The Status Quo

[Lee]

you are admitting here tacitly that Spider-Man’s status quo is not immutable truth about the character.

I never said it was immutable. I said there are iconic elements to the series and the more iconic an element is the more it will be used. Some of the iconic elements get cycled out to shake things up, but the most iconic elements eventually get cycled back in. New ideas are introduced into the mix, and sometimes they also become iconic parts of the series. Different eras will have different elements that are on the table and that are off the table. The most famous and iconic elements are the ones that will be brought back to the table the most often.

Peter Parker being down on his luck is an element you should expect to frequently be on the table, as it has been for over six decades.

[Hurricane Billy]

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

Couldn't agree more. As someone who hasn't bought a 616 Spider-Man comic since the days of Civil War, I am very excited for Hickman's Ultimate Spider-Man.

Will it be the same thing as the 616 comics I grew up with? I doubt it, especially given how the selling point of 6160 Peter is that he's only just now getting his superpowers as a middle aged man who has been happily married and a parent for sometime now. Not to mention the rather lofty overarching dystopian world narrative of Earth 6160 as a whole, so I suspect USM might feel a bit like the old Spider-Man 2099 run from the 90's mixed in with some of the old Married PeterMJ era vibes.

Which, frankly, sounds far more exciting to me across the board than just recycling through mid-20's Peter being a single bachelor over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again for time immemorial. Peter used to basically be the George Bailey of superheroes, in that his life progressed and morphed over the years and there was always a balance of some sort between his personal losses and victories. But I feel like that hasn't been the case for quite some time now, unfortunately.

[Moxxi517]

I never said it was immutable. I said there are iconic elements to the series and the more iconic an element is the more it will be used. Some of the iconic elements get cycled out to shake things up, but the most iconic elements eventually get cycled back in. New ideas are introduced into the mix, and sometimes they also become iconic parts of the series. Different eras will have different elements that are on the table and that are off the table. The most famous and iconic elements are the ones that will be brought back to the table the most often.

Peter Parker being down on his luck is an element you should expect to frequently be on the table, as it has been for over six decades.

But like this mostly doesn't mean anything then. We are mostly discussing elements here that were not used most frequently but forcefully shoved back into the series a decade and a half ago. Elements like Peter being single, or the series emphasizing his youth. These elements were not the most iconic, but you've spent all this time telling people that they need to be routinely cycled back into the series for the better health of the franchise. Why did these need to be injected back into the series? They had been absent for a good portion of 20 years. It all gives the air of editorial saying, "iconic is whatever we decide it to be as long as we maintain our position in editorial and on the writing team." And at that point, this conversation has no meaning. It is undoubtedly a waste of time.

You reduce it down to "Peter being down on his luck" because that's the most inoffensive part of the status quo. But it's a motte and bailey tactic to disguise a bunch of other "status quo" items that we are actually arguing about. Namely his single status haha. Plus "Peter being down on his luck" can literally mean anything. Was he never down on his luck in the 90s or during the JMS era? No he was, and those stories had better stakes to them because he had more responsibility.

[godisawesome]

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.

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.

Yeah... and I'd argue the problem that Millenials and Gen Zers have is that "Peter is down on his luck" isn't an iconic part of his story unless it's directly tied to, and subordinate to, how we view "Characters grappling with real world problems" and "Spider-Man is Fun! But Responsible!" as the iconic parts of the story.

The larger franchise has made human psychology, escapism, and consequence-based storytelling much more a part of his lore than "Ha ha, his life sucks!"

You might as well ask why Peter being a "lovable geek" has almost completely erased "friendless nerd" as his primary characterization point even in material set in his youth now - the franchise and stories have evolved to that point, partially in reflection of the real world changes to the nerd-sphere.

Of course, I really *do* think there's an unexpectedly cavernous gap between how some Gen Xers see Spidey versus how Millennial and Gen Zers see him - younger fans are so inculcated with Peter having a dynamic arc that embraces change and progresses to a mature, wise-cracking hero that the "hopeless sucker" phase that defined even stuff like the Raimi films is seen as "that thing that happens... and then we move past it," and the market reflects that by how little modern movies and cartoons actually benefit from it.

