Mary Jane Watson-Parker Appreciation 2020

[Lukmendes]

...I don't know what to say about this.

Mary Jane with the Carnage Symbiote - again.

Again? When the hell did that happen before? Did I repress something stupid?

Quite possibly EmJay has finally become an outright villain.

Seanan McGuire gets to finally write the Gwen Stacy vs. Mary Jane story she's probably had in the back of her mind .

With how much of a bitch EmJay was, not surprising this is happening, it's like all of the nastyness MJ had when being poorly written were transfered to EmJay, guess MCU Thanos would say it's perfectly balanced now :P

Yeah, I don't think Ditko could've quite captured the "Face it Tiger..." moment...

Hard to say, 'cause while Ditko had control of the plot and character personalities, Stan Lee was the one writing the dialogue, and even under Ditko, MJ still sounded easy going, maybe wouldn't be the party girl type, but who knows, at the very least, it seems she at least was always planned to be different from the others by being easy going even when written in Ditko's "Everybody is a douchebag" world.

We'll never know though.

Sorry! I guess I was just going in-depth with it .

It's okay lol.

Honestly, even in context, you can still get the impression that they're denying it, lying to themselves, or that they care more about each other than they realize, and that's specially the case with MJ:



(ASM#275)

And this is written by DeFalco too, same guy who wrote ASM#259, and the intent is "they're friends" again, but it can be interpreted as romantic.

Doesn't help that the Web of Spider-Man published after ASM#259 ignored the platonic relationship DeFalco was trying to do and made it rather blatant that MJ was romantically interested in Peter:

https://i.imgur.com/pcmKQkJ.png

(Web#3)

https://i.imgur.com/h0zFfpG.png

(Web#6)

So seeing MJ and Peter act in this way that can really be interpreted as romantic in one book, and it's not even far fetched to reach that conclusion, and then seeing at least MJ saying she's interested but she's too much of a coward to be with him in another, yeah...

I've said this before, but Marvel should print a collection or a series of volumes that highlight the "key moments" in Peter and MJ's relationship in 616. Something that would make continuity more accessible for new readers. Maybe if they ever get around to addressing OMD, they'd be more inclined to do so. There's clearly an audience for it, and they could do the same for Felicia and Gwen.

Thinking of it, it's surprising they didn't do that when they were publishing her mini.

DC released Batman and Catwoman's "greatest hits" in a trade collection recently. Maybe do the same for some of Peter's romances.

Imagine if they released a trade like that back when they were baiting Bruce and Selina into getting married, that'd make people even more pissed lol.

A version of Mary Jane with a version of the Carnage symbiote in the actual comics would be fun, but I'm really hoping this leads to a final reconciliation with Ghost-Spider-Gwen. Also, if Em Jay can control her version of the Carnage symbiote in the end, it'd be really cool to see her become Earth-65's Scarlet Spider, like her costume in that Halloween issue of Spider-Gwen.

Imagining a Carnage symbiote being heroic in any way outside of Axis is just weird man lol.

That's what I though.i don't think they went anywhere since Mary Jane had always her eyes on Peter. Weirdly enough Mary Jane did try with Peter, but he blew her off cause "Muh responsibilities"

She still had a crush on Peter while he was dating Peter, but I got the feeling she moved on after a while, only after Conway started to write that this came back, and even then it was after Gwen died.

And because of her "party girl" persona, he thought it wasn't worth trying to have a serious relationship with her and stuck with Gwen until Gwen died, at which point Mary Jane refused to leave Peter to wallow in his grief even after he snapped at her that she'd never been sad in her life, not even if her own mother died . . . given that her mother was dead before we see her in-series . . . in retrospect, Peter must have felt pretty awful when she told him what her life was really like before they met.

What Peter screamed at her is worst than saying that she was never sad in her life, he was saying that MJ was so much about the party life that she just would never care about anyone but herself, even if people around her died.

