Mary Jane Watson-Parker Appreciation 2023

[Kaitou D. Kid]

I will never understand the "Wells wanted to permanently write MJ out" takes. Dude absolutely knows he has no control over what the next writer does.

The real question to ask is "why is the dude writing a run that he knows is going to be retconned so completely?"

I don't think he is trying to do that either. But to play devil's advocate... if a writer ever got on the book with that goal in mind, it would look indistinguishable from the character assassinations Wells is doing right now. That's how inept of a writer Wells is.

This run is miserable. The only saving grace is that Wells is so completely inept a writer, none of the emotional beats are landing and he’s just angering everyone. Never have I seen a run be so determined to anger MJ fans, Ben fans, Felicia fans, and Spidey fans (with the constant nerfing, screaming he’s going to die, and needing someone to rescue him).

This paragraph is unfathomably true.

[CaptainUniverse]

Dude treated ASM like a writing exercise to see if he could do a mystery box that he didn't plot out at all, and it's basically created a run that even its fans admit is hated.

Yup. I am pretty sure there was even an early interview where he stated it was an experimental writing exercise of sorts.

[Kevinroc]

I don't think he is trying to do that either. But to play devil's advocate... if a writer ever got on the book with that goal in mind, it would look indistinguishable from the character assassinations Wells is doing right now. That's how inept of a writer Wells is.

Spider-Man is 60 years old. At this point I don't think anyone taking on the title thinks that can actually happen.

[Spider-Tiger]

I will never understand the "Wells wanted to permanently write MJ out" takes. Dude absolutely knows he has no control over what the next writer does.

The real question to ask is "why is the dude writing a run that he knows is going to be retconned so completely?"

It's probably just as simple as Wells didn't want to write Peter and MJ as a couple for the duration of his run but wasn't actually interested in telling the story of their break-up. So he came up with a status quo that would keep Peter and Mary Jane apart and figured he could work out the details later. His entire approach to this arc strikes me as though he probably couldn't care less whether the whole thing is retconned away once he is gone.

Unlike a lot of previous writers (Spencer, Slott, JMS, etc.), I don't think Wells took this gig with the intention of really putting his stamp on the character. His attitude gives off a "Yeah, sure. I'll have fun with it" vibe.

[Kevinroc]

It's probably just as simple as Wells didn't want to write Peter and MJ as a couple for the duration of his run but wasn't actually interested in telling the story of their break-up. So he came up with a status quo that would keep Peter and Mary Jane apart and figured he could work out the details later. His entire approach to this arc strikes me as though he probably couldn't care less whether the whole thing is retconned away once he is gone.

Unlike a lot of previous writers (Spencer, Slott, JMS, etc.), I don't think Wells took this gig with the intention of really putting his stamp on the character. His attitude gives off a "Yeah, sure. I'll have fun with it" vibe.

I definitely get this vibe about the whole thing.

I feel for the next creative team that has to clean up this mess.

[CaptainUniverse]

Spider-Verse! (Featuring Spinneret and Spiderling!)

[TinkerSpider]

I will never understand the "Wells wanted to permanently write MJ out" takes. Dude absolutely knows he has no control over what the next writer does.

The real question to ask is "why is the dude writing a run that he knows is going to be retconned so completely?"

I know I can go to the dark extremes sometimes, so I'll try to pull back LOL.

It's just that a) Wells has a track record of MJ erasure going back years; B) he's a BND writer and maybe he thinks he finally has the key to making the BND changes stick; his entire run is pretty much BND 2.0 and What Peter Did is smelling a lot like OMIT: here, let's go backwards and have a story explaining all the tedious detail why Peter & MJ broke up - with OMIT leaning in for extra MJ assassination - when all the reader wants is for the story to clear up the confusion with a scene or two and move forward; C) he sounded pretty frustrated with fans who won't let OMD go so he might think while he has the keys, let's see if I can't shut them up by removing MJ so far out of the story, it makes no sense for even the next writer to bring her back. And look, I gave her a husband and kids, she's happy, you fans are awful people for wanting to break up a happy family; D) he wrote Curt Connors eating his own child and implied rape - a story Nick Lowe loves - you think trying to break MJ's character so that she's practically unusable for the next writer isn't in his wheelhouse?

