Spider-Man: Life Story #3

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Haha my apologies, Drifted a little there ...

There is more respect but perhaps less thought. Peter and MJ in Spider-Girl were much more like responsible parents than they have been in Renew Your Vows. I realize Annie was a handful but having MJ go all girl power and insist that she and Annie fight alongside Peter was pure fan service fanfic BS. No way thats a responsible way to parent! So I just couldn't get behind that series. It was amusing as a short story on Doom's Battleworld but as an ongoing, it just was too screwy and rahrah for me.

I prefer the RYV Houser series for that reason where Annie was a teenager. Reading the Conway run while cute and heart-tugging especially if you have been around little kids in your family and friends, was unbelievable to me. I love that bit in Conway where the family come from superhero fighting and decide to take her to a kids' playground because it's family night, which Peter and MJ do despite being exhausted...that part I like. Anyway, I think it's a good decision that Conway and Stegman made to make it more lighter and kid-friendly, so that the villains don't kill and so on. That's about the only way they could make that work. But that made it jarring from Slott's original series where you had a family story set in a background where death and violence happened.

[Vortex85]

Haha my apologies, Drifted a little there ...

There is more respect but perhaps less thought. Peter and MJ in Spider-Girl were much more like responsible parents than they have been in Renew Your Vows. I realize Annie was a handful but having MJ go all girl power and insist that she and Annie fight alongside Peter was pure fan service fanfic BS. No way thats a responsible way to parent! So I just couldn't get behind that series. It was amusing as a short story on Doom's Battleworld but as an ongoing, it just was too screwy and rahrah for me.

Yeah, I remember being really excited hearing news about a Renew Your Vows ongoing only to be be bumbed that they were going the Superhero family route. I had wanted to see Soider-Man with a wife and daughter. I do feel that route has a lot of opportunity to do what Chip did in this book and make Peter be a neglectful father and husband but I would love to see Peter pull it off and still be there for his family at the same time. I feel this would require a more reactive / less proactive superheroing on Peters part but I could see it working so long as the writers were conscious to show Peter making his family a #1 priority more often than not.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Yeah, I remember being really excited hearing news about a Renew Your Vows ongoing only to be be bumbed that they were going the Superhero family route. I had wanted to see Soider-Man with a wife and daughter. I do feel that route has a lot of opportunity to do what Chip did in this book and make Peter be a neglectful father and husband but I would love to see Peter pull it off and still be there for his family at the same time. I feel this would require a more reactive / less proactive superheroing on Peters part but I could see it working so long as the writers were conscious to show Peter making his family a #1 priority more often than not.

There's a difference between wanting to make it work and doing a good job and succeeding before superhero demands come in, and not trying at all. The thing about Peter's work/life stuff is that there are days he can make it work. But he's not consistent. He has been there for Aunt May, has been a decent boyfriend to Gwen and MJ, and was a good husband to MJ. On good days he made it work, but his superhero work pressurized and interrupted and interferred with that at other times. He did try and so on.

In Life Story #3, it's clear that Peter doesn't even try.

[Kevinroc]

Peter looked at what happened to Reed and saw him as a warning of his own future.

[Miles To Go]

Peter looked at what happened to Reed and saw him as a warning of his own future.

A warning he didn't even attempt to heed.

[Scott Taylor]

In Life Story #3, it's clear that Peter doesn't even try.

That seems a little harsh. My recollection of Secret Wars is vague, but wasn't he forced to go? And also getting ambushed, shot and buried by Kraven seems to me to be a valid excuse to not be there.

Unless you are saying he should have just quit heroing long ago, in which case I totally agree.

[Miles To Go]

Even MC2 Peter only remained Spider-Man after careful consultation with MJ not to overdo it, allowing him to spend more time raising the baby with her.

[Russ840]

A warning he didn't even attempt to heed.

Perhaps arrogance led to failing at this point. Peter thinking that it cant happen to him because he has seen it happen to Reed is the problem. It just happened in spite of his confidence.

I’m sure Peter is going to fix this by later issues.

[boots]

Then take care of them yourself and don’t expect your wife to do it just because she’s the wife. Especially when your wife is caring for two babies under a year old.

I’ve watched loved ones fall prey to dementia and become a danger to themselves and everyone else in the household. Just one example: my grandfather got up at 2 AM while everyone was sleeping, decided it was time for breakfast, turned the gas range (hob) to high, put an empty pot on the flames, and went back to sleep.

Luckily my grandmother woke up and smelled the burning before the damage went further than a ruined pot. We found him professional care shortly after.

