The C2E2 Spider-man 60th Panel, some interesting things been said.

[TinkerSpider]

Then what is everybody complaining about? Given how sizable the audience is for the Spider-marriage, I’m assuming there is plenty of “Man with Arachnid Powers and his Wife” stories being made for you folks to read.

No one was complaining; they were mentioning that fans can create content. And as platforms to share content proliferate and the means of production become more democratic - an iPhone can now take the place of a heavy duty film camera and an editing bay and a distribution service all in one - I sincerely believe we'll start to see some fan content become even more popular than "official" content. That's the takeaway conclusion.

By the way, the fan content can use the Spider-Man name. Disney isn't going to come after them, unless the fan content reaches the stature of the Unofficial Bridgerton Musical and even then, Netflix didn't sue when the creators won a Grammy, they didn't sue when the creators were getting nationwide publicity, they only sued when the musical was booked into Lincoln Center and even then Netflix offered the creators a license so the musical could continue but the creators said no.

Disney didn't even mention Marvel Comics on their earnings call to investors today. The only reference to Marvel was in creating more original MCU material to prop up Disney+ subscriptions. That's how important Marvel Comics is to the parent company.

Also, as someone who is a creative writer teacher, I am surprised you appear to be preaching that imagination has limits.

[RJT]

It seems you are missing my point. Or at least not addressing it.

In “never-long form, sequential superhero stories” every introduced aspect beyond the very core premise is a creative dead end if we are stuck with the factory reset button. Betty is introduced. We know they can’t marry, have kids or anything that ages or limits the character. Betty is as much a creative dead end as the marriage is because it limits the stories being possibly told. In the marriage you see doors closing but with the factory reset these doors are forever closed even before Betty is introduced. In that aspect how does the restrictions of never be able to progressive beyond a certain point with any character differ from the same limits you see a marriage introduce?

Oh and being Spider-Man didn’t make his life worse. That is just focusing on the drama every situation adds. It made his life better in some ways and worse in others. The key lesson was always that his decision made it worse by letting Bens murder get away. Responsibility. Would he have got together with MJ without that bite? Gwen? Harry? Bullying by Flash and so on.

Sure Spider-Man wasn’t pure escapism like DC and other comics where doing. When I was reading those early stories(reprints) when I was young the escapism part played in that Spider-Man allowed him to have this life but it also limited him. We didn’t just want to swing and fight like Spider-Man we also wanted that life of being young and having exciting friends and beautiful girls.

Let’s also add that this ongoing story is very much a theoretical concept so all arguments on the creative possibilities and limitations are purely abstract since imigination is supposedly limitless. In that sense all talk about creative dead ends are just a way of saying difficult speed bumps.
The reality is that even if marvel would in some way manage to keep copyrights for centuries. And also publish comics regularly we will never see anything but a story intended to be ever ending who has to end due to real life practicality. In the sense that stories will be recycled. Characters will repeat cycles of behavior and remixes of old patterns. All this instead of some more or less uninterrupted flow of original stories. This will shape the story as a ever ending story must either shed its readers in cycles or keep the cycles in the stories different enough that readers stay on. The second is what many would argue to be in the realm of impossibility with a exponential difficulty factor the longer the story runs.

Carlie Cooper? I did not count that as a long term relationship but that itself would probably warrant a different post entirely devoted to her.

The marriage was not marital discord for me but often little pauses in the drama of Peters life. A chance to breath for him. I miss that and very much so now when the story has gone in the direction that everything in Peters life is a mess.

The clone saga and blowing up MJ is great examples of Marvel being obtuse. They are people who realize they have locked themselves out(by going by your view) and instead of calling a locksmith, janitor or trying to find the key they call the zoo and rent a rhino to try to ram the door open.

I don’t really get what you’re saying regarding Betty Brant. Is it the idea that only relationships that result in marriage are important? Peter dated her, lost her to Ned Leeds. He loved and lost.
The marriage is the creative dead end because now there is no option for any “reset.” The choice that Jim Shooter made in 1987 tied the hands of every Spider-Man creator thereafter until 2008. You guys liked that choice but the majority of the actual writers on Spider-Man did not. But they had to either find a way to make the marriage work (and apparently they did for you, but I don’t think most of them were very successful) or find a way to end the marriage.
In the post-2008 status quo, writers have had the opportunity to use Mary Jane as Peter’s ex who rooted for him—which is how she was typically used throughout the 70s and 80s(BND and Slott) or have them be together (Spencer) That’s why I say it’s a creative dead end—it locks the creators into a status quo they can’t get out of.
When a writer doesn’t want Peter to work at the Daily Bugle, he can get another job. If the next writer likes the Bugle, they find a way to hire him back. When a writer wants to have Peter go back to school, he goes to school. The next one can have him take a leave or drop out.
But between 1988 and 2008 if a writer wanted to have Peter get together with Glory Grant, or date Jessica Drew, or have him accidentally date the Burglar’s daughter (Ben Reilly would do that in Jurgens’ book) they couldn’t.
There is nothing marrying them does that having them dating can’t do. But marrying them closes off other avenues for future writers. That’s why it’s a creative dead-end.
There’s an interview with Peter David where tells the story of Tom DeFalco explaining why David couldn’t kill off Jonah. There is an absolutely awesome story to be told about Jonah and Spider-Man having one last deathbed conversation, but now you have taken one of the great supporting characters off the board for any future creative team without really adding anything in its place.
That’s why I think the marriage folks are upset because they are being told they can’t have something. The Spencer run gave us a committed Peter and MJ, where she offered him emotional support and even got to be the hero a couple of times. How would any of those stories have been different had they been married?