It's really shitty to say something like that, but it's understandable, not only Gwen died, he blamed himself for it once again, and this was way more direct than uncle Ben's death, but still, considering he was this specific, it's possible he thought MJ was somewhat like that at least, specially considering that the reason he didn't date her to begin with was because he thought she wouldn't actually care about him, so yeah.

[Spider-Chan]

Again? When the hell did that happen before? Did I repress something stupid?

The Ultimate Spider-Man cartoon.

She even manages to get contr9l of the Carnage symbiote and becomes the Ultimate Spider-Woman.

[Frontier]

The Ultimate Spider-Man cartoon.

She even manages to get contr9l of the Carnage symbiote and becomes the Ultimate Spider-Woman.

Man, this cartoon was so random .

[Lukmendes]

The Ultimate Spider-Man cartoon.

She even manages to get contr9l of the Carnage symbiote and becomes the Ultimate Spider-Woman.

Oh man this is bad, really, really bad...

Hopefully it's stupid enough for me to repress later.

Thanks for answering anyways lol.

Man, this cartoon was so random .

I remember Miles getting annoyed at this Spidey in Spider-Verse, he was probably meant to represent a lot of fans' reaction to this guy .

[Prime]

So we agree that MJ didn't marry Peter because she was scared he wouldn't come back home on acclunt he might have been killed?

[Revolutionary_Jack]

So we agree that MJ didn't marry Peter because she was scared he wouldn't come back home on acclunt he might have been killed?

Her reasons for hesitating to marry Peter had to do with issues of her family and so on. The Big Question arc (ASM#290-292) is all about her coming to terms with that, and when she does make some kind of peace with it, she says "yes".

Honestly, even in context, you can still get the impression that they're denying it, lying to themselves, or that they care more about each other than they realize, and that's specially the case with MJ
...
So seeing MJ and Peter act in this way that can really be interpreted as romantic in one book, and it's not even far fetched to reach that conclusion, and then seeing at least MJ saying she's interested but she's too much of a coward to be with him in another, yeah...

The people who developed Mary Jane's backstory the most (Wolfman, Roger Stern) definitely didn't do it with the intention of setting up the marriage. Wolfman introduced in ASM#192 in a thought bubble that MJ's parents were divorced. Stern brought MJ back into the continuity after some 40 issues and he wrote the backstory outline and then introduce MJ's sister Gayle in "The Daydreamers" (ASM#246). Stern said that he introduced the story because 1) He thought Mary Jane was an interesting character (even if he didn't think she and Peter would work) 2) Her backstory was largely untold. Tom Defalco's main innovation was introducing the concept that Mary Jane at some point had learned Peter was Spider-Man and had been keeping it secret from him. He left out when she knew (Conway's Parallel Lives came up with the answer) but he and Ron Frenz (who knew more about continuity than Tom did) ran the numbers and figured that nothing contradicted it.

Defalco and Frenz said later that had they continued the run they planned to have Peter and MJ start a relationship again, and they even considered a plot where they get engaged but at the last minute MJ stands up Peter because she gets word about her sister Gayle and so on. That was just a pure coincidence because the actual decision to marry Peter and MJ happened after they got fired from the book, and happened independently, but Shooter might have known the plans and figured that having Peter and Mary Jane get married wouldn't be totally without foundation.

The other thing is that Mary Jane was genuinely popular. Tom Defalco noted in the letter's page during Stern's Hobgoblin arc (Stern was editor at the time) that more letters came from readers asking about Mary Jane than the Hobgoblin mystery. So readers wanted more of her, and that led writers to devote a lot of time to put her on screen. The big joke is that Black Cat was introduced in ASM#194 when MJ was furloughed from the titles. But Mary Jane upon her return in ASM#238 all the way to the Wedding ended up making more appearances between those issues than Felicia did at the time. Even if officially Felicia was Peter's girlfriend at the time.

