15th anniversary of Brand New Day. Hooray?

[Lee]

Quesada and Co. were confident that in 5 years...all the complaints would go away( they literally said this). 16 years and counting...oh well.

It doesn't really matter. The series survived the transition and there's no incentive for them to revert back. This is what they want from the brand. There's not really anything fans can do to get them to change their mind on this.

[Matt Rat]

It also reads like an unresolved story arc in which Peter and MJ will, at some point, prevail against Mephisto

That it does, and Spencer's climax encourages such discussion, what with Mayday's key role in Mephisto's defeat. Even if you don't have all the knowledge of 20 years worth of the marriage and came in fresh to Spider-Man years later, something like that should be not be left unstated, you'll have people curious about it.

[TinkerSpider]

It doesn't really matter. The series survived the transition and there's no incentive for them to revert back. This is what they want from the brand. There's not really anything fans can do to get them to change their mind on this.

I don’t think the marriage is coming back - not until Disney cleans house and we get people born after 1985 in charge who don’t have to have Peter Parker frozen in amber just so they can recall a bucolic time period of their youth that didn’t really exist - and perhaps people should talk to Dan DiDio about corporate mandates that were proclaimed to be “forEVER” lol - but the negative chatter over OMD wont stop until Marvel realizes Peter was pwned by Mephisto and from a storytelling point of view it will always be a stain on the character and on Marvel until the story is resolved.

It would also help if some Marvel editors and writers would grow up, be professionals, focus on their craft, and stop trolling just to troll because they’re upset OMD is still a stain - which is wholly on them and not the readers. Removing the marriage ≠ removing Mary Jane.

And Spider-Man goes into the public domain in 2058, so it turn out “forever” has a hard stop date - after that, anyone can write and sell their own Spider-Man story.

[PCN24454]

I don’t think the marriage is coming back - not until Disney cleans house and we get people born after 1985 in charge who don’t have to have Peter Parker frozen in amber just so they can recall a bucolic time period of their youth that didn’t really exist - and perhaps people should talk to Dan DiDio about corporate mandates that were proclaimed to be “forEVER” lol - but the negative chatter over OMD wont stop until Marvel realizes Peter was pwned by Mephisto and from a storytelling point of view it will always be a stain on the character and on Marvel until the story is resolved.

It would also help if some Marvel editors and writers would grow up, be professionals, focus on their craft, and stop trolling just to troll because they’re upset OMD is still a stain - which is wholly on them and not the readers. Removing the marriage ≠ removing Mary Jane.

And Spider-Man goes into the public domain in 2058, so it turn out “forever” has a hard stop date - after that, anyone can write and sell their own Spider-Man story.

The only way the marriage comes back is if the series ends. Otherwise it’s never really gonna come back in long term.

[TinkerSpider]

The only way the marriage comes back is if the series ends. Otherwise it’s never really gonna come back in long term.

You didn’t read my post.

[Knightsilver]

It doesn't really matter. The series survived the transition and there's no incentive for them to revert back. This is what they want from the brand. There's not really anything fans can do to get them to change their mind on this.

Maybe not. Of course the current editorial won't be around forever. And given how off brand the books are compared to the far more popular video games and movies...all it would really take is for someone higher up to want synergy.

[PCN24454]

You didn’t read my post.

I did read it. I just disagree with it.

[TinkerSpider]

I did read it. I just disagree with it.

You did neither. You neither read it nor are you disagreeing with me.

I said the marriage wasn’t coming back. But relying on corporate mandates as “proof” is ridiculous because corporations are made of people and those people change. And then I pointed out Spider-Man goes into the public domain eventually, and anyone will be able to write and sell a Spider-Man story then.

I said nothing about the story or the series ending. That’s you moving the goalposts. And even then what you said is empirically, factually wrong because we have decades of stories where Peter is married and the book sold well and the series didn’t end, and we’re even getting new, fresh stories set during the marriage proving there are still stories to be told.

[PCN24454]

You did neither. You neither read it nor are you disagreeing with me.

