Sins Past: what would you have done as a follow up?

[marhawkman]

I mean, there's a variety of general approaches one could take...

Pretend it never happened(which of course means erasing Gabriel and Sarah from existence)

Accept the Kindred story. If you do like it, I'd love to hear why.

Some other sort of retcon... which.. feel free to explain in detail.. really the more the better.

So what does Marhawkman think would be good?

well, I think the Kindred story had only a small handful of actual good ideas. Meh, most of it was bad. Soo.. I'm going to say that didn't happen in this universe.

So what do I think would have been good?

Well, the most detailed convo I had, years back, pointed out that the in-universe biggest issue is that it needs Gwen to be both alive, and out of sight for months, since the original had it as a normal 9-month pregnancy. Kinda hard to get pregnant and have literally no one notice. And then she dies while Spidey is fighting Norman.

Out-of-universe, editorial probably wanted to fix the implied time scale. Which I touched on in point 1 above. Spidey is fighting the CHILDREN of his ex-girlfriend. Accelerated aging or not, point one is 9 months, and this adds... well at one point Sarah claimed to age at around 4x normal aging. When she fought Spidey, Sarah was physically equivalent to at least 16. so... her calendar age was probably at least 4 years old. So... Sarah met Pete in person.. at least 5 years.... after Pete had become Spidey. Which means Spidey has to be in his 20s or the story is physically impossible. But editorial wants Spidey to be less than 18...

As some of you know I'm a big fan of MC2. So dad Spidey is absolutely a thing I like, and that would mean ditching the perpetual teenager nonsense. So writing Spidey as mid-20s? ok. I like that actually.

But what else would I fix? The core complaint was "Gwen wouldn't do that".... which... the Kindred fixes by invoking cloning. But the problem there is that ruins the emotional impact that meeting Sarah had on Pete. Now, if Sarah and Gabriel were genetically children of Gwen and Norman, but created in a lab... they'd still look the same. But the real emotional impact on Pete was feeling a sort of... paternal affection. Pete got to know Sarah and tried to be a father figure to her. Pete's the person who convinced her to leave being a supervillain and join Interpol instead.

Which is the biggest issue with Kindred. The stuff with Gwen was just the STARTING point of the story. But that was all the Kindred story really seemed to care about.

Anyways, that ended up being rather long, what do you guys think?

[FFJamie94]

Honestly, the Gwen Stacey stuff isn't high on my list of retcons.
I'll rather retcon that the Green Goblin since his resurrection has been a clone as a way for Jackal to keep watching him die than anything.
But yeah, if I had to link it back to that, then I'll make it so that it was a plan by the Jackal, who did it because he wanted his ultimate revenge on Peter.

Basically, I'd make the Jackal an ultimate villain, then kill him off via the Green Goblin's hand.

[HypnoHustler]

I think Spencer did a serviceable, if extremely convoluted, job retconning it. The only issue being his run was building up to a much more consequential OMD retcon, so a mere Sins Past retcon seemed anticlimactic in comparison… but that horse has been beaten to death already.

[PanicPixieDreamGirl]

Treat Gwen as a character rather than a walking uterus, which neither the original or the retcon did.

[Matt Rat]

I'd put it back in continuity honestly.

If that pisses off the Gwen contingent, good, she was never as interesting without this.

[HypnoHustler]

I'd put it back in continuity honestly.

If that pisses off the Gwen contingent, good, she was never as interesting without this.

That sounds a bit like cutting off the nose to spite the face. I agree, fans worshipping "Saint Gwen" is annoying (although it seems like editorial and writers do that more than fans nowadays). But 'Sins Past' makes almost every bottom 5 Spidey stories list (usually sandwiched between the Clone Saga and OMD).

[Jman27]

just keep it and dont reference it.

[maryjane]

I liked sins past. Many do not. But I do. It was intense, the scene when Peter visualize the situation, with Norman touching her and he explodes crushing everything was very, very intense, you cry for him. And for me, it made Gwen more real, fallible, a young girl, with a strong father figure that she has recently lost, can be seduced by an older man that know what to say, how to act, to trick her in a situation that she had normally refused. So I liked it.

The retcon was terrible, not only because it retconned a story that I liked, but because it was a total nonsense, not even Thanos could have orchestrated such a plan, so intricated, so unpredictable and to obtain nearly nothing. The author wanted an "easy win", thinking that retconning a story so hated by many fans would have assured its success.

follow up ? I would have used the twins in the stories, not often maybe, but I would have used them. New adds to the cast. And maybe some flashbacks to add things to the story of Gwen and Norman, but without changing it.

