Controversial Spider-Man Opinions

[TheCape]

Yeah I guess so.

Frankly I think Peter and Gwen should've been together not only at the end of season 2, but for the rest of the cartoon, they're both so shitty as boyfriend/girlfriend that I think nobody else deserves to suffer either of them .



Yeah we'll probably only see Venom as a villain at first at most, this idea of him being an anti-hero is becoming more widespread.



Original Eddie doesn't work as much with this idea of anti hero Venom, 'cause he was just a pathetic guy, fakes some interview, Spidey ends up revealing the truth about the whole Sin Eater think, then blames every shitty thing that happened to him on Peter, yeah...

Not saying original Eddie was bad, he was fine, just that someone like that can be harder to care for if he becomes more heroic.

Then again, if what I hear of what Spectacular was planning is true, that Eddie would eventually become more like his Lethal Protector characterization, I'd find it hard to believe he can go that way too, Spectacular Eddie is a colossal piece of **** and in some ways, more evil than 616 Venom used to be, so yeah...



If Otto started to act in a motherly way to get that nickname, I dunno how I'd react lol.



Yeah, he's still an evil ******* so it's weird when the plot tries to make it look like he's not that bad, doesn't help when they talk about the horrors he did as not being that bad...

Wonder what he'll be up to once he returns to ASM, if Spencer writes him, not sure if he'll have the classic personality, but I definitely don't see him becoming an anti-hero again.



Honestly, Hulk Goblin in a glider is hard to picture for me, just don't really see it working that well lol.

I'm sure that by season 5 Peter would have turned out to be a semi decent boyfriend lol.

Original Venom wasn't mean to be more than a villain when he appeared so that's not surprise, Michelinie even said that he was gonna kill Eddie 100 issues after his introduction, whatever weird moral code Eddie conducted himself with (a code that was really lose), he wasn't mean to be sympathetic. He became bigger that Michelinie expected and that led to The Lethal Proctector sadly.

Remember when Otto said that he wanted to be remembered as worse than Hitler?...good times lol. I'm pretty sure that Spencer would write him as a villain, but might throw a reference to Superior here and there for the fans.

It was a big glider....

[Agent Z]

That's true enough. Gwen isn't all that different from Karen Page, Daredevil's love interest in the Silver Age, or Susan Storm.

The only thing Gwen has in common with these characters is hair color.

[Lukmendes]

I mean, part of me guesses this was a feature, not a bug. For one Eddie's own creation process was kinda rushed because Michelinie already had an idea for another host that was turned down by editorial, so he had to come up with Eddie as a host rather quick. In that same sense, he originally wanted Eddie to be an expendable host, someone that would die or be left by the Symbiote soon so it could jump onto another host over and over. So by all accounts, he was basically a monster of the week and very much made to be expendable and not someone you would care about. Obviously this backfire spectacularly, and now we have him as an A-List, but you know, it's interesting to think about that original process. Personally I think he works a little bit better after all the layers of retcons that were pushed after he was originally revealed, but I am personally of the opposite opinion, in that as a villain he is mostly style, little substance in his 616 version.

Original Venom wasn't mean to be more than a villain when he appeared so that's not surprise, Michelinie even said that he was gonna kill Eddie 100 issues after his introduction, whatever weird moral code Eddie conducted himself with (a code that was really lose), he wasn't mean to be sympathetic. He became bigger that Michelinie expected and that led to The Lethal Proctector sadly.

Yeah there wasn't much to Eddie's character as a villain, he was just used for this obssessive rage to kill Spidey, which was really mostly the symbiote anyways, probably why Michelinie was considering this idea of switching hosts a lot.

I'm sure that by season 5 Peter would have turned out to be a semi decent boyfriend lol.

He'd better, like even with the whole Spider-Man making him skip out dates thing being understandable, he still was mostly not there for Liz, was pinning for MJ and Gwen, and almost cheated too.

At least when breaking up with Liz, he has the decency of saying he wasn't much of a boyfriend, and that Liz was great.

Remember when Otto said that he wanted to be remembered as worse than Hitler?...good times lol

And that was under Slott too lol.

It was a big glider....

Checked out a few pictures, he also wears armor, it's kinda eh, looks worse with it.

The only thing Gwen has in common with these characters is hair color.

