Which stories required Spider-Man to be married?

[MJS]

It wasn't the initial plan, but the story did eventually become about trying to remove the marriage.

Exactly right. And it seems the "eventually" was sooner rather than later.


Howard Mackie interview

MA: Was the Clone Saga intended to be a way to get back to Spider-Man being single, as some have said?
HM: My recollection is that the return to the single Spider-Man did enter the conversation eventually, but it was not the intent of the story when pitched, though it did seem to be an ideal way to bring that end goal about.
MA: Do you recall how that idea came about? Did you support it, and what were your thoughts in general on the issue of Spider-Man/Peter Parker being married?
HM: I cannot tell you specifically how that conversation came about, but I do know that it has been an ongoing part of every Spider-Man writer/editorial meeting ever since Spider-Man and MJ tied the knot.

J.M. DeMatteis:

"From the moment then-Web of Spider-Man writer Terry Kavanagh tossed the idea out on the table at one of our regular Spider-conferences, we knew we had a keg of dynamite on our hands. But what an exciting keg it was. At least I thought so. I had just taken over the writing of Amazing Spider-Man—and the idea that the guy we thought was Spidey was a clone while the real Spider-Man had been out wandering the world for five years thinking he was a fake seemed like just the thing we needed to shake the Spiderverse to its foundations. Most of the writers, artists and editors who joined in that retreat agreed.

"What was most exciting was that this wasn’t some bogus Big Event. This was going to be The Real Thing. Good-bye Peter and Mary Jane, hello Ben Reilly (the perfect name, courtesy of my dear friend Danny Fingeroth, who was the Spider-Man group editor at the time). As we knocked the idea around, we realized that what we had on our hands was a powerful super-heroic drama with emotion, psychology, action and—perhaps most important—a coherent beginning, middle and end. It was our intention to bring Ben back, mess with the readers’ minds for six or eight months, and then, when the smoke cleared, return him to his full glory as Spider-Man, sending Peter, Mary Jane and their new baby off into the happy ending we thought they deserved."

In other words, per Howard Mackie, how to get rid of the marriage was part of every Marvel story conference, and according to J.M. DeMatteis, from his perspective it was indeed to a story done to say goodbye to Peter and Mary Jane.

It's been twenty years, people's memories aren't infallible and everyone in that room when the Clone Saga was discussed has their own perception of what happened. But it's safe to say how to get rid of the marriage and the clone saga are intertwined.

[Frontier]

http://goodcomics.comicbookresources...-revealed-580/



That's an interesting choice.

As a creative exercise, can anyone think of a way Spider-Man: Blue could have been told with an unmarried Spider-Man?

By not having MJ come in at the end.

[Mister Mets]

Okay here's the thing. When we say "marriage stories", do we mean stories that entirely revolved around the marriage or simply stories that occurred involving a married Spidey? If it is the former, then there are very few stories that were actually about the marriage, you know. It's for that reason why I find it disingenuous on the part of Slott when he says stuff like "Marriage fans can't bring up many examples of good marriage stories". For there weren't that many "marriage stories" in the first place. So we are left with stuff like the second Clone Saga, whose suckiness had nothing to do with the marriage, or some of the 00's JMS tales where stories occurred during the twilight years of the marriage but weren't really about the marriage to qualify as "marriage stories".

For all the hoo-haa about "marriage being a limitation", the entire 90's felt like an exercise in staying away from the marriage/limit the marriage from being a major part of the stories as opposed to the accused other way around. Rather than make more concentrated efforts in exploring the role the marriage and Mary Jane played in Peter's life.

And I don't even think many marriage fans want every story to revolve around the marriage either, even when it is put in place. So a story cannot really be limited by something it isn't revolving around.

The definition of marriage stories will vary from person to person. I think it mainly means stories that would be substantially different if Peter and MJ were living together, rather than married. That said, there is plenty of room for disagreement with "substantially different."

One further factor is that most of these stories were not made in a vacuum. If Peter and MJ were married for just under four years when JM DeMatteis starts "The Child Within" that is going to inform decisions he makes for the story, even if someone might think the marriage isn't requied for what's on the page.