Controversial Spider-Man Opinions

[phantom1592]

Why do you think Peter gets a pass but not Hank?

Because Peter has hundreds of great stories that overshadow it. It's a lot easier to say 'that was out of character and a mistake' rather than let it define him.

Hank on the other hand... never really HAS good stories. The only two things that people really remember is the slap and creating Ultron. He's kind of a screw up by nature so it's a lot harder to find GOOD stories with him even though he's been around forever.


Honestly, I tend to think Peter's slap/push/whatever was a hundred times WORSE than Reed or Hank. I actually find it pretty sexist to keep on about those two. Yeah, their wives got hit... but their wives are combat trained superheroes. They aren't victims. They should have gotten right back up and blasted back. They would have if it was Dr. Doom! If Reed had slapped Johnny to break the mental control... nobody woudl have said anything. But because it was 'the girl'... it suddenly becomes an unforgivable sin...


Now MJ was a whole other story. She WAS innocent and helpless... she was pregnant. she was high risk. An ordinary mortal woman with no combat training who was carrying a delicate child... THAT's soemthing that should haunt him for a while. Yeah, Peter was distracted and upset and all that... but the cornerstone of his life is 'With Great power comes great responsiblity'. He doesn't GET to forget that he has super strength and lash out at people. His is worse.

Wasn't Hank's incident an accident too, if I'm not mistaken? Not saying they're the same.

It was. The writer confirmed that in an interview years back now. Hank was supposed to flail his arms out or something and she got knocked down. The artist went EXTREME and super Marvel action style and it looked a LOT worse than what he had written.

[Kaitou D. Kid]

Wasn't Hank's incident an accident too, if I'm not mistaken? Not saying they're the same.

Yep, both characters were in a state of mental instability while doing it. The fact that that disqualifies Peter but not Hank is proof of what I said earlier: It's the superhero version of "First impressions count."

Granted the author is right that Peter felt immediately bad in the comic while Hank didn't, but Hank felt bad about it pretty much for the entirety of his following history. The fact Peter not doing it again is seen as "the character returned to good writing" while Hank not doing it again doesn't count... I mean, we are back to "first impressions count."

Not that I think Peter should face consequences for it, though. I think some fans have this mentality that retcons are inherently bad and that ignoring previous events in comics is inherently bad. It isn't. I'm perfectly fine with discarding Peter hitting MJ as bad writing to be ignored.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

I'm sick and tired of fans wanting to put Peter in the same box as Hank Pym.

Nobody puts Peter in the same box as Hank Pym and this scene is almost never mentioned or referred to outside the narrow circle of Clone Saga aficionados.

Wasn't Hank's incident an accident too, if I'm not mistaken? Not saying they're the same.

Hank's incident wasn't an accident, he was in fact an abusive partner to Jan.

Hank on the other hand... never really HAS good stories. The only two things that people really remember is the slap and creating Ultron. He's kind of a screw up by nature so it's a lot harder to find GOOD stories with him even though he's been around forever.

People need to make a distinction between stories where Hank is shown in a good light and stories with Hank Pym that are of good aesthetic quality.

Because aesthetically, the entire story arc of Avengers#211-230 is the best thing Hank Pym was ever part of. It's a great comics story and a defining Avengers story.

Honestly, I tend to think Peter's slap/push/whatever was a hundred times WORSE than Reed or Hank.

No it wasn't.

The writer confirmed that in an interview years back now. Hank was supposed to flail his arms out or something and she got knocked down. The artist went EXTREME and super Marvel action style and it looked a LOT worse than what he had written.

That entire excuse is a bold-faced lie to anyone who has read the original comics.

The entire purpose of the "Hank-Slaps-Janet" saga was to establish what had already been going on for some time in the comics. Hank Pym was a troubled superhero with deep insecurity and psychological baggage whose marriage with Janet was unhealthy and combustible. Jim Shooter who wrote that felt that he could do a story with Hank Pym who had more or less become disposable (since Scott Lang was already created to take over his original mantle as Ant-Man, yep that had already happened before this story).

I'll post again to give you all a rundown. But first,

Yep, both characters were in a state of mental instability while doing it.

