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Spider-man divorce?

Started by drice6900,

27 posts in this topic

drice6900

drice6900

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This interview pisses me off to no end. Joey, read this over and over and get a clue:

 

"What happens is that we as creators forget that there are always new readers coming into comics, why shouldn’t they experience Peter as we did when we discovered him."

 

Agreed, so why don't you actually practice what you preach! sumo.giffrustrated.gif

 

 

Joey Q full interview

 

NRAMA: Joe, in the recent issue of Wizard, you once again suggested (although that may be putting it lightly) that Peter Parker being married to Mary Jane is an albatross for Spider-Man. Can you expand upon that a little? From your vantage point, why was Peter "allowed" to be married in the first place?

 

JQ: This is an interesting story. Back when I was merely a casual fan, I was floored when I heard that Marvel married off Spider-Man, even then I felt it was a strategic mistake. It just seemed strange to me that they would consider something of the sort with Marvel’s #1 icon. To me it was the equivalent of marrying off Archie and having it become the ongoing continuity for the character. The story as I heard it from the few Marvel historians and people who were here at the time goes something like this…

 

Sometime around 1986-87 the Spider-Man daily newspaper strip was losing some steam. Stan, who was writing the -script was asked to do something to spike it and get people interested. Stan thought that the best thing to do was to marry Peter and MJ in the strip. He supposedly called Jim Shooter leaving Jim a message saying that Spidey was going to get married in the papers within the next few months. Shooter not wanting to see this happen in the strip before it happened in the comics tore up Heaven and Earth in order to get Peter and MJ together and married as soon as possible. Remember, at this point in time in Spidey continuity Peter and MJ weren’t even dating, as a matter of fact she wasn’t even living in New York. So, within a matter of issues, she was back in his life, engaged instantly, and married just as quickly.

 

Now, my feelings towards the marriage aren’t new to anyone. It’s not that I’m against the portrayal of marriage in the Marvel Universe, heck we’re having two big weddings this year. But, here’s the difference between Luke and Jessica, T’Challa and Ororo, and marrying Peter Parker. Peter Parker was designed as a teen property, perhaps the greatest teen property ever created in comics. But as so often happens in comics, sometimes characters move beyond the initial idea of their creation and before you know it, you have problems.

 

Sure, are Peter and MJ okay as is, sure, but a lot of the drama and soap opera that was an integral part of the Spider-Man mythos is gone. What happens is that we as creators forget that there are always new readers coming into comics, why shouldn’t they experience Peter as we did when we discovered him. I mean the marrying was nothing more than Marvel’s comic division trying not to get trumped by the news strip.

 

While I always hated the portrayal of the marriage, and by that I mean that for years after they were married they were never really portrayed as truly happy, I don’t understand in a way why that was done. I believe it was an attempt by the creators back then to bring back a much-needed tension to the relationship side of Peter’s world that was now missing because he was no longer single. It was an attempt to bring back the soap opera.

 

As a single character there was always that possibility that Peter could meet someone new. Now if you have him even consider a new relationship, he would become the most dislikable character in the history of comics, he’s a married man and he’s Peter Parker. Peter Parker is us - he is our everyman, that’s what makes him so likable. In the past, during his single days, he could have been torn by a romantic triangle, not now that he’s married. How about that wonderful tension that there use to be between Peter and Black Cat. As it stands she can try to tempt him, but in no way can Peter succumb and still remain a likable character.

 

Look at all the wonderful story elements Brian Bendis is able to play with withinUltimate Spidey. Everyone’s loving the Kitty Pride relationship. Sure, we know that most like he and Mary will get back together, but as a single guy, we have so many more options to play with.

 

Look, I could go on and on, I have in the past and we could argue this amongst ourselves until we’re blue in the face, but let me ask you this, why is it that in every other incarnation of Spider-Man, whether it’s the movies, the cartoons, everywhere he’s represented, they always show him as single with the exception of one place, the Marvel Universe comic? A character can absolutely grow within his own comic while never ever actually changing and I thinkUltimate Spider-Man has proven that. He’s been in the same grade for five years and nearly a hundred issues.

