Do you think fans would accept anyone except MJ as the love interest?

[Frontier]

Has anyone discussed "Silk," Cindy Moon as a replacement love interest? I don't find her nearly as annoying as Black Cat, and I find the "Spider-Bride" angle between her and Peter fascinating. Would love to see her become a serious contender for Pete's affections.

--jthree

Honestly I feel like Cindy should never be counted as a love interest.

[marhawkman]

Honestly I feel like Cindy should never be counted as a love interest.

this is true. Pete didn't want to be in a relationship with her.

[godisawesome]

Even if we ignore those things, the introduction is garbage by itself.

Suddenly new Spider-Chick, she has better versions of Spidey's powers, and now they're really turned on around each other.

The first time I read about Cindy on the wiki, I legit thought it was an out of date April Fools joke, because I struggled to understand that was done for real.

Either way, Marvel could make another love interest that works well, but the problem is that this is a huge mountain climb.

First there's the very importatn fact that MJ is a classic name, she was hinted to exist all the way back in ASM#15, and debutted in ASM#42, making her about as old as Rhino, actually older than a classic villain like Kingpin, so on name recognition alone, she's about as iconic to Spider-Man as Lois is to Superman.

Second, even if we ignore how recognizable MJ's name is, there are a lot of stories with her being a pretty fun love interest, while also being her own character, so MJ isn't a lame character who's around just because of name recognition alone like Electro, she has a decently defined personality, which only enhances her as a love interest.

Love interests who are only defined as being love interests are boring, specially if they only cause drama, and if a love interest can also be their own character, then the relationship has a chance of being more fun, shit like that is why Felicia is also pretty iconic as one, 'cause while fans tend to exaggerate her traits (I tend to see a lot of fans thinking her and Spidey had a really active sex life, and I have yet to see any evidence of them having sex that often), her own personality and goals combined with how she interacts with Spider, and how their personalities clash, can be pretty fun, and MJ also has a lot of the same benefits with how she has her goals as a model/actress, what she goes through, the difficulties of dating a super-hero while still staying together, and having fun interactions that help emphasize how much they love each other.

So essentially, to make another liked love interest, Marvel would need to come up with a character who has fun chemistry with Spidey, while also managing to make her into her own person, which's a really difficult mountain climb by default, but it's even worse considering Marvel has very few, if any writers actually capable of writing romance like this, and even if by a small miracle that happens, she would still be competing with huge names like MJ and Felicia.

And even if we ignore all of this, it's also worth remembering that fans are stubborn and may be against change by default, so a new love interest would be hard to accept, but if she manages to actually be interesting, then she could be accepted, even if I doubt she wouldn't reach the level of popularity MJ and Felicia have.

There’s another hurdle of difficulty, albeit coming more from the management than the fanbase this time: yes, you’d have to overcome MJ’s popularity as “the” love of Peter’s life… but if you did do that, you’d likely find yourself looking at an audience now expecting her to marry Peter, which was the very situation that freaked out the guy behind OMD so hard he spend a decade trying to break up the marriage before he succeeded.

That’s likely the heart of the matter; the only real reason that MJ and alerted aren’t still hitched has nothing to do with someone disliking MJ, but the idea of a single “official” romantic interest rather than a fling.

Quesada and others had a fanatical belief rooted in marketing that commitment drives away customers, all evidence to the contrary.

Any character who could rise to rival MJ would then be confronted by that same group, and likely even more easily undermined.

[Kevinroc]

Pretty much, but I feel that if the character is actually interesting then she could be accepted after a while, it's just that Marvel struggles to do that.

Which honestly I can't even blame them that much for failing, writing an actually interesting love interest is difficult, specially if they do it in a way that is similar to previous love interests, which I'll be honest, most of Spidey's love interests sucked ass, even "classic" ones like Betty and Gwen, though Betty at least gets a pass for being the first.

Writers don't care about other writers OCs, basically.

(We saw this during BND.)

[marhawkman]

There’s another hurdle of difficulty, albeit coming more from the management than the fanbase this time: yes, you’d have to overcome MJ’s popularity as “the” love of Peter’s life… but if you did do that, you’d likely find yourself looking at an audience now expecting her to marry Peter, which was the very situation that freaked out the guy behind OMD so hard he spend a decade trying to break up the marriage before he succeeded.

That’s likely the heart of the matter; the only real reason that MJ and alerted aren’t still hitched has nothing to do with someone disliking MJ, but the idea of a single “official” romantic interest rather than a fling.

Quesada and others had a fanatical belief rooted in marketing that commitment drives away customers, all evidence to the contrary.

Any character who could rise to rival MJ would then be confronted by that same group, and likely even more easily undermined.

This shows up not just in Pete though. Iron Man, Thor, Black Panther...

[JThree]

I think it is more likely people would accept a new character if well done then Bringing Gwen back from the dead, Felicia and especially Cindy. Most People also do not want someone who diminishes Peter’s role in the book ( Mockingbird comes to mind).

Bless you for mentioning Cindy. I would love to see a series (not What If? that just reinforces that the existing plot lines were the "right" ones) where Peter could have had other relationships that worked out. Have to reread my Silk stories, but I do think Peter and Cindy have potential. Already discussed it in another thread. Did the "Spider-Bride" theme get resolved?

--jthree

[Matt Rat]

Did the "Spider-Bride" theme get resolved?

