How much longer do you guys think before the marriage is back for good?

[RJT]

Just like Joey Q, your argument is based entirely on your PREFERENCE. Whereas the pro-marriage side has hundreds and hundreds of comics and stories to back up their side. If you would just admit you prefer Peter unmarried, that's fine, but everything else is smoke and mirrors to cover a preference. It's not limiting to have him married, or they'd never marry people in long form stories ever. It's not about sales, because sales were fine as proven and fluctuate all the time as is. It's not about being relatable because being married isn't unrelatable. You just don't want Peter married. I'd honestly respect your argument if you just came out and admitted it instead using false narratives that have been proven wrong again and again and again.

The pro-marriage side is just a preference too. There are hundreds and hundreds of Spider-Man comics where they aren't married, so that's a wash. I'll take a Stan Lee-Steve Ditko or John Romita Sr. Spider-Man comic over any from the marriage years any day of the week.

It's a weird stance to take that you'll "respect [people's] argument" as long as they agree that you are right and their point of view is irrational.

[TinkerSpider]

It's definitely a storytelling limitation to limit the series to things that can be reversed.

TV shows definitely map things out in advance.

It's called a series bible. It's especially important where you have a series where the initial hook is temporary/ subject to change. For example, if you're pitching a drama about med students performing a residency at a hospital, the series bible would mention what they're done with med school.

Yes, bibles cover the characters and the backstory, and are used to keep the continuity straight.

They have a brief pitch outline of where the story might go.

But it’s not broken down much beyond that. They certainly do not list out every character's arc and specific subplot for the next 50 episodes.

If season one of a political drama covers an election, the studio wants a sense of what Season 2 would cover.

A sense.

A sense is not mapping out 5000 episodes in advance, as you unrealistically insist is the metric for comic books. The usual ask from networks/platforms is an outline. An outline. Which may and does change in the actual writing of the episodes. For subsequent season renewals, they may want a new pitch first. Which is again, a brief outline.

This may all be subject to change.

Yes! Stories change as they are crafted! New ideas come up! Something happens in real life that sparks a new idea! Or a collaborator on the team has an even better story avenue! Or you have a late night epiphany that changes the entire trajectory! Or any number of things occur! Because stories are infinite, and in their creation they are malleable, changeable, grow, mutate, and swerve!

Which is why your insistence on knowing 500 issues worth of subplots upfront is a non-starter. Storytelling just doesn’t work that way.

Comics often go much longer. It's likely that TV shows will premiere in the future, last for several years, be considered a success and come to a conclusion.

And Amazing Spider-Man will keep trucking along.

Uh-uh-uh. Stop shifting the goalposts.

You must outline every issue of Amazing Spider-Man for the next 30 years, or else the concept obviously cannot support a long running series!

.

Yeah.

It's worth considering what the comics were like.
The golden years were probably from mid 1987-1993 (Spectacular Spider-Man #200.) Not every run was equal, but there were plenty of really popular stories, and some beloved classics.
I think the period from Maximum Carnage to the beginning of the clone saga is kinda weak, showing Marvel running out of ideas with the parents coming back and "Peter Parker No More." The character might be overexposed with four monthlies, a quarterly series and various one-shots/ mini-series.
The clone saga tried to replace the married Peter Parker with the unmarried Ben Reilly.
I'm rereading the next period of comics, and the character still feels really overexposed.
Then we get the relaunch where there's a dumb status quo to Peter pretending to MJ that someone else is Spider-Man.
She's believed dead for a year and a half.
She's then separated from Peter for two years of comics.
Then we get about 4 1/2 years of comics with Peter and MJ together before One More Day.

The idea that it was 20 consistent years doesn't track.

They are speaking of the duration of the marriage. When MJ was "dead" and when they were separated still counts as the characters being married. Not whether you thought the quality was consistent. In fact, since you seem to want to count all your possible subplots, MJ/Peter is believed dead and Peter & MJ separate so one of them can work through trauma are very valid, dramatic and can be incredibly emotionally rich subplots.

I forgot to mention this part, but we should be able to discuss tradeoffs, in terms of what Marvel gains and loses.

Editors and decision-makers certainly have to be able to consider tradeoffs, so it's definitely relevant to any discussion about what Marvel should do.

Great. List all the tradeoffs, quantify their value, and explain where you got the value scale from and how the scale works, and how/why you assigned the value to each trade-off. Go for it!