Not the same thing. Peter was actually being gaslighted by Norman Osborn into thinking he was a clone. Hank Pym was in the middle of building a robot to attack his fellow Avengers in a false-flag operation that Janet told him was a terrible idea.

In the former case, Peter is reacting to a horrible and cruel prank played by an evil villain in the latter, Pym is acting like an evil villain.

The fact that that disqualifies Peter but not Hank is proof of what I said earlier: It's the superhero version of "First impressions count."

It proves a lot more than that,
-- Peter attacking Mary Jane was incidental to the story and not the focal issue, i.e. learning he's a clone.
-- The story is badly written and concieved.

In any long-running serial continuity, not all characters and not all moments are created or treated equal. It's easy for fans to discard this moment on aesthetic grounds.

In the case of Hank attacking Janet,
-- Hank attacking Janet was in fact the entire point of the story, and main focus.
-- It's actually quite a well-written comic.

So it becomes harder to excuse that.

The fact Peter not doing it again is seen as "the character returned to good writing" while Hank not doing it again doesn't count...

Again we are confusing characters appearing in a good or bad light with whether that story is good on aesthetic grounds.

Hank Pym's downfall is in fact the greatest story he has ever appeared in.

Not that I think Peter should face consequences for it, though. I think some fans have this mentality that retcons are inherently bad and that ignoring previous events in comics is inherently bad. It isn't. I'm perfectly fine with discarding Peter hitting MJ as bad writing to be ignored.

In the case of the Clone Saga, the entire story is about whether Peter is a clone or not. The incident with MJ is a minor event in its own story and not the main focal point, so it can be discarded. It's easier to sweep that aside because unlike Hank, because Hank's story is fundamentally about the end of his marriage to Janet. That's more or less what the entire thing was about.

Stuff like Tony Stark imprisoning superherheroes in the N-Zone Gulag is a lot harder to stomach and accept because CIVIL WAR is a foundational story for Tony, it was constructed deliberately to establish him -- the lesser star of Marvel heroes -- into a major figure. It was also a huge success and Tony being Pre-Reg was central to that. In the case of Scarlet Witch, House of M which ends with "No more mutants" and amounted to an act of genocide which shattered the X-Men comics for a decade plus, and which is also far and away the biggest comic that Wanda was ever a part of, can't be swept away either. So that offers some understanding as to why some things are swept away and others. To paraphrase Dem party slogans, "it's the writing, stupid".

Now if a writer wanted to write a story of Peter Parker breaking down and becoming abusive and attacking his loved ones, that story would make it harder to ignore. To give an example for me Spider-Man 3 is absolutely not canonical to the previous two films but the hardest thing is the scene where Peter attacks MJ in the nightclub. That scene and that moment makes it impossible to appreciate the characters. Now you can say that Peter's possessed by the Venom symbiote and so on, but either case, the entire scene was about Peter deliberately attempting to humiliate Mary Jane. He went to the club where she was performing with Gwen, makes a fool out of himself and then hurts her in the process. That entire scene is far more about Peter being a jerk to her than the original Clone Saga issue was. The clone saga was a victim of gaslighting going overboard and let's not mince words, what Peter experienced during the Clone Saga at Norman's hands, was high-level malicious gaslighting designed to torture Peter. In SM-3, it's a repressed dude with inferiority complexes being possessed by someone who lets out his repressions to deliberately spite the person who loved him and who he loves.

Now again, there's a reason people reject this scene as unbecoming or unfitting to Tobey Peter as a whole because
a) Spider-Man 3 is a bad movie. Search your feelings.
b) That scene is overshadowed by the ridiculous Emo Peter montage and that ungainly hairstyle Tobey affects to show he's evil. So the camp distracts, happily from the drama.

Sorry for this long post, I have another one so I wanted to get all this out from the start.

[PCN24454]

I can't wait for Boomerang to leave. He's far overstayed his welcome.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

I've been wanting to do this for some time now. One of the things I hate most in Marvel comics fandom is what I'd like to call "Hank Pym apologia" where basically because 'the founding member of the Avengers' (aka he founded the weakest and least charismatic version of the team, and was also a minor figure at that, since his wife Janet came up with the name and was a far more active and regular member), was shown to become a cautionary tale among superheroes in his greatest story, you have many fans trying to "redeem" Hank by using a variety of excuses, bad faith, and false equivalency, to either minimize that incident or story, or alternatively retcon it. This squad of fans are so forceful that they manage to convince poor Jim Shooter in his own blog post (which if anyone has read it is quite contradictory) that he didn't write the story he had written.