I said the marriage wasn’t coming back. But relying on corporate mandates as “proof” is ridiculous because corporations are made of people and those people change. And then I pointed out Spider-Man goes into the public domain eventually, and anyone will be able to write and sell a Spider-Man story then.

I said nothing about the story or the series ending. That’s you moving the goalposts. And even then what you said is empirically, factually wrong because we have decades of stories where Peter is married and the book sold well and the series didn’t end, and we’re even getting new, fresh stories set during the marriage proving there are still stories to be told.

They also weren’t about the marriage. It was just something in the background.

[TinkerSpider]

They also weren’t about the marriage. It was just something in the background.

*blinks at the non sequitur*

Okay. No one has ever said they were.

[RJT]

I

And Spider-Man goes into the public domain in 2058, so it turn out “forever” has a hard stop date - after that, anyone can write and sell their own Spider-Man story.

That isn’t exactly how public domain works.

[Mister Mets]

I don't think you can look at MJ in those terms. Because MJ wasn't created to be the love interest. She was created to be a comic relief side-character. She became the love interest because of a particular set of circumstances that nobody could account for. This makes adaptations interesting because they come in with the intention that MJ is THE love interest for Peter. Even The Amazing Spider-Man films intended to depict the couple before they were cancelled.

You may be getting to a different point about how Mary Jane as introduced in the Lee/ Romita run is different from the character now.

And she seemed to be rather popular when she was introduced, so there is a whole other question about whether a great supporting character was altered in order to fill a different role.

Why? No, seriously, people keep parroting this phrase but I don’t think they know why they parrot it.

Decades ago, there was a thing in television called “The Moonlighting Curse.” It was conventional wisdom that if you ever let the two leads consummate their relationship, the series would die.

But it turned out: there’s no such thing as a Moonlighting Curse. Shows don’t die when characters are together. If anything, the Moonlighting Curse coincided with the natural life cycle of a television series and the show was on the downside of the curve, anyway.

So to me: this is the comics version of the Moonlighting Curse. A bunch of middle aged men stood around and told themselves this was the truth, based on nothing but something they felt.

Because the sales were strong during the marriage. Yes, sales were strong for all of comics but ASM outsold them all right after the marriage. ASM was even the Batman at the time, the one book whose sales were so solid and dependable, all the other comics were measured against it.

Sales fell in half during the Clone Saga. Part of that is the market was changing and speculators were leaving and comics everywhere crashed. Part of that was they kept the story going for too long and kept moving the end zone and kept vacillating on “Pete’s the real deal! No, it’s Ben! No, it’s Pete! No, it’s Ben! No, it’s Pete!” And part of it was that people were angry they even tried to replace Peter and get rid of the marriage and those readers left - and then the Byrne era drove a bunch more away.

But JMS brought the readers back, and sales were good. Which goes to show it’s not the status quo. It’s the creative team.

But since OMD sales have fallen, while Batman’s grew and then remained constant. As of 2020, last time we had reliable numbers, Batman was outselling ASM 3 to 2. And now Batman is the Batman of comic sales, not ASM.

So again: why?

It's really arrogant to suggest that people you're disagreeing with don't know what they're talking about, and aren't familiar with arguments about the Moonlighting curse.

I'll note I intentionally sidestepped it when I I wrote "I don't think it worked in the long-term in the specific context of a Spider-Man whose adventures are expected to be published indefinitely." A complaint about whether people are wrong in a different context is irrelevant.

Batman sales are not normal for the market, so the implication that this is what we should expect of another title isn't a reasonable one.

MJ is empathetic and a has higher EQ than Peter. She’s smart and quick witted. She’s brave and keeps her head in dangerous situations. She’s witty but it’s a drier sense of humor than Peter’s. She can be cutting on occasion. She’s career driven/passionate about her interests. She is staunchly loyal to the people she cares about. She doesn’t like taking no for an answer and will go after what she wants. Her feelings for Peter are so big and complicated, they can scare her. She doesn’t easily let others see her real self and is less trusting of people than Peter. She doesn’t like being condescended to and being judged by her appearance - although she will use her appearance as a mask to keep others off guard. She keeps Peter’s secret tight and doesn’t let it slip; she’s trustworthy and one of the few Peter is happy to trust. She grew up with a less than happy home life. She doesn’t come from money.

