Zendaya's "MJ": Future as a Comics Character?

[Mister Mets]

Who said anything about supplanting Mary Jane?

Supporting characters can be added to a comic without any marketing. They either take off or they don't. I can't think of a single Spider-Man supporting cast member that was given a big marketing push at the point of introduction.

Gotta agree here. Putting marketing over story is putting the cart before the horse.

Yeah, but the MCU alters character personalities to fit the story and sometimes the actor. Thor is not at all like how Hemsworth portrays him in later movies, but that's how they're portraying him. He's still supposed to be Thor though.

Like, how does that track with "Ned" who is basically Ganke in all but name and only has in common dating Betty Brant with the actual Ned Leeds?

Even I wish she was more like 616 Mary Jane but her coolness and antisocial personality is supposed to be the superficial part of her personality like comic MJ's comic persona. We don't know anything about her family life because she's barely been developed.

The intention of the character is what matters and she's fully intended to be a version of Mary Jane Watson.

The leads are changed a bit, but they're still recognizable.

The supporting characters sometimes seem to just have the role but not the personality. This makes sense because it's Spider-Man's story, not Ned's.

Regarding Ned and Ganke, that comparison gets a little messy. I think they picked the name Ned Leeds because they need a friend of Peter Parker's who was not Harry Osborn or Flash Thompson. I don't know if they intentionally chose someone similar to Ganke. My guess is that during casting, they felt Jacob Batalan was right for the role. The producers were open about reflecting a more diverse New York City, and when casting Spider-Man: Homecoming, Peter Parker's a white guy, the two love interests are African-American and the rival is Latinx, so that creates an opening for an Asian-American best friend.

A further wrinkle is that Ganke is Korean-American, while Jacob Batalan is Filipino-American. It's seen as acceptable to change white characters into minorities. It gets messy to change the ethnicity of a character who is a minority, or to ask an actor to play someone from a different ethnic group.

A recent trailer for Spider-Man: No Way Home suggests MJ has a good relationship with her dad, so that's another difference between her and the 616 MJ.

The main similarities between Zendaya's MJ and the 616 MJ are that they're attractive women in love with Peter Parker, but that applies to pretty much every love interest in the Spider-Man comics.

[Frontier]

Gotta agree here. Putting marketing over story is putting the cart before the horse.

The leads are changed a bit, but they're still recognizable.

The supporting characters sometimes seem to just have the role but not the personality. This makes sense because it's Spider-Man's story, not Ned's.

Regarding Ned and Ganke, that comparison gets a little messy. I think they picked the name Ned Leeds because they need a friend of Peter Parker's who was not Harry Osborn or Flash Thompson. I don't know if they intentionally chose someone similar to Ganke. My guess is that during casting, they felt Jacob Batalan was right for the role. The producers were open about reflecting a more diverse New York City, and when casting Spider-Man: Homecoming, Peter Parker's a white guy, the two love interests are African-American and the rival is Latinx, so that creates an opening for an Asian-American best friend.

A further wrinkle is that Ganke is Korean-American, while Jacob Batalan is Filipino-American. It's seen as acceptable to change white characters into minorities. It gets messy to change the ethnicity of a character who is a minority, or to ask an actor to play someone from a different ethnic group.

A recent trailer for Spider-Man: No Way Home suggests MJ has a good relationship with her dad, so that's another difference between her and the 616 MJ.

The main similarities between Zendaya's MJ and the 616 MJ are that they're attractive women in love with Peter Parker, but that applies to pretty much every love interest in the Spider-Man comics.

But they deliberately call her "MJ" and she's Hollands' main love interest. It's not like they're being that clever about who she's meant to represent even assuming differences in terms of characterization just like it was obvious they were trying to construct a character similar to Ganke from Miles' books down to the visual of the character. They probably weren't thinking too deeply about exact ethnicities.

Did I not also mention that they also both put up fronts to hide their securities or what they're really like?

[marhawkman]

Gotta agree here. Putting marketing over story is putting the cart before the horse.

Yeah, the problem isn't designing a character to fill a niche... the problem is when the writer stops there.

A further wrinkle is that Ganke is Korean-American, while Jacob Batalan is Filipino-American. It's seen as acceptable to change white characters into minorities. It gets messy to change the ethnicity of a character who is a minority, or to ask an actor to play someone from a different ethnic group.

Yeah... Koreans and Filipinos are not the same ethnicity. they don't really even look the same.

[Mister Mets]

But they deliberately call her "MJ" and she's Hollands' main love interest. It's not like they're being that clever about who she's meant to represent even assuming differences in terms of characterization just like it was obvious they were trying to construct a character similar to Ganke from Miles' books down to the visual of the character. They probably weren't thinking too deeply about exact ethnicities.

Did I not also mention that they also both put up fronts to hide their securities or what they're really like?

The main similarities between Zendaya's MJ and the 616 MJ are that they put up a front and that they figure out Peter Parker's secret identity.

They still seem to be different enough people that you could call Zendaya's MJ by a different name. And because there are things that are unique to her, you may as well create a new comics character who has those unique attributes.

