The Problem With Spider-Man Comics Today

[Daibhidh]

Back together is simply not as fun as being newlyweds for the very first time.

I think that's not the point of the marriage.

It has been said that you can depict romance in drama or a novel or film, but not marriage. Romance is dramatic: the two people have to make choices about whether to act on their feelings and overcome obstacles, and then when they finally come together you have a high of satisfied expectations. Romance has to have a plot arc: the two people come together or they fail to come together or they circle around each other indecisively. Marriage is not dramatic: the quality of the marriage depends not on dramatic choices or on overcoming obstacles but on little ongoing interactions. You can show the characters having healthy interactions or unhealthy interactions once or twice, but what makes a marriage healthy or unhealthy is not one or two interactions or ongoing arguments handled well or badly, but the trend over time.

But when you get into an ongoing serial storytelling like a soap opera or a comic romance doesn't work as well. Romance is a hit: you see the couple work their way towards getting together. But then, they're together. So for the sake of drama they have to split up and then they get together with other people, but it's just a little less easy to care because it didn't work out the last time, and then they split up and get together with someone else again, and again it's harder to care because they're not going to last.
Marriage on the other hand can be depicted in an ongoing story, because you can just see them supporting each other or failing to support each other in a difficult patch, and there doesn't need to be an arc with a shape to it for the whole of the marriage.

What MJ/Peter marriage fans want to see is not Peter and MJ getting married every five years or even getting back together every five years. We don't want to see the marriage again or even Straczynski getting them back together again. We want to see them just getting on with dealing with the stresses of superhero life together.

FFS this is Marvel. Reed and Sue are right there. The problem with the Fantastic Four is that Reed and Sue are married, said no Fantastic Four fan ever.

[Daibhidh]

Yeah, Spidey at his best also tackles social issues pretty often. Too much weird and it loses track of that, and it was a great part of what made the comics relatable, not so much the marital status of Peter.

It seems to me a big missed opportunity that in the 2010s when the gig economy was becoming a feature of the economic landscape, Dan Slott made the foremost superheroic member of the gig economy into a CEO.

That said I didn't like JMS all that much.

The superheroic stuff in JMS is mostly pretty run of the mill to dire. Even Morlun is overrated. The animal totem stuff is based on the idea that most of Spider-man's villains are animal-themed, which doesn't hold up if you think about Spider-man's villains as a whole. (Only three of the Sinister Six are animal-themed. Maybe four if you count Kraven, which I don't. And then there's Norman. I suppose Norman is themed around a goblin shark? That's would certainly be jumping it.)

JMS' run is a great run because the marriage holds it together.

[Lee]

I think that's not the point of the marriage.

It has been said that you can depict romance in drama or a novel or film, but not marriage. Romance is dramatic: the two people have to make choices about whether to act on their feelings and overcome obstacles, and then when they finally come together you have a high of satisfied expectations. Romance has to have a plot arc: the two people come together or they fail to come together or they circle around each other indecisively. Marriage is not dramatic: the quality of the marriage depends not on dramatic choices or on overcoming obstacles but on little ongoing interactions. You can show the characters having healthy interactions or unhealthy interactions once or twice, but what makes a marriage healthy or unhealthy is not one or two interactions or ongoing arguments handled well or badly, but the trend over time.

But when you get into an ongoing serial storytelling like a soap opera or a comic romance doesn't work as well. Romance is a hit: you see the couple work their way towards getting together. But then, they're together. So for the sake of drama they have to split up and then they get together with other people, but it's just a little less easy to care because it didn't work out the last time, and then they split up and get together with someone else again, and again it's harder to care because they're not going to last.
Marriage on the other hand can be depicted in an ongoing story, because you can just see them supporting each other or failing to support each other in a difficult patch, and there doesn't need to be an arc with a shape to it for the whole of the marriage.

What MJ/Peter marriage fans want to see is not Peter and MJ getting married every five years or even getting back together every five years. We don't want to see the marriage again or even Straczynski getting them back together again. We want to see them just getting on with dealing with the stresses of superhero life together.

FFS this is Marvel. Reed and Sue are right there. The problem with the Fantastic Four is that Reed and Sue are married, said no Fantastic Four fan ever.

Marvel wants Fantastic Four to be about a family of adventurers. Marvel wants Spider-Man to be about a young man finding his way in the world.