She’s surprisingly consistent in many ways. Her variance is no greater than Peter’s, who has swung - no pun intended - greatly from adaptation to adaption as well.

Are these attributes of MJ common in most takes? Was this the character that became popular in the Lee/ Romita run, or is it a mix of things that apply to most supporting characters on her level? A lot of this seems to be generic, just as applicable to Lois Lane.

[Mister Mets]

That isn’t exactly how public domain works.

Yeah, those will be the equivalent of alternate universes.

If anyone wants to tell a story of a superhero who gets married, they can do that right now.

I sometimes think that, with these threads, fans don't want to discuss or debate, but want to vent their frustrations over the situation.

This is true, but frustrating.

There's an idea that people want to be taken seriously but not literally, but that only works if everyone has the same frame of reference. Once we have a forum where people are expected to have different backgrounds and perspectives, we should all strive to communicate more effectively.

I have yet to hear an actual explanation to support or "justify" that claim, beyond the assertion in and of itself or just being a statement of personal preference (which fair enough if one prefers a single Spider-Man, but that does not mean that the marriage was or was not viable as the long-term status quo).

There have been multiple explanations on this.

The basic idea is that there are more stories Marvel is willing to tell with a Peter Parker who isn't married (assuming kids and divorce are off the table.) There were threads about why Peter should be married or single a few years ago.

https://community.cbr.com/showthread...hlight=married
https://community.cbr.com/showthread...hlight=married

Marvel likes the ability to shake up the status quo every few years. The marriage complicates that by adding a new constant to the status quo.

Adaptations will take facets of things and adapt stuff out in the retelling process, so differences are to be expected. In any event, Mary Jane does maintain some consistent traits across the adaptations in question. In the case of Ultimate, her troubled home life is factored into a few stories, while her dynamic with Peter echos their 616 variant's married life (MJ is seen helping Peter in small ways behind-the-scenes and being a moral support, not to mention how the strain of having a significant other in a dangerous profession isn't sugarcoated). In the Raimi movies, we get her troubled home life, aspirations to showbiz, and a bit of the carefree mask she wore in her younger years. MCU might be the outlier, but MJ Jones-Watson was always more a homage than anything else.

If anything, Gwen Stacy is a better analogy of a character who's basically reimagined from scratch every time a new major incarnation is made (heck, Stone's version in the movie is basically Ultimate MJ with a different name and added science skills).

MJ's troubled home-life wasn't that big a deal in the silver age when she was introduced.

That's hardly her defining attribute.

The similarities between Ultimate MJ and classic MJ (or the woman classic MJ became) seem to apply to pretty much every superhero girlfriend (helping the lead in small ways behind the scenes and being a moral support who worries about her significant other's dangerous calling) aware of his secret identity.

Most young people today consume or have consumed Spider-man through multiple forms of media: film (animated and live action), television, games, etc. The overwhelming majority of these feature Mary Jane as Peter's love interest. The MCU films themselves exist concurrently with the PS4 universe and ITSV which also feature Mary Jane (and are also both mega hits). There are some versions that deviate from the typical MJ in terms of characterization, but that's true of Peter's entire supporting cast (and Peter himself.) Most of the MCU cast don't even remotely resemble the traditional versions of those characters. But even the MCU banks on the name recognition of "MJ" and what that means within the context of Spider-man.

The idea that fans are just too used to Mary Jane as Peter's endgame is less of a lift than some of the earlier arguments, which go into the personal motives of the writers or try to paint Mary Jane as an all-time great character.