[Frontier]

The other thing is that Mary Jane was genuinely popular. Tom Defalco noted in the letter's page during Stern's Hobgoblin arc (Stern was editor at the time) that more letters came from readers asking about Mary Jane than the Hobgoblin mystery. So readers wanted more of her, and that led writers to devote a lot of time to put her on screen. The big joke is that Black Cat was introduced in ASM#194 when MJ was furloughed from the titles. But Mary Jane upon her return in ASM#238 all the way to the Wedding ended up making more appearances between those issues than Felicia did at the time. Even if officially Felicia was Peter's girlfriend at the time.

That's a real "Bye Felicia" moment .

[Vortex85]

So we agree that MJ didn't marry Peter because she was scared he wouldn't come back home on acclunt he might have been killed?

No, it didn't really have to do with that at all.

MJ grew up in a broken home. Her father was abusive and treated her mother, sister, and herself like trash. Further, her sister Gayle married early and had 2 babies while her husband was still in college, who was unhappy and left Gayle to raise and care for them alone. MJ and her mom moved in with Gayle to assist, but then MJ's mother died leaving her sister asking MJ to live with and work to help support her and raise her kids with her. MJ, still young and full of dreams, ran away to live with her Aunt Anna, not wanting to throw away her life on the account of her families mistakes. This is where MJ's classic "running away from problems / avoiding responsibility" thing started that she had to develop and grow out of.

The above is why in high school and college MJ never wanted to commit to relationships because she didn't believe or trust in them based on how she grew up. It took confronting her sister and father again and working on her inner demons to accept Peter's proposal to get married.

[Vortex85]

No, it didn't really have to do with that at all.

MJ grew up in a broken home. Her father was abusive and treated her mother, sister, and herself like trash. Further, her sister Gayle married early and had 2 babies while her husband was still in college, who was unhappy and left Gayle to raise and care for them alone. MJ and her mom moved in with Gayle to assist, but then MJ's mother died leaving her sister asking MJ to live with and work to help support her and raise her kids with her. MJ, still young and full of dreams, ran away to live with her Aunt Anna, not wanting to throw away her life on the account of her families mistakes. This is where MJ's classic "running away from problems / avoiding responsibility" thing started that she had to develop and grow out of.

The above is why in high school and college MJ never wanted to commit to relationships because she didn't believe or trust in them based on how she grew up. It took confronting her sister and father again and working on her inner demons to accept Peter's proposal to get married.

Now that I think about it, this makes Peter yelling at MJ and leaving her being obsessed with Spider-Man back in the "I Am The Spider" period as seen on a few pages back all the more tragic. Probably why MJ had to go visit her father again after that period first before she could return home and sort things out with Peter after he did that to her. Funny how it logically makes sense to her story. Very human.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

That's a real "Bye Felicia" moment .

I ran the numbers per this site.
https://cmro.travis-starnes.com/char...rder_listing=1

Between ASM #238-292, across all titles (ASM, Web of Spider-Man, Spectacular Spider-Man and 616 in general), Mary Jane made 61 appearances.

Black Cat between ASM#192 to ASM #289 (including satellites and everything in 616) made 56 appearances.

So despite Felicia having a head start with MJ out of the books between ASM#192 to ASM#238, Mary Jane in less time exceeded her in half the time.

Now that's popularity. Winning not only against Gwen but against the trendy new thing of the '80s as well. Popularity of characters in comics is more exceptional when you recoup every decade with new audiences. Mary Jane has had that.

When OMD happened, we heard all kinds of lies from people from Slott and others that Mary Jane was some no-show in the books who basically dropped in to get married to Peter all of a sudden, and that Felicia was the "it" girl. If you run the numbers you know that's not true at all. Sure Felicia struck out because she was a new character at the time and people would associate a period with the new characters rather than returning ones but Mary Jane was still the bigger character in that period.