[marhawkman]

Marvel wants Fantastic Four to be about a family of adventurers. Marvel wants Spider-Man to be about a young man finding his way in the world.

MC2 Spider-Dad was best Spider-Man

As April herself put it, "April comes before May," out of her belief that she was the original May "Mayday" Parker all along and the Mayday their parents had been raising for the last 15+ years was her clone. Yeah, Spider-Girl had her own Clone Saga, and that's not even counting the remnants of her dad's Clone Saga like Kaine showing up every now and again and the ever-mysterious Darkdevil turning out to be Ben Reilly's son possessed by both Matt Murdock's spirit and a portion of Zarathos, the demon half of Ghost Rider/Johnny Blaze.

Ah, right, April chose her own name. I was trying to remember if she was named after someone.

[Kevinroc]

Ah, right, April chose her own name. I was trying to remember if she was named after someone.

April chose that name because "April comes before May" (the implication being she considered herself the original, and Mayday the clone).

[WebLurker]

Let's take a step back here. You made a post saying "Writer thinks X" with no proof, and when looking for proof after the fact, you didn't find any.

Kudos for admitting to the mistake. Spreading misinformation about people isn't cool, and there's too much of it in the online Spider-Man fandom and super-hero comics fandom. It's also kind of uncool to pepper a "My bad, I posted misinformation about a writer" post with "But also writer sucks and is bad".

The point was, "if somebody who's not a fan of him thinks he gets too much crap, that really says something about how the situation."

The tweet you mentioned wasn't deleted, it's here: https://twitter.com/DanSlott/status/1379515313788686338

Think that's a different one; the one I found on Google had him asking why he would've been a Spider-Man writer and wrote RYV if he hated Spider-Man and Mary Jane. The browser said something about the account being deleted, although I'm not sure what that was about.

I think it's important for people (speaking broadly here, about all online fandoms) to remember that if you don't like what a writer did with a character, it doesn't mean that the writer hates the character, and if a writer wrote a comic you didn't like, it doesn't mean the writer is a bad person who wants to ruin your life.

I have come to dislike snap guesses about authorial intent, eps. when there's no effort to get info about the project in question that explains intent.

[Matt Rat]

Marvel wants Fantastic Four to be about a family of adventurers. Marvel wants Spider-Man to be about a young man finding his way in the world.

Marvel don't know what they want Spider-Man to be, that's why we've still had comics where he's single, or married, or a father. Hell even Slott's 60th anniversary story was about him as an old man finding his way in the world.

[Daibhidh]

Marvel wants Spider-Man to be about a young man finding his way in the world.

There's Miles. You don't need two Spider-men to both be about young men finding their way in the world. They can have Peter be about a young couple finding their ways in the world together.
(Contrary to what one would believe from Victorian novels, young men and women do not stop needing to find their way in the world instantly upon marriage.)

[nose norton]

What's really weird is they had a chance to prove it and now settled back to early 80's minus the black suit

If only that were so. The early 80's were great, gimme that any day.

[nose norton]

I think it's important for people (speaking broadly here, about all online fandoms) to remember that if you don't like what a writer did with a character, it doesn't mean that the writer hates the character

Unless your name is Gerry conway, the character is Gwen and what you do is terminate it because you think it was as dull as dishwater.

[marhawkman]

There's Miles. You don't need two Spider-men to both be about young men finding their way in the world. They can have Peter be about a young couple finding their ways in the world together.
(Contrary to what one would believe from Victorian novels, young men and women do not stop needing to find their way in the world instantly upon marriage.)

actually the way my GrandParents described being married... it's harder since you need to find solutions that work for both partners.

[PanicPixieDreamGirl]

'The Book of Peter' alluded to Peter and MJ having a child with the name Mary.

That threw me the first time I saw it, I always wondered if it was actually supposed to be "May" and a stray R got in there by mistake.

[marhawkman]

That threw me the first time I saw it, I always wondered if it was actually supposed to be "May" and a stray R got in there by mistake.

Well.. the M in "MJ" is Mary....

[PanicPixieDreamGirl]

Well.. the M in "MJ" is Mary....

Yeah, but MJ never seemed the type to name a kid after herself.

(Is that still common in America? I dunno.)

[marhawkman]

Yeah, but MJ never seemed the type to name a kid after herself.

(Is that still common in America? I dunno.)

Some families do... some don't. It's all on the parents naming the kid.