strejdaking asked: If you are implying everyone who has been writing Spider-Man agrees with your interpretation, that simply not true. Admittedly, I can see why you, an actual person working in the industry, has hard time taking some guy on internet saying you and your coworkers are wrong seriously-but it's a fact that it's not just fans who think this. I ask you: Why are all the writers and fans who believe Spidey is about responsibility wrong? How is he about youth anymore than any character who started young?
hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger:
Ok, there are a lot of things to unpack in your question here. I will try to do my best to answer them as I can.
First off, and importantly so, I don’t edit the Spider-Man books. I have worked on a few odd Spidey books over the years, most of which were not in continuity. I do co-edit Spider-Man/Deadpool, but mostly because I am the Deadpool editor. I am, however, a lifelong Spider-Man fan who cares as passionately about Peter Parker and his life as any fan on here, I guarantee you that.
Naturally, not every person who worked on Spider-Man over the years agrees on every aspect of Spider-Man. If they did, things would have gone a lot more smoothly than they did, and there wouldn’t be so many bad stories–some of which exist purely to undo previous stories.
You’re setting up a false dichotomy in what the book is about. When I have said in the past that Spider-Man is about “youth” it’s not the word “youth” that is the important part. I am very much a “spirit of the law” not a “letter of the law” guy. To me, being about Youth and being about Responsibility are not in opposition, they are two sides of the same coin. It’s also about doing what’s right even when it costs you. It’s also about growing up, coming of age, and “adulting” as another commenter replied. To me, those are all part of one big thing. And there’s room for all of those things in Spider-Man, because he is resilient.
But there is a reason that every time a new “version” of Spider-Man comes out, they make him as young as possible–High School or College age. They don’t start from scratch as a 25 year old guy. and I don’t think that is just because that is where he started in the comics. It’s because at that age is where his central message is easiest to tell stories about.
Yes, you have responsibility for your entire life, not just when you are young. But when you’re young, it’s easier to forgive your mistakes as a learning experience. If you want to read stories about an adult making bad decisions, constantly screwing up his life and failing to learn the right lessons…well, good news! We publish that book, too, it’s called Deadpool, and I actually DO edit that one.
Back to your point that not everyone who worked on Spider-Man agrees that youth is an important component of his story, that’s fine. But it has been pretty widely agreed by most creators and editors who worked on Spider-Man since the marriage that it was a bad idea for the character. They tried SO MANY TIMES over the years to get rid of the marriage. That’s why the Clone Saga started! Then there was Mary Jane dying on a plane! Then the separation when she was in LA! They really wanted it out of there.
And look…I GET IT. Guess what–when I started reading Spider-Man…when I FELL IN LOVE WITH THE SERIES AND ITS CHARACTERS…when, and I’ve said this before, when the book SHAPED ME FUNDAMENTALLY to a degree where I would say it served as my RELIGION…when all that happened? Spidey was MARRIED TO MJ. And when I read those late 90s/early 2000s stories trying to break them up? I was OUTRAGED. I was invested in their marriage! I cared about Peter and I cared about MJ, and it was TOTALLY LAME to just pretend they were never married, like they tried to do for a while there during the Mackie and JMS runs.
For me, though, the changeover happened when I read Kurt Busiek explain why the marriage was bad for Peter as a character, and it all clicked. I stopped viewing the issue as something happening to people that I knew and cared about and started seeing it as story decisions made in a story I cared about. And I saw that yeah…it really would have bee better for the story if they had never been married.
But you know what? It’s fine if you don’t see it that way. I ended up a comic book editor. Most readers, hopefully, will not…and as such have no NEED to look at the stories that way. They can just read them and decide if they liked them or not. And that is totally great.
So if you don’t like unmarried Peter, I am sorry. But the good news is, you can read Renew Your Vows, you can read old stories from before OMD, you can read old Spider-Girl comics…and if the bulk of the fans agree with you, then who knows? Maybe he will be married again in the main series. I don’t think that is likely to happen…but anything is possible.