Wasn't Sue more of a crybaby back in Kirby era too? 'Cause Gwen cried, a lot lol.

[TheCape]

Yeah there wasn't much to Eddie's character as a villain, he was just used for this obssessive rage to kill Spidey, which was really mostly the symbiote anyways, probably why Michelinie was considering this idea of switching hosts a lot.



He'd better, like even with the whole Spider-Man making him skip out dates thing being understandable, he still was mostly not there for Liz, was pinning for MJ and Gwen, and almost cheated too.

At least when breaking up with Liz, he has the decency of saying he wasn't much of a boyfriend, and that Liz was great.



And that was under Slott too lol.



Checked out a few pictures, he also wears armor, it's kinda eh, looks worse with it.



Wasn't Sue more of a crybaby back in Kirby era too? 'Cause Gwen cried, a lot lol.

It was pretty obvious than that was a flaw that he was mean to outgrow eventually, the narrative wasn't exactly giving him.a pass for his many blunders with Liz, so in a way is kind of fitting that he didn't get the girl at season 2, Karma is a b£#$.

Someone described that Goblin as "a bastardization of a bastardization", i'm inclined to agreed.

[federicodettofred]

Is this even an opinion? I mean, Ultimate Spider-Man is a great book, but it's technically a terrible "modern realistic retelling" of the classic Spider-Man comics. How exactly is Demon Goblin more realistic than regular Goblin? How is a 15-year old getting an office job in Manhattan more "realistic" than a 15-year old getting a freelance job as photographer? Why were so many characters changed from their 616 counterparts for no reason?

Regardless of whether it was better or not, The Spectacular Spider-Man was more of an actual modern/realistic retelling of the Lee/Ditko/Romita comics, which is what Ultimate was supposed to be.

Well, actually it's just a modern retelling. Spider-Man can't be realistic that much. I absolutely love Ultimate Spider-Man, but I obviously prefer classic Goblin and classic Gwen Stacy, for example.

[Agent Z]

Wasn't Sue more of a crybaby back in Kirby era too? 'Cause Gwen cried, a lot lol.

Yeah and then Sue grew out of it. Saying she's just like Gwen completely ignores the two different trajectories the characters took.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Has Bendis actually said that Ultimate Peter was never meant to leave high school?

Well the metaphor he often used to describe it was The Simpsons, which has negative continuity and Bart, Lisa, and Maggie never grow up.

In either case, it wasn't really his call. Ultimate Spider-Man originated as a commission handed to Bendis by (then) Marvel President Bill Jemas. Jemas was the one who really came up with the "Spider-Man is about youth" ideology that has infected Marvel's handling of Spider-Man since then. Jemas wanted a teenage version of Spider-Man who never grew up. Joe Quesada actually opposed this because John Byrne's Spider-Man Chapter One had crashed and burned just a year back but Jemas was insistent (which of course makes it specially hypocritical that Quesada, without irony, cited USM's success later as proof that Spider-Man is about youth and would always succeed in that, when he knew well that USM would be an exception and not the rule). The opening arc of USM was co-plotted by Jemas and Bendis. So aging up Ultimate Peter was never truly on the cards. That version wasn't intended to really grow up, and wasn't concieved to. It was meant to demonstrate and prove, "Spider-Man should never have grown up and left high school" and so on.

Bendis talks about this in his interview in Comics-Creators on Spider-Man. He also said another impetus for that was that ASM at that time (just before JMS signed on...Bendis started USM before JMS began) was really depressing and low-selling. Mary Jane had died, Peter was lonely and depressed and Bendis noted that Marvel felt that they needed a Spider-Man title that had that old time optimism again.

If this is true, it contradicts previous things that Bendis said back in the 2000's. He has said in interviews that every 100 issues were 1 year of Peter's life, meaning Peter was 16 after issue 100 and would've been 17 after 200 and so on (going by that math, Ultimate Peter would now be 18-19). That doesn't mean he was never intended to grow up, just that he aged a lot slower than 616.

Bendis didn't really have a sense of how long Ultimate Spider-Man would last in the early 2000s. Mark Bagley said that when he worked on USM, he thought after initial success it would last for some 40 issues tops. But then when they reached 60 issues and came within sight of breaking Lee-Kirby's record of longest writer-artist run (for Fantastic Four), they realized they would last. And even then 100 issues per year and so on and so forth still means 300 issues worth of high school stuff.

