Dan Slott on the "real" MJ

[RedQueen]

Has he wrote MJ to be a 'party girl?' Last I looked she was owned her own business and had her **** together.

I mean in regards to the interview. I was also referring to his quote about Peter couldn't still be selling his photographs anymore. I was more talking about more in line with his perspective of her. Not really career choices. Just more like the character themselves. I just used examples from the interview, specifically the earlier bit when he talked about Peter.

It's more perspective than anything else.

Plus, owning the business, we don't get to the see the character herself. She's got a set up away from Peter so Slott can write her off in the story. We haven't seen her in months.

I guess I mean Slott writes MJ as to revolve around Peter's story and Slott writes her appearances and plots on how she's useful to Peter's story. Giving her a business and boyfriend effectively renders her useless to Peter's story because Slott gave her his version of a somewhat happy ending for her so she won't be associated with Peter anymore. Though what he'll do with RYVs will be interesting.

[Agent Z]

What happened with MJ wasn't character development. They altered her past to explain she only used the party girl personality as an act to hide who she really was. It came from no where, wasn't planned by any writer and was done purely to accommodate the decision to have her and Peter marry, a decision made for sales. They needed someone who could believably marry Peter but didn't have one, so they altered someone to fit that mold. They even made it so that MJ always knew he was Spider-Man, making her the least likeable character anytime she complained Peter was late since she knew why he was late.

That could have been her pretending so that no one would suspect her of knowing his secret. And as far as retcons go, there have been far worse. Especially when in regards to Peter's love interests.

[Kevinroc]

What happened with MJ wasn't character development. They altered her past to explain she only used the party girl personality as an act to hide who she really was. It came from no where, wasn't planned by any writer and was done purely to accommodate the decision to have her and Peter marry, a decision made for sales. They needed someone who could believably marry Peter but didn't have one, so they altered someone to fit that mold. They even made it so that MJ always knew he was Spider-Man, making her the least likeable character anytime she complained Peter was late since she knew why he was late.

They hinted that MJ had a troubled background just before Wolfman had MJ and Peter break up that first time.



Or when Roger Stern said something happened between MJ and her sister.





This is hardly "came out of nowhere."

[Tuck]

Giving her a business and boyfriend effectively renders her useless to Peter's story.

No. Peter and MJ will always be in a love triangle if they're not together. Even marrying her off won't change that. Only ignoring her completely for . . . probably years could accomplish that.

[Aruran.]

I really don't get how people want the Lee/Romita version of MJ again, yet are fine with everyone else's character development. Think about it, in that era it was entirely about Peter and no one else got an in depth focus. It's the first 100 issues of a series that gets fleshed out. We knew nothing about MJ at that time expect she was Anna's niece and that she liked to party. It's the fact that what people did after adding the tragic background rubbed people the wrong way, and that's understandable.

[RedQueen]

No. Peter and MJ will always be in a love triangle if they're not together. Even marrying her off won't change that. Only ignoring her completely for . . . probably years could accomplish that.

I don't think Marvel will ever be able to shake off MJ and Peter's possibility of romance. Readers never forget. George RR Martin at a con has said hasn't even forgotten it.

[Agent Z]

I really don't get how people want the Lee/Romita version of MJ again, yet are fine with everyone else's character development. Think about it, in that era it was entirely about Peter and no one else got an in depth focus. It's the first 100 issues of a series that gets fleshed out. We knew nothing about MJ at that time expect she was Anna's niece and that she liked to party. It's the fact that what people did after adding the tragic background rubbed people the wrong way, and that's understandable.

In a way, it's similar to how people feel about Wolverine's origin; the less that was know about Logan and what he'd done, the more people found him interesting. These days with multiple retcons and connections to other Marvel characters, people would rather return to the ambiguity of Logan's origins. Of course, Logan's problem has more to do with how convoluted his back story was.

[Tuck]

But Wolverine's origin was a mystery to him. That's different than the readers just not knowing about it. It was actively addressed on the page that he has no history, and was often a plot driver.

We didn't have some comic book go back and tell us the story of Mary Jane and how she likes parties . . . cuz they're fun n stuff.

[Yvonmukluk]

What happened with MJ wasn't character development. They altered her past to explain she only used the party girl personality as an act to hide who she really was. It came from no where, wasn't planned by any writer and was done purely to accommodate the decision to have her and Peter marry, a decision made for sales. They needed someone who could believably marry Peter but didn't have one, so they altered someone to fit that mold. They even made it so that MJ always knew he was Spider-Man, making her the least likeable character anytime she complained Peter was late since she knew why he was late.

You do realise the reason MJ married Peter in the comics was because Stan Lee was marrying them in the newspaper strip, right? They weren't blindly fumbling to grab a love interest-it was always going to be Mary Jane. You got a problem with that, take it up with Stan. The engagement was rushed, yes-but it made sense for it to be the two of them. Who else was it going to be? She was the only one who really accepted both sides of Peter's life.

[Confuzzled]

I really don't get how people want the Lee/Romita version of MJ again, yet are fine with everyone else's character development.

Yeah, it just sounds so disingenuous to me. Especially when you consider she never had any thought bubbles in the entire Lee/Romita stretch. Well, except for ONE!

