Preview: Jackpot #1

[Huntsman Spider]

there has to be a rogues' gallery created for Mary Jane. Some villains can be drawn from her previous life of modeling and TV acting. She can be an investigator for arts/entertainment-industry corruption and exploitation. She can have her own independent blog talking about the adventures of Jackpot as an "outside observer with inside connections". Expose the casting-couch creeps and more.

That would have been a great premise to run with in Amazing Mary Jane, at least. Especially given what she already went through with the likes of Jonathon Caesar trying to woo her away from Peter, kidnapping her when she refused to be lured away, and then using his industry connections to ruin her rising career when he was put in prison for kidnapping her in the first place.

[Jman27]

MJ is damaged goods. I can’t wait for this era to be over for her. Hopefully someone can start repairing her then and we find out the damage isn’t permanent, hopefully.

I also hope that Bronfman realizes what sort of situation she has walked into and that she was promised or heavily teased better projects if she did this.

all she gotta do is ignore the online community

[ARkadelphia]

I would never accept such a job that she has without being given some sort of garauntee. It's not worth it just to get your foot in Marvel. Sure it's the management that gives you your assignments but it's the readers who make your career. By accepting this she is giving herself a massive hurdle in that second column. If you think about it there are many writers who just by being associated with a bad run got their whole career ruined.

Marvel editorial doesn't face the same risk, they can always just bring in some other writer and Bronfman is left to her own devices. So I really hope she gets an easy win assignment from them as part of the deal. Something that fans can point to and say "But she wrote that too".

Paul reminds me of Paolo in Friends. Paolo was thrown in to delay Ross and Rachel. He was a roadblock that they soon discarded when he outlived his role. Paul on the other hand is still here, for whatever reason. Spider-man editorial just seems preferental to hanging on to ideas and concepts for to long. Letting them outlive their appeal. If you want MJ and Peter to be seperated you no longer need Paul. He has served that role. Keeping him on like this is just becasue they for some reason want to use the character. Even turning him into a nemesis for Jackpot is risky. I sure hope they are goign that route. If not only becasue having a comic with Peter fighitng Paul on the cover would sell. Still this is suppose to be MJ's story...

Are you suggesting Paul is a crap weasel?

[ARkadelphia]

I think we’ll see the kids next in an X-Men comic featuring the Children of the Vault

[Celgress]

No idea is a bad idea rather the execution is bad. Boy oh boy was the exeucation bad for this one. There is no way I can support what has been done to 616 MJ, hard pass.

[Batman Begins 2005]

No idea is a bad idea rather the execution is bad. Boy oh boy was the exeucation bad for this one. There is no way I can support what has been done to 616 MJ, hard pass.

Character assassination. Same with Peter Parker, Ben Reilly etc.

[Celgress]

Character assassination. Same with Peter Parker, Ben Reilly etc.

Indeed, I really cannot argue with your point whatsoever.

As someone who longed for a superhero MJ in 616, this is quite literally my worst nightmare. Everything that made MJ, well, MJ has been stripped from her: she's been saddled with an unlikeable support/love interest character & a recycled superhero identity, her connection to Peter has been virtually erased, her well-documented reluctance to be a full-time superhero swept under the rug, and her own passions (modeling, acting, bartending, etc) subsumed by the Jackpot identity for the most ham-fisted of reasons. This is not 616 MJ. I don't know who this is but she isn't our girl. Things cannot get much worse. IMHO, she might as well be Generic Superhero Girl No. 272.

[Hurricane Billy]

That's because they are determent to make Paul innocent/victim in the end. After all the failed attempts that blew up in their faces to make Paul "MJ's husband and father to her children" in order to damage her relationship with Peter for good, they cannot accept their mistakes and simply get rid of him along with the fake children. Not really suprised if it turns out like that. Not only Wells assassinates her character in the worst way possible, but now (and that's IF what the spoilers say it's true) spoilers:

they are using "that" logic from Slott's run (which he used on MJ as reason not to date Peter only later the exact opposite to happen, dating Pedro and working for Tony) to make her look even more guily.

end of spoilers

But nooooooo, their precious "Golden Boy" did nothing wrong, depsite the fact that he "helped his own father GENOCIDE THE ENTIRE PLANETARY POPULATION". Never once he felt remorse for what he did or anything. All of this is 10 pound s**t inside a 5 pound bag.

I had a laugh not too long ago when I believe Lowe tried to respond to the Paul criticisms somewhere by suggesting that fans are only really saying this because "we don't know his side of the story yet."

And while it's true that we don't and Lowe is just doing his job in defending the books he's attached to as editor, what we have seen across multiple different books and POVs where Paul pops up all consistently paint the same picture of a man who just isn't haunted in the slightest by his actions and is quite visibly just enjoying living life. Which just reinforces the deduction that Paul is actually either lying through his teeth and knew what he was helping his dad accomplish or he's a genuine sociopath.