I think if you ask some Gen Xers, MCU Spider-Man should never have worked if Angsty Loner Amazing Spider-Man didn't, and their confused at why it did, or why Spider-Man 3 didn't excite anyone with its Peter story except meme-enthusiasts, and why so many fans of the successful MCU version, while still liking the "back to basics" idea of NWH's ending, are also almost uniformly expecting Zendaya's MJ to end up remembering the truth in the future...

...or why the Spiderverse films can milk so much love out of portraying the "Spidey Must Suffer" trope as a meta-"enemy" of the story and characters.

[Hurricane Billy]

As an aside, I think there's also something to be said about the vicious cycle of what seems to be two of the Editorial's go-to phrases whenever this topic of discussion comes up: "Vote with your wallet" vs "You can't say if you liked this issue or not until you actually bother to read it first!"

After all, isn't the obvious implication from the Editorial in the latter sentence is that they want the fans who are complaining or upset about whatever is going on in the Status Quo in 616 Spider-Man comics to be reading said comic through legal means and giving them money... which effectively means in order to engage with the Editorial and have the 'right to complain,' they have to "vote with their wallet" to support the continuation of the direction they aren't enjoying? And obviously, I get it- the Editorial and Marvel Comics as a whole want to make a financial profit and continue to do things a certain way that runs at odds with a lot of fans. It's Capitalism 101. But the set-up of that dialogue kinda leans itself towards letting the Editorial do whatever they want, right?

Obviously the simple solution to it all is to do what I've been doing for ages now: Just ignore 616 Spider-Man and not give my money to Marvel Comics, because that's all I can currently do to "vote with my wallet." Well, not all I can do now, since there just so happens to be a great shiny new iteration of Spider-Man whose set-up so far aligns with a lot of stuff I miss about the older comics coming to the sales from a writer I quite like. So I'll continue to vote with my wallet over there.

[MisterTorgo]

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

Absolutely. In fact, wasn't there quite a bit oof dialogue about how great and pure their love is? That's another reason why, ultimately, for me, an alternate universe marriage doesn't really cut it because Mephisto (in his words) is still laughing at the piece of Pete and MJ's lives that he took and the thought of some of my favorite fictional heroes being so beaten by the devil feels very, very wrong.

[Lee]

But like this mostly doesn't mean anything then. We are mostly discussing elements here that were not used most frequently but forcefully shoved back into the series a decade and a half ago. Elements like Peter being single, or the series emphasizing his youth. These elements were not the most iconic,

I disagree. Those were key elements for decades in the comics, then the cartoons and movies and the Ultimate Spider-Man comic started adapting those elements. It's no surprise to me that they got cycled back into the main comics.

but you've spent all this time telling people that they need to be routinely cycled back into the series for the better health of the franchise.

I didn't say they need to be cycled back in. I said that they are cycled back in, that it's been happening for decades and will likely continue to happen for decades.

I'm not saying "this is how it should be" or "this is how I want it to be". I'm saying "this is how it has been", "this is how it is" and "this is how it will likely continue to be".

I would not be surprised if a few years from now Jameson forgets Spider-Man's secret identity or if Harry Osborn is brought back to life. It's the nature of the beast.

[Moxxi517]

I disagree. Those were key elements for decades in the comics, then the cartoons and movies and the Ultimate Spider-Man comic started adapting those elements. It's no surprise to me that they got cycled back into the main comics.

Like this is again an admission that these things can change. Like I would not be surprised if the adaptation of an older Peter in the Spider-Verse movies, in the Insomniac games, and in the new Ultimate Spider-Man book could possibly spur change in ASM. Changes that at least a portion of the fanbase have been seriously pining for. And at that point I struggle to understand what we are even talking about anymore with the status quo. Status quo isn't fundamental to anything. It can be radically different things depending on the interpretation of the person you are asking.

I didn't say they need to be cycled back in. I said that they are cycled back in, that it's been happening for decades and will likely continue to happen for decades.

I'm not saying "this is how it should be" or "this is how I want it to be". I'm saying "this is how it has been", "this is how it is" and "this is how it will likely continue to be".

I would not be surprised if a few years from now Jameson forgets Spider-Man's secret identity or if Harry Osborn is brought back to life. It's the nature of the beast.

