After reading some comments about MJ by spiderfan and Luk, i kind of wanted to talk a bit about her characther post-Stan Lee and pre-ASM #259 when her relationship with Peter changed forever. Especially because i've been reading a lot 70s Spider-Man.
In Conway's run is when you start to see her less shallow side, mainly because a lot of that run Peter is haunted by Gwen's death and is something that he doesn't come to terms with until thr first Clone Saga happens. Generally their dynamic is Peter being kind of brooding while MJ tries to make him forget about his problems and at the same time she gets the slow realization that she actually wants something more serious with Peter and Peter reciprocates (we all know the scene
.
In Wein's run things get a bit more complicated, partially because i don't think that Wein knew what to do with then, so there was a lot of Peter running off to be Spider-Man and pissing her off in the process, to the point that she start to date Flash to make Peter jelaous, but they still have some nice moments, like MJ helping him with Aunt May when she is sick, but the general dynamic is still the same whenever Wein isn't using "Abandoning the date" plot point.
In Wolfman's run, things get a bid weird, because Marv is kind of trying really hard to go back to the Dikto days, so Peter and MJ behavior gets a bit weird in comparison with the previous runs, still i do like a scene when Peter basically says in his head "every time that i want to get close to MJ, she suddenly pulls the party girl persona" wich basically tells you that she still has problems opening up to him in spite of she still being in love, althought Peter proposing out of nowhere probably didn't help, but it sort of fits neatly in the narrative of their romance, because it clearly wasn't the right time, i think that Wolfman was also the first writer in making reference to MJ parents and they were divorced.
With all this i said that the reveals by DeFalco actually sort of help to explain a lot of her behavior, especially in 259 when talks about her backstory anfd later when Peter wants to quit and he angryly shouts at her about how she doesn't know why he is Spider-Man because she never asked and never tried to understand and she admitted that he was rigth "Peter i'm asking now" and he proceeds to tell her the story of AF # 15, i hope that she wasn't put up by the narration lol. I think than that issue was ASM #275
Still, i think that my view of then in the 70s is basically two people in love that want to be closer than they are but neither was willing to really take the first step to get closer to eacth other, until they weren't a thing anymore, but luckily it wasn't too late.
I know that the narrative is probably not perfect and there are probably some holes in it (i haven't read a good chunk of 70s Spec Spider and there is definetly a team up issue when she clearly considers Peter and Spidey to be two different people), but most of it kind of fits strangely enougth. As Lukmendes said at some point, she really was like a sort of happy accident in Peter's life lol.