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Spider-man OMD part 4 spoilers, divorce or no? The result inside.
Posts
The flaw in your logic is that you're assuming MJ and Pete didn't have pre-marital sex.
Better? d=
Cap is not Spider-Man, they are on completley seperate levels.
Secondly, what do you think the original purpose of the Clone Saga was? to replace Peter Parker as Spider-Man. They were going to shuffle Peter and his family off to the side and the hip blonde single Ben Reilly was going to be the new true Spidey.
But they pussied out at the last second, one of the big reasons why the Clone Saga turned into such a huge mess at the end, because they had written themselves into a corner.
Does anyone else find this kind of an absurd statement when it comes to comic books? I mean, we're talking about a venue where almost every issue contains two-three deus ex machina... there shouldn't be any corners, ever. Sometimes I think the writers just get fed up with the mandates and just throw something down on paper to be done with it... and of course, editors being the ones who issued the mandate are pleased as punch that the end result is what the want (baby gone, marriage gone, 50 years worth of clusterfucked continuity gone... Jason Todd... back, for some reason) that they seldom seem to realize just how ridiculous it looks on paper.
While I agree with the original purpose, the big reasons why it turned into a mess has nothing to do with the writers or writing themselves into a corner. You can blame that all on money and the accounting / marketing division that made all the decisions at Marvel at the time.
Constantly being told to 'make stuff up, we're making too much money to end the story now' is not how good stories get told. Or when they finally come up with something being told they can't do that or things like Spidey is a street level hero and magic owuldn't fix it further compound writing problems.
I don't disagree with the fact it turned into one big shit fest near the end, but I don't blame the writers and don't think they deserve any of the blame.
Which it obviously did not.
I know I was responding to your post, but I wasn't attacking you, that phrase has been used a lot in this thread. And I agree, the editorial mandates are what destroy the stories... but I also think they frustrate the writers to the point of them taking the path of least resistance... granted, with the Clone Saga they literally could not do this... they were told Ben Rielly was the new Spider-Man, then they were told to bring back the old one, kill off the new one, blah blah blah... but with OMD, I think they could have fulfilled the mandate in a better way... unless the mandate was specifically "have Mephisto do it."
In which case Joe Q. should be beaten over the head with Cap's shield over on Colbert.
So, wait, you're saying that your problem isn't with the marriage being written off but with Mephisto doing it?
Is that the consensus here? Because I'm thinking Mephisto is the scapegoat here for the people that dislike the end result. The truth is, Pete has done his share of messing with the supernatural. Traveller, anyone? Madamme Web? Fucking Ezekiel? And even without that, similar deus ex machina results have been used before. Anybody remember when Tony Stark wiped off the memory of everybody ON EARTH to revert the first time he revealed his secret identity?
I mean, how can anybody complain about magic being the solution to retcon a run that spent half of its duration dealing with Peter being a totemic figure representing THE SPIDER and morphing into... well, into a guy with organic webshooters?
What sounds better?
Peter and MJ get a divorce and Peter has to deal with that and Aunt May possibly dying.
or
Peter and MJ making a deal with the devil to pretty much fuck up the continuity of Spider Man storylines for god knows how many years back.
This, I think, is the main issue... I mean, my god, MJ the superstar was living in a flea bag motel, caring for Peter's 180 year old aunt, and basically waiting for her husband to be arrested or killed. I think a divorce would have been pretty goddamn sensible. The editors went in with a bunch of assumptions about what they could and could not do to Peter:
1. Can't have him divorce... he would look bad
2. Can't have her die... too depressing...
3. Can't have aunt may die... we tried that once, didn't work out for some reason
All of those mandates would stump a lot of writers... but the deal with the devil is just so satan ex machina...
Being the protector, never harming anyone, and being hated for it, and bearing that hatred.
Dealing with the knowledge that what you do is necessary, even though it puts not just you but your loved ones in danger.
Spider-Man is not about being a poor superhero. It's about being a living martyr. I could give a fuck about the intimate details of individual arcs, as long as those themes are acknowledged. OMD pretty much shat all over those themes, and BND (from everything I've been told) has pretty much ignored them.
Living martyr? Seriously?
Beause, you know, the one thing Stan Lee never forgets to mention about his run on Spidey is that one time he caught the flu.
The bar for martyrdom has seriously lowered.