Greg Weisman's Peter for example was always intended to grow up but he would have still been in high school longer (going by real time) than Stan Lee's Peter was (in real time).

Agreed. It's a pity that didn't come to pass. I imagine it would have been like the X-Men Evolution cartoon which started with teenage versions of the character and then aged them up and by the fourth season they graduated.

Other AU versions that start at the origin do this too, that's why for example AU versions of the Fantastic Four take longer to get to Franklin.

They don't even get to Franklin IIRC mostly because a lot of fans of Fantastic Four aren't on board with Reed and Sue getting married or Sue giving birth to Franklin either (yeah, there are those...mostly Sue-Namor shippers).

Assuming this editorial mandate was even confirmed to be in place, it sounds like something that could have only came in place post-OMD when Marvel cracked down on adult Spider-Man. Doesn't sound at all like that was always "the plan".

The appeal of USM as a teenage Spider-Man contrasted heavily against the 616 Peter who was an adult so editorially it made sense to distinguish the two versions of Spider-Man. One's in high school, the other version is older.

When I say that USM was intended to never grow up, that doesn't mean for instance that there wasn't a possibility of aging Peter up or that Bendis didn't want to (like it's pretty obvious with USM Annual #3 that there were places he wanted to go with the characters that he couldn't while they were in high school). It's likely that Bendis maybe wanted to do that eventually. But the thing is nobody at the time knew how long Ultimate Marvel would last, how long Ultimate Spider-Man would last. There were anxieties if Ultimate Marvel could replace the 616 Continuity, and there were talks about that because in its early years Ultimate Marvel was outselling the main titles. So a lot of stuff was in flux...at least until the mid-2000s where it became clear that Ultimate Marvel's success was down to its early 21st Century zeitgeist and once that was giving away and fading it didn't really have much novelty.

That set the plans in place for Ultimatum, which was intended to be the final story of Ultimate Marvel...until last minute when they chickened out and decided for a lame relaunch soft reboot instead and so they pumped out more stories. It was around this time Obama got elected and Bendis came up with plans for Miles. It's funny, the two characters from Ultimate Marvel that survived, which crossed into 616 were both created (or co-created) by Bendis in the Post-Ultimatum era. One was the Ultimate Reed Richards as an enemy which Bendis did in the Ultimate Doom trilogy series (Hickman would convert Reed into the Maker), and then Miles Morales.

[PCN24454]

Yeah and then Sue grew out of it. Saying she's just like Gwen completely ignores the two different trajectories the characters took.

*were allowed to take

[Revolutionary_Jack]

I should tell you all that a lot of old-school Fantastic Four fans aren't on board with Reed and Sue getting married and Sue giving birth to Franklin. These guys wanted to ship Sue with Namor and/or other heroes, and weren't happy that Lee-Kirby pulled the trigger themselves meaning they can't even say (not that it matters since "creator's intent" and "originally introduced" are lame excuses) that the creators of FF didn't intend it or that it was never part of the design and so on. A common subplot with Susan is adultery fantasies with Namor and/or T'Challa, and sometimes Doctor Doom. Ultimate Fantastic Four (which inspired that wretched movie with Michael B. Jordan) had them as teenagers as well.

Virtually no adaptation of Fantastic Four (barring the second Jessica Alba FF movie) features Reed and Sue getting married, as a couple, and as parents. It's never been exported out of 616. There are more adaptations with Peter-MJ as a married couple than Reed and Sue. So believe me if Marvel could, they'd go after the Richards' marriage as well. The reason they haven't is...to put it as brutally as possible...nobody really cares all that much if Reed and Sue are together/apart/divorced etcetera. Emotionally they never really got the attention of the audience the way Peter/MJ did, or Scott/Jean did or used-to-do. The really cool and interesting FF members were always Johnny Storm and Thing, people were vastly more upset when Johnny Storm dated and married Alicia Masters, the character Kirby/Lee intended as Ben Grimm's true love (and were pleased when they made that Alicia into a Skrull and annulled it). So Susan Storm's growth and change isn't comparable to Gwen Stacy. In the course of Kirby-Lee's run, they made Sue into a homemaker and mother, so that made her a little untouchable because nobody wants to read a Fantastic Four comic and see Susan Storm cheating on the father of her child, or see stories where this super-team fail to keep the little sprog alive, and so on. Fantastic Four always was a generally optimistic title...even under Jonathan Hickman.