I'm trying to make you guys get a sense of the decisions that writers and editors have to make, because that's relevant in a discussion about what we expect Marvel to do.

Perhaps you should explain what you think they do, then.

It seems really disrespectful to suggest that laziness is the problem.

The goalpost is always the same- Does the marriage work as a story engine for the comics with no end in sight?

And we've proven that it does. Because ideas are infinite.

That does not mean there are not limits (and there's really only one).

But it does mean that the number of stories that can be created within that limit are infinite.

[Venomsaurus]

The pro-marriage side is just a preference too. There are hundreds and hundreds of Spider-Man comics where they aren't married, so that's a wash. I'll take a Stan Lee-Steve Ditko or John Romita Sr. Spider-Man comic over any from the marriage years any day of the week.

It's a weird stance to take that you'll "respect [people's] argument" as long as they agree that you are right and their point of view is irrational.

Of course the pro-marriage side is just a preference, that doesn't even need to be said. However I would argue that the pro-marriage side's argument as to the benefits have actual backing in stories and moments that have been shared here. Whereas the anti-marriage side is using proven false arguments that are just PR speak at best. I never said he was irrational, I said his argument is based on a bad-faith excuse made up by a corporation to spin their own preferential treatment of a character. Which it is. As has been proven again, and again, and again, and again, until we're all just blue in the face.

[Garlador]

The pro-marriage side is just a preference too. There are hundreds and hundreds of Spider-Man comics where they aren't married, so that's a wash. I'll take a Stan Lee-Steve Ditko or John Romita Sr. Spider-Man comic over any from the marriage years any day of the week.

It's a weird stance to take that you'll "respect [people's] argument" as long as they agree that you are right and their point of view is irrational.

I think there is a deeper view - and reasoning - behind much of the stance, and lingering resentment towards the current book.

Here's my perspective; if Peter & Mary Jane had never gotten married, I would have grown up reading a single Spider-Man and not have cared. That would have been the status quo. I enjoy plenty of other single Spider-Man stories - from the games to the movies to books like Ultimate Spider-Man. I'm not anti-single Spider-Man. Sure, I may have rooted for them to hook up or get married one day in the main comic, but I would still very much enjoy the adventures of the single 616 Spider-Man if he had never gotten married.

...But he did get married. And they made me care about it.

He not only got married, they nurtured and developed that specific relationship for over twenty years, through insane trials and tribulations, emerging as one of the strongest married couples in the entire medium. The "One More Day" version of events is NOT what readers followed for decades; married Peter & MJ is what happened. That genie is out of the bottle. Editorial trying to shove it back in has not really worked out.

Ultimately, what I'm most staunchly for is not the marriage itself, but just the fact that the moment One More Day happened it "broke" the comic and its continuity forever. The sacred trust of telling a continuous, ongoing, evolving story was shattered, not through an organic series of events that led to a natural conclusion, but an insanely transparent editorial move that garishly scooped out decades of story and trampled over dozens of writers' contributions for a status quo that very few readers were clamoring for.

I would honestly prefer a divorce over "the devil torments their souls for eternity and forcefully violates their love for one another, twisting it into something perverse and offensive". I would prefer stories that respect the history that came before instead of viewing it with disdain and shame, especially given how at the point of OMD that history constituted nearly half of the book's entire publication.

I ascribe that needed respect for any character, not just Spider-Man, and for any galling retcon that spits on years of beloved stories, marriage or not.

[hobnob]

I don't see it as that connected to my own experience.

I just think Peter is better when he's not lonely all the time. It stops being interesting the longer he stays in his misery. OMD overshadows Peter constantly. He has a good friendship with Dr Strange but you can't explore it without addressing the heavy breathing from the fans, and I completely hate the fact that he has a broken and tormented soul. I'd like to see him back on top and returned to the position he enjoyed in JMS which was a 616 big hitter that had the respect of the superhero community. As it is they treat him like an idiot.

Peter's baseline since OMD has been increasingly depressing.

Similarly, MJ is at her best when she's Peter's best friend and there's nothing between that friendship, like other love interests. They're better when they're together.

[Alan2099]

Of course the pro-marriage side is just a preference, that doesn't even need to be said. However I would argue that the pro-marriage side's argument as to the benefits have actual backing in stories and moments that have been shared here. Whereas the anti-marriage side is using proven false arguments that are just PR speak at best. I never said he was irrational, I said his argument is based on a bad-faith excuse made up by a corporation to spin their own preferential treatment of a character. Which it is. As has been proven again, and again, and again, and again, until we're all just blue in the face.