I would harken back to a time when I said "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". It's been a while, and I think we've both changed as people since then. But this seems to be an iconic aspect of the discourse, so I'm glad to see us cycle back to it. I was getting somewhat nostalgic.

[Refrax5]

so issue 35 came and went and as usual there is no consequences and the status quo will probably be back to normal with Green Goblins triumphant return in issue 950.

Zeb has had a lot of criticism online for his run so far but my question is what is left for any writer to actually do with Peter?
I feel like Zeb has been given Amazing at the worst possible time, in fact the book is a poisoned chalice now.

lets go back 25 years
Aunt May was resurrected and the downfall began, she is literally in no danger of being killed off again and never will be.
The baby was simply taken away and never heard from again
The marriage was blown up in a plane, kidnapped, put on a break and finally retconned to have never happened.

with this is we have established that Peter will never have a family and his only close relationship will be with his aunt may who should have stayed dead after issue 400.

So what did writers (In this case Dan Slott) have left to play with? His brain.
and so we eventually got a Peter Parker who had a PHD and ran his own company but what happened there? his company was destroyed and his PHD wasn't actually his and so we have taken away his ability to grow outside of a family in the job department meaning he will never achieve any kind of success.

so I ask again what's left for new writers?

They can still play with his powers cant they? nope, that was done during the other storyline and was undone alongside the marriage.

well what about death and rebirth? thats been done too
body swap with a villain? combined with the death and rebirth story above.
Alternate version? been done to death and there's anew spiderverse crossover in the works

There is literally nothing left but the random adventure and bad guy of the trade for peter to beat.

Family, relationships, success, power upgrades, killed off, resurrected, mind swapped, everything has been done and then undone.

I feel like Marvel knew that which is why they let Nick bring Peter and MJ back together for his run because there was no hook left and unfortunately now for Zeb that last hook has been taken away and once Norman is back on his glider throwing pumpkin bombs at spidey we will truly have done it all the redemption arc will be over and the last hook they have left will be gone.

so when Zeb eventually leaves the book and we get a new writer, what's left for them to do? everything's been done?

No stakes are left, no consequences are left, no growing, learning or evolving is possible.

Peter Parker will simply be hollow and a new writer will be stuck with that.

I don't really agree. I think people are so obsessed with the idea of the marriage or of children that they refuse to accept or even consider any alternative to that and view it as the only way to fix things. I personally prefer him to be married, have no interest in reading about a spider-baby, but I also remember how boring and stagnant the marriage felt at times back then. The character fell into the same kind of rut back then, too, and Ultimate Spider-Man was kind of viewed as the better version of the character.

I also think that the idea that marriage and kids is the only way to mature a character or give them growth is a very conservative, old-fashioned viewpoint that holds less and less water in the modern world. I'm 40 and I know so many people who never got married or did but are now divorced and they certainly aren't immature or "man-children" or anything like that. There are a lot of directions life can take people and the idea that somebody like Spider-Man, with the kind of life he lives, might not marry or have kids doesn't seem far fetched at all to me.

I'm not saying I'm against it (maybe the kids part just because I find kid characters annoying and uninteresting), but I don't think it's necessary to mature the character. You don't see this kind of thing with virtually any other character. I never see anyone complaining that Matt Murdock or Steve Rogers are stagnant because they aren't married.

The real problem is just how they write him in such a shallow, childish way. Even pre-marriage, Peter had more maturity and seriousness than he does now. They need to just let him be a competent, confident adult who still has relatable problems rather than a perennial sad sack with the overdone "Parker luck" thing.

Honestly, even if he was married with kids, I imagine Marvel would still write him as incompetent and immature and that's the actual problem.

I think people thinking marriage and kids are this magic bullet that will fix everything are kidding themselves.

[Lee]

As an aside, I think there's also something to be said about the vicious cycle of what seems to be two of the Editorial's go-to phrases whenever this topic of discussion comes up: "Vote with your wallet" vs "You can't say if you liked this issue or not until you actually bother to read it first!"

After all, isn't the obvious implication from the Editorial in the latter sentence is that they want the fans who are complaining or upset about whatever is going on in the Status Quo in 616 Spider-Man comics to be reading said comic through legal means and giving them money... which effectively means in order to engage with the Editorial and have the 'right to complain,' they have to "vote with their wallet" to support the continuation of the direction they aren't enjoying?