[RJT]

No one was complaining; they were mentioning that fans can create content. And as platforms to share content proliferate and the means of production become more democratic - an iPhone can now take the place of a heavy duty film camera and an editing bay and a distribution service all in one - I sincerely believe we'll start to see some fan content become even more popular than "official" content. That's the takeaway conclusion.

By the way, the fan content can use the Spider-Man name. Disney isn't going to come after them, unless the fan content reaches the stature of the Unofficial Bridgerton Musical and even then, Netflix didn't sue when the creators won a Grammy, they didn't sue when the creators were getting nationwide publicity, they only sued when the musical was booked into Lincoln Center and even then Netflix offered the creators a license so the musical could continue but the creators said no.

Disney didn't even mention Marvel Comics on their earnings call to investors today. The only reference to Marvel was in creating more original MCU material to prop up Disney+ subscriptions. That's how important Marvel Comics is to the parent company.

Also, as someone who is a creative writer teacher, I am surprised you appear to be preaching that imagination has limits.

I’m not saying imagination has limits. I’m suggesting that the use of a corporation’s Intellectual Property has limits.
I actually discussed fan fiction with my students this summer and told them that it’s fine as a creative exercise, but that they shouldn’t get the impression that just because the owners of that IP haven’t done anything to shut down the FF sites, doesn’t mean that they can’t or won’t.
I certainly wouldn’t want to go into court against Disney trying to make the “you didn’t stop me at first, so you can’t stop me now!” argument.
And as a creative writing teacher, my main advice would be “fan fiction can be fun, but you’re better off—both legally and creatively—making your own stuff.” That’s hardly limiting imagination—it’s prodding my students to expand it.

[WebLurker]

The marriage is the creative dead end because now there is no option for any “reset.” The choice that Jim Shooter made in 1987 tied the hands of every Spider-Man creator thereafter until 2008.

So, because you don't like a specific status quo, it's a "dead end" (not even discounting the evidence to the contrary)? Fair enough if it's not your thing (we like what we like and all that), but, as the many times disgraced J.K. Rowling once wrote, it's important to call things by their proper name.

[TinkerSpider]

I’m not saying imagination has limits. I’m suggesting that the use of a corporation’s Intellectual Property has limits.
I actually discussed fan fiction with my students this summer and told them that it’s fine as a creative exercise, but that they shouldn’t get the impression that just because the owners of that IP haven’t done anything to shut down the FF sites, doesn’t mean that they can’t or won’t.
I certainly wouldn’t want to go into court against Disney trying to make the “you didn’t stop me at first, so you can’t stop me now!” argument.
And as a creative writing teacher, my main advice would be “fan fiction can be fun, but you’re better off—both legally and creatively—making your own stuff.” That’s hardly limiting imagination—it’s prodding my students to expand it.

Sorry, I meant your comment that marriage is a dead end. That is a very limiting statement and implies writers have hard stops to their creativity, which surprised me coming from a creative writing teacher.

Fanfiction is great training wheels. It allows new writers to experiment with style, setting, world building, voice, etc. because they are working off established character templates, and by playing with character templates and what is in character and what is out of character they learn how to build their own original characters.

P2P fanfic (pulled to publish, which means taking the fanfiction and changing the names and any worldbuilding elements that belong to others, and then publishing it as an original work) has been quite lucrative for authors, especially in the YA, fantasy and women's fiction genres. And then there's fanfiction based on public domain characters, such as Sherlock Holmes, that has done quite well for some writers.

Sometimes I think writers employed to write corporate IP should be required to write fanfic before being paid to write profic, because it would force them (hopefully) to think deeply about the characters before adding to the "official" canon.

[RJT]

So, because you don't like a specific status quo, it's a "dead end" (not even discounting the evidence to the contrary)? Fair enough if it's not your thing (we like what we like and all that), but, as the many times disgraced J.K. Rowling once wrote, it's important to call things by their proper name.

It has nothing to do with how I feel about it….it’s a creative dead end because it limits the choices of writers and artists. You put Doctor Octopus in Spider-Man’s body, you can reverse it before the new creative team takes over, or they can reverse it or keep it. You have Peter fired from the Daily Bugle, the next creative team can keep him in a new job or have him return to the Daily Bugle.
You marry him to Mary Jane, that’s it. The next creative team is stuck with that choice. And that’s what actually happened in 1987…the editor in chief wanted to do it, got fired a month later, and then all the creators who had argued against it were stuck with that status quo, and the attempts to undo it led to a lot of really terrible storylines.