Really?

"My preferences count as facts but anybody elses preferences are just lies and spin doctoring."

Seriously, how can you even type that out and not see the blatant hypocrisy?

[Venomsaurus]

Really?

"My preferences count as facts but anybody elses preferences are just lies and spin doctoring."

Seriously, how can you even type that out and not see the blatant hypocrisy?

Yeah if I had said that I'd totally agree. Good thing I didn't say that. I said my preference has actual stories and moments shared here that prove it's point. There are no such moments on the other side or they'd be posted here and discussed as well. The only argument is PR rhetoric Marvel spews every now and then that's already been disproven.

[TinkerSpider]

I don't see it as that connected to my own experience.

I just think Peter is better when he's not lonely all the time.

That's because Peter was never "lonely." It's a BND fallacy.

Pete went from dating Betty, to having Liz Allan interested in him, to having Gwen interested in him, to MJ being MJ, to seriously dating Gwen, to growing closer to MJ, to dating MJ, to proposing to MJ, to dating Cissy Ironwood in Marvel Team Up, to love life shenanigans with Deb Whitman and Marcy Kane, to Felicia (somewhere in there he had an affair with a married Betty), to Amy Powell flirting with him, to MJ returning to town, to seriously dating Felicia who even moved in with him when her apartment was blown up, to proposing to MJ again. I'm sure I got the order wrong and forgot a few as well. Note how MJ is a throughline.

Pete is a serial monogamist. He was never Archie perpetually torn between two women. He had plenty of women interested in him, and often the women were the pursuers. This idea of Peter as a lovelorn loser is puzzling if you read the comics. Sure, did he sometimes miss dates or get wires crossed? Of course. He's human, and he has a big side gig. But who among us hasn't?

Did he also have plenty of success with women? Yes.

Peter's baseline since OMD has been increasingly depressing.

He's basically a new character. He's someone's projection of what they think the idea of Peter Parker should be, instead of looking at who Peter Parker is as a character. And it ignores everything that made Peter such a resonant, likeable and relatable character in the first place.

Similarly, MJ is at her best when she's Peter's best friend and there's nothing between that friendship, like other love interests. They're better when they're together.

Agree. It's amazing how well the two characters compliment each other.

I still can't understand how a major media company in the 21st century can have a popular female character who appeals to both men and women yet does everything it can to destroy and bury that character. Any other media company would be salivating to have such a valuable IP.

[hobnob]

Really?

"My preferences count as facts but anybody elses preferences are just lies and spin doctoring."

Seriously, how can you even type that out and not see the blatant hypocrisy?

It's not really hypocritical IMO. It's calling out the argument that Peter being single opens it up to tell more stories, which has been used by Marvel to defend the decision like it's some unassailable defence. The truth is that it opens up different stories and closes off others.

[hobnob]

That's because Peter was never "lonely." It's a BND fallacy.

Pete went from dating Betty, to having Liz Allan interested in him, to having Gwen interested in him, to MJ being MJ, to seriously dating Gwen, to growing closer to MJ, to dating MJ, to proposing to MJ, to dating Cissy Ironwood in Marvel Team Up, to love life shenanigans with Deb Whitman and Marcy Kane, to Felicia (somewhere in there he had an affair with a married Betty), to Amy Powell flirting with him, to MJ returning to town, to seriously dating Felicia who even moved in with him when her apartment was blown up, to proposing to MJ again. I'm sure I got the order wrong and forgot a few as well. Note how MJ is a throughline.

True but that was the swinging 60s and 70s. That was the age of Free Love (which was basically free use, but flower power PR has made everyone think it was just hippies giving out good vibes). I just don't think that would resonate with young people today.

Agree. It's amazing how well the two characters compliment each other.

I still can't understand how a major media company in the 21st century can have a popular female character who appeals to both men and women yet does everything it can to destroy and bury that character. Any other media company would be salivating to have such a valuable IP.

It's astonishing all things considered. You'd think Disney would be pushing her as a strong female character given her mass appeal. Yes her character's got 'a past' as a party animal but these days that's not what people want to see. If you mention the idea of relationship drama in Insomniac's SM2 people get really mad. Reeaaallly mad really quickly.