And just to quickly cover some of the other arguments other people have sent at me that I have not replied to…I actually think Clark and Lois being married is EVEN WORSE for Superman that Spidey’s marriage was for him. I think it completely changed who Superman is irrevocably, and that bums me out because I preferred the old version–the way he is in the Silver-Age or in All-Star Superman. Meanwhile, the marriage DID NOT ruin Fantastic Four…because Reed and Sue already played the role of “mother and father” in that series before the wedding. And the marriage did not ruin Deadpool because that was just another thing for him to screw up badly.
This is utterly illogical.
Spider-Man already came of age and was an adult. He had to adopt adult responsibilities in his teenage years.
One cannot be the embodiment of the spirit of youth if one is not in fact a youth, i.e. one is actually an adult.
Just as a character cannot be in a state of perpetual ‘growing up’.
By definition narratively speaking a character defined by growing up exists in a finite context. You can’t have them ‘growing up’ as the default setting to be maintained long term at all.
Either they are about youth or they are a coming of age story. Either they are Peter Pan or they are Harry Potter.
Spider-Man was neither. Spider-Man was a kid who adopted an adult’s responsibilities in his teenage years. He wasn’t an adult in other respects and he did have to grow up, but that was the point, we saw that happen.
Spider-Man is a story about responsibility. Yes in a story about youth or coming of age, responsibility would logically be a theme present. As we age we gain responsibilities we have to live up to. For Spider-Man though the presence of responsibility was not present in the context exclusive to that.
Simply put Spider-Man did learn and react to the arious responsibilities in his life as he grew up but the story was not about him learning he has those responsibilities and learning to accept them.
The story was that and then continuing to show him carrying on and living up to them whilst also coping with balancing them against one another and new responsibilities he gained in life.
Not because this is a story about growing up but rather that this is a responsibility about this character’s life in general.
The Spider-Man of 1992 or 2002 was not a Spider-man ‘learning to grow up’. That was a Spider-Man who WAS a grown up and had those responsibilities to live up to whilst balancing them against his biggest responsibility, to use his powers as a hero to help others.
If nothing else if we run with the logic presented of the above statements then why precisely would Spider-Man being married, divorced, widowed, etc and it making him ‘too old’ be that much of a concern. Apparently he can be in his early 30s, owning a company, living on his own, supporting himself and being responsible for countless people’s jobs but somehow still be ‘about youth’.
Is there a reason a new version of Spider-Man comes out he’s high school or college aged?
Yes.
That reason being that the high school-college era happened to be the era where he got big in pop culture and for the college status quo he maintained that for an incredly long period of his history.
The 1960s Spider-Man cartoon set him in high school but at the time that made up the majorioty of the source material they were adapting so what were they to do?
After that literally EVERY adaptation of Spider-Man up until the 2002 film set him in college although with Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends that was incidental for the most part and irrelevant to th status quo of the show as it didn’t focus upon his normal life too much. But again, for most of Spider-Man’s history up until that point he’d only been in college apart from the 2+ years he was in high school, the latter NOT being him at the height of his popularity in the Romita era.
The influential 1990s Spider-man series never depicted him in high school outside of his origin storyline in 1 episode and in fact eventually dropped the college setting wholesale. Noticably it also depicted Spider-Man as getting married.
Spider-Man Unlimited was a terrible show but also featured an adult Spider-Man, the bad aspects of that show having nothing to do with his age or life status.
The 2003 MTV show depicted him in college because it was tied into the 2002 film which merely started him in high school before graduating him to college. That wasn’t necessary for the movie. There was little reason that the film makers actively choose to not make him high school age throughout the movie. But they still did and he continued to age throughout the films until Spider-man 3 where again he was considering marriage.
The Spectacular Spider-Man cartoon did indeed set him in high school but only because they wanted to do something different and realized that FEW Spider-Man adaptations ever set him in high school and adhered to the early Ditko stories of the character.
The showrunner has admitted his blue sky plans for the show was that eventually they’d take Peter to college and beyond.