[HypnoHustler]

I liked sins past. Many do not. But I do. It was intense, the scene when Peter visualize the situation, with Norman touching her and he explodes crushing everything was very, very intense, you cry for him. And for me, it made Gwen more real, fallible, a young girl, with a strong father figure that she has recently lost, can be seduced by an older man that know what to say, how to act, to trick her in a situation that she had normally refused. So I liked it.

The retcon was terrible, not only because it retconned a story that I liked, but because it was a total nonsense, not even Thanos could have orchestrated such a plan, so intricated, so unpredictable and to obtain nearly nothing.

While I agree the retcon was incredibly convoluted, ‘Sins Past’ wasn’t? Norman impregnated his archenemy’s girlfriend, waited for her to have his twins in secret, stole them, then killed her, then raised his archenemy’s dead girlfriend’s twins while he was busy faking his own death, then through some technology that isn’t explained he accelerated their age and gave them super-powers, and then when their physical age had reached adulthood after just 7 years or so he manipulated them into attacking said archenemy by telling them he was responsible for their mother’s death. That’s an insane sentence.

[JTait]

I would have moved on and tried to forget about it. There are things that I do like about it as a story, but overall it is just a total mess that should never have been released. Any attempt to fix it is fundamentally flawed by being tied to such a controversial and divisive story.

In trying to undo it, Spencer actually managed to write a story that was even worse!

[Kanos]

It's too late to pretend Sins Past never happened. This story is in the main title and has two sequels. So many people know about this story and still think that Gwen and Norman had sex.
That's why I like Spencer's retcon. No one will agree with me, but I think his ideas are good. But I've come a long way, at first I hated it. I had to re-read a lot of comics, after that I changed my mind.
1) I like the idea that Harry created the twins, not Norman or the Jackal because it shows Harry's pain in the DeMatteis era. He gave his father the "perfect" children that he dreamed of. This is far more dramatic than just Norman created the twins. When the story first came out, I didn't understand why Harry wanted revenge on his father, but when I re-read the story, I realized that Harry didn't say anything about revenge. He said that Norman would be proud of him.
2) I like that Gaunt/Mendel Stromm helped Harry. I can believe that Stromm contacted Harry, told him that Norman was alive. He then helped create the twins and possibly AI Osborn with goblin robots. After Revelations, Mendel had amnesia, which explains why he doesn't remember the twins. I still don't know why Mendel was depicted as the Robot Master and not Gaunt, but it's most likely an artist mistake because Spencer knows about Gaunt, he showed it in ASM #4.

3) The fact that Sarah and Gabriel are now clones and Mary Jane and Norman's memories are Mysterio's hypnosis is a good retcon.
4) People don't like that the Kindred turned out to be twins, many think it killed the Kindred. There are people who think it destroyed the twins. I don't think it destroyed the Stacey twins, I read all the stories about them (all 3 lol) and they clearly had split personalities and a desire to kill people, so I can believe they are Kindred. But of course, there are many questions as to why Kindred looked like Harry when he came to Mysterio in hell, or maybe Mysterio just lied.
I'm not saying that these are perfect retcons, of course not, but they are interesting and can be improved.
I want JMD to write a mini-series about the Harry Goblin era and show how Harry was developing a plan about Peter's "parents", the AI, the twins, the Phil Urich costume. DeMatteis loves Harry, mystique, clones, that would be a great story.

[Username taken]

Pretend it never happened.

It was a silly and immoral story that should never have been told.

[Ursalink]

Well, the idea of being actually "manipulated clones" was always whatI had in mind when I heard about this story for the first time.

But I think it would have been a more fitting way from Norman or the Jackal to torture Peter if they have created Sarah and Gabriel with Peter's DNA, making him believe he was their father.

[Mister Mets]

I would have made it a Skrull plot, and tied it to Secret Invasion

[Huntsman Spider]

Well, the idea of being actually "manipulated clones" was always whatI had in mind when I heard about this story for the first time.

But I think it would have been a more fitting way from Norman or the Jackal to torture Peter if they have created Sarah and Gabriel with Peter's DNA, making him believe he was their father.

It would have also gone with the original story idea where Peter was supposed to be the Stacy Twins' father in the first place, before Joe Quesada vetoed it because he thought it would "age" Peter too much.