--jthree

It got dropped as soon as Spider-Verse finished.

[Lukmendes]

There’s another hurdle of difficulty, albeit coming more from the management than the fanbase this time: yes, you’d have to overcome MJ’s popularity as “the” love of Peter’s life… but if you did do that, you’d likely find yourself looking at an audience now expecting her to marry Peter, which was the very situation that freaked out the guy behind OMD so hard he spend a decade trying to break up the marriage before he succeeded.

That’s likely the heart of the matter; the only real reason that MJ and alerted aren’t still hitched has nothing to do with someone disliking MJ, but the idea of a single “official” romantic interest rather than a fling.

Quesada and others had a fanatical belief rooted in marketing that commitment drives away customers, all evidence to the contrary.

Any character who could rise to rival MJ would then be confronted by that same group, and likely even more easily undermined.

Good point, didn't even consider about what could happen if she rivalled MJ in popularity lol.

Writers don't care about other writers OCs, basically.

(We saw this during BND.)

BND was each writer trying their own waifu as the OTP for Spidey, a shipping war being done officially lol.

Then again there was something like that when Conway took over ASM, he even killed Gwen for MJ's sake (Though originally he was just planning to break them up), so I guess official shipping wars are part of ASM's core .

It got dropped as soon as Spider-Verse finished.

And the end of Spider-Verse made it clear that the pheromones are still active, but then Silk's ongoing mostly ignored it besides vaguely talking about it in a way you wouldn't even know it was about the pheromones unless you know about 'em.

[Kevinroc]

BND was each writer trying their own waifu as the OTP for Spidey, a shipping war being done officially lol.

Then again there was something like that when Conway took over ASM, he even killed Gwen for MJ's sake (Though originally he was just planning to break them up), so I guess official shipping wars are part of ASM's core .

Romita was the one who wanted to kill somebody. Conway just took advantage of the opportunity.

[TinkerSpider]

Romita was the one who wanted to kill somebody. Conway just took advantage of the opportunity.

Roy Thomas was the editor, after Stan moved to a higher position. He ordered a death.

Romita came up with killing Gwen, because he remembered how affected emotionally he was when Milton Caniff killed off the love interest in Terry and the Pirates.

Conway was on board, of course.

[Matt Rat]

Roy Thomas was the editor, after Stan moved to a higher position. He ordered a death.

Romita came up with killing Gwen, because he remembered how affected emotionally he was when Milton Caniff killed off the love interest in Terry and the Pirates.

Conway was on board, of course.

Roy Thomas is a funny one...I read he also disapproved of the marraige, but when he took over the ghost writing duties of the newspaper strip, working with Stan convinced him keeping it in the strip when nobody else was using it was a unique opportunity to set it apart from everything else they were doing, so that's what convinced him to go with the 'dream' retcon that restored it after it briefly synched with Brand New Day

[JThree]

Roy Thomas was the editor, after Stan moved to a higher position. He ordered a death.

Romita came up with killing Gwen, because he remembered how affected emotionally he was when Milton Caniff killed off the love interest in Terry and the Pirates.

.

Would love to know more about this Terry and the Pirates storyline? Any fans tell me a bit more?
==jthree

[JThree]

OK. Realizing, I haven't read the Silk storylines for awhile, but then why did the writers have the "pheromone" angle between her and Pete if they didn't intend to do anything romantic with the two. Why introduce Silk at all? Seem to remember that the covers kept her mysterious at first.

--jthree

[Kevinroc]

OK. Realizing, I haven't read the Silk storylines for awhile, but then why did the writers have the "pheromone" angle between her and Pete if they didn't intend to do anything romantic with the two. Why introduce Silk at all? Seem to remember that the covers kept her mysterious at first.

--jthree

They were so blind to what they were doing that they rushed in without really thinking about it. The pheromones thing has been dropped. I would be very surprised if it were ever brought up again.

[Lukmendes]

Romita was the one who wanted to kill somebody. Conway just took advantage of the opportunity.

I once heard that Green Goblin is supposed to represent Conway's opinion of Gwen (That she's a waste of space), and if so, he sounded kinda happy to have the chance to kill her off lol.

Roy Thomas was the editor, after Stan moved to a higher position. He ordered a death.

Romita came up with killing Gwen, because he remembered how affected emotionally he was when Milton Caniff killed off the love interest in Terry and the Pirates.

Conway was on board, of course.

Huh, wasn't aware of the Roy Thomas bit.

Roy Thomas is a funny one...I read he also disapproved of the marraige, but when he took over the ghost writing duties of the newspaper strip, working with Stan convinced him keeping it in the strip when nobody else was using it was a unique opportunity to set it apart from everything else they were doing, so that's what convinced him to go with the 'dream' retcon that restored it after it briefly synched with Brand New Day

Some people at Marvel have the opinion that the marriage can happen anywhere but 616, so that's not surprising...

It could also be a case that Roy Thomas started to be okay with it after a while, assuming he was against it of course.

OK. Realizing, I haven't read the Silk storylines for awhile, but then why did the writers have the "pheromone" angle between her and Pete if they didn't intend to do anything romantic with the two. Why introduce Silk at all? Seem to remember that the covers kept her mysterious at first.

--jthree

Cindy was basically "throw shit at the wall and see what sticks", the pheromones just happen to be something that didn't stick.