[Vortex85]

I enjoy plenty of other single Spider-Man stories - from the games to the movies to books like Ultimate Spider-Man. I'm not anti-single Spider-Man. Sure, I may have rooted for them to hook up or get married one day in the main comic, but I would still very much enjoy the adventures of the single 616 Spider-Man if he had never gotten married.

...But he did get married. And they made me care about it.

He not only got married, they nurtured and developed that specific relationship for over twenty years, through insane trials and tribulations, emerging as one of the strongest married couples in the entire medium. The "One More Day" version of events is NOT what readers followed for decades; married Peter & MJ is what happened. That genie is out of the bottle. Editorial trying to shove it back in has not really worked out.

THIS. 100x this. 20 years, 800 issues.

Had it been a couple years maybe it would have been ok, but 2 decades people. I didn't even start at the beginning. I only experienced the marriage 13 years from my start before it was undone. But let me tell you by the time it was undone I was so invested in the marriage and daily lives Of Peter and Mary Jane Watson-Parker I was ready to collect Spider-Man comics for the rest of my life on that single aspect alone.

I remember as a 10 year old reading Peter and MJ learning they were having a baby together, and spending over a year following her pregnancy and the anticipation of that moment. I remember the dark time afterward they recovered from that loss and found new hope in life. I remember the sheer dread learning of MJ's death making me decide to stop collecting until JMS, but the total anxiousness during JMS watching the two of them work towards reconciliation and the total ecstatic joy and excitement when they reunited. I remember laughing and smiling at all the fun and cute moments they shared. I felt everything they went through together for much of my life, and knew them intimately like they were close friends.

Then suddenly without warning, Marvel rips it away and says "DO NOT CARE ANYMORE. We don't want you to care anymore and you aren't getting it back."

Frankly it was TOO LONG for them to do that to readers. I was a total jerk move.

I envy those who were able to get over it as they wanted us all to do, but I will NEVER give up hope on Peter and MJ. They simply mean the world to me and are my favorite couple in all of fiction. So I will never stop advocating for them to get back what they lost together.

[Spider-Tiger]

That's because Peter was never "lonely." It's a BND fallacy.

Pete went from dating Betty, to having Liz Allan interested in him, to having Gwen interested in him, to MJ being MJ, to seriously dating Gwen, to growing closer to MJ, to dating MJ, to proposing to MJ, to dating Cissy Ironwood in Marvel Team Up, to love life shenanigans with Deb Whitman and Marcy Kane, to Felicia (somewhere in there he had an affair with a married Betty), to Amy Powell flirting with him, to MJ returning to town, to seriously dating Felicia who even moved in with him when her apartment was blown up, to proposing to MJ again. I'm sure I got the order wrong and forgot a few as well. Note how MJ is a throughline.

Pete is a serial monogamist. He was never Archie perpetually torn between two women. He had plenty of women interested in him, and often the women were the pursuers. This idea of Peter as a lovelorn loser is puzzling if you read the comics. Sure, did he sometimes miss dates or get wires crossed? Of course. He's human, and he has a big side gig. But who among us hasn't?

Did he also have plenty of success with women? Yes.

I disagree with the first line to an extent, but agree with the rest. Yes, Peter was a serial monogamist, yes, Peter had relationships, but Peter was "lonely" in the sense that he had 0 people to actually confide in. And often times this led to disagreements and discord in those romances. It's the Spider-man 2 template. By the time Peter was married, that general storytelling pattern was (mostly) retired. And honestly with good reason. It makes Peter's romances tiresome, uninteresting, and reduces the women to plot devices. Gwen Stacy was perhaps the biggest victim of this repetitive plot structure (and arguably part of the reason that she was killed off.) And Kirsten's Mary Jane was a victim of this in Spider-man 2 as well (with the romance of the Raimi trilogy being the most heavily criticized element.)

People gravitated to comics MJ in the Silver Age because she represented a break from that plot structure. She didn't seem to care if Peter missed a date. She had her own life to live and that was refreshing. And eventually the character took center stage.

The current Post-OMD status quo (or more specifically the Wells run) is trying to superficially mimic that Silver Age Gwen/Betty template. Instead of Peter's secret ID and the tradeoffs of being a Superhero causing these misunderstandings we have weird contrivances with Mayan Gods and devil deals causing Peter misfortune in his relationships for no apparent logical reason. Or Peter simply being an incompetent "loser" by nature. And MJ is just mad for reasons unexplained. It's a flanderization of that structure that's morphed into a game of kicking the character repeatedly and causing discord at random, which is why people have labeled this "misery porn."