That's a leap in logic. "Vote with your wallet" and "You can't say if you liked this issue or not until you actually bother to read it first!" are two separate ideas.

If someone buys a comic, they are supporting it. If a comic sells poorly it is likely to get retooled or cancelled. If a comic sells well the publisher is likely to stay the course. That's what is meant by voting with your wallet.

Saying that you can't have a fully informed opinion on a comic you haven't read is just a fact.

It's okay for people to just not engage with media they strongly suspect they aren't going to enjoy.

If someone disliked #1 of a comic so much that they chose not to read #2, that's absolutely fine. Should they want to, they can send a letter to the editor explaining what they disliked about #1 and how that resulted in them not reading #2. The editor can do what they will with that feedback.

If that person sent a second letter saying "I haven't read #2, but it's poorly written and a bad story", that's worthless feedback that won't be taken into consideration and they're only wasting their own time.

If they wrote a letter saying "I don't currently read Comic X, but I would if it was written by Writer Y or if you brought back character Z", that's useful feedback that can be taken into consideration.

[Frontier]

I don't really agree. I think people are so obsessed with the idea of the marriage or of children that they refuse to accept or even consider any alternative to that and view it as the only way to fix things. I personally prefer him to be married, have no interest in reading about a spider-baby, but I also remember how boring and stagnant the marriage felt at times back then. The character fell into the same kind of rut back then, too, and Ultimate Spider-Man was kind of viewed as the better version of the character.

I also think that the idea that marriage and kids is the only way to mature a character or give them growth is a very conservative, old-fashioned viewpoint that holds less and less water in the modern world. I'm 40 and I know so many people who never got married or did but are now divorced and they certainly aren't immature or "man-children" or anything like that. There are a lot of directions life can take people and the idea that somebody like Spider-Man, with the kind of life he lives, might not marry or have kids doesn't seem far fetched at all to me.

I'm not saying I'm against it (maybe the kids part just because I find kid characters annoying and uninteresting), but I don't think it's necessary to mature the character. You don't see this kind of thing with virtually any other character. I never see anyone complaining that Matt Murdock or Steve Rogers are stagnant because they aren't married.

The real problem is just how they write him in such a shallow, childish way. Even pre-marriage, Peter had more maturity and seriousness than he does now. They need to just let him be a competent, confident adult who still has relatable problems rather than a perennial sad sack with the overdone "Parker luck" thing.

Honestly, even if he was married with kids, I imagine Marvel would still write him as incompetent and immature and that's the actual problem.

I think people thinking marriage and kids are this magic bullet that will fix everything are kidding themselves.

Even I can agree with this to a degree. The problem isn't just the excuses they find to separate him from MJ but they take the "loveable loser" thing to it's zenith to where he's barely a functional Superhero or person.

I think people just associate that with the marriage or MJ because he's been written better when he's been with her.

[Moxxi517]

I don't really agree. I think people are so obsessed with the idea of the marriage or of children that they refuse to accept or even consider any alternative to that and view it as the only way to fix things. I personally prefer him to be married, have no interest in reading about a spider-baby, but I also remember how boring and stagnant the marriage felt at times back then. The character fell into the same kind of rut back then, too, and Ultimate Spider-Man was kind of viewed as the better version of the character.

I also think that the idea that marriage and kids is the only way to mature a character or give them growth is a very conservative, old-fashioned viewpoint that holds less and less water in the modern world. I'm 40 and I know so many people who never got married or did but are now divorced and they certainly aren't immature or "man-children" or anything like that. There are a lot of directions life can take people and the idea that somebody like Spider-Man, with the kind of life he lives, might not marry or have kids doesn't seem far fetched at all to me.

I'm not saying I'm against it (maybe the kids part just because I find kid characters annoying and uninteresting), but I don't think it's necessary to mature the character. You don't see this kind of thing with virtually any other character. I never see anyone complaining that Matt Murdock or Steve Rogers are stagnant because they aren't married.