[Mistah K88]

Reminds me of one problem I have with Spectacular, how nobody points out how much of a colossal hypocrite Gwen is, she says she doesn't want to be Peter's second choice, then she starts to date Harry, her second choice, yeah...

That's actually one of the best things about Spectacular's Gwen... It was a way to show she had flaws without "Sins Pasting" to do so. Her giving Harry a "pity relationship" ended up screwing her over when Harry started emotionally blackmailing her in order to stay together. She and Peter were definitely game to cheat on their significant other when they were being hounded by reporters, and I only think they stopped in the final episode because Harry was JUST there. Peter and Gwen were both pretty flawed as characters, which made it more exciting to see how they would change and grow...

Also when it comes to controversial opinions...in that show I liked the race change to the specific character of Roderick Kingsley (probably the most major character they did that too...and even then he's minor in the grand scheme of things). After reading some of the stuff where the Hobgoblin is clearly afraid of being seen as crazy like Norman Osborn, it definitely makes a lot of sense as mental illness isn't taken as seriously in the African American community (things are changing thankfully). It makes sense kind of in the same way someone could make the assumptions about Harry's sexuality due to some of his character beats and traits.

Another controversial opinion I have is that I'm not a fan of "character development" (i.e. becoming a good guy) when it comes to characters who are CLEARLY extremely petty and villainous like Otto Octavius. More power to you if you enjoy the change...but I think there is a clear line that you cross where redemption just isn't believable... I mean some characters can make sense...but Doc Ock? REALLY?!

[WebLurker]

Not exactly, you already knew, and like I said, I told people about it that he came back and the reaction was that surprise and somewhat annoyance, and I specified that because the initial reaction being that kinda shows they thought it was questionable at least, so yeah, not sure if disliking his resurrection is controversial.

Okay?

-I supposed that i should another opinion, i don't like the idea of Peter and MJ knowing eacth other until they are at least 16, nothing wrong the childhood friends trope, but is just not a thing that i personally relate to those two.

Thought it worked in the context of itself, but fair enough if it wasn't your thing. (I guess for me, I appreciated that the series basically decided to focus on one relationship and develop that one in depth instead of dividing its time between multiple ones. There are ways to make the latter work and I do think part of the reason the 616 Peter/MJ relationship does work is that there is a degree of realism in that they weren't each other's first boyfriend/girlfriend and things kinda developed by chance over time. However, I do think Bendis did the childhood friends trope right and, since he was writing a high school-centric series which never really moved much past that, it was probably the right call for this take.)

(Guess I can add another controversial opinion, based on recent comments; I think the hostility to teenage Spidey is overdone, since I think that both teen and adulthood stories offer unique and good material that the other doesn't have.)

[Lukmendes]

That's actually one of the best things about Spectacular's Gwen... It was a way to show she had flaws without "Sins Pasting" to do so. Her giving Harry a "pity relationship" ended up screwing her over when Harry started emotionally blackmailing her in order to stay together. She and Peter were definitely game to cheat on their significant other when they were being hounded by reporters, and I only think they stopped in the final episode because Harry was JUST there. Peter and Gwen were both pretty flawed as characters, which made it more exciting to see how they would change and grow...

Hey I'm not saying her having this flaw is a bad thing, just that nobody pointing that out is kinda annoying.

Then again, think she only told the second choice thing to MJ, and MJ shipped them both together, even when Peter was still dating Liz, so yeah, makes sense if so.

Another controversial opinion I have is that I'm not a fan of "character development" (i.e. becoming a good guy) when it comes to characters who are CLEARLY extremely petty and villainous like Otto Octavius. More power to you if you enjoy the change...but I think there is a clear line that you cross where redemption just isn't believable... I mean some characters can make sense...but Doc Ock? REALLY?!

What's not believable about the guy who was planning to commit omnicide becoming a good guy?

[Kaitou D. Kid]

Seeing as Doc Ock has so much in common with Walter White, it's not surprising that the writers who tried propping up Hero Ock were the same ones in favor of OMD. I find that very revealing. What that shows IMO is that a lot of people at Marvel see the real everyman as being closer to guys like Otto and Walter White than they do to Peter Parker. A happily-married bitterless Spider-Man just didn't make sense, so "obviously" it had to be shut down in favor of a more "realistic" Spider-Man that can't maintain relationships.

