How much do you like MJ?

[NC_Yankee]

Expendable? As any other character in the title save one. Unpopular? Again with this? Do we need to rehash the discussion from not that long ago?


Which would've been true for all Silver Age sweethearts.

That is not true. I am waiting for the issue where 616 Gwen stood out in a good way ( and I do not mean stuff from 2020, her from Heaven during Slott’s run or as a Clone). I mean starting with the Master Planner Saga and ending in ASM 121). I think of her treatment of Aunt May, abandoning Peter and flying to London ( compare that to MJ in ASM 122), and her support for Sam Bullet.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Expendable?

The goal behind The Night Gwen Stacy Died project was
A) kill a character as a big daring stunt,
B) use someone that would make it so it's unexpected and dramatic.
C) but not too dramatic that we can't keep telling stories in the same way and same style as before.

Before and after Gwen died, Peter Parker's stories were action stories mixed with drama, comedy, and romance. Gwen's death did not in any significant way change the nature of the series and stories that could be told. So in that respect, she was fairly expendable, and she met all three criteria.

As any other character in the title save one.

The hard truth is that you can't kill off too many characters without changing the tone of the stories. Just as you can't bring in too many love interests, just as you can't keep bringing characters from the dead. The more you do that, the more emotional investment you drain from the stories. So in that sense, in terms of an ongoing serial story as opposed to selling merch, it cannot be truly said that long running supporting characters can be safely discounted and removed. It's important for a serial story to maintain a tone and style, and the way to do that is to keep hold of and maintain long-running supporting characters. More than the protagonist, it's them who maintian and uphold the emotional investment of the story. You can sell Superman and Batman toys without anyone knowing they are Clark and Bruce, but you can't tell the story of Clark and Bruce without the Kents of Smallvile, the Staff of Daily Planet, without Alfred the Butler, James Gordon, and a Robin of some kind.

In the case of Spider-Man, he lives in a fairly sanitized corner of the Marvel Universe as it is. Compare the tone of Spider-Man with Daredevil. Spider-Man has only one dead girlfriend with Gwen, but Daredevil has several, Wolverine even moreso. The criminal element in his stories don't touch on rape, molestation, human trafficking, and other kinds of stuff. The more death, violence, and tragedy you pile on, it becomes impossible to have Spider-Man be Mr. Quippy or whine about "Typical Parker Luck" without coming off as a sociopath when faced with the far greater suffering faced by people around him. You saw this in Mackie's run with Mj's "death/separation" thing. It made the titles really depressing to read and drove down sales. At the end of the day, Spider-Man is not the character who buries loved ones by the dozens (that's Daredevil, Batman), whose daily life is preoccupied more with the lives of people he fights than the ones he loves (Batman, The Punisher). So you can't really kill off major characters like Jameson or Mary Jane, and still pretend the character is the same as he was before.

That's why The Night Gwen Stacy Dies is such a great cunning, manipulative story, in the way it fooled so many people into thinking it was more tragic than it really was simply because it made use of an essentially exceptional and unrepeatable circumstance made possible thanks to Gwen Stacy herself. As a character, Gwen was totally peripheral to Peter's world. She wasn't close to Aunt May, in fact she bullied her. She didn't like Spider-Man and blamed him for her father's death, so that relationship had no future. So in an actual sense, Gwen's death made Peter's world easier, calmer, and more bearable. But of course that would only make Peter more guilty. Spider-Man also gets to beat Green Goblin in a straight 1-on-1 battle which he had never done before then (read the Ditko issues, the Romita issues, and the Drug Trilogy), in all instances Goblin either exited stage left, or he had a mental breakdown of some sort or another. Gwen was an exception for that reason. It happened because of specific factors that made it work that can't really be repeated in later stories.

As Gerry Conway noted, "While Gwen was his official girlfriend, for those of us who had followed the character from the very start, she didn't feel like she was that integral to the character...But to people who had been reading the book for the last five years, she was Lois Lane." As Conway emphasized, Gwen Stacy wasn't "Lois Lane" in the grand scheme of the title history. So that meant killing her was a shock but not such a shock that you can't have Peter recover and move on, not such a shock that readers won't be invested in reading more, it was a tragedy yes, but a survivable and recoverable one, especially since Conway ended the story with the Epilogue and have the original intended Lois Lane (MJ) waiting in the wings to play off a subplot that Ditko had set-up in his title, when she was the one Aunt May believed was right for Peter. So in a real sense Gwen's death was very much in the "illusion of change". It simply reset Spider-Man's status-quo to back where it was when Ditko left the titles (and Conway admitted as much in Comic-Creators on Spider-Man). Spider-Man was no longer living in Harry Osborn's loft, but a much cheaper low-rent apartment, he's once again close to Aunt May (which he wasn't in the Lee-Romita run) and he finally starts a relationship with Mary Jane, the girl his Aunt had set up for him in that run.