 

But, unfortunately within the regular Marvel Universe, the marriage ship has sailed and we are where we are.

 

NRAMA: You said: "Peter grew old and married a supermodel. Peter became Billy Joel." Did you really need to slight the “Piano Man”?

 

JQ: It’s funny, I’ve been saying that Billy Joel thing for years back before I was ever even at Marvel, it was so much more relevant back when he was married to the Christie Brinkley. I’m a huge Billy Joel fan, he was a ‘regular guy”, a kid from Long Island who made it good after playing hell holes and bars, a classical musician with the heart of a rocker. In many ways, Joel lost a lot of his “regular guy” appeal when he married Christie Brinkley.

 

By the way, god bless!!! Remember how dumb that Uptown Girl video was! Bruce Springsteen suffered from that when he married a model became a public. You kind of expect a Bowie, Jagger, or Rod Stewart to be marrying a supermodel, just as you would Tony Stark, but to me, Joel and Springsteen are more akin to Peter Parker with respect to their images.

 

And yes, some characters should not be married while I believe it’s okay for some. Batman should not be married, no if, ands, or butts, Spider-Man should not have been married. As a property that is attractive to teens, having him married matures him too much and puts us in a bad position. There’s nothing wrong with portraying marriage, but Peter is supposed to be perceived as one of our youngest characters, marrying him makes him feel older.

 

By the way, if he and MJ had kids that would have just compounded the problem, and Marvel dodged that bullet some time ago. But all that said, divorcing or widowing, or annulling the marriage compounds would only be worse, that would only serve to make both Peter and MJ seem even older. So while marriage for a character is not a “bad”, it can be a bad thing from a story and property management sense if the character was best suited for being single.

 

I know that there are people that feel that the characters need to grow and mature, but remember a character can grow and mature while not having to grow up and age. So, how about this, perhaps we take that reasoning literally, how about if we started to publish stories of a late fifties Spider-Man, he has kids and perhaps grandkids? Aunt May is long in the grave and MJ is getting saggy while Peter is getting jowly and paunchy. Now while that may seem ridiculous to someone in their thirties or forties who’s reading Spider-Man, imagine the 10 year old kid who is picking up the current Spidey book and wondering why perhapsUltimate Spider-Man speaks to him or her more?

 

While we can write and create wonderful stories about a married Peter Parker, we could create even better ones about a single one.

 

But, like I said, that ship has sailed.

 

NRAMA: In that vein, does being married or being in a serious relationship have to be something that was there from the beginning for it to work with a character? Obviously, Reed and Sue were destined for marriage from the start, but, on your side of the argument, I'd imagine, Peter wasn't... Can you take a single superhero, marry them off, and have it work?

 

JQ: Sure, but lets look at Reed and Sue. Reed was already a father figure and older when theFF began. Reed and Sue never explored being single with the only real tension provided by Namor when he would appear. Remember, at the core of the FF is the idea of family, that’s what makes them the perfect superhero team. By contrast, Johnny Storm was married off and I don’t think it was too long before the folks at Marvel realized this was a mistake and figured out a way to make it go away.

 

Yes, there are single characters that you can marry, but they have to be characters that don’t necessarily have their bachelorhood as a prime story point. T’Challa is a perfect example. You also have characters like Tony Stark who are known for their playboy ways.

 

NRAMA: What does a single Peter Parker have, character-wise, over a married Peter? What can you do (beside send him on dates) with swingin' single Spidey that you can't do with married Spidey?

 

JQ: There is the element of soap opera, simple as that. There are so many more stories and angles that you can go with a single Peter that just aren’t available to us because of the marriage. There is no denying that during the classic heyday of Spider-Man soap opera played an important part in the telling of his stories. Remember, he had a bunch of girlfriends before even meeting MJ, Gwen, Betty, and Liz.

