ASM #26 Preview

[Xenon]

Regarding Paul, there's a number of things that usually get overlooked, and when put together with the facts we have (and the clear holes in the big picture) are quite telling:

1. His first chronological appearance (issue 22?) it does give a bit of a feeling that he was expecting them.
2. Check his body language in the panels where he appears with MJ during that issue. Guy is getting creepily chummy.
3. About the fact that Peter had to be sent back because if Wayep killed him he'd be invincible and destroy the universe. MJ took his words at face value and decided to push Peter back, but even toady we still have no reason to believe he was telling the truth.
4. The fact that only one person could be sent back was bullshit, since the portal was open for a while and he literally pushed two halves of a god through it.
5. Did he know about the time dilation?
6. Did he know the kids were not real and that's why he wanted to leave them behind?
7. If so, why did he agree to take them instead of telling MJ the truth?
8. What was the "I should have told you" thing?
9. How much did he lie, and how much of it did he come clean with afterwards?

I'm not saying you couldn't make Paul a villain, Im just saying I don't think that's the plan, and I think they definitely won't make him a villain and make him romantically involved with MJ.

As for MJ, as far as I know, we have a single question:

1. Why is she being such an ******* to Peter?

Also why did she lose faith in Peter? Why does she act like he's a stranger and she never loved him? Why wasn't she upset about grinding his heart into dust?

As for the possibility of a romance, leaving aside the dickless Paul nonsense:

1. All the evidence we have of them actually being romantically involved is vague, circumstantial and not a lot of it to begin with.
2. The less vague pieces of evidence are early in the run.
3. We may even have slightly more (and slightly more concrete) evidence of them not being involved.


Putting all of this together, plus the fact that Romita's art became increasingly rushed during the last few issues (Romita being a notedly fast artist), plus the fact that the run so far has been half filler, I can only conclude in something I've already read before: the original plan was for Peter to have actually done something bad, MJ leaving him as a result, Paul being a regular guy with two kids who MJ started dating and then became part of the family. Backlash was so bad that they had to change plans, so Wells pulled his two bottom of the D-list villains that nobody would want to use anyway out of his ass and try to somehow come up with an alternative story to address the threads he opened. Killing Kamala was probably part of the original plan (whether his or editorial´s idea) and she was supposed to be featured much more, but she fell through the cracks during the rewrites.

I mean the weird carved line is still in there....

I think this is basically what happened, though I do think Wayep was always a part of the plan. The last issue of Beyond ends with them encountering Rabin (though we dont' know its rabin), so he was always set up, and MJ may have always been taken with him. But I suspect the how and why she got together with PAul was radically different and there was at least SOMETHING that Peter could be accused of doing to break them up. As opposed to...this mess. Like the current mess doesn't explain why May is mad at him. Something clearly changed (and this is why I'm willing to ignore and not even make up excuses for Paul's love you too).

EDIT: Another reason I think the plan changed, if Wells knew he was going to go with the different time thing, i don't think he jumps six months ahead. That's a huge amount of time to lose in the marvel universe even if it doesn't actualy mean anything. For shock value saying a month passed between the last we saw them and the status quo in ASM1 would have been way more shocking, which is the only thing Wells seems to care about.

While, obviously, they are riffing off the cover of "The Death of Captain Marvel" from 1982, one would think that someone would have pointed out that such an image was inappropriate for this character and her story.

Attachment 132470

This iis likely what happened. They were referencing this cover, not what this cover was referencing. Unfortunately, if you're going to spend a ton of energy and marketing hyping up how you have a muslim superhero you probably have to pay attention to that kind of detail. Like it'd be one thing if it wasn't such a big part of their push for her but it absolutely was.

[Jman27]

well ms.marvel death was mention in this week x-men

[wleakr]

Just got my copy in the mail - this book wasn't that bad. Not great at all, but not as bad as one might believe based on comments on this board.

But I'm not a stickler of MJ needing to be written or voiced a certain way, so there's that...

[Conn Seanery]

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