit" (ASM Vol. 3 #1).
It's clear he wanted to use her, but he didn't want her to get back with Peter, and he couldn't think of anything else for her to do, so he ended up repeating the same beats with her.
I think the mess they made in GDS and Spencer's first issue (in regards to MJ and Peter) probably comes down to Slott and Spencer not communicating, and editorial not working on a more seamless transition. Slott probably wanted to give his successor free reign. And Spencer wanted to lean in on Peter/MJ.
I wonder what a smoother transition would have looked like.
(I'm not one of those people who thinks Slott hates MJ or that he hates the idea of Peter/MJ. The PS4 game ends with Peter/MJ getting back together. But I think he lived in the shadow of OMD, and that impacted his run on Spider-Man.)
I think that was more on Insomniac then something Slott would have pushed for.
Honestly, from his writing, I don't think he's excessively anti-MJ or anti-Peter/MJ, but I don't think he cared much for them overall. Some of Slott's work with MJ came off as she was just there because she was expected to be rather then Slott felt creatively energized writing for her. But that's just my takeaway.
I am amazed that people think Slott actually wrote that game. Just take a look at the game's credits. Look at it on youtube or IMDB. There's an entire writing team, headed by John Paquette who was lead writer. With additional side credits given to Christos Gage, while Slott's main credit is 'Additional Lines'. Slott was important mainly as source material, like they drew on Big Time, and on Mister Negative. So they looked at his original stories. For the game's version of MJ they drew mostly on Bendis' work in USM, where she becomes a journalist in the later part of the run. And it was Christos Gage more than Slott who worked on that. Heck look at the current Spider-Man City at War comics, Slott isn't credited there either. Only John Paquette.
Anyway, I don't actually care about Slott's motivations, likes or dislikes. I don't think he wrote Spider-Man well period. That includes all characters including Aunt May. I mean we're talking about a guy who wanted to make May a bigot, and had to be reminded by others that May supported civil rights in the Wein era, and ultimately decided to make May abrasive to Anna Maria Marconi out of ableism. I mean we're talking about a person who shaped and gave Peter his moral values, and he decides he's going to undermine that, why? I mean there are actually Spider-Man characters with dodgy politics, Gwen Stacy worked for a legit white supremacist in the pages. In general Slott did better with his own newly created characters than he did with the traditional supporting cast.
I don't think saying Slott disliked Spider-Man is fair, because that's neither here nor there. That said, I can understand why people have that impression and using Slott's own public statements is neither here nor there. Not all creators, even great and talented ones (in which company I don't actually include Slott needless to say), are always honest 100% of the time. Some of them tend to outright lie repeatedly, even to, and especially to, fans. We also live in an age of social media and so on, and that means people are interviewed more often and asked for their opinions far more often than before. So that creates a pretty large echo chamber and so on. The best Spider-Man story Slott did was Spider-Man/Human Torch and that was Pre-OMD, and all mostly inserting stuff into pre-existing status-quo by other writers. It also had Ty Templeton on art. It's also a story that's basically telling it from Johnny Storm's POV so I guess you can say that Slott has difficulty getting into Peter's POV and looking at him from the outside, but again that's not a bad approach inherently speaking. A number of good stories have been written using that approach.
I think if he actually hated MJ or the idea of Peter/MJ, he wouldn't have pushed for RYV.
I just think he was in the shadow of OMD, and he had no interest in going back to Peter/MJ in his run because of that. (RYV being an exception, of course.)
(As for the game, I'm well aware that a number of people also worked on crafting the game's story. Gage probably did quite a bit of the heavy lifting from Marvel. But if Slott were on some kind of anti-MJ agenda, he wouldn't have been involved with the project at all.)
The only reason she was in Iron Man was because Slott had no plans to use her for probably a long while, so Bendis snatched her up because then she probably would've just disappeared for a bit. So that seems fairly sure that he didn't really want to use her alot, which I do think has to do with like you said, not knowing what to do with her beyond teasing a romance he would never do. Outside of the AU, the only other stories she plays some kind of a role in are basically an Iron Man crossover, and his final arc.
Yeah I feel the exact same way, I thought he used her really well during Big Time and in RYV, its just clear he doesn't see her as being essential, and instead had a lot of different ideas he wanted to explore and put focus on.
* giggles in parallax *
i sometimes get on better with people who have different tastes to mine. seeking out people who reflect my opinions back at me... just ain’t that appealing
it’s more about the person and how they conduct themselves than whether or not they think mj was a hot reward for peter’s goodness
“with great responsibility comes a hot wifey!”- what uncle ben really said
troo fan or death