[Kevinroc]

I think it’s good practice to introduce new supporting characters too. Characters that can facilitate new stories for the heroes’ personal lives. I don’t think new girlfriends should be off limits.

The thing is new love interests don't really facilitate "New" stories, but retreads of old ones. How many times do you want to see Peter stand a date up because Spider-Man is needed? To see Peter lie to a woman he is supposed to be romancing?

[Lee]

I don't know anyone who's ever had two relationships that were exactly alike. Different combinations of personalities makes for different relationships.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

I don't know anyone who's ever had two relationships that were exactly alike. Different combinations of personalities makes for different relationships.

For a serial dater maybe. For someone who is committed to long-term relationships like Peter, it's more realistic for him to recreate and retread beats of relationships he's familiar with. Like even in BND, Carlie Cooper was positioned as Gwen 2.0, she was a forensic cop, a little smart, had a wildly inconsistent artistic design and personality just like Gwen, and was shilled by all the characters like Gwen was.

The thing is new love interests don't really facilitate "New" stories, but retreads of old ones. How many times do you want to see Peter stand a date up because Spider-Man is needed? To see Peter lie to a woman he is supposed to be romancing?

Exactly. And again it's subtractive, because any new love interest is expected to play a variation of the role already played by characters in Peter's supporting cast and there's no organic way for that to come about. It's totally pointless and nihilistic. You saw that with the Carlie Cooper thing where nobody, not the writers or the fans, had real conviction in her as a character. So their relationship never had any real emotional highpoints that writers and fans could refer to.

[The tall man]

The thing is new love interests don't really facilitate "New" stories, but retreads of old ones. How many times do you want to see Peter stand a date up because Spider-Man is needed? To see Peter lie to a woman he is supposed to be romancing?

He isn't lying to anyone, something unexpected came up and he cannot make the date; its really not that hard. Is he suppose to stop being Spiderman and helping people because it puts a crimp in his love life? Besides he is not obligated to reveal his heroic identity to anyone. And in a world where cheating, infidelity, divorce and falling out of love is the norn, to expect Peter to have this perfect relationship with the perfect woman is highly unrealistic. Have Peter and MJ ever had a serious heated argument/fight? (if they have I'm sure Peter was at fault and the one to apologize because they cannot have perfect MJ be the one at fault). All couples do at some point but some seem to think that doesn't apply to Peter and MJ. People drift apart, relationships end and others move on, that is realistic not some perfect endless love that must always endure.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

He isn't lying to anyone,

Yes he is. Peter was always lying to Betty, Gwen, and MJ when he never revealed his identity to them. In the case of Gwen and MJ, he planned to propose to them (and did propose to MJ) without telling them his secret.

And in a world where cheating, infidelity, divorce and falling out of love is the norn,

In the words of the esteemed philosopher Luke Skywalker, "Astonishing, every word in that sentence is wrong."
- Norn is the fates in the Norse Myths, my dude. I get that you mean "the norm" but even then,
- Just because something happens commonly doesn't make it the "norm". Stealing, Murder, Crime and other stuff happens with some frequency in the real world but that doesn't make it the "norm".
- To be a "norm", it means something is accepted as within acknowledged social conventions. If you steal or commit any crime, you are breaking norms, even if what you are doing is common.
- If you cheat, if you commit adultery, or if you undergo a divorce, that doesn't mean those things are "good" things, or within the norms of a relationship. Nobody enters a marriage expecting for it to end in divorce.
- And even then the divorce rate is usually aroud 50%, i.e. it's as likely for a relationship to last long-term as it is for it to end in divorce.

Have Peter and MJ ever had a serious heated argument/fight?

They have had, numerous times, across their relationship and marriage. But again we're not here to do your job for you. Either you read the comics and have an actual informed opinion, or you don't and hold your peace.

People drift apart, relationships end and others move on, that is realistic...

Which didn't happen. IN Spider-Man the status-quo is what it is because of some magic retcon forced by editorial via OMD, not because of the characters. The entire Mephisto thing happened because he specifically called Spider-Man and Mary Jane's love the purest in the Marvel Universe...and he also said that neither of them would be truly happy after that, so how can you expect anyone to validate or accept a continuity status-quo founded on such a nihilistic foundation. Where basically readers are asked to accept "this status-quo is artificial and fake, filled with reduced and diminished version of characters where no new relationship can count or matter" and so on.