 

When you look at good TV soap opera, the relationship aspects of it revolves around romance and break ups and when it deals with marriages it usually deals with romantic tensions that are being put upon those marriages and working at trying to break them apart and they almost always involve cheating and or threat of divorce. You can’t do that with Spidey and MJ, you just can’t. Could you imagine if we ever told a story about either Spidey or MJ cheating? We would irrevocably destroy one of the two characters by doing it.

 

NRAMA: You've mentioned this already, but let's reiterate just to be crystal clear - in talking about how marriage may not have been the best thing for Spidey's character, divorce is about 100x worse, right?

 

JQ: Yup, it would be simply horrible, a 1000% worse.

 

NRAMA: So - money where mouth is - what are you going to do about it? You've talked about it enough, and you're in charge of the editorial side of things...to put things into Western terms, it sounds like you're riding around with a burr under your saddle. Is it something you're hankering to fix, or is riding with a burr under your saddle just your lot in life and you have to live with it?

 

JQ: If we’re going to use descriptive language to talk about this, let me put in as colorful perspective as I can. It’s like a burr on my saddle grating on the biggest hemorrhoid you’ve ever imagined, coupled by the fact that I’m riding a smelly horse. What am I going to do about it? What can I do about it? Folks here at Marvel have been wrestling with this long before I took over. How do you fix it, how do you fix it without saying that years of Spider-Man books didn’t count? That’s been the lingering question.

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Silvers24

Silvers24

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I can't wait for Joe Q to say how stupid Marvel was for killing off Gwen, and then he later finds a way to permanatly bring her back, eventually (possibly) have Mary killed off instead, and then we see them marry, and have kids.

 

popcorn.gif

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Silvers24

Silvers24

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Um........When I came to this thread, no one had posted, I was able to come to this thread twice, on the second time I visited, I clicked "reply" from drice6900 post, but before I did, I failed to see a post by a member named "Timulty"

 

But, we thought the same, so therfore, who are you? And how are we related???

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Silvers24

Silvers24

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Yeah, but what sucks, is look how easily we thought of this, therfore if it became real, then we'd already know theyw as gonna kill her off.

Only thing unpredicable is the "How will they" part.

Unless they don't blab their mouth off, and off her like that at a unpredicable time.

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Timulty

Timulty

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I believe the words we were saying is that Joey would find a piece of 893censored-thumb.gif way to accomplish getting Spider-man to be single again. In the process, it would probably be hyped as a cross-over comic event. That's the point we were trying to make.

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followtheleader

followtheleader

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When Spectacular Spider-man was ending, they tried doing a "cheating" Peter Parker kind of story. I wonder if that was to see how the audience would react. Osborn's daughter "forcibly" made out with Peter as Mary Jane walked in. There was some drama and it was immediately dropped.

 

Pat

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awe4one

awe4one

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"Getting rid of the baggage" was the reason Marvel tried rebooting Spider-Man in the Clone Saga. And we all saw how that ended...

 

Apparently the same mindset exists at Marvel. If they could rid Peter of all his baggage, except Aunt May, they'd do it in a New York minute...

 

But really...what's the point? They would alienate most of their faithful older readers and they have a unfettered Spider-Man...Ultimate...

 

Jim

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ericc123

ericc123

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Joey Q is such a insufficiently_thoughtful_person! In the current ASM series that was relaunched they killed Mary Jane in a plane crash. In the other series (Peter Parker I think) they toyed around with his neihbor that had an evil dog being his love interest and no one bit. Mary Jane comes back after the failed expierment. Why does it always have to be we need to change things? Write good stories with what you have and your comics won't suck!

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Timulty

Timulty

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People fear change

 

People fear change for the sake of change. If a story is done properly people will accept it.

 

But that is the problem, isn't it? I mean, Marvel screws this sort of thing(especially in the Joey Q era) more than anything. Peter becoming single, I have no probs with that. I do with the way, they will approach it.

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