Some of this is understandable (there are people who genuinely like the Hank Pym stories in "Tales to Astonish" before he became part of the Avengers), other responses are essentially various kinds of bad faith. Most fans I think are ignorant, in that they haven't read the original story and they react to it parasocially, they see outrage online and take up a cause because on first glance it has the appearance of fairness (i.e. why is Hank punished and not Reed and Peter). There are others though who are in true bad faith, actual misogynists who blame Hank's downfall on Janet and it's a fact that the ultimate consequences of various attempts to redeem or restore Hank Pym in the pages of the comics has led to Janet suffering at Hank's expense as a character. Janet was far more the founder of the Avengers than Hank was. She was the one who came up with the name, the first female member of the group, and was far more active than Mr. I-hot-rodded-a-robot-so-smart-it-brainwashed-me. So whoever is taking up Hank's cause just be careful about that the company you keep and the cause and perspective you espouse.

What I recommend everyone do is read the original comics Avengers #210-212. This in fact ultimately marked the start of a story-arc, i.e. a serialized story of subplots with threads picked and passed around that finally found a conclusion in Avengers #230 (the first issues of Roger Stern's epic run on the title).

As Jim Shooter said in the article where he claims that he didn't intend Hank to be a wife-beater, the entire story was written with the aim to end Hank and Janet's marriage.

"Before I embarked on the storyline that led to the end of Hank Pym and Janet van Dyne’s marriage, I reread every single appearance of both characters. His history was largely a litany of failure, always changing guises and switching back and forth from research to hero-ing because he wasn’t succeeding at either. He was never the Avenger who saved the day at the end and usually the first knocked out or captured. His most notable “achievement” in the lab was creating Ultron. Meanwhile, his rich, beautiful wife succeeded in everything she tried. She was also always flitting around his shoulders, flirting, saying things to prop up his ego."

Hank Pym was never some great Marvel hero. He never commanded a major ongoing of his own. Like many also-rans he became fodder for The Avengers, and since Cap, Iron Man, Thor had their own solo titles, that meant that writers (Roy Thomas especially) had more freedom with Hank Pym, Janet, Scarlet Witch, and Vision to mine for drama and conflict in the title. Since obviously doing anything damaging with Tony, Iron Man and Thor, was the call of their ongoing writers. Most importantly, Hank kept changing and cycling through identities -- Ant-Man, then Giant Man, then Yellowjacket, then Goliath (I think) -- and ultimately lost his branding in terms of straying far enough from he was introduced that David Michelinie, who liked the original Ant-Man issues, introduced Scott Lang to be Hank's legacy and Scott has been far more consistently and frequently Ant-Man than Hank ever was.. Marvel fans complain about Scott usurping Hank in the Ant-Man, but again they are ignorant of the fact that this simply confirms what was a reality even before Hank slapped Janet.

Hank Pym's relationship with Janet was always founded on dubious terms. His first wife Maria was murdered and Hank truly loved her and had a healthy relationship and marriage with her. Then he met Janet who was younger than him and more crucially someone who resembled his first wife a great deal. So you see the problem in their relationship, you have a younger woman with an older man aka walking trigger of a midlife crisis waiting to happen, the entire relationship is based on Janet living up to Maria. The entire time during The Avengers title was filled with Hank feeling insecure and Janet being charismatic and extroverted which made him insecure and prone to lash out. Most notably, Hank married Janet under very f--ked up circumstances. Where he basically created this alternate personality Yellowjacket who became a villain and then bride-napped Janet and forced her to marry which Janet accepted as essentially Hank's bizarre way of getting through his shyness and asking her to marry him. So you have a relationship with a dude with severe mental issues, who forces his partner into co-dependency to decode and suss out his real feelings. Yep real foundation for a happy marriage, lol

Anyway, in Avengers #210-212, Hank Pym returns to the Avengers after having been gone a long time (because he wasn't an active and regular member of the group at the time). He has major insecurity issues and is in a major mid-life crisis and actively hates himself and people around him. He takes his anger out on Janet, in public among fellow Avengers, humiliating her when she offered to help him. This happens in AVENGERS #211:
Avengers #211.jpg

(I love the clueless expression at the bottom with the Avengers Big Three basically going "My dudes, I think it's time we invented HR").