[Spider-Tiger]

He isn't lying to anyone, something unexpected came up and he cannot make the date; its really not that hard. Is he suppose to stop being Spiderman and helping people because it puts a crimp in his love life? Besides he is not obligated to reveal his heroic identity to anyone. And in a world where cheating, infidelity, divorce and falling out of love is the norn, to expect Peter to have this perfect relationship with the perfect woman is highly unrealistic. Have Peter and MJ ever had a serious heated argument/fight? (if they have I'm sure Peter was at fault and the one to apologize because they cannot have perfect MJ be the one at fault).

Have you followed Peter and MJ's story in 616? Because quite a bit of their history involves her running away from commitment and behaving insensitively in the process. But like Peter her actions are understandable and sympathetic when we see her POV, and she learns and grows from the consequences of her behavior. That doesn't make her "Perfect."

All couples do at some point but some seem to think that doesn't apply to Peter and MJ. People drift apart, relationships end and others move on, that is realistic not some perfect endless love that must always endure.

People can break up or drift apart (Peter and MJ had done so a few times before and during the marriage) but that's not the story that OMD or the preceding stories told. Their relationship was pretty rock solid by the time OMD came around, and much of the previous conflict had been dealt with and resolved.

Anyway, what's "realistic" doesn't necessarily equate to what works from a storytelling POV. In the real world, one can meet the love of their life in their twilight years, but a serialized story must set up its main characters relatively early in the narrative. In the real world, different people can mean vastly different relationships, but in a story that hinges on the drama that's generated by Peter's dual identity, you're bound to rehash the same beats regardless of whether the love interest is an astronaut, an accountant, or a hairdresser.

Additionally, since MJ is such a significant character in the ongoing story, you're going to have a large portion of the readership that's invested in wanting to see her story continue as it relates to Peter's. Hence, why so many readers tend to want them to reunite or stay together.

[Kevinroc]

He isn't lying to anyone, something unexpected came up and he cannot make the date; its really not that hard. Is he suppose to stop being Spiderman and helping people because it puts a crimp in his love life? Besides he is not obligated to reveal his heroic identity to anyone. And in a world where cheating, infidelity, divorce and falling out of love is the norn, to expect Peter to have this perfect relationship with the perfect woman is highly unrealistic. Have Peter and MJ ever had a serious heated argument/fight? (if they have I'm sure Peter was at fault and the one to apologize because they cannot have perfect MJ be the one at fault). All couples do at some point but some seem to think that doesn't apply to Peter and MJ. People drift apart, relationships end and others move on, that is realistic not some perfect endless love that must always endure.

If you don't think Peter not telling a girlfriend that she's in danger by being with him, taking that choice out of her hands, isn't lying, I don't know what you define as lying.

Peter planned to marry Gwen and not tell her that he was Spider-Man. Peter actually proposed to MJ and didn't tell her that he was Spider-Man. Carlie broke up with him because she realized he was Spider-Man and wouldn't tell her the truth.

This matters.

You can make an argument that Peter has trouble letting people in, that he has trouble trusting people, that he is afraid of being hurt so he preemptively ruins himself, that he is flawed. That's an argument you can make. Saying "he's not really lying to them" is not that argument. Because he is.

[Lee]

For a serial dater maybe. For someone who is committed to long-term relationships like Peter, it's more realistic for him to recreate and retread beats of relationships he's familiar with.

Nobody can recreate a previous relationship with a new partner. The combination of personalities is different, the combination of life circumstances is different.

[Kevinroc]

Nobody can recreate a previous relationship with a new partner. The combination of personalities is different, the combination of life circumstances is different.

This applies to real people, not fictional people who only live on paper.

[SpideyCeo]

Not enough like her with Peter any more, and thats because shes boring and drags spidey down with mundane issues in his stories that arent fun to enguage in a tounge in cheek way.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

This applies to real people, not fictional people who only live on paper.

And even in real life, people when moving to new relationships, consciously or subconsciously bring in aspects of their previous relationships. People try and recapture the spark of the new romance they had in the early days of their old relationship with someone new. Psychologically that's what happens, especially for someone as prone to long-term relationships and committments as Peter is.

[NC_Yankee]

Not enough like her with Peter any more, and thats because shes boring and drags spidey down with mundane issies in his stories that arent fun to enguage in a tounge in cheek way.

If MJ is boring did you ever read stories with Carlie Cooper, Betty Brant or Gwen Stacy?

[NC_Yankee]

Not enough like her with Peter any more, and thats because shes boring and drags spidey down with mundane issues in his stories that arent fun to enguage in a tounge in cheek way.

You must love Dan Slott’s run ( oops I forgot the boring Carlie Cooper and Cindy Moon ( plus Otto’s Anna Maria ( Her I actually liked)).