[WebLurker]

It's not really hypocritical IMO. It's calling out the argument that Peter being single opens it up to tell more stories, which has been used by Marvel to defend the decision like it's some unassailable defence. The truth is that it opens up different stories and closes off others.

And the stories it opens up are more in line with the rest of the storytelling across the franchise.

[Kevinroc]

I disagree with the first line to an extent, but agree with the rest. Yes, Peter was a serial monogamist, yes, Peter had relationships, but Peter was "lonely" in the sense that he had 0 people to actually confide in. And often times this led to disagreements and discord in those romances. It's the Spider-man 2 template. By the time Peter was married, that general storytelling pattern was (mostly) retired. And honestly with good reason. It makes Peter's romances tiresome, uninteresting, and reduces the women to plot devices. Gwen Stacy was perhaps the biggest victim of this repetitive plot structure (and arguably part of the reason that she was killed off.) And Kirsten's Mary Jane was a victim of this in Spider-man 2 as well (with the romance of the Raimi trilogy being the most heavily criticized element.)

People gravitated to comics MJ in the Silver Age because she represented a break from that plot structure. She didn't seem to care if Peter missed a date. She had her own life to live and that was refreshing. And eventually the character took center stage.

The current Post-OMD status quo (or more specifically the Wells run) is trying to superficially mimic that Silver Age Gwen/Betty template. Instead of Peter's secret ID and the tradeoffs of being a Superhero causing these misunderstandings we have weird contrivances with Mayan Gods and devil deals causing Peter misfortune in his relationships for no apparent logical reason. Or Peter simply being an incompetent "loser" by nature. And MJ is just mad for reasons unexplained. It's a flanderization of that structure that's morphed into a game of kicking the character repeatedly and causing discord at random, which is why people have labeled this "misery porn."

I still have no idea why MJ was so mad at Peter at the beginning of this run. It really feels like Wells just wanted to break them up because he wanted Peter to be big sad, and then failed to rationalize it when the time came, and let the story get overtaken by the very temporary death of Kamala Khan, a superhero so disconnected from everything going on that I still have no idea what the point of all that was beyond the demands of the higher-ups at Marvel.

And everything since is just built off of that failure. It doesn't matter if this current "Reverse Kraven's Last Hunt" is actually as good as Kraven's Last Hunt. This run has **** the bed so badly and is choosing to ignore that than actually cleaning up the mess.

[hobnob]

I still have no idea why MJ was so mad at Peter at the beginning of this run. It really feels like Wells just wanted to break them up because he wanted Peter to be big sad, and then failed to rationalize it when the time came, and let the story get overtaken by the very temporary death of Kamala Khan, a superhero so disconnected from everything going on that I still have no idea what the point of all that was beyond the demands of the higher-ups at Marvel.

And everything since is just built off of that failure. It doesn't matter if this current "Reverse Kraven's Last Hunt" is actually as good as Kraven's Last Hunt. This run has **** the bed so badly and is choosing to ignore that than actually cleaning up the mess.

I think this run is unsalvageable. I really do. The damage to ever-popular Mary Jane Watson has captured the audience’s imagination more than anything Peter can do. I honestly would not be surprised if Wells leaves after Gang War. I really don’t think he will but I wouldn’t be surprised. The more you think about how to get Mary Jane back to her baseline the more you realize just how bad it is.

I keep saying that Marvel is staring fan good-will in the face and just spitting on it. If ASM 1000 was a wedding issue I think loads of fans would return and sales would go up. A lot would be forgiven, and people might even tongue-in-cheek thank Wells in retrospect for making it happen by tanking fan satisfaction. so badly.

I noticed this evening that people on Twitter are posting that Chip Zdarsky is blocking people despite not interacting with him ever. It’s like he’s banning people criticize Wells or he’s decided the fans are too toxic. Fan backlash is now a radioactive contagion across Spider writers. https://x.com/mayday_stan95/status/1...FgFGyKWO5tIJzw

What bigger Spider-Man story is there than a wedding issue? It is probably the most in-demand story in modern comics. It’s an open goal and they’re probably going to kick it into touch out of spite, because apparently Peter needs to be single so we can have another Hunt or <alliterative superlative> <six plus-or-minus one> that ‘can’t be told if Peter’s married’.