Anyway continued in Part 2, because there's a 3-Image cap per post, and I'd like to do the remaining three separately.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

So the entire comic sets out a downward spiral for Hank and Janet from the get-go. Then they go on a mission (which by the way concerns a supervillain who treats his partner abusively because plot-parallels and foreshadowing and using conflict to foregound internal theme, is a thing writers do). This mission goes south because Yellowjacket f--ks up and refuses to take responsibility. Cap and others submit Hank to a Court-Martial inquiry for his conduct on the mission. Hank gets huffy about being held to account and his bottled resentment. To be honest, Cap/Tony/Thor being the boys' club they collectively are (though in their credit they cautiously and slowly get woke in the course of this story arc) were gonna let Hank with a slap on the wrist because they felt about attacking a friend.

Anyway, Hank decides he's going to show the Avengers by inventing a robot to attack the Avengers during the Court-Martial. As he is the lab tinkering, Janet hears the noises and she tries to talk Hank out of his crazy scheme and then he hits her and right after he attacks her, Hank tells her to get up and force her to be part of his scheme:

Avengers #212 - 2.jpg

Now look at that page carefully in full. People often bring up the panel in the middle divorced from the stuff around it. But sequential art is sequential folks. Unlike Peter/MJ in the Clone Saga, this entire story is about Hank's marriage with Janet, and he himself by creating this robot to attack his team-mates all in a plot to escape accountability for his incompetence is behaving in a criminal manner. Janet tries to bring him to reason but he attacks her and as she's lying on the floor trying to pick herself up (all on her own) Hank compells her to be part of this scheme and she weekly accepts.

So using force on your partner and then making partner continue in your illegal scheme against her desire...that' abuse. Hank Pym was being abusive to Janet and no Jim Shooter, Hank definitely is a wife-beater in this scene. This was what you wrote in the dialogues and balloons.

The next day at the meeting Janet arrives wearing sunglasses to cover her bruises (a real life thing that women suffering from abuse and domestic violence do in their dailyl life).

Then the actual Court-Martial Happens, and Hank gets arrogant and attacks the character of Cap and others. This leads even Tony, who was most simpatico to Hank to go, "Hank just stop" and then Janet removes her sunglasses showing her bruises to everyone. Thor says "Odd's blood, has this man hit you". So again, Hank's actions to Janet were abuse and treated and recognized in the comic itself.

Avengers #212 - 3.jpg

Then the robot attacks it goes south, and attacks Hank because dude's incompetent, and Janet has to bail him out.

It's only this moment, after his scheme fails, after Janet saves and bails him out, after all this, that Hank feels a level of moral shame and horror at what he's done. And the immediate aftermath is the end of their relationship and the total humiliation of Hank Pym who realizes he's not gonna be an Avenger anymore.

Avengers #212 - 4.jpg

Ideally you all should be reading this comic and I wish there was an online YouTube video essay that broke all this down forensically but anyway, the fact is the original comic, Hank slapping Janet was a part of the story, and Hank was written as an abusive husband.

Whereas the Peter/MJ in the Clone Saga was clearly not intended to be a story about a failing marriage and relationship. So the two things don't have the same moral value or equivalence.

[Frontier]

I don't think this is the thread to discuss one's opinions on Hank Pym since he has nothing to do with Spider-Man beyond sharing an insect theme. Comparing the treatment/handling/leadup to the respective hitting is one thing, but otherwise Hank has nothing to do with this thread.

And I'm a Hank Pym fan.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

I don't think this is the thread to discuss one's opinions on Hank Pym since he has nothing to do with Spider-Man beyond sharing an insect theme. Comparing the treatment/handling/leadup to the respective hitting is one thing, but otherwise Hank has nothing to do with this thread.

And I'm a Hank Pym fan.

Well the main defense and charge over the Peter/MJ thing in the Clone Saga was "what about Hank Pym" and nobody here seems to have read the original story so in that light a forensic examination is apt.

