The Status Quo

[Lee]

It's shifted with the times, it all does. Reed Richards is still the family patriarch, but what that looks like in the 2020s has shifted from what that looked like in the 1960s.

[Moxxi517]

It doesn't matter whether you view it as external or internal. What matters is whether it is an iconic part of the series/character/property that the publishers want to keep around and that the writers want to use. Peter Parker being down on his luck and struggling is an iconic part of the series and character, so they keep returning to it.

I think the much shorter way of writing this would just be to say “writers can do whatever they want as long as it sells.”
Reading this, the whole defense of the status quo as something that is important feels like a waste of time.

[TinkerSpider]

It doesn't matter whether you view it as external or internal. What matters is whether it is an iconic part of the series/character/property that the publishers want to keep around and that the writers want to use. Peter Parker being down on his luck and struggling is an iconic part of the series and character, so they keep returning to it.

Yeah, no, every writer who cares about storytelling and every reader who cares about a compelling story will loudly proclaim it does, indeed, matter very much.

An external plot without an internal plot is flat, dull, emotionless, with characters who act more like dolls being moved around a playset by the visible hand of the writer than actual characters. Kinda like most of Amazing Spider-Man from 2008 to 2018, as a matter of fact, and again from 2022 to now.

That's why we're discussing the lack of internal plot, because the absence of a character arc/emotional journey for Peter Parker has been glaring and the reading experience has been very much lacking. And as Galador pointed out, he is pretty much the ONLY title character put out by Marvel OR DC that has lacked internal plot/character growth for years upon years upon years.

Sometime ago I saw people expressing frustration over the Hulk comic backtracking some elements after the end of Immortal Hulk. It happens to all of them.

This may not be the defense you may think it is...and actually can be read as point for those arguing for internal consistency and weight.

Those characters all have different iconic elements (except Ant-Man, who wasn't an iconic character at all until maybe the movies).

Batman always ends up back in the Batcave, Tony Stark always ends up running Stark Industries, the Fantastic Four always return to their original roster, Dr. Doom returns to having a disfigured face and ruling Latveria. Superman had his secret identity revealed to the world then restored again twice in a decade.It just happens that one of the most iconic elements of Spider-Man is that he's down on his luck and struggles to pay the rent. That's not an iconic element of Batman or Thor. It's an iconic element of Spider-Man. That's why it's a recurring theme for Spider-Man stories.

Again, you are talking external plot.

The characters are nearly always in different emotional places, however.

Peter being down on his luck and struggling to pay rent after he and MJ were kicked out of Bedford Towers and MJ was blackballed by Jonathon Caesar is a Peter on a different point and trajectory on his internal plot/character arc than Peter being down on his luck and struggling to pay rent after he and Harry stop being roommates due to Harry's drug abuse.

External plots can repeat; what keeps them from being repetitive and boring the audience is the internal character arc/growth that goes with them.

[godisawesome]

It doesn't matter whether you view it as external or internal. What matters is whether it is an iconic part of the series/character/property that the publishers want to keep around and that the writers want to use. Peter Parker being down on his luck and struggling is an iconic part of the series and character, so they keep returning to it.

I think one could argue that the way it's portrayed now is different from how it was before.

I think the much shorter way of writing this would just be to say “writers can do whatever they want as long as it sells.”
Reading this, the whole defense of the status quo as something that is important feels like a waste of time.

I'd argue it most definitely *DOES* matter whether it viewed as internal or external - in large part because that factoid shapes whether what we're looking at is merely the parts of the "iconic status quo" or "something different and unwanted."

...But this is because everyone's perspective of the "Classic Status Quo" can be wildly different, which means that each attempt to replicate it is going to look different.

In this current comic case, I'd argue we're seeing an almost exclusively "Angst-Loving Gen X Nerd" POV of Spidey's "status quo," heavily defined by shallowly coping one output of the Silver age and Bronze Age character writing, "Peter being relatable through his heartache and struggle with life", but producing it in an entirely "Non-Classic" way, by making "sadness" the input injected into the story instead in an artificial and farcical means, making the output instead be "Cheap, fanfiction sorrow porn."

In contrast, the "Serial Story-Loving Millenial Nerd" POV (my own) was built off of all the times someone has made a Spider-Man story that featured a single love interest and progressed them to a monogamous, committed relationship where she knows who he is... and then continued on from there. Our POV is that the comics are wasting our time on an "incorrect premise" and that, in comparison, the franchise's future is likely much more dependent on a question like "Will Zendaya's MJ rediscover who Peter is in the MCU?" rather than if a comic character feels "young" in issues printed 5 years in the future...

