So, how did you feel about the reveal of the parentage of Spider-Woman's baby, *Spoilers*

[AdamFTF]

I think that the problem lies in the differences in comics and cartoons.

In cartoons, the kids are in danger yes but unless they're a Venture Brother, make it out just fine.

In comics, significant others and children always have a target on them. I remember when Black Widow was discussing 'The Life' with Venom/Flash Thompson, and one of the most important points about it that she emphasized, was never to have children, because they'd be targets.

So there's that...

And that pretty much stems back to the late '60s when writers at DC had Black Manta kill Arthur Curry Jr. (aka Aquababy). That, along with the death of Gwen Stacy, started the whole "superheroes must always be alone" thing. The whole idea that a superhero's loved ones always have targets on their backs. And it's another trope that needs breaking. I swear, unless people start breaking through some of these cliches, every superhero story is going to seem like the same old stuff moved around to different characters.

[ilovelocust]

Oddly enough, her adopting Shogo is the least WTF thing they've done with this character in about 15 years.

Personally, I like the idea of the father of Jessica's baby being no one of consequence because it's essentially a trope breaker. I've been looking for more trope breakers in superhero comics. In superhero comics, it always seems like no one is adopted or has an unknown parent for no reason. It's even such that when I heard about Sue Storm being adopted in that awful recent Fantastic Four movie, my mind immediately went to "but who's her real father?" The more characters that can start breaking these unwritten rules, the better.

As for whether or not Jessica choosing to be a superhero single mom is irresponsible, that depends entirely on how seriously we're supposed to take this stuff. Are we supposed to take it more seriously than cartoons? Because a lot of cartoons have people in what are essentially single parent roles. Darkwing Duck adopted a little girl by himself and still went around fighting guys like Megavolt and Steelbeak. Or, something less Disney, there's Johnny Quest. Dr. Benton Quest was the single father of two children, his biological son Johnny and his adopted son Hadji, and actually brought the kids with him to all sorts of dangerous locales where they had all sorts of adventures. The only real difference is that he had his bodyguard Race Bannon to help watch over the kids, and Race even brought his own daughter along for the '90s sequel series. And I think that's as high as I can go on the "taking this seriously" scale. I can only take superhero comics about as seriously as I take Johnny Quest.

Age of the children, support network, and how they came into the super heroes lives all matter when people are building their suspension of belief. Infants are wholly reliant on their parents. If left alone they will die with no capability to reach out and call for help beyond crying (a seven year old will call the police or look to a neighbor if mom/dad doesn't come home). Support networks that are actively involved in the child's life make a big difference as well. Even if the support network is also involved in the superhero life the odds of multiple people catching a stray bullet to the brain is much lower than just one doing so. Plus, support network knows to go check the apartment for the infant if something happens to the parent. How the child comes into existence is also important. Did the child predate the loss of the support network as in the case of a widow/widower or taking in a kid you were the support network for (siblings or close friends children for example)? Was the kid already in a bad situation and taking them in provided them with a better one despite risks as in the case of adoption? The first is just making do with a bad situation outside the character's control. The second is less clear cut, but generally a net positive for the kid's life assuming the hero in question isn't a terrible parent. Creating a kid that didn't already exist is going to put the most responsibility on the hero.

[Of Atlantis]

I interacted briefly with the writer over Twitter after I said the reveal was underwhelming and he said he was surprised at the whole baby daddy hype this caused. Said it was never meant to be the focal point. I'm not sure how he expected it not to be, but those were his words.

[Thirteen]

The unknown identity of the Father is going to be a dangling thread that I fear someone would come back to in "all the wrong ways".
That donor is going to be Doctor Doom or Kang the Conqueror and come to reclaim his progeny.

To really neutralize the baby daddy as a factor would have been to show that it was Joe Q Marvel who had no interest in any relationship with Jess or the baby. Or say the donor has since died.
The "I don't the identity of the father..." hangs in the air waiting for the "...YET." to be added on. It's the nature of shared characters in serialized continuing storytelling.

[Anduinel]

I interacted briefly with the writer over Twitter after I said the reveal was underwhelming and he said he was surprised at the whole baby daddy hype this caused. Said it was never meant to be the focal point. I'm not sure how he expected it not to be, but those were his words.

He probably didn't mean it to be the focal point; Jessica is the star of the book, after all, not her baby bump. But if he didn't want the identity of the father to be the biggest question on a lot of readers' minds, he should have made it a non-issue by killing the mystery early on. But then that wouldn't have driven sales, would it?

[The Negative Zone]

It's a baby, there's honestly not much that can be done with it characterwise without aging it up at least somewhat. Hell even with Jubilee's baby, the identity of the father turned into a story of its own. A baby is basically a fancy plot device to bring on parental style character development.

Then.. who the baby will become and how the baby will affect Jessica.

[Kurolegacy]

Then.. who the baby will become and how the baby will affect Jessica.

But problem there is, given this is a shared universe that relies on comic time, we'll never really see who the baby becomes unless there's a point of the future version of Gerry coming to the past or we see into the future like we have with numerous children of the MU heroes. Kinda like how we'll never see the Young X-Men grow beyond their teenage years despite them being around since the early 2000's.

[Nelson]

I had this whole thing typed up but decided against it because haters are gonna hate.

Yes, the memes will sure show your intellectual superiority over the oposittion. You forgot to compare me to Hitler, while you are at it.

I interacted briefly with the writer over Twitter after I said the reveal was underwhelming and he said he was surprised at the whole baby daddy hype this caused. Said it was never meant to be the focal point. I'm not sure how he expected it not to be, but those were his words.

Remember that he is a liar who changes the story to whatever will get him most sympathy points. He and Bill Rosemann have told multiple contradicting things about Avengers Arena. According to Roseman the story was an idea Mark Waid submitted at writer's retreat that was given to Hopeless. Waid on twitter said he "gets more credit than he deserves", which, when they credit you for idea means that he did I don't know what - farted in the room and that inspired somebody to produce that piece of ****? Soon after that they stopped saying this claim and instead Hopeless revealed he wanted to write a Braddock Academy book to which Arena was only suppsoed to be an arc of, that Tom breevort and Axel Alonso told him to expand into a whole book. In a podcast I cannot find anymore however he talked at lenght how Arena was his dream project he always wanted to make to show how much he hates teen superhero characters and thinks they all should get killed so comics can be more realistic. He also went to list every single dumb anti-Robin argument used by people who don't actually read any comics about Robins to justify his position, equating all teen superheroes with sidekicks who are, according to him, forced to fight crime against their will by adults.Which directly contradicts his statement in the afterword of the last issue of the series that he is a big fan of Runaways, since he would know nobody is forcing them to superheroics - if anything adult superheroes several times tried to force them to stop it. Said statement he is a fan of Runaways (which he literally calls hsi favorite book of all times) contradicts statement made at one time that he didn't read Joss Whedon's run - hard to believe he didn't bother to finish his suppsoedfly favorite book - and one he made in an interviewfor CBR around issue #16 that he was surprised there was a single person in the world who cares about Runaways enough to be upset with what he did to Nico and Chase - I find such thing hard to believe if it was suppsoed to be his favorite book.
Dennsi Hopeless is a liar. He will spin the story any way he wishes, just so that he gets your sympathy. Don't believe a single word he says.

[DiceRoll]

Wait...so could it actually be a good-looking surfer she used her pheromone powers on?