[Frontier]

Well the main defense and charge over the Peter/MJ thing in the Clone Saga was "what about Hank Pym" and nobody here seems to have read the original story so in that light a forensic examination is apt.

I mean, even if the story's ultimate aim was dissolving the Hank/Janet marriage I don't think that means that the writer is lying about how he didn't intend for the degree of physicality to be what was depicted on page.

The same might've even been true for the Peter/MJ thing.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

I mean, even if the story's ultimate aim was dissolving the Hank/Janet marriage I don't think that means that the writer is lying about how he didn't intend for the degree of physicality to be what was depicted on page.

How do you explain the dialogue word-balloons where Thor comments on Janet's face being bruised and going "Odd's blood, did he hit you"? The dialogues were written by Shooter so quite obviously he intended this to be treated as abuse and it's recognized by the other superheroes in the same issue.

The same might've even been true for the Peter/MJ thing.

An art mistake, or more likely a mistake by editorial or someone who should have been paying attention, was likely at play there.

Because that scene isn't treated or recognized as abuse in the panel and page or treated as such in the aftermath. That's entirely different from the case of Hank Pym where what we see and how it's treated in-page is absolutely consistent all-the-way.

Now, obviously the intent was for Peter to over-react and have a breakdown over learning he was a clone and doing something so shameful that he runs away in horror. That was obviously the intent of the scene. But whether it was something mild, i.e. Peter nearly attacked MJ in anger and flinches at shock or something like that, seems to suggest wires being crossed.

But anyway the short answer is...blaming stuff on artwork for a scene and so on always needs to be taken with a grain of salt, there are cases where that happens to be true but in comics, all the writers and editors (even the ones with talent, the ones you like) are always in CYA mode and incredibly petty and willing to point blame.

Always read the comic in context and use that as your frame of reference.

[Frontier]

How do you explain the dialogue word-balloons where Thor comments on Janet's face being bruised and going "Odd's blood, did he hit you"? The dialogues were written by Shooter so quite obviously he intended this to be treated as abuse and it's recognized by the other superheroes in the same issue.



An art mistake, or more likely a mistake by editorial or someone who should have been paying attention, was likely at play there.

Because that scene isn't treated or recognized as abuse in the panel and page or treated as such in the aftermath. That's entirely different from the case of Hank Pym where what we see and how it's treated in-page is absolutely consistent all-the-way.

Now, obviously the intent was for Peter to over-react and have a breakdown over learning he was a clone and doing something so shameful that he runs away in horror. That was obviously the intent of the scene. But whether it was something mild, i.e. Peter nearly attacked MJ in anger and flinches at shock or something like that, seems to suggest wires being crossed.

But anyway the short answer is...blaming stuff on artwork for a scene and so on always needs to be taken with a grain of salt, there are cases where that happens to be true but in comics, all the writers and editors (even the ones with talent, the ones you like) are always in CYA mode and incredibly petty and willing to point blame.

Always read the comic in context and use that as your frame of reference.

So the sense I'm getting is that the Peter/MJ scene was a complete reverse of the Hank/Janet scene in terms of writing intent versus artist depiction.

[Agent Z]

Honestly, I tend to think Peter's slap/push/whatever was a hundred times WORSE than Reed or Hank. I actually find it pretty sexist to keep on about those two. Yeah, their wives got hit... but their wives are combat trained superheroes. They aren't victims. They should have gotten right back up and blasted back. They would have if it was Dr. Doom! If Reed had slapped Johnny to break the mental control... nobody woudl have said anything. But because it was 'the girl'... it suddenly becomes an unforgivable sin...

This is victim blaming you're engaging in here. Striking your spouse is never acceptable and whether or not they are capable of defending themselves is irrelevant.

[Agent Z]

Nobody puts Peter in the same box as Hank Pym and this scene is almost never mentioned or referred to outside the narrow circle of Clone Saga aficionados.



Hank's incident wasn't an accident, he was in fact an abusive partner to Jan.



People need to make a distinction between stories where Hank is shown in a good light and stories with Hank Pym that are of good aesthetic quality.

Because aesthetically, the entire story arc of Avengers#211-230 is the best thing Hank Pym was ever part of. It's a great comics story and a defining Avengers story.



No it wasn't.



That entire excuse is a bold-faced lie to anyone who has read the original comics.