What I can't get past is why give MJ a husband and kids? If he just wanted MJ out of the story, then send her to Europe. Have her be working on a film. Or missing and presumed dead; it's been twenty-five years since Byrne did that, after all. If he wanted to make her unavailable, give her another boyfriend like Bobby Carr. But a husband and kids are pretty permanent, in that you pretty much can only use death to remove the kids permanently; even if MJ divorces Paul, the kids are still hers - and even if the kids and Paul turn out to be figments, MJ still would still have the memory of being married and being a mother (and we saw how Wanda reacted when she learned her kids were just figments LOL). So then you need to mindwipe MJ or reveal this isn't actually our MJ or pluck MJ from a point earlier in the timestream before this all happened for her not to be emotionally devastated.

And yes, everyone is going to say I'm overthinking - but just pointing out giving her a family is the thorniest situation to walk back out of all the options that were available to Wells. So why do it unless he does expect it to stick? Sure, he knows his run might be retconned the way he retconned Spencer's "unbreakable" as fast as he could. But it might not. In the meantime, he's made his case.

Hopefully, I'm going to have egg all over my face and this isn't his intent. It's just that Marvel, when given the chance to prop up MJ or knife her in the back, chooses the knife almost every single time. But everyone's right - he probably didn't think of the implications when he first came up with the mystery boxes (which is evident from the work on the pages LOL) and it was probably is his idea of a "fun" storyline. I guess we'll see!

[Kevinroc]

I know I can go to the dark extremes sometimes, so I'll try to pull back LOL.

It's just that a) Wells has a track record of MJ erasure going back years; B) he's a BND writer and maybe he thinks he finally has the key to making the BND changes stick; his entire run is pretty much BND 2.0 and What Peter Did is smelling a lot like OMIT: here, let's go backwards and have a story explaining all the tedious detail why Peter & MJ broke up - with OMIT leaning in for extra MJ assassination - when all the reader wants is for the story to clear up the confusion with a scene or two and move forward; C) he sounded pretty frustrated with fans who won't let OMD go so he might think while he has the keys, let's see if I can't shut them up by removing MJ so far out of the story, it makes no sense for even the next writer to bring her back. And look, I gave her a husband and kids, she's happy, you fans are awful people for wanting to break up a happy family; D) he wrote Curt Connors eating his own child and implied rape - a story Nick Lowe loves - you think trying to break MJ's character so that she's practically unusable for the next writer isn't in his wheelhouse?

What I can't get past is why give MJ a husband and kids? If he just wanted MJ out of the story, then send her to Europe. Have her be working on a film. Or missing and presumed dead; it's been twenty-five years since Byrne did that, after all. If he wanted to make her unavailable, give her another boyfriend like Bobby Carr. But a husband and kids are pretty permanent, in that you pretty much can only use death to remove the kids permanently; even if MJ divorces Paul, the kids are still hers - and even if the kids and Paul turn out to be figments, MJ still would still have the memory of being married and being a mother (and we saw how Wanda reacted when she learned her kids were just figments LOL). So then you need to mindwipe MJ or reveal this isn't actually our MJ or pluck MJ from a point earlier in the timestream before this all happened for her not to be emotionally devastated.

And yes, everyone is going to say I'm overthinking - but just pointing out giving her a family is the thorniest situation to walk back out of all the options that were available to Wells. So why do it unless he does expect it to stick? Sure, he knows his run might be retconned the way he retconned Spencer's "unbreakable" as fast as he could. But it might not. In the meantime, he's made his case.

