The 10 Most Important Mary Jane Stories

[Mister Mets]

Patrick Mocella of CBR posts his list of the ten most important Mary Jane stories.

https://www.cbr.com/spider-man-mary-...marvel-comics/

Some of these don't seem to match the title. Her first appearance should be rated higher than ninth if the criteria is importance.

[Batman Begins 2005]

Mary Jane Watson's debut, Doomed Affairs and Confessions from Ultimate Spider-Man #13 (that really should have made it) are the MJ stories that come to mind when I think about the character.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Interesting list. I think we can quibble about the rankings and so on.

I would personally add Kraven's Last Hunt (because Mary Jane is absolutely the emotional center of that story), Roger Stern's "The Daydreamers", Gerry Conway's ASM#149, the end of the First Clone Saga, where Peter definitively moved on from Gwen to MJ.

But again this is a character with some 1000+ appearances so I am sure you could pick a lot more than this.

[Confuzzled]

Great list. Nice to see Web of Romance and Parallel Lives finally get the recognition they deserve.

A minor quibble I have is whether "The Night Gwen Stacy Died" really counts as a "Mary Jane story" despite having a watershed moment for the character in the very last page. Would trade it for Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa's Sensational Spider-Man story from MJ's POV.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

A minor quibble I have is whether "The Night Gwen Stacy Died" really counts as a "Mary Jane story" despite having a watershed moment for the character in the very last page. Would trade it for Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa's Sensational Spider-Man story from MJ's POV.

The latter is good but too sentimental and it mostly just editorializes the original story. I mean the epilogue of ASM#122 is one of the single most iconic pages in Spider-Man history and considered to be Romita's finest character work.

Besides Night Gwen Stacy Died is fundamentally not a story about Gwen. She's barely in it, the story of her death mostly just uses her as a prop. If you want stories where Gwen is important as a character, then ASM#87 and ASM #91-92 are that.

[Lee]

Strongly disagree with #1. I don't think Mary Jane is defined by her ability to beat up highly skilled super-villains, or that the most important Mary Jane comic ever is one that had no impact on the future of the series and has been out of print for over 20 years.

I mean the epilogue of ASM#122 is one of the single most iconic pages in Spider-Man history and considered to be Romita's finest character work.

Romita's inking is good, but shouldn't credit also be given to penciller Gil Kane?