The entire purpose of the "Hank-Slaps-Janet" saga was to establish what had already been going on for some time in the comics. Hank Pym was a troubled superhero with deep insecurity and psychological baggage whose marriage with Janet was unhealthy and combustible. Jim Shooter who wrote that felt that he could do a story with Hank Pym who had more or less become disposable (since Scott Lang was already created to take over his original mantle as Ant-Man, yep that had already happened before this story).

I'll post again to give you all a rundown. But first,



Not the same thing. Peter was actually being gaslighted by Norman Osborn into thinking he was a clone. Hank Pym was in the middle of building a robot to attack his fellow Avengers in a false-flag operation that Janet told him was a terrible idea.

In the former case, Peter is reacting to a horrible and cruel prank played by an evil villain in the latter, Pym is acting like an evil villain.



It proves a lot more than that,
-- Peter attacking Mary Jane was incidental to the story and not the focal issue, i.e. learning he's a clone.
-- The story is badly written and concieved.

In any long-running serial continuity, not all characters and not all moments are created or treated equal. It's easy for fans to discard this moment on aesthetic grounds.

In the case of Hank attacking Janet,
-- Hank attacking Janet was in fact the entire point of the story, and main focus.
-- It's actually quite a well-written comic.

So it becomes harder to excuse that.



Again we are confusing characters appearing in a good or bad light with whether that story is good on aesthetic grounds.

Hank Pym's downfall is in fact the greatest story he has ever appeared in.



In the case of the Clone Saga, the entire story is about whether Peter is a clone or not. The incident with MJ is a minor event in its own story and not the main focal point, so it can be discarded. It's easier to sweep that aside because unlike Hank, because Hank's story is fundamentally about the end of his marriage to Janet. That's more or less what the entire thing was about.

Stuff like Tony Stark imprisoning superherheroes in the N-Zone Gulag is a lot harder to stomach and accept because CIVIL WAR is a foundational story for Tony, it was constructed deliberately to establish him -- the lesser star of Marvel heroes -- into a major figure. It was also a huge success and Tony being Pre-Reg was central to that. In the case of Scarlet Witch, House of M which ends with "No more mutants" and amounted to an act of genocide which shattered the X-Men comics for a decade plus, and which is also far and away the biggest comic that Wanda was ever a part of, can't be swept away either. So that offers some understanding as to why some things are swept away and others. To paraphrase Dem party slogans, "it's the writing, stupid".

Now if a writer wanted to write a story of Peter Parker breaking down and becoming abusive and attacking his loved ones, that story would make it harder to ignore. To give an example for me Spider-Man 3 is absolutely not canonical to the previous two films but the hardest thing is the scene where Peter attacks MJ in the nightclub. That scene and that moment makes it impossible to appreciate the characters. Now you can say that Peter's possessed by the Venom symbiote and so on, but either case, the entire scene was about Peter deliberately attempting to humiliate Mary Jane. He went to the club where she was performing with Gwen, makes a fool out of himself and then hurts her in the process. That entire scene is far more about Peter being a jerk to her than the original Clone Saga issue was. The clone saga was a victim of gaslighting going overboard and let's not mince words, what Peter experienced during the Clone Saga at Norman's hands, was high-level malicious gaslighting designed to torture Peter. In SM-3, it's a repressed dude with inferiority complexes being possessed by someone who lets out his repressions to deliberately spite the person who loved him and who he loves.

Now again, there's a reason people reject this scene as unbecoming or unfitting to Tobey Peter as a whole because
a) Spider-Man 3 is a bad movie. Search your feelings.
b) That scene is overshadowed by the ridiculous Emo Peter montage and that ungainly hairstyle Tobey affects to show he's evil. So the camp distracts, happily from the drama.

Sorry for this long post, I have another one so I wanted to get all this out from the start.

You're making this way more complicated than it actually is. Peter was under the control of the symbiote at the time. That's all there is to it.

[SpiderClops]

J.J.J. is an asshole through and through. And not the "asshole with a heart of gold" kind(and that trope has its own problems). He's just an asshole.

[Agent Z]

J.J.J. is an asshole through and through. And not the "asshole with a heat of gold kind"(and that trope has its own problems) kind. He's just an asshole.

It's one of those "depends on the writer" kind of thing.