Originally Posted by
Revolutionary_Jack
I was basically looking at the marriage as a status-quo. In any and every story, where Peter and MJ are married/one of them is "presumed" dead/separated, and potentially parents and/or divorced...the marriage counts as a status-quo. So the whole pregnancy/miscarriage thing counts as much as the stuff that doesn't cont. Peter and MJ being married doesn't mean she has to appear in each and every story and so on. The whole gaslighting charade put out against the marriage is that A) It had no good stories, B) It didn't allow for many kinds of stories, C) It was negligible and inconsequential...basically involves a lot of asinine arguments and inconsistent standards. I am simply looking at things normally and fairly.
The great joke is that the era you describe...is pretty much the only time there has ever been "single Peter Parker". In Spider-Man's history there has never been extended periods where Peter isn't in a relationship of some kind of another. Once Peter and MJ married, and in that period of death/separation...you had truly single Peter, who wasn't dating, wasn't looking at girls, was celibate and so on. And that period, at least until JMS came on, and basically telegraphed their reunion...the entire "death/separation" period is considered one of the lowest points in Spider-Man history certainly Pre-OMD.
I mean there you go, truly single Peter Parker...look upon ye works, ye lowly and remain the laughing stock for years to come...
That was something Defalco/Frenz came up as a melodramatic touch and something that never made any sense. See if MJ (as per Defalco) knew that Peter was Spider-Man some time during their dating and the time she rejected Peter's first proposal (which does make a glaring inconsistency since Wolfman's thought bubbles cite her parents' divorce and Ned and Betty's rocky marriage as her reason for turning down Peter's proposal, nothing about Spidey's double life), then her leaving Peter for his double life never made any sense since during the Wein and Wolfman era she was never all that threatened or affected by being, as she knew, Spider-Man's girlfriend. If you accept Parallel Lives as Slott himself admits we must, then she entered into a relationship with Peter, after Gwen's death, after knowing the dangers of that. So that never made any damn sense.
Even in the Defalco/Frenz era, Mary Jane's reaction was more as a result of shellshock and PTSD after the Spider-Man and Puma battle. Later issues have her going back-and-forth with Peter and Spider-Man. Issue #275, has her convincing Peter to back out of a brief "Spider-Man no more" spiel, and then in Web of Spider-Man #6, Danny Fingeroth's script has her say:
"Sometimes being a swinging bachelorette isn't all it's cracked up to be. Sometimes it's so hard to keep on my happy-go-lucky face all day...it seems like a hubby, a house, and 2 to 3 kids would be just the ticket. But you had a shot at that didn't you, M. J. And you couldn't have asked for a better catch than Peter Parker. There was only one problem: I figured out that Peter was really Spider-Man—and once I realized that, I knew I could never marry someone who I never knew for sure would come home from work alive!...Oh, why does he have to have such a darn high sense of responsibility?...If only he were less altruistic -- I would've accepted his proposal on the spot. But if he was different...he wouldn't be the same guy you loved, would he, M. J,? Face it, lady: Peter Parker and Spider-Man—two sides of the same coin."
— M.J.'s thought bubbles, Web of Spider-Man, Issue #6 Vol. 1, written by Danny Fingeroth.
So there you have that divide. Mary Jane is madly in love with Peter Parker but she is fearful for his life as Spider-Man and yet Peter being Spider-Man is exactly why she loved him in the first place. I mean it's one of those unresolvable things in any relationship and so on.
Then Louise Simonson's script in ASM Annual #19 where Alister Smythe kidnaps MJ because he thinks she's Spider-Man (!) has her getting more used to the idea of being caught up in Spider-Man's adventures and David Michelinie brought back Smythe in 290-292 as a build-up to the wedding since it was a neat way to set her accepting the proposal in such a short-time and overcoming her issues about being Mrs. Spider-Man.