At the care facility, he decided his bed was an engineering puzzle (he was a brilliant theoretical mathematician with a Ph.d) and he took the entire thing apart and then rebuilt it in an incredibly dangerous manner. Thankfully there were staff there to stop him from injuring himself.

Dementia is a disease, it needs treatment and round the clock care.

So fine, don’t provide professional senior care - but then you better be prepared to give it yourself.

And asking a sleep deprived new mother of twins to do it is the height of selfish a$$hattery.

sure dude. yet to read the ish as i said, only that culturally there's a point of reference there.

it does sound like this peter struggles with responsibility, which is actually more interesting to me.

[boots]

I don't get why Peter thinks he's getting old in this issue. I mean, by the counts, he must have 37 years in this issue; and I don't think that turns him into an old man.

well, not generally...but in an elite athlete sense...you're getting more and more outclassed by younger rivals

edit: someone else already addressed this

[TinkerSpider]

sure dude. yet to read the ish as i said, only that culturally there's a point of reference there.

it does sound like this peter struggles with responsibility, which is actually more interesting to me.

peter is coded white anglo american, dude, so culturally senior care homes are an appropriate option.

one shouldn’t have to read something to understand expecting a mother of newborn twins to look after a woman suffering from dementia without any additional help is selfish a$$hattery but you do you.

since you don’t seem to care about spoilers about something you haven’t read, this peter doesn’t struggle with responsibility. he whines about it but he puts his own desires first and has no empathy for others.

[boots]

peter is coded white anglo american, dude, so culturally senior care homes are an appropriate option.

which...i noted several posts ago.

not wanting to make a judgement call on something i haven't read, doesn't seem unreasonable to me.

you're very cranky today. someone needs a cuuudllleeee

[Revolutionary_Jack]

That seems a little harsh. My recollection of Secret Wars is vague, but wasn't he forced to go? And also getting ambushed, shot and buried by Kraven seems to me to be a valid excuse to not be there.

Him being transported by the Beyonder isn't his fault and missing out on the birth of his kids counts as tragic, i.e. he behaved as a hero in investigating this construct in Central Park and got transported to an alien planet and missed out on the most important day of his life. That counts as his activity as Spider-Man taking a tragic price from his daily life for believable stuff.

But after that not so much. He wears the Symbiote despite knowing it's alive which shocks Reed. In 616, Peter dropped the suit the minute he found out. And his reasons for wearing the suit are more mid-life crisis and as he says, "to be relevant" than anything. He knows he can't cut it as well as Spider-Man anymore, he has a company and kids. But he decides to take this wacky alien suit. He doesn't even care about Kraven wearing his suit and shooting people when Reed brings it up. He just brushes that aside. His reaction on seeing Kraven-in-black-costume with the gun is more or less, "I came to blow off steam, beating up a guy who kills people in my costume counts as a guilt-free blowing-off steam exercise." So there's not any heroic motives for anything he does in this issue.

Also the only reason he got ambushed by Kraven is because he decided he needed some "air" to get away from MJ and his crying kid.

Unless you are saying he should have just quit heroing long ago, in which case I totally agree.

I am saying that there needs to be a sense that he is trying to balance being a father with being a hero. It's obviously a difficult thing to do, balancing being a Dad to a newborn and being Spider-Man. It's hard for writers to get into that especially if you are doing it in a Teens Rated setting with actual violence and so on (which Conway and Houser's RYV isn't set in). But the arc is Peter tries to make a go at balancing both, and then decides he can't and makes a choice.

For that to happen, there needs to be a demand from society for a Spider-Man which Reed Richards' conversation implies there isn't. And Peter needs to show that he loves his children and wants to be a Dad and be there for them. He has to show that he's making a go at it. Otherwise all we have is the story of a selfish ******* who's forcing his wife and kids to adjust to his routines and the only person he allows in his personal life is his dementia-addled Aunt who can't talk back to him anymore and so on.

In 616, Peter tries to be a good boyfriend to Betty, Gwen, Mary Jane. He tries to be a good nephew, a good student, a good husband. and so on. We see him put the effort, some days he scrapes through. Other days he misses out because he needs to be Spider-Man. That gives a sense of tragedy and poignancy to that.

That's why I say Life Story Peter doesn't try.

[Yvonmukluk]

I mean, yeah he's only 37 but add on the fact that he's been doing Super Heroics for 22 years and you can imagine how that would physically age him even more.



If that's the case and then Zub decide to play up Felicia's daddy issues, the subtext is probably going to get really uncomfortable.

Huh, it's worth remembering that Peter B. Parker is actually the same age as Life Story Peter in this issue there. So there's kind of an interesting parallel there.

[Spiderfang]

Okay I am going to need a clean version of that 80's variant cover ASAP