[Jman27]

No, it didn't really have to do with that at all.

MJ grew up in a broken home. Her father was abusive and treated her mother, sister, and herself like trash. Further, her sister Gayle married early and had 2 babies while her husband was still in college, who was unhappy and left Gayle to raise and care for them alone. MJ and her mom moved in with Gayle to assist, but then MJ's mother died leaving her sister asking MJ to live with and work to help support her and raise her kids with her. MJ, still young and full of dreams, ran away to live with her Aunt Anna, not wanting to throw away her life on the account of her families mistakes. This is where MJ's classic "running away from problems / avoiding responsibility" thing started that she had to develop and grow out of.

The above is why in high school and college MJ never wanted to commit to relationships because she didn't believe or trust in them based on how she grew up. It took confronting her sister and father again and working on her inner demons to accept Peter's proposal to get married.

can i get that issue number please I wanna read her backstory

[Jman27]

I ran the numbers per this site.
https://cmro.travis-starnes.com/char...rder_listing=1

Between ASM #238-292, across all titles (ASM, Web of Spider-Man, Spectacular Spider-Man and 616 in general), Mary Jane made 61 appearances.

Black Cat between ASM#192 to ASM #289 (including satellites and everything in 616) made 56 appearances.

So despite Felicia having a head start with MJ out of the books between ASM#192 to ASM#238, Mary Jane in less time exceeded her in half the time.

Now that's popularity. Winning not only against Gwen but against the trendy new thing of the '80s as well. Popularity of characters in comics is more exceptional when you recoup every decade with new audiences. Mary Jane has had that.

When OMD happened, we heard all kinds of lies from people from Slott and others that Mary Jane was some no-show in the books who basically dropped in to get married to Peter all of a sudden, and that Felicia was the "it" girl. If you run the numbers you know that's not true at all. Sure Felicia struck out because she was a new character at the time and people would associate a period with the new characters rather than returning ones but Mary Jane was still the bigger character in that period.

just do a popularity poll there problem solve

[Revolutionary_Jack]

just do a popularity poll there problem solve

Popularity polls are unreliable and unfair. Because the sample can't always be representative. So for instance if you do a popularity poll with a huge non-comics audience Mary Jane would win out because Felicia Hardy doesn't show up in adaptations very often, rarely has much prominence, and never appeared in live-action movies.

If you do it just among comics readers, maybe that might work. But comics readers are a small bunch and the comics readership today isn't the comics readership of the '80s, so it can't tell us much about popularity back then. Only a small section of comics readers in the '80s became long term obsessives and that applies to every new batch of incoming readers every generation. So the Spider-Man continuity mandarins at CBR Spider-Man (including me), we are a minority of a minority.

So looking at appearance rates, sales, longevity and recurrence that tells us more about popularity. Liz Allan was written out of the books for some 100 issues between ASM#28 to ASM#132 or so, Betty Brant has dropped in and dropped out. You can apply that to a number of cases. Supporting characters have dropped in and dropped out of titles as have love interests. Mary Jane wasn't really introduced until 40 issues in ASM, and written out for some 40 isues between ASM#192-238...and again written out for around 40 issues after OMD before they brought her back. So the thumbs have pressed its scales against her numerous times and her popularity has only increased compared to anyone else.

[Vortex85]

can i get that issue number please

MJ's childhood backstory is shown in Amazing Spider-Man #259. If you can get ahold of it, Parallel Lives also expands on it and shows more.

MJ reconciles with her father in "Back From the Edge" - Amazing #395, Spectacular #218, Amazing #396, Spectacular #219. Particularly Spectacular #219 is when she goes to her father to reconcile.



Extra:
Amazing Spider-Man #290-292 is a great arc that deals with MJ's family prior to her deciding to marry Peter.

[Prime]

Oops my bad.Didnt structure the question will.so when exactly was the moment MJ fell in love with Peter? Did she already love him before the original clone saga?