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  1. #16
    I'm at least a C-Lister! exile001's Avatar
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    This is really interesting to me, and I kinda wish we did have twitter or message boards back when things like a character death was unexpected, final and most importantly rare.

    I grew up knowing Spider-man lost a girlfriend before ever reading a Spider-man comic. It's like Vader being Luke's dad, it's just such common knowledge (within the comics community). I'd love to pour through the variety of raw opinion and thought on this when it was fresh.

    I remember when Amazing Spider-man #700 dropped and the Spider-man community exploded! I imagine it would have been somewhat similar.
    "Has Sariel summoned you here, Azrael? Have you come to witness the miracle of your brethren arriving on Earth?"

    "I WILL MIX THE ASHES OF YOUR BONES WITH SALT AND USE THEM TO ENSURE THE EARTH THE TEMPLARS TILLED NEVER BEARS FRUIT AGAIN!"

    "*sigh* I hoped it was for the miracle."

    Dan Watters' Azrael was incredible, a constant delight and perhaps too good for this world (but not the Forth). For the love of St. Dumas, DC, give us more!!!

  2. #17
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    Quote Originally Posted by exile001 View Post
    This is really interesting to me, and I kinda wish we did have twitter or message boards back when things like a character death was unexpected, final and most importantly rare.
    The letters pages you get here are more or less as close as you get. You also get more interesting stuff from old fan magazines and so on. Like for instance, one year after Gwen died, there was this pretty interesting bit from the magazine ''Comic Book Market Place'', where one writer took Roy Thomas' lazy defense in ASM#125 that Gwen had to die because if she lived then Peter and her would've married, which was just some CYA that Roy threw out and wasn't reflective of anyone's intent at the time. Gwen was killed because she wasn't a very good character, she had become expendable and in so far as Gwen's designated role as "heroine of the books" went, there was somebody else who filled that role better than she did, and who indeed took that role and held on to it since then. Anyway this letter goes like this.

    "Since they couldn’t marry Peter and Gwen, they say it was ‘inescapable’ — Gwen had to die. Not only is this a glaring and desperate attempt to absolve themselves of creative responsibility in the eyes of fans, it brings up an even more disturbing question: Was the writing staff so unable to think of any other potential avenues for the character’s fate? Couldn’t Gwen simply have left town, met someone else, gotten a job? Since when is a brutal demise the only alternative for a female character besides marriage? The misogynistic implications of this thinking are staggering."
    — Arnold T. Blumberg "Comic Book Market Place", one year after the story's publication.

    Blumberg basically anticipates the criticisms we now have about fridging and so on. Gwen's death is really dubious. On one hand it's textbook fridging but on the other hand, she really was a bland, disposable character, and ASM#121-122, and especially #122 really is a classic issue, and pretty much excellent comics storytelling.

    I grew up knowing Spider-man lost a girlfriend before ever reading a Spider-man comic.
    The funny thing is I didn't. It's kind of lost to comics readers how little Gwen's death was known to "casual fans". For me Spider-Man was the newspaper strip and then Raimi's movies, and then after that I got into comics. It was Spider-Man: Blue that served as my introduction to Gwen. But she wasn't in any of the cartoons then nor in the games. And actually Gwen's death is increasingly irrelevant. The most successful version of Gwen Stacy is Spider-Gwen/Ghost Spider who is explicitly not a love interest for Peter, never has been, and ITSV doesn't have a single reference to her death. So I think Gwen's death is kind of irrelevant nowadays. The one time they adapted this, in the Garfield movies, people hated it and the movies failed.

    It's like Vader being Luke's dad, it's just such common knowledge (within the comics community). I'd love to pour through the variety of raw opinion and thought on this when it was fresh.
    Starlog magazine actually does capture fan debate post TESB (https://io9.gizmodo.com/heres-how-fa...-19-1821551259). It's forgotten that Empire Strikes Back was quite divisive and controversial when it came out. The reason was that the movie ended on a cliffhanger unlike the first one which had a clear ending, albeit with some light teases. Vader being Luke's Dad was an out-of-left-field twist because again there was no set-up for that. Vader was a one-dimensional thug in the first film and now the second movie hinges on this guy somehow being a deeper guy than that even after he killed and tortured most of the supporting cast in the two movies. Some didn't like the Leia/Han romance feeling that the romantic pair was Luke/Leia and boy were they in for a rude shock when ROTJ came out.

    I remember when Amazing Spider-man #700 dropped and the Spider-man community exploded! I imagine it would have been somewhat similar.
    That was different because ASM #700 was leaked earlier thanks to piracy and so on. So it wasn't surprising for that. The outrage was also because ASM#700 is an anniversary issue and so on. The outrage was also not very innocent because, speaking as someone who was around there, the early promotion for Superior Spider-Man and also Superior involved fan debates about whether Otto would have sex with MJ in Peter's body and so on, and Marvel baited that with the covers of Superior #1 and #2 and it took Otto doing that breakup with MJ at the end of #2 for that part of the story and outrage to die down. So ASM#700 and Superior was definitely baiting the creep part of the fanbase...so that's why it's not really all innocent and so on.

