Well, honestly people, who didn't see this one coming?
*sigh* It is what it is, I suppose. Eternally broke, single, down on his luck man-child Peter is a favorite trope of Editorial..
Well, honestly people, who didn't see this one coming?
*sigh* It is what it is, I suppose. Eternally broke, single, down on his luck man-child Peter is a favorite trope of Editorial..
"So you've come to the end now alive but dead inside."
Conway thinks Peter as a high school graduate is a bad idea.
https://twitter.com/gerryconway/stat...94191478771714
Changing the status quo for an archetypal super hero or heroine is *always* a mistake— because the *archetype* is what makes the character work. Peter Parker should never have graduated high school, let alone marry. Superman should never marry Lois. Batman should never kill.
I am tired of Marvel never evolving this character. Or at least evolving him kicking and screaming and in spite of themselves. Editorial has severely harmed him throughout the years by pulling him backwards all the time. Like Sisyphus he pushes the boulder only for editorial to take it away from him and have him regress all the time. He now stinks of perpetual loser instead of troubled invidiual in all eras of his life. I feel his main conflict was never tied to his age or being single but on the obsession he has with not saving every single person because of what happened to Uncle Ben. So he is always broke, late, flaking out to people because he must sacrifice his own life to be this superhero. And this has happened all throughout his life. Imagine if it only happened when he was a teenager. You would never get spiderman struggling to pay rent, failing his wife, flaming out of grad school. Failing in his own company, etc etc. This obsession with keeping him young is retarded. He should be married with kids by now and we should be experiencing his ongoing conflict in that context now. There will always be teen heroes to play the highschool superhero role. Leave it to Miles now, even though I think he is aging out of that too quickly. I personally love Spiderman in his college years the best. But that ended at least 30 years ago.
Last edited by BESTXMAN; 01-21-2022 at 09:02 AM.
Conway believes in the illusion of change.
Which is ironic because he was the first to introduce permanent change by killing the superhero’s love interest. He and Romita Sr. are on record saying they needed to kill a character because the audience was too complacent and they wanted to shock them - but if characters are archetypes and never change, then it doesn’t matter what shocking thing happens to them because it has no consequences. And Conway understood that for an event to be really shocking, the event has to have those consequences and lead to growth for the characters. I recently read an interview with him - but can’t find the link now, drat - that originally Gil Kane kept MJ outside Peter’s door at the end of ASM 122, but they both realized she needed to be in the room and interacting with Peter for her character to grow.
But then, Conway also thinks the introduction of the direct market and move away from newsstand is what really killed superhero storytelling, because now comics could survive on a much smaller audience than the broad newsstand audience and so stories had to be tailored to this narrow group of fans’ interests to keep them coming back. He’s not wrong, but the direct market did keep comics alive since the 1970s, so…one has to work with the hand one is dealt. Theoretical perfect world is nice, but it doesn’t pay the bills.
I’d also argue that Marvel painted itself into this corner by boasting for decades about their continuity and how they never had to reset or introduce another universe, unlike DC (until of course Marvel did) because their characters’ lives matter and their continuity builds on itself. And Marvel owned the market for a long time by publishing character-centered stories, while DC kept their characters archetypes and lost sales. So then DC switched to character-centered stories and one can make the case they’re currently doing it far more successfully than Marvel by learning into Clark & Lois’s marriage and Bruce Wayne as surrogate dad.
Peter David offers this view on the illusion of change:
“…Fans don’t like to be treated as if they’re stupid.
That’s the problem with illusion of change.
There are all sorts of shades of philosophies in between, I would surmise, but if we take two schools of thoughts as the basic extremes: There are those creators who believe that anything goes as long as it’s not too completely out of left field and as long as it tells a good story. There are others who believe that any change should be transitory, serving only to provide a story arc but otherwise leaving matters exactly as they are. The latter mindset might be ideal when dealing with mainstream superheroes, since these characters are the properties of large companies and have to be kept nice and spiffy for whoever might come next. What becomes problematic is mustering any continued fan interest in the fates of these characters, because it’s becoming perceived that there is no fate that is irrevocable, no development that cannot be undone inside of twenty-two pages.”
And regardless of Conway’s feelings about the direction, he did a great job with the hand he was dealt with young marrieds Peter and MJ in Web and Spectacular, and again with married Peter and MJ with daughter in Renew Your Vows.
Last edited by TinkerSpider; 01-21-2022 at 09:06 AM.
Well now that's just silly. He was in high school for like a measly 28 issues. (Some of which were more centered on his Daily Bugle life than the high school setting.) Whereas he was in college for over like 150 issues. If anything I'd say ESU or "Bugle Photographer" is more the status quo.
"The White Queen welcomes you, TO DIE!"
Damn, I was expecting an old interview where he mentioned this not ay tweet from 9 days ago...
What a backwards mentality too, since what made Spider-Man stand out at the time was that the stories did advance to a certain extent and matured, which's why stuff like the death of characters started to happen at the time.
And yeah, he can call "illusion of change" all he wants, this "illusion" changed the kind of tone the stories had, and Spidey benefitted from this, and if he didn't get stuff like that, he would be just yet another wacky silver age character, just like everyone else.
After like, ASM#10, the relationship was just a repetitive, never ending jealously streak for the sake of bad drama, there was barely any moment where the relationship actually looked like either Peter or Betty had any sort of fun, to the point they never even kissed on-screen lol.
If it's the one I'm thinking, it was actually a pretty alright tie-in, but I can understand why O'Neil would leave lol.
**** like this is part of the reason why DC fans are so sick of Crisis, any sort of development can be undone just like that, now we get this new universe where key details are changed just because they can, and it's annoying.
Wouldn't even say "some of which", the high school setting is so hilariously under developed that most issues wouldn't change if the high school wasn't shown.
As you said, Bugle had far more attention, while high school only really had Flash and Liz, and those two barely developed, and as much as being Spider-Man was constantly a pain in Peter's ass, he never had a problem with his studies during it, while that became a problem in his college years.