The real problem is just how they write him in such a shallow, childish way. Even pre-marriage, Peter had more maturity and seriousness than he does now. They need to just let him be a competent, confident adult who still has relatable problems rather than a perennial sad sack with the overdone "Parker luck" thing.

Honestly, even if he was married with kids, I imagine Marvel would still write him as incompetent and immature and that's the actual problem.

I think people thinking marriage and kids are this magic bullet that will fix everything are kidding themselves.

I think good writing trumps everything else. And a big issue in the current writing is that it falls back on lazy contrivance in order to maintain the status quo. And that contrivance also makes Peter look like a bit of a manchild.

When talking about fixing it though. I.E. making Peter just an overall more competent character. The thing I always ask is "what would that look like?" MJ is pretty established as the love of his life, it's something that the audience thinks that he wants. If you as editorial don't want him to want that, you have to write a story suggesting why he wouldn't want that. And the PeterMJ dynamic is really good, so those stories end up being pretty low quality imo. So, I feel like he kind of naturally finds his way back to MJ in this case. Plus it does let you explore greater themes of responsibility. Like maturing doesn't have to involve getting a family. But the question becomes "what does maturing look like in the case that Peter is forever single". Maybe Parker Industries was a suggestion of a potential direction for maturity. But on the whole the Spidey team hasn't used the time they've had (16 years!!!) to suggest what an alternate ending for Peter would look like. Even Zeb Wells has said that Peter and MJ would ride off into the sunset together if ASM ended. AF#1000 had PeterMJ together. It's been emphasized a number of times that that's the way that they do mature. I honestly do think we could hold off on the kids for a while though lol.

MJ being in the story is something I'd suggest is good for ASM beyond just being married to Peter. And one thing that the Well's run and Slott's run have shown is that they will write MJ out of the book for long stretches of time if she is not more significantly attached to Peter. Which I just find to be a real shame.

[TinkerSpider]

I disagree. Those were key elements for decades in the comics, then the cartoons and movies and the Ultimate Spider-Man comic started adapting those elements. It's no surprise to me that they got cycled back into the main comics.



I didn't say they need to be cycled back in. I said that they are cycled back in, that it's been happening for decades and will likely continue to happen for decades.

I'm not saying "this is how it should be" or "this is how I want it to be". I'm saying "this is how it has been", "this is how it is" and "this is how it will likely continue to be".

I would not be surprised if a few years from now Jameson forgets Spider-Man's secret identity or if Harry Osborn is brought back to life. It's the nature of the beast.

You are still ignoring internal arcs, which are the very nature of the beast for storytelling, period, and the absence of such is why the last 15 years of Amazing Spider-Man, with the exception of much of the Nick Spencer run, have been mostly unsatisfying and received much warranted criticism for lackluster storytelling and characterization.

The post OMD/BND mentality of Peter being a sophomoric loser perpetually stuck in amber as if he’s a Simpsons character who never moves forward, never grows, never learns is a relatively recent development in the book’s 60 year run. It is not, in the definition of fact, how it must be or how it will always be. It’s a mentality held by those who control the book’s current direction, but comics are a long game (or should be, if they don’t manage themselves into into obscurity as some suggest they are, and certainly comic shop owners don’t sound currently optimistic about American Big Two superheroes and especially Marvel, judging by various interviews and social media accounts).

There will be a change in mentality at the top, sooner or later. The only thing inevitable is change.

[Tuck]

The character fell into the same kind of rut back then, too, and Ultimate Spider-Man was kind of viewed as the better version of the character.

Mary Jane was "dead" when Ultimate started. By the time JMS/JRJR got on the book, the quality difference was more a matter of opinion.

I never see anyone complaining that Matt Murdock or Steve Rogers are stagnant because they aren't married.

Because Spider-Man was married, and it got taken away.

I think people thinking marriage and kids are this magic bullet that will fix everything are kidding themselves.

I'm sure some do, but I don't think very many marriage supporters believe the marriage is the linchpin to Spider-Man being better.

[Jman27]

Mary Jane was "dead" when Ultimate started. By the time JMS/JRJR got on the book, the quality difference was more a matter of opinion.



Because Spider-Man was married, and it got taken away.



I'm sure some do, but I don't think very many marriage supporters believe the marriage is the linchpin to Spider-Man being better.

I think they do considering their attitude