"He's pure power and doesn't even know it. He's the best of us."-Matt Murdock
"I need a reason to take the mask off."-Peter Parker
"My heart half-breaks at how easy it is to lie to him. It breaks all the way when he believes me without question." Felicia Hardy
I am surprised at all this interest in Anna Watson. Look not every supporting character needs to be cool or interesting. Anna is a nice person who loves May, and Mary Jane, and also cares for Peter. That's enough.
Give her more baggage for the sake of drama, as in the Fox Cartoon where they made a stupid mistake with that dynamic, and you ruin and compromise that. Why would May Parker want Peter and MJ get together, or be friends with Anna if she has such a negative and dark view about Peter? It doesn't make any sense. In the BND era, they sorta hinted that after Peter and MJ broke up, that May and Mary Jane also became cool in the aftermath...yet somehow May and Anna Watson were still friends. I can see May and Anna keeping a friendship while avoiding talking about some stuff but I can't imagine Anna wouldn't side with her niece first and foremost...so it didn't make sense. And I guess ultimately they dropped that plot.
(IN retrospect it's kind of amazing how BND kept making Aunt May more unlikable than she was before. I can't believe that a May Parker who adored Mary Jane and was friendly to Peter during their separated phase of the marriage would suddenly cool at MJ over a Post-BND breakup. It made no sense. Then Dan Slott made her a bigot for being prejudiced towards Anna Maria Marconi. A plot he wanted to do earlier by making May racist but had to be talked out of because people reminded her of her activism in the Len Wein era. It's like May became Fox Animation Anna Watson.)
I think the interest is because of how Anna is kind of an understated focal point to Mary Jane and even May and that connection led to Peter and MJ's relationship, so it's kind of interesting that so little has been done with her.
Although you're probably more likely to hear about MJ's dad and her issues with him than you are MJ's aunt who she lives with next to Peter. She hasn't been in any of the movies and I don't think MJ ever mentioned her in the PS4 games (although she was basically adult Ultimate MJ, who had her mom, so she might not have had an Aunt Anna of note).
When we were talking about BND making Aunt May unlikeable, I thought we were going to talk about when Mr. Negative turned her into this rotten, mean, old lady .
Mary Jane Watson is an important character and her family life is important to explain her and how it plays into her relationship with Peter. Her having a messy family life with closer relations to Aunts and Cousins than her own father and sister explains why she would want a family with Peter since she is on the peripheries of her own family, and a little closed off from them. Her relationship to Anna makes sense since Anna lives in NYC and that's where Mary Jane wants to be, live, and make her home. So that explains why she's drawn to Peter and away from her own family...the fact that Kristy has a pair of s--ty parents herself and is drawn to MJ (who gets to be for her what Anna was to her) also makes sense. More than that isn't necessary. Mary Jane's family needs to be as mundane and humdrum as possible to contrast with Peter's world as Spider-Man.
He did eventually.
If Peter and MJ make each other happy, that should be good enough for May. Their relationship is none of Anna's business if it is a good one.
MJ's family doesn't get focused on often so maybe that is what people potentially see in Anna. You don't have to make her like her Fox cartoon counterpart to make her interesting.
Last edited by Agent Z; 11-22-2020 at 11:32 AM.
I'm surprised that (as far as I remember) she's not the mother of any of Kraven's children.
"Wow. You made Spider-Man sad, congratulations. I stabbed The Hulk last week"
Wolverine, Venom Annual # 1 (2018)
Nobody does it better by Jeff Loveness
"I am Thou, Thou Art I"
Persona
For me, and maybe for others, the interest stems from the post-Clone Saga period: Aunt May was still dead but the comics were trying to move away from Clone Saga stuff and back into more of a classic feel -- which meant Peter needed an old lady from which he needed to hide his secrets! I actually enjoyed her quite a lot during that era, and I still think JMD's Mad Jack from those days was potentially supposed to have some connection to her.
-Pav, who really liked that verison of Jack O'Lantern before becoming muddled together with Mysterio...
You were Spider-Man then. You and Peter had agreed on it. But he came back right when you started feeling comfortable.
You know what it means when he comes back.
"You're not the better one, Peter. You're just older."
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