Right now it seems we have the perfect situation; Nick Spencer did a 75+ issue run where Mary Jane and Peter were together and she served as an emotional support for him. Zeb Wells is writing a story where they aren’t together. Eventually somebody else will come along and want them together again.

[D.Z]

Some fans are just fans of the marriage itself and not Spiderman.

[Huntsman Spider]

Sorry, I meant your comment that marriage is a dead end. That is a very limiting statement and implies writers have hard stops to their creativity, which surprised me coming from a creative writing teacher.

Fanfiction is great training wheels. It allows new writers to experiment with style, setting, world building, voice, etc. because they are working off established character templates, and by playing with character templates and what is in character and what is out of character they learn how to build their own original characters.

P2P fanfic (pulled to publish, which means taking the fanfiction and changing the names and any worldbuilding elements that belong to others, and then publishing it as an original work) has been quite lucrative for authors, especially in the YA, fantasy and women's fiction genres. And then there's fanfiction based on public domain characters, such as Sherlock Holmes, that has done quite well for some writers.

Sometimes I think writers employed to write corporate IP should be required to write fanfic before being paid to write profic, because it would force them (hopefully) to think deeply about the characters before adding to the "official" canon.

A very valid point.

[RJT]

Sorry, I meant your comment that marriage is a dead end. That is a very limiting statement and implies writers have hard stops to their creativity, which surprised me coming from a creative writing teacher.

Fanfiction is great training wheels. It allows new writers to experiment with style, setting, world building, voice, etc. because they are working off established character templates, and by playing with character templates and what is in character and what is out of character they learn how to build their own original characters.

P2P fanfic (pulled to publish, which means taking the fanfiction and changing the names and any worldbuilding elements that belong to others, and then publishing it as an original work) has been quite lucrative for authors, especially in the YA, fantasy and women's fiction genres. And then there's fanfiction based on public domain characters, such as Sherlock Holmes, that has done quite well for some writers.

Sometimes I think writers employed to write corporate IP should be required to write fanfic before being paid to write profic, because it would force them (hopefully) to think deeply about the characters before adding to the "official" canon.

The irony of that is that Jim Shooter didn’t think deeply about the characters when he married Peter and Mary Jane. If he wanted to get them married, he probably should’ve had the writers of the books build up to it more organically in the main books instead of rushing it. He added to the “official canon” right before he got fired and left it for everybody else to deal with

[TinkerSpider]

The irony of that is that Jim Shooter didn’t think deeply about the characters when he married Peter and Mary Jane. If he wanted to get them married, he probably should’ve had the writers of the books build up to it more organically in the main books instead of rushing it. He added to the “official canon” right before he got fired and left it for everybody else to deal with

Well, it was Stan who wanted to marry them and they had more of a lead up in the comic strip, and it wasn't completely out of the blue - there was Spider-Man vs. Wolverine, and in Spectacular, which was more relationship driven than ASM at the time, MJ and Peter were dancing around each other even while he was still trying to figure out if he could fully trust Felicia - but not gonna argue.

[RJT]

Well, it was Stan who wanted to marry them and they had more of a lead up in the comic strip, and it wasn't completely out of the blue - there was Spider-Man vs. Wolverine, and in Spectacular, which was more relationship driven than ASM at the time, MJ and Peter were dancing around each other even while he was still trying to figure out if he could fully trust Felicia - but not gonna argue.

I mean, the issue of Amazing before he proposed to MJ, he was hooking up with Felicia. And the writers of the books at the time say that it was sprung on them. You can like the marriage all you want but you can’t deny it was editorially mandated.

[wleakr]

Some fans are just fans of the marriage itself and not Spiderman.

Exactly this.

Even folks that were not fully into Spencer storylines were good with it as long as he "stuck the landing", i.e. restored the marraige.

[RJT]

Exactly this.

Even folks that were not fully into Spencer storylines were good with it as long as he "stuck the landing", i.e. restored the marraige.

I sometimes get the sense that it’s like a piece of unfinished business and they want the marriage so they can walk away from the character knowing this wrong has been righted.

[Huntsman Spider]

It is unfinished business. They couldn't just let Peter and Mary Jane divorce or otherwise split up like a normal married couple with "irreconcilable differences," they had to get the damned Devil --- or the closest equivalent thereof in Mephisto --- to break them up with a literal Faustian pact for Aunt May's life. The marriage did not fizzle out under natural and understandable or relatable circumstances; it was retconned out by a literal deal with a literal devil, who even admitted to their faces that he was doing it to spite The One Above All (God) by eliminating their marriage and the memory of it from the Marvel Universe at large, and that was the price they had to pay to keep Aunt May alive. Ironically, that makes the case for the love between Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson(-Parker) even stronger, because if you have to have the Devil (or the closest in-universe equivalent) break them up . . . that says a lot.

[TinkerSpider]

I mean, the issue of Amazing before he proposed to MJ, he was hooking up with Felicia. And the writers of the books at the time say that it was sprung on them. You can like the marriage all you want but you can’t deny it was editorially mandated.

Which is a great reason to stop editorially mandating other stories. Two wrongs don’t make a right.