It's such a bizarre hill to die on here with Paul, especially considering that for all of this bluster, it's also entirely self-induced. Paul never needed to be Rabin's son or an associate of his involved in any way with what happened.

[Malachi]

Are you suggesting Paul is a crap weasel?

Very much so

[Konnik92]

I had a laugh not too long ago when I believe Lowe tried to respond to the Paul criticisms somewhere by suggesting that fans are only really saying this because "we don't know his side of the story yet."

And while it's true that we don't and Lowe is just doing his job in defending the books he's attached to as editor, what we have seen across multiple different books and POVs where Paul pops up all consistently paint the same picture of a man who just isn't haunted in the slightest by his actions and is quite visibly just enjoying living life. Which just reinforces the deduction that Paul is actually either lying through his teeth and knew what he was helping his dad accomplish or he's a genuine sociopath.

It's such a bizarre hill to die on here with Paul, especially considering that for all of this bluster, it's also entirely self-induced. Paul never needed to be Rabin's son or an associate of his involved in any way with what happened.

There was a theory floating around after #25 and #26 were released (I might've posted it before somewhere else), that Paul was not supposed to be Rabin's son initially, but just some ordinary guy MJ met. The theory goes that Peter was time traveling, messing up with the time-line by not reconciling with MJ at a specific moment in their lifes, leading to distancing themselves permanently, she meets Paul, leading to them eventually get married and have two kids. And the funny thing is that would explain most of the things back then (in the beginning of the run) that seems not logical or inconsistent now - MJ's awful treatment of Peter, how Felica is MJ's "old friend of hers from another time" when her "daughter" asked about her, etc. Their plan was to permanently destroy any romantic relationship between Peter and MJ, but thanks to the backlash that failed.

[Batman Begins 2005]

Indeed, I really cannot argue with your point whatsoever.

As someone who longed for a superhero MJ in 616, this is quite literally my worst nightmare. Everything that made MJ, well, MJ has been stripped from her: she's been saddled with an unlikeable support/love interest character & a recycled superhero identity, her connection to Peter has been virtually erased, her well-documented reluctance to be a full-time superhero swept under the rug, and her own passions (modeling, acting, bartending, etc) subsumed by the Jackpot identity for the most ham-fisted of reasons. This is not 616 MJ. I don't know who this is but she isn't our girl. Things cannot get much worse. IMHO, she might as well be Generic Superhero Girl No. 272.

Agreed, Celgress.

[Morgoth]

The whole point of Paul (besides rage baiting) is to call out fans, because they ''hate the genuine good guy and want him dead only because MJ is dating him instead of Peter'', because they ''don't see MJ as a character with various options of development, instead they see her only as a Peter's love interest and can't accept, that she can actually move on with someone else, like it happens a real life'', because they ''didn't care about MJ having a family and kids, wanted her to leave them and celebrated, when they were erased from existence'', etc. This whole **** is the excuse for editorial to say, that fans are bad, lol.
So, if they really want to make Paul a victim here, it's not surprising, it's the same direction this story had.

[Jman27]

The whole point of Paul (besides rage baiting) is to call out fans, because they ''hate the genuine good guy and want him dead only because MJ is dating him instead of Peter'', because they ''don't see MJ as a character with various options of development, instead they see her only as a Peter's love interest and can't accept, that she can actually move on with someone else, like it happens a real life'', because they ''didn't care about MJ having a family and kids, wanted her to leave them and celebrated, when they were erased from existence'', etc. This whole **** is the excuse for editorial to say, that fans are bad, lol.
So, if they really want to make Paul a victim here, it's not surprising, it's the same direction this story had.

well prior to his origin that was the case people tried their hardest to villainy the character saying hes an abuser or he gay anything to make it seem that Mj wasnt there by force

[MisterTorgo]

The whole point of Paul (besides rage baiting) is to call out fans, because they ''hate the genuine good guy and want him dead only because MJ is dating him instead of Peter'', because they ''don't see MJ as a character with various options of development, instead they see her only as a Peter's love interest and can't accept, that she can actually move on with someone else, like it happens a real life'', because they ''didn't care about MJ having a family and kids, wanted her to leave them and celebrated, when they were erased from existence'', etc. This whole **** is the excuse for editorial to say, that fans are bad, lol.
So, if they really want to make Paul a victim here, it's not surprising, it's the same direction this story had.

I've seen that argument, too. I guess a woman could get kidnapped to an alternate, desolate dimension and stranded there with an accessory to said desolation and two magically conjured children for four years before being rescued by the man in with whom she was going to move and afterwards treating him coldly for months for no discernable reason before becoming a superhero using the symbology-magic-powered gauntlet that said accessory created instead of working on a device to send her home in said desolate dimension.

That could happen in real life.

[Lifetap]

The reality is, in terms of the story the only point of MJ is to be a supporting character and mainly a love interest, because if she wasn't she wasn't why include her in the story. It would be like complaining that Kim Kardashian (random famous person I picked), isn't in the comic. They aren't in the comic because they aren't relevant to either Peter Parker or Spider-Man.