Doctor Strange: "You are the right person to replace Logan."
X-23: "I know there are people who disapprove... Guys on the Internet mainly."
(All-New Wolverine #4)
I remember way back in Reign of the Supermen how Superboy kept insisting everyone call him Superman. Then, when the real Superman came back, he went "No. THAT'S Superman. Just call me Superboy."
I really wish Miles would have done something like that. Her picked up the name to carry on Spidey's legacy, I don't see why he didn't drop it once he saw the real Spider-man was still in action.
Oh well. I suppose it could be worse. He could be Spider-Miles.
I think it only gets complicated if you try to pair them together when they're characters clearly not designed to work together as a pair or a duo and it shows.
Because why would you have a character with the exact same codename as the main character? The two Hawkeyes/Wolverine's thing is mostly to service the female version using that name, ultimately, and the Batgirls is a team book where the "main" one takes a backseat as mission control.
(Even in ITSV the point was Miles coming into his own and that he and Peter have to be their own Spider-Man's on their own Earth's, not together).
What about Captain America? Right now there is a comic with both Rogers and Sam being so at the same time and working as a team. Plus, at one point they mention the thing with the name, and decide that yes, they are both Captain America
There's rarely a satisfying in-story reason for why a character would take the same name as their friend/inspiration/whatever who is still active. If you became a pro wrestler, you wouldn't use the same name as your wrestler friend. If you became a DJ, you wouldn't use another DJ's alias. It's even more cumbersome given that most of these characters have secret identities. How does the Daily Bugle distinguish between Spider-Man and Spider-Man? If Spider-Man, Spider-Man and a third hero (who doesn't know their secret identities) are having a team-up, what do they call each other?
Yeah, I suppose we could analyse post-OMD Spider-Man against pre-OMD Spider-Man. Everything from the death of Gwen Stacy, to OMD has had some drama involving MJ, even killing her off at one stage. Everything post-OMD had MJ aligning with Tony Stark, mostly, and only peripherally meeting Peter Parker as a friend, (as MCU Peter suggested to MJ in Spider-Man 1 by Sam Raimi). It’s hard to differentiate the two phases of this period as good Spidey, or bad Spidey, because each phase had its positives and negatives. Dan Slott is what we have to evaluate here. Slott had to carry the can of a post-marriage Spider-Man and his BND beginnings were quite good. I looked at BND negatively, because I was against OMD, but have we really had an MJ-free Spider saga? MJ was always lurking there in the background, and all Dan Slott brought us, was a marriage drama-free Spider-Man like Steve Ditko era Spider-Man. I can’t say Dan Slotts era was any worse than the Ditko/Romita Snr era. I found stories I enjoyed in Dan Slotts era.
What I can say is MJ never left the Spider-Man franchise after OMD.
Last edited by jackolover; 08-17-2022 at 10:53 PM.
One additional change is that the MJ of the movies is different from the MJ of the comics.
Sincerely,
Thomas Mets
"He's pure power and doesn't even know it. He's the best of us."-Matt Murdock
"I need a reason to take the mask off."-Peter Parker
"My heart half-breaks at how easy it is to lie to him. It breaks all the way when he believes me without question." Felicia Hardy
"He's pure power and doesn't even know it. He's the best of us."-Matt Murdock
"I need a reason to take the mask off."-Peter Parker
"My heart half-breaks at how easy it is to lie to him. It breaks all the way when he believes me without question." Felicia Hardy
I don't agree that it was like the Ditko era because the context with Ditko was completely different. It was the Lee/Ditko run who first introduced MJ and set her up as Peter's eventual endgame. The fact that Ditko left before the MJ reveal doesn't negate that.
Slott on the other hand has gone out of his way to diminish MJ's role as a supporting character and love interest. Sure, to an extent, he inherited that status quo from OMD. However, it can't entirely be blamed on OMD. Nick Spencer proved that Quesada and Editorial are only against Peter being married; they're not against Peter dating MJ. Their separation in the past 15 years (minus the 3 years where Spencer was on) can thus be more attributed to Slott and Wells, even though OMD was the trigger of that.
What that also means is that Slott and Wells are anomalies even by the standards of the group of writers that are pro-OMD.
Last edited by Kaitou D. Kid; 08-18-2022 at 11:59 AM.