No, you got a point. If you like the "YOU KILLED THE WOMAN I LOVE!" Spidey, that's what he is. He's the guy who had his Uncle Ben, Captain Stacy, Gwen Stacy, Ben Reilly, Norman and Harry Osborn killed because he was a superhero. He's the guy who keeps going on and off the costume because he can't make up his mind about risk to his loved ones.
But, you know, that's a big IF. I mean, that path has been overused to death. Every single person near Peter has suffered some form of fatal destiny due to his being Spider-man. Everything from death to incarceration, getting sick, kidnapped, cloned, mutated or abducted by symbiontes.
I've said it below, but the greatness of Stan Lee's run is that he managed to portray the same conflict with tiny everyday stuff. With him it wasn't about Gwen Stacy getting kidnapped and thrown off a bridge. It was about getting the pills back to Aun May in time while fighting Doc Ock, losing the mask and having to use a fake plastic one that won't let him breathe because he can't afford a real one or taking the subway in costume after a fight and having everybody run scared off the wagon.
Really, what Spidey needs isn't melodrama, he needs to make the details count. His webshooters being stolen and his tracers found in corpses is subtly making the same point you're requesting,without needing old aunts getting shot in the chest while on the run from international security agencies.
yeah... those points were made thirty years ago. It's called evolution. If you want your spidey running to the drug store for pain medication, fine... but I like my Spidey being a lamentable Superhero... someone constantly downtrodden, actively punished for doing the right thing, yet having to do it anyway. Honestly, being spider-man is a compulsion for him... it brings him nothing but misery, but he can never stop.
That's my spidey. It doesn't have to be angsty or bombastic... there are ways to make it subtle as Salvation has indicated. but that is the spidey I want.
Agreed. But we already HAD this Spidey... and we kind of have him again with Ultimate Spider-Man... but like I said earlier, I'm waiting to see what happens... I'm hating OMD, I'm just not loving it yet.
I disagree that moving from the subtle annoyances that being a superhero causes a normal guy to the over the top drama of him losing every person he's ever cared for is "evolution".
If anything, Spidey works better being an everyday hero. Being heroic for going to the drugstore, not for stopping the villain. Beyond personal taste, that's better storytelling. Stories about a guy who repeatedly has his friends and relatives dramatically hurt are called "soap operas". Marvel has enough of those, if you ask me. Soap operas are the reason I don't actively follow most X-men stories.
the funny thing about your statement is that Spider-Man essentially invented the death of a close character. Gwen Stacey was the first mainstream comic book character to be killed outside of an origin story. To me that completely invalidates your point. Spider-Man has always been about tragedy defining character, not mundane everyday events.
edit: although I guess his death dosen't count because it wasn't really a story.
Thats one of the best things about it, in my opinion.
There was Spider-man BEFORE Gwen died. Gerry Conway did that right after Stan Lee left the book after over a hundred issues. Conway started the "Oh, my God, everybody I love died because of me" thing with Spidey.
Heck, he had Harry be a LSD addict, which was the reason Norman Osborn killed Gwen Stacy. In more than one way he was the Mark Millar of his age, the "edgy" guy who went crazy over the top for shock value. He was also responsible for the Clone Saga (he introduced the clone). Hmm... I'm finding out I really don't like Conway at all. He pretty much ruined Spidey.
Well, since you haven't liked the last 40 years of Spider-Man, we've pretty much reached an impasse then. While I don't share your point of view, I can at least respect it. Hopefully BND will find a way to make both camps happy.
And while I myself like Brand New Day.. your assertions make no sense within this context, since the change to a single Spidey was largely made precisely so they could get back to the soap opera Spider-Man feel which is what made the book so popular to begin with.
To be fair, when the clone originaly surfaced, it was reasonably established that Pete was still the original and the other one the clone, who shortly afterwards died. It was only later writers and editors who took that seemingly finished plot point and ran with it.
edit: What Bale said just a minute before me. I'm getting slow in my old age.
Hopefully, it will.
I do feel I have to point out that I never said I didn't like what came after Stan Lee left, if you look below in the thread, my point has always been that Spider-man is the only book in which he's still considered the defining writer, unlike in X-men (Claremont) or Daredevil (Miller), for instance.
Fantastic Four
John Byrne.
Waid's run was amazing though and everyone should read it.
from Cable & Deadpool #50, I believe:
Lex Luthor: WRONG!