Hopefully, I'm going to have egg all over my face and this isn't his intent. It's just that Marvel, when given the chance to prop up MJ or knife her in the back, chooses the knife almost every single time. But everyone's right - he probably didn't think of the implications when he first came up with the mystery boxes (which is evident from the work on the pages LOL) and it was probably is his idea of a "fun" storyline. I guess we'll see!

You're definitely overthinking it.

Wells absolutely screwed up pretty much everything with MJ and the mystery box. The fan ire exists for a reason. But when you go to such an extreme (to remove MJ from the narrative), the snap back is going to be just as, if not more, extreme. Because Status Quo is God. And the Status Quo (and the fandom) demands MJ be the love interest.

[Spider-Tiger]

What I can't get past is why give MJ a husband and kids? If he just wanted MJ out of the story, then send her to Europe. Have her be working on a film. Or missing and presumed dead; it's been twenty-five years since Byrne did that, after all. If he wanted to make her unavailable, give her another boyfriend like Bobby Carr. But a husband and kids are pretty permanent, in that you pretty much can only use death to remove the kids permanently; even if MJ divorces Paul, the kids are still hers - and even if the kids and Paul turn out to be figments, MJ still would still have the memory of being married and being a mother (and we saw how Wanda reacted when she learned her kids were just figments LOL). So then you need to mindwipe MJ or reveal this isn't actually our MJ or pluck MJ from a point earlier in the timestream before this all happened for her not to be emotionally devastated.

Sending Mary Jane off to Europe probably wouldn't be enough to break them up and have Peter date someone else. Killing her off or having her go missing would take the story in a dour direction just as it had in the Byrne era. Giving her a mysterious husband and kids that you can then snap your fingers and magic away probably seemed like the most attractive option to Wells. I really don't think he put all that much thought into it (other than he didn't want to write them together and probably wasn't interested in writing the umpteenth break up)

As far as Lowe, he probably cares too little about the actual content of the story which is why the book has been so inconsistent between runs.

I think these characters have gotten to a point of iconography that no single run can 'ruin' them. The next guy can just come along and ignore whatever the last guy did.

[Daibhidh]

That pretty much sums it up. Why should you care how a character got "there"...if you don't like where "there" is?

If you want to know how they get out of this one, it helps to know how they got into this one. So if you cold open with our leads buried up to their necks in sand and surrounded by flesh eating ants a flashback to how they got there will tell you what the resources available to them and the additional obstacles they face are. But otherwise, one doesn't much care beyond a general continuity fetish.

[Max_Mercury]

let's see if I can't shut them up by removing MJ so far out of the story, it makes no sense for even the next writer to bring her back. And look, I gave her a husband and kids, she's happy, you fans are awful people for wanting to break up a happy family;

What I can't get past is why give MJ a husband and kids? If he just wanted MJ out of the story, then send her to Europe. Have her be working on a film. Or missing and presumed dead; it's been twenty-five years since Byrne did that, after all. If he wanted to make her unavailable, give her another boyfriend like Bobby Carr. But a husband and kids are pretty permanent, in that you pretty much can only use death to remove the kids permanently; even if MJ divorces Paul, the kids are still hers - and even if the kids and Paul turn out to be figments, MJ still would still have the memory of being married and being a mother (and we saw how Wanda reacted when she learned her kids were just figments LOL). So then you need to mindwipe MJ or reveal this isn't actually our MJ or pluck MJ from a point earlier in the timestream before this all happened for her not to be emotionally devastated.

And yes, everyone is going to say I'm overthinking - but just pointing out giving her a family is the thorniest situation to walk back out of all the options that were available to Wells. So why do it unless he does expect it to stick? Sure, he knows his run might be retconned the way he retconned Spencer's "unbreakable" as fast as he could. But it might not. In the meantime, he's made his case.