I think the argument has been that MJ is Peter's most iconic and recognizable love interest (due to the many adaptations that feature a version of that character as Peter's love interest) and so attempts at "replacing" her or minimizing her significance in the 616 comics are futile. As long as other media continue to feature Mary Jane or MJ, the comics will cycle back to the character as well. So what we end up with is a revolving door of the same make-up/break-up type stories with MJ in the 616 universe. And that becomes tiresome.

None of that has to do with MJ being "special." Although 616 MJ being "special" is what propelled her into the position of being spider-man's longest running romantic relationship in the 616 universe (And thus why so many adaptations use some variant of the character as Peter's go-to love interest today)

It's a different and practical argument to say that it's hard to get rid of MJ because she's iconic.

It doesn't really matter. The series survived the transition and there's no incentive for them to revert back. This is what they want from the brand. There's not really anything fans can do to get them to change their mind on this.

That is likely Marvel's view.

Fans can still have an impact, but they'd have to show that Marvel can make significantly more money following a particular route.

They arguably do have more impact than comic books. (Case in point, it's the cartoons, not the comics, that established how Venom works.)



Kinda like how Transformers media is about morphing robots fighting each other for resources. Weird, ain't it?



Red herrings. (All things considered, I think the more interesting question is why the main comics are the abnormality of the franchise on this point.)

The Transformers analogy doesn't quite work because it doesn't require a particular character.

If the argument is that Mary Jane is special, it is worth looking at what makes her special. It's perfectly fine to go with a different argument.

I think it was a mistake to lead up the Death of Gwen Stacy. Given that they weren't doing the Death of Gwen Stacy they might as well have gone with MJ as the second lead. That said, the film made good use of Gwen's background, and of her scientific background which was never much more than nominal in the Lee-Romita comics.

However good a story it may have been in itself, the influence on the Spider-man franchise of the belief that The Death of Gwen Stacy is The Great Spider-man Story has been baleful. Actually the influence of that idea on superhero comics in general has been baleful. In so far as that is your point I agree.

I'm not particularly concerned about the signifier MJ or Gwen is attached to a particular character except in so far as it reflects on the reception of the 616-characters. For example, I suspect that the perception of Dunst's MJ has influenced the way the anti-marriage crowd think about 616-MJ.

This gets to a different point. If Sony had decided not to kill off Emma Stone's Gwen, does anyone think audiences would've still wanted to see Mary Jane?

[Lee]

Yeah, those will be the equivalent of alternate universes.

If anyone wants to tell a story of a superhero who gets married, they can do that right now.

There are also a lot more complications when something in a series enters public domain. You have to be very careful to only pull from the public domain material, and not touch anything from later stories.

When Spider-Man becomes public domain, it will be the Spider-Man of 1962. You'd have to wait a few more years before Mary Jane becomes public domain. And longer still for the story where Spider-Man marries Mary Jane to become public domain.

Marvel will always have the advantage of having access to all of Spider-Man, with the public domain version lagging decades behind.

If someone wants to read stories where Peter and Mary Jane are married and One More Day never happened, they'd be better served by reading fan fiction now, rather than waiting so many decades for all that stuff to become public domain.

[Spider-Tiger]

This gets to a different point. If Sony had decided not to kill off Emma Stone's Gwen, does anyone think audiences would've still wanted to see Mary Jane?

Well, the only reason they even used Gwen was to kill her off in the sequel. And the lead up to and foreshadowing of her death was the crux of those two movies. So it probably would have been difficult for them to change course mid-way.

It would have been wiser to change direction and not kill her off so early after the reception of the first film. They could have kept her alive for as long as Stone was willing to continue with the franchise. Or slowly phased in a new love interest with Stone around if that was the ultimate plan. The Death of Gwen was probably too big and attractive a story to not go there at some point.

I don't think general audiences would've cared as much because it's not as uncommon for a superhero to have a new love interest in a reboot.

There probably still would've been chatter and speculation in fan circles about MJ's role in those movies . I was just getting involved in online discussion at the time and the chatter regarding who should play the new MJ and when/how she should be introduced was constant. (And I think Emma was far better suited for the MJ role than any other actor at that time. Even Shailene Woodley. But thats besides the point.)