She was a fascinating enigma just waiting to be explored. Gerry Conway has constantly mentioned how wasteful he found Lee's tendency to push MJ near the peripheries of the story so as to make Gwen relevant. And it's not like the backstory was clumsy exploitative tragic like Kevin Smith's Black Cat rape story. It was just tragic in a way that felt all too real. If anything, the 60's go go girl is the concept, not the multifaceted, fully fleshed woman during the marriage years, despite being forced by less able writers to wait by the window because they just didn't know better. I really don't see how that is the character's fault.

Oh man, now I'm nervous for RYV.

[Vortex85]

Yeah, it just sounds so disingenuous to me. Especially when you consider she never had any thought bubbles in the entire Lee/Romita stretch. Well, except for ONE!

She was a fascinating enigma just waiting to be explored. Gerry Conway has constantly mentioned how wasteful he found Lee's tendency to push MJ near the peripheries of the story so as to make Gwen relevant. And it's not like the backstory was clumsy exploitative tragic like Kevin Smith's Black Cat rape story. It was just tragic in a way that felt all too real. If anything, the 60's go go girl is the concept, not the multifaceted, fully fleshed woman during the marriage years, despite being forced by less able writers to wait by the window because they just didn't know better. I really don't see how that is the character's fault.

Oh man, now I'm nervous for RYV.

Well said, my friend.

[Amazing Michael Deery]

You do realise the reason MJ married Peter in the comics was because Stan Lee was marrying them in the newspaper strip, right? They weren't blindly fumbling to grab a love interest-it was always going to be Mary Jane. You got a problem with that, take it up with Stan. The engagement was rushed, yes-but it made sense for it to be the two of them. Who else was it going to be? She was the only one who really accepted both sides of Peter's life.

That#s exactly the problem though. They only did it because Stan Lee did it. It wasn't a natural extension of the stories they were doing and Mary Jane wasn't in the right place to be his wife. So they changed her hurriedly changed her character to make her the marrying type.

[David Walton]

Well, this thread could get interesting....

Count me among those that feel MJ's backstory was painfully retrofitted to make her marriage material for Pete but it really wasn't done overnight.

IIRC, it was Gerry Conway who started to slowly start any kind of compassion/nuance to MJ right after Gwen died and she and Peter slowly stated drifting together. But then it was Marv Wolfman (I think) who jettisoned MJ from the title for 3-4 years before Uncle Rog brought her back. It was then DeFalco who introduced the idea that MJ had always known Pete's secret (very hamfisted and still unbelievable given all the scenes that run contrary) and, worse, the awkward painful family background introduced by Michelenie made "this" MJ seem to be a much different character.....honestly, almost as different as "Spider-Gwen" is from "our" Gwen; I am not suggesting either is bad but they are both light years away from the characters they originally were and the changes really can't be easily explained by "character growth". At least not IMO.

A few points:

--MJ's backstory wasn't designed to justify the marriage. In fact, it was quite the opposite! DeFalco did more than any other writer to expand MJ's history, and he planned for MJ to jilt Peter at the altar. Here's what Ron Frenz had to say in an interview with Tom DeFalco:

"We planned to take Pete and Mary Jane through all the steps of the engagement process. They were going to set a date and MJ's past would come back to haunt her. Her sister would contact her right before the wedding, and give her a chance at reconciliation. She would use that as an excuse to run away from Pete because she was still afraid of being tied down. Pete would be out fighting supervillains, and would barely get to the church on time. Harry Osborn would meet him on the steps, and we would have this silent sequence where he gives the wedding ring back to Pete. As Harry walks away, the ring drops out of Pete's hand and the scene ends with a long shot of Pete standing all by himself. Anyway, Jim Shooter decided that Pete and MJ would actually get married and Stan Lee agreed because he wanted them to be married in the newspaper strip. I was offered the chance to pencil the wedding issue, but turned it down because it just didn't feel right to me. I liked our story better. I guess when you think about it, the whole marriage was kind of our fault. We should have just kept our mouths shut."

--DeFalco had MJ reveal that she'd known Peter was Spider-Man for a while, but the timing was kept ambiguous. I feel like it was heavily implied that MJ put it all together sometime after she rejected Pete's first proposal (or maybe right before). But it was Conway who took things a step further and revealed MJ had always known in Parallel Lives.

[dragonmp93]

That#s exactly the problem though. They only did it because Stan Lee did it. It wasn't a natural extension of the stories they were doing and Mary Jane wasn't in the right place to be his wife. So they changed her hurriedly changed her character to make her the marrying type.

And two decades later, then they made an unnatural story about a deal with the devil to break them up...................................

Yeah, it just sounds so disingenuous to me. Especially when you consider she never had any thought bubbles in the entire Lee/Romita stretch. Well, except for ONE!

She was a fascinating enigma just waiting to be explored. Gerry Conway has constantly mentioned how wasteful he found Lee's tendency to push MJ near the peripheries of the story so as to make Gwen relevant. And it's not like the backstory was clumsy exploitative tragic like Kevin Smith's Black Cat rape story. It was just tragic in a way that felt all too real. If anything, the 60's go go girl is the concept, not the multifaceted, fully fleshed woman during the marriage years, despite being forced by less able writers to wait by the window because they just didn't know better. I really don't see how that is the character's fault.

Oh man, now I'm nervous for RYV.

How long One More Day is retconned out of the continuity and not replaced by something even worse, im going to be happy. (I hope that im not asking too much.)

[Project Initiative Cascada]

Slott should just stay far away from writing MJ and Felicia. All he is doing is further damaging the characters and angering fans in the process.