This is where my thinking has been going as well since the latest piece of trash issue came out and we found out she's married. Dan Slott has said that he never bothered to put Peter and Mary Jane back together because it has to lead to a what comes next situation: If they can be together, why can't they be married? Slott is a hack of course, so I give him no credit for coming up with idea--rather I think this what editorial told him and he just repeated it like the yes man he is. But I think after Spenser's "unbreakable" splash page, the editorial office was thinking they were at the "what next?' question and had/have no desire to undo OMD. Spenser got a close anyone to addressing it, and in the end they pulled back on it. So I think the idea became how do we tear them apart and drive a stake into fans who want the marriage back? Let's ruin Mary Jane's character so badly fans won't even want her and Peter back together.

So I think what we're going to get is a story where Mary Jane is stuck in some other dimension where time moves slower, she gives up on Peter coming to get her and moves on. Maybe she even blames him, just like they made her do in OMIT. She meets someone else, gets married, has kids, and lives another life. As for why she looks the same age when she comes back, hey they don't have to explain it, it's magic! And despite everyone thinking this will be undone, the fact remains ALL THIS HAPPENED! No matter what story comes next, in continuity Mary Jane got married to someone else and had kids!!!

So now Spidey editorial can look at Peter/MJ marriage fans and taunt them: "I thought you guys loved marriage so much? Do you want to break up a marriage now? Do you like Peter as home wreaker? How about as a stalker? Hey, you want us to kill some kids now?"

That's how it feels to me.

[Morgoth]

Well, DC once killed Donna Troy family, including her kids, so they could reverse her status quo back to basis.
I mean, if Marvel wants to use this kind of argument, it's not going to work, there is already a precedent.

[logo449]

I could totally see Zeb Wells and Nick Lowe looking at that “Unbreakable” page at the end of Spencer’s run and wanting to see just how far they could bend it. Unfortunately, giving her a husband and kids feels like it snapped it unless they’ve got some ridiculous ass pull explanation coming up.

Or maybe they really will lean into Peter and MJ permanently moving apart. Their love persists for each other, it just evolved into something else besides a romantic relationship (this sounds so bad, I think it’d make Nick Lowe cry).

[Kevinroc]

Coming up with some ridiculous out for the corner the characters were backed into is pretty much comic writing 101.

(Still doesn't change how terribly this was all handled.)

[Spider-Tiger]

This is where my thinking has been going as well since the latest piece of trash issue came out and we found out she's married. Dan Slott has said that he never bothered to put Peter and Mary Jane back together because it has to lead to a what comes next situation: If they can be together, why can't they be married? Slott is a hack of course, so I give him no credit for coming up with idea--rather I think this what editorial told him and he just repeated it like the yes man he is. But I think after Spenser's "unbreakable" splash page, the editorial office was thinking they were at the "what next?' question and had/have no desire to undo OMD. Spenser got a close anyone to addressing it, and in the end they pulled back on it. So I think the idea became how do we tear them apart and drive a stake into fans who want the marriage back? Let's ruin Mary Jane's character so badly fans won't even want her and Peter back together.

So I think what we're going to get is a story where Mary Jane is stuck in some other dimension where time moves slower, she gives up on Peter coming to get her and moves on. Maybe she even blames him, just like they made her do in OMIT. She meets someone else, gets married, has kids, and lives another life. As for why she looks the same age when she comes back, hey they don't have to explain it, it's magic! And despite everyone thinking this will be undone, the fact remains ALL THIS HAPPENED! No matter what story comes next, in continuity Mary Jane got married to someone else and had kids!!!

So now Spidey editorial can look at Peter/MJ marriage fans and taunt them: "I thought you guys loved marriage so much? Do you want to break up a marriage now? Do you like Peter as home wreaker? How about as a stalker? Hey, you want us to kill some kids now?"

That's how it feels to me.

Do we even know they're really kids? (Versus clones or robots or illusions or some other nonsense)

The conceit is that this marriage was 'mysteriously' forced into existence and all is not what it seems. So I would expect it to be wiped away just as quickly.

We've reached the point that thse characters have about as much depth as plastic dolls in order to maintain an Archie style status quo. Expecting any far reaching consequences is probably expecting too much.