Through no fault of his own, JMS' portrayal of Peter might have actually hit a nerve for some of the Marvel staff.

[PCN24454]

Seeing as Doc Ock has so much in common with Walter White, I wasn't surprised that the writers who tried propping up Ock where the same ones in favor of OMD. I find that very revealing. What that showed to me is that a lot of people at Marvel see the real everyman as being closer to Otto/Walter White than they do to Peter Parker. A happily-married bitteress Spider-Man just didn't make sense, so 'obviously' it had to be shut down in favor of a more "realistic" Spider-Man that can't maintain relationships.

Considering how many readers strive for darker, more "mature" stories, I'm still wondering whether they're right or not.

[Frontier]

I'm sure that by season 5 Peter would have turned out to be a semi decent boyfriend lol..

Maybe by the time he started dating MJ.

That's one thing I kind of have to fault Weisman and co. for playing the long game with...they never really got to do the shift from Gwen to MJ so it started building up this renewed fervor for Gwen as a love interest that culminated in the ASM movies and some of the revisionist history that happens with Gwen.

I should tell you all that a lot of old-school Fantastic Four fans aren't on board with Reed and Sue getting married and Sue giving birth to Franklin. These guys wanted to ship Sue with Namor and/or other heroes, and weren't happy that Lee-Kirby pulled the trigger themselves meaning they can't even say (not that it matters since "creator's intent" and "originally introduced" are lame excuses) that the creators of FF didn't intend it or that it was never part of the design and so on. A common subplot with Susan is adultery fantasies with Namor and/or T'Challa, and sometimes Doctor Doom. Ultimate Fantastic Four (which inspired that wretched movie with Michael B. Jordan) had them as teenagers as well.

Virtually no adaptation of Fantastic Four (barring the second Jessica Alba FF movie) features Reed and Sue getting married, as a couple, and as parents. It's never been exported out of 616. There are more adaptations with Peter-MJ as a married couple than Reed and Sue. So believe me if Marvel could, they'd go after the Richards' marriage as well. The reason they haven't is...to put it as brutally as possible...nobody really cares all that much if Reed and Sue are together/apart/divorced etcetera. Emotionally they never really got the attention of the audience the way Peter/MJ did, or Scott/Jean did or used-to-do. The really cool and interesting FF members were always Johnny Storm and Thing, people were vastly more upset when Johnny Storm dated and married Alicia Masters, the character Kirby/Lee intended as Ben Grimm's true love (and were pleased when they made that Alicia into a Skrull and annulled it). So Susan Storm's growth and change isn't comparable to Gwen Stacy. In the course of Kirby-Lee's run, they made Sue into a homemaker and mother, so that made her a little untouchable because nobody wants to read a Fantastic Four comic and see Susan Storm cheating on the father of her child, or see stories where this super-team fail to keep the little sprog alive, and so on. Fantastic Four always was a generally optimistic title...even under Jonathan Hickman.

I feel like they were married in the 90's cartoon and just about to have a kid.

I think it's that the Richard's marriage is seen as being central to the FF as a family dynamic.

(Guess I can add another controversial opinion, based on recent comments; I think the hostility to teenage Spidey is overdone, since I think that both teen and adulthood stories offer unique and good material that the other doesn't have.)

Yeah, I think it's just an issue that there's been so much focus and attention to teen Spidey as of late and we're only slowly seeing a shift towards adult Peter again.

Although I feel like they've kind of ran about as far as you can get with teen Peter between the MCU and Marvel's Spider-Man cartoon.

Seeing as Doc Ock has so much in common with Walter White, it's not surprising that the writers who tried propping up Hero Ock were the same ones in favor of OMD. I find that very revealing. What that shows IMO is that a lot of people at Marvel see the real everyman as being closer to guys like Otto and Walter White than they do to Peter Parker. A happily-married bitterless Spider-Man just didn't make sense, so "obviously" it had to be shut down in favor of a more "realistic" Spider-Man that can't maintain relationships.

Through no fault of his own, JMS' portrayal of Peter might have actually hit a nerve for some of the Marvel staff.

I think this is more true for Slott (and to a lesser extent Gage) than Marvel as a whole.