...With the addendum that, yeah, many of us see the "Angst-Loving Gen X Nerd" group at Marvel comics as incompetent in pursuing its own objective of keeping him young by instead making him seem like a midlife crisis-having loser stuck in a fantasy series of Deus Angst Machinas.

[Knightsilver]

The problem for Post OMD Peter...is that all of his peers be they his former classmates or fellow superheroes...have all moved forward in life personally and professionally. They've had marriages...families...careers...and yet Peter comes across as a guy who everyone thought would really go somewhere in life when he was young...and just completely crashed and burned. Whether Marvel likes it or not...Peter has aged...and the current status quo doesn't make him look young...it just makes him look like a middle aged failure.

[Kevinroc]

MJ is still Peter's iconic love interest in this franchise. And OMD did not change that. It cemented that.

[Tuck]

MJ is still Peter's iconic love interest in this franchise. And OMD did not change that. It cemented that.

It was cemented by the marriage, and then further by MJ being the principle love interest in Ultimate.

[Kevinroc]

It was cemented by the marriage, and then further by MJ being the principle love interest in Ultimate.

And then the movies and the video games.

[TinkerSpider]

And then the movies and the video games.

And nearly every animated series.

Even the currently being published YA novels by Preeti Chhibbar have MJ as Peter's true love.

[Lee]

I think the much shorter way of writing this would just be to say “writers can do whatever they want as long as it sells.”

That isn't true. It has to be approved by an editor. And the bigger more controversial story choices have to be approved higher up the food chain than that.

MJ is still Peter's iconic love interest in this franchise.

She is, that's another good example of something they'll keep cycling back to.

[Konnik92]

It doesn't matter whether you view it as external or internal. What matters is whether it is an iconic part of the series/character/property that the publishers want to keep around and that the writers want to use. Peter Parker being down on his luck and struggling is an iconic part of the series and character, so they keep returning to it.

Really? I thought it was "responsibility". The "Parker Luck" used to bring some sort of balance between Peter Parker and Spider-Man. Now, it doesn't matter whether Peter puts the mask or not, he's always going to struggle/suffer for something. How it is now is a lot different from how it was back then.

[Lee]

Really? I thought it was "responsibility".

I said "an", not "the". There are many iconic parts of the Spider-Man series. The more iconic a part of the Spider-Man series something is, whether it's a theme, a costume, a phrase, a story, a character quirk, or something else entirely, the more it will be returned to.

Asking why Spider-Man is down on his luck and struggling more often than other Marvel heroes is like asking why Hulk is angrier than other Marvel heroes, why Iron Man is richer than other Marvel heroes, why Blackbolt is less talkative than other Marvel heroes.

[Moxxi517]

That isn't true. It has to be approved by an editor. And the bigger more controversial story choices have to be approved higher up the food chain than that.

This is pretty much a direct admission that I was right. I was using writer as a shorthand for writer/editor/etc anyways. The reason why this makes the whole status quo debate null and void is that you are admitting here tacitly that Spider-Man’s status quo is not immutable truth about the character. It is something that the current editorial team interprets. I mean DeFalco clearly had a different interpretation about it being centered on responsibilty which you can see parroted here. In that way fans can be frustrated that the current status quo doesn’t fall in line with who they think the character should be. Especially when those shifts are done shoddily, famously in the example of OMD. But also more recently with Well’s stuff.

So much of your contribution seems to be a frustration that fans don’t understand how things work. And that things have always worked mostly the same way and will continue to work the same way. But things can change just as they very clearly changed during OMD. So discourse like this is just kind of going to continue on and on until some people retire. And then we’ll get new frustrated discourse about other aspects of the franchise.

[TinkerSpider]

Really? I thought it was "responsibility". The "Parker Luck" used to bring some sort of balance between Peter Parker and Spider-Man. Now, it doesn't matter whether Peter puts the mask or not, he's always going to struggle/suffer for something. How it is now is a lot different from how it was back then.

Someday there will be a creative team interested in exploring Peter Parker and his world as if he were a human character and not just a hollow rubber doll moving around a limited playset. We're just in the weeds again as readers.

At least we're not not starving outside the 616 comics.

[Kevinroc]

Someday there will be a creative team interested in exploring Peter Parker and his world as if he were a human character and not just a hollow rubber doll moving around a limited playset. We're just in the weeds again as readers.

At least we're not not starving outside the 616 comics.

I have high hopes for Hickman's Ultimate Spider-Man. (I know it's not 616.)