On a tangent, it does seem that with Asian characters there is pressure to make sure that characters are depicted by someone with the correct ethnic background. People don't really care if a Danish-American plays someone with an Italian background (see Viggo Mortensen in Green Book) but there is pushback if Asian characters are played by someone with the wrong ethnic background. I'm not sure if that's because Asian audience members are more attuned to physical differences between people with different backgrounds (to give an example, Korean and Japanese individuals) or the extent to which it's bigotry on their end, racial preferences that most white audiences are just unaware of.

[Kevinroc]

The main similarities between Zendaya's MJ and the 616 MJ are that they put up a front and that they figure out Peter Parker's secret identity.

They still seem to be different enough people that you could call Zendaya's MJ by a different name. And because there are things that are unique to her, you may as well create a new comics character who has those unique attributes.

On a tangent, it does seem that with Asian characters there is pressure to make sure that characters are depicted by someone with the correct ethnic background. People don't really care if a Danish-American plays someone with an Italian background (see Viggo Mortensen in Green Book) but there is pushback if Asian characters are played by someone with the wrong ethnic background. I'm not sure if that's because Asian audience members are more attuned to physical differences between people with different backgrounds (to give an example, Korean and Japanese individuals) or the extent to which it's bigotry on their end, racial preferences that most white audiences are just unaware of.

Once she states her nickname is "MJ", Zendaya's character is exclusively referred to as such in the movies and promotional material. At this point the idea of Peter x MJ is so famous that Marvel seem to have given up even trying to pretend Peter has another love interest that could supplant MJ.

Your other tangent is very eyebrow raising. It should be noted that Phil Lord specifically stated that the reason Ganke does not have a significant role in Into the Spider-Verse is because of "Ned" in Homecoming.

https://twitter.com/philiplord/statu...92039195324418

[bat39]

Zendaya's MJ is meant to be Mary Jane the same way John Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt's character in TDKR) is meant to be Robin. They are different characters on many levels (names, backstories, appearances, characterizations) but they essentially play the same roles within this adaptation of the mythos.

Which makes the question of bringing her into the comics tricky. Yes, you could bring her into the comics as a separate character from Mary Jane, because there is enough on a technical level to make her distinct - her appearance, her name, her characterization as a budding anti-establishment crusader etc.

But ultimately, the only thing special about her in the MCU is the fact that she's its version of MJ. It's not as though she's a version of MJ who's become a breakout character and is wildly popular to the point where Marvel really has an incentive to get her into the comics. She's not Samuel L Jackson's Nick Fury, who has become a global icon who has attained far more mainstream popularity than his original 616 counterpart ever did.

[The Kid]

I doubt it because MCU MJ is basically what it says. She's the MCU interpretation of Mary Jane so I don't expect to see her in the comics because she basically already is

[Vortex85]

I think MCU MJ's main appeal is that she is Zendaya. LOL

[marhawkman]

I think MCU MJ's main appeal is that she is Zendaya. LOL

Well, this is probably true to some extent yes.

[Lee]

I doubt it because MCU MJ is basically what it says. She's the MCU interpretation of Mary Jane so I don't expect to see her in the comics because she basically already is

Nick Fury was already in the comics. Mary Jane and Michelle Jones have less in common than Nick Fury and Nick Fury.

More of a Yondu situation, now that I think about it.

[Frontier]

Nick Fury was already in the comics. Mary Jane and Michelle Jones have less in common than Nick Fury and Nick Fury.

More of a Yondu situation, now that I think about it.

But for the MCU, their Yondu is effectively supposed to be the Yondu despite the character differences, he even has has his own version of the OG!Guardians who also only have tangential resemblance to their comic counterparts.

The comics introduced him as a possible ancestor to the original Yondu but there's no real need to do that in the comics for the MCU MJ because there's already a present-day MJ in the comics who Michelle is effectively a stand-in for.

[Kevinroc]

I think MCU MJ's main appeal is that she is Zendaya. LOL

This is absolutely true. Did you see how much they advertised that she was in Dune? And do you know how much of Dune she is actually in?

[Kevinroc]

Nick Fury was already in the comics. Mary Jane and Michelle Jones have less in common than Nick Fury and Nick Fury.

More of a Yondu situation, now that I think about it.

It's a lot easier to say "This is Nick Fury Jr., the son of the original Nick Fury" then it is to say "this woman is also named MJ."

(People also HATED how they created Nick Fury Jr. They should have just stuck Ultimate Fury into 616 following Hickman's Secret Wars.)

It doesn't change the situation that Marvel creating another woman in Spider-Man's life who ALSO uses the MJ name instantly invalidates the end of Homecoming.

[Lee]

Having one character named Mary Jane and another character named Michelle Jones is less silly than having two characters named Nick Fury and two characters named Yondu. They don't have to call her MJ, Michelle is fine.

[Kevinroc]

Having one character named Mary Jane and another character named Michelle Jones is less silly than having two characters named Nick Fury and two characters named Yondu. They don't have to call her MJ, Michelle is fine.

A father and son sharing a name is not the least bit strange. A character sharing an ancestor's name is also not actually strange.

Two random people in the same franchise both sharing the same nickname?

Again, the "Michelle" name was meant to throw people off when the character revealed their nickname. Invoking the nickname of "MJ" in a Spider-Man film carries with it a certain connotation. The reveal that she was "MJ" at the end of Homecoming was meant to say "you know who this character is".

And in case you forgot, Spider-Man comics already had a love interest named "Michele".

https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Miche...es_(Earth-616)