    Also ASM#700 isn't a very good story. The thing about controversy is that it's not always the case that good works of art become controversial. Sometimes plain mediocrities and bad stuff also get outrage and controversy. Unfortunately, the fact that controversy happened with Night Gwen Stacy Died created this mentality that because that story was good and controversial, all stories that do that are the same, when that's not true.

  3. #18
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    Quote Originally Posted by Revolutionary_Jack View Post
    You mean write a blurb or whatnot. Would only do that if someone paid me.

    Anyway it's an interesting read and got a lot of stuff in it. There are flaws there and so on, like it's biased against Jim Shooter and full of a lot of mistakes and one-sided narratives concerning him but the rest of the book is interesting and informative.
    Thanks for the answer. I will check it out

  4. #19
    Loony Scott Taylor's Avatar
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    "I also hope Peter doesn't mourn her too long...how long can he grieve over a person whose brain was constructed entirely out of old Pepsi bottles and whose personality had the exact color, consistency, and flavor of a loaf of Wonder Bread?"

    This guy gets it.
    Every day is a gift, not a given right.

  5. #20
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    Quote Originally Posted by Scott Taylor View Post
    "I also hope Peter doesn't mourn her too long...how long can he grieve over a person whose brain was constructed entirely out of old Pepsi bottles and whose personality had the exact color, consistency, and flavor of a loaf of Wonder Bread?"

    This guy gets it.
    It's a girl. Jane C. Hollingsworth, a prominent Marvel letterhack (the word used for regular fans who serially wrote letters). Hollingsworth also commented a lot on Ms. Marvel and Carol Danvers' early appearances and so on. Gwen Stacy was a generally unpopular character, certainly among Spider-Man's female readership (which people tend to neglect actually existed) and it's interesting how feminism evolved because feminists disliked Gwen for basically being a barbie doll or trophy girlfriend type of girl while today the issue is her fridging.

  6. #21
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    Quote Originally Posted by Revolutionary_Jack View Post
    It's a girl. Jane C. Hollingsworth, a prominent Marvel letterhack (the word used for regular fans who serially wrote letters). Hollingsworth also commented a lot on Ms. Marvel and Carol Danvers' early appearances and so on. Gwen Stacy was a generally unpopular character, certainly among Spider-Man's female readership (which people tend to neglect actually existed) and it's interesting how feminism evolved because feminists disliked Gwen for basically being a barbie doll or trophy girlfriend type of girl while today the issue is her fridging.
    Honesty as the best medicine?

    Gwen has an interesting position in comic history. Born out of the world of the 1950s, never quite made it to the world of the 1970s, and was killed before anyone could figure out how to solve her character problem. When she was created, who could have foreseen the direction society would take? I appreciate the background on Hollingsworth. Danvers is another one of those female characters who really just never quite made the transition to modernity at the time, and whom comics is still trying to rehabilitate today in some ways.
    Every day is a gift, not a given right.

  7. #22
    ArnoldTBlumberg
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    Quote Originally Posted by Revolutionary_Jack View Post
    "Since they couldn’t marry Peter and Gwen, they say it was ‘inescapable’ — Gwen had to die. Not only is this a glaring and desperate attempt to absolve themselves of creative responsibility in the eyes of fans, it brings up an even more disturbing question: Was the writing staff so unable to think of any other potential avenues for the character’s fate? Couldn’t Gwen simply have left town, met someone else, gotten a job? Since when is a brutal demise the only alternative for a female character besides marriage? The misogynistic implications of this thinking are staggering."
    — Arnold T. Blumberg "Comic Book Market Place", one year after the story's publication.
    Hey there! I was always proud of that piece, and I'm very glad that you enjoyed it, but it wasn't "one year" after the Gwen Stacy story itself. Gwen's death was published in 1973; I wrote that for COMIC BOOK MARKETPLACE in 1999. Part of the premise of the article was how inexplicable it was that decades afterward, everyone seemed to be forgetting the editorial run by Marvel a few issues after the death issue in which they offered their laughable justification for the decision.

    Anyway, glad to see the article is still informing folks!

  8. #23
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    Quote Originally Posted by ArnoldTBlumberg View Post
    Hey there! I was always proud of that piece, and I'm very glad that you enjoyed it, but it wasn't "one year" after the Gwen Stacy story itself. Gwen's death was published in 1973; I wrote that for COMIC BOOK MARKETPLACE in 1999. Part of the premise of the article was how inexplicable it was that decades afterward, everyone seemed to be forgetting the editorial run by Marvel a few issues after the death issue in which they offered their laughable justification for the decision.

    Anyway, glad to see the article is still informing folks!
    I saw it listed as 1973 at some places. I am sorry for this.

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