Basically the idea that Spider-Man should be a high schooler is an invention of the Webb movies and USM cartoons. The Webb films didn’t even stick with it for too long and USM was simply a broken adaptation from day one never actually capturing the character properly.
Plus does it not occur that the reason that most adaptations place Peter in high school or college (apart from the latter being the status quo for so long and during many adaptations existence) has a lot to do with them beginning with his origin story which began in high school or are otherwise adapting the earliest stories of the character which again happened during that era of his life?
Following the logic of the OP basically Franklin Richards is pointless to the Fantastic Four because he’s never been in an adaptation.
It’s not because the essence of the series is compromised by his presence, it’s because you don’t START with that. The same is true of Spider-Man.
Of course you START with him as a high schooler and college student. But if the character is going to develop you don’t stay there.
So no. That isn’t the age where his central message is simply the easiest to convey.
Yes it’s easier to forgive your mistakes as a learning experience when you are younger.
But again that ISN’T what Spider-Man was ever about. Stan Lee himself has NEVER said anything even remotely like that.
I repeat.
Spider-Man is NOT a series about someone constantly making MISTAKES and LEARNING from them indefinitely.
Spider-Man made mistakes because we ALL do.
The point was he is a normal guy and relatable. This is the reason, the essence of why he has problems in his life not solved and sometimes caused by his superpowers.
Should Spider-Man be making massive mistakes as an adult?
No, but that isn’t a compromising of his core message or values.
The core message was that if you have the power to do good, you should do good because it’s the right thing to do.
It’s basically the same thing as Superman except his uncle had to die to teach him that lesson and he stumbled trying to live up to it.
Because he’s not perfect, he’s human. And that was the main idea behind the character’s appeal.
It was NEVER about being a screw up and learning from those mistakes.
That notion is especially illogical in the context of Spider-Man in current continuity being at least 25 years old (i.e. an adult) and based upon his history shouldn’t be making those mistakes.
How the hell do yo even have a series where a character screws up and makes mistakes and learns from them and make that a seires to last long term? By definition he’d have to unlearn or forget those same lessons. Because again then by this point he should’ve made so many damn mistakes that he’s learned from right?
Moving on, it’s been pretty widely agreed by people who worked on Spider-Man that the marriage was a bad idea.
H’okay.
Let’s put aside the fact that there are a significant number of creators who do NOT think that.
Let’s even put aside the fact that Jesus Christ lots of people can think something and be wrong.
Dude…J.M. DeMatteis, Peter David, Tom DeFalco and Roger Stern all don’t think that Spider-man getting married was inherently bad.
Stern thinks him marrying Mj specifically was the problem, he didn’t feel that Spider-Man getting married was in general something that could never be done.
Lets say for the sake of argument that yes MOST creators think it was a bad idea (and lets put aside how most creators didn’t seem to think Civil War 2006 or Civil War II were bad ideas when it was incredibly obvious how they were), those guys I just listed would then be in the minority.
Here’s the thing though, the number of people in your camp doesn’t always matter if the guys you got are more knowledgeable on the topic at hand.
Most people think that diamonds are some kind of rare and precious commodity and that is why they are so expensive. But most of those people are not as knopwledgable on the subject as others meaning there is a smaller number of people who know more and who’s opinions thus count for more.
In this context it is catarogically NOT the case that say Tom Brevoort, who’s barely written any Spider-Man in his life and has never written anything good with the character, has an opinion which carries as much weight as Tom DeFalco who has written more, written more quality work and has written what was for it’s time the most definitive information publication about Spider-man ever.
Stern, Dematteis, PAD and DeFalco are highly experienced Marvel writers with notable runs on Spider-Man specifically and who have also written critically acclaimed (and more importantly objectively well crafted) work with the character.
Common sense would then dictate that their opinion on the subject at hand carries much more weight than Jason Aaron, Tom Brevoort, Joe Kelly and Joe Quesada’s opinion on the matter.
I forgot to mention someone else who both doesn’t think Spider-Man is about youth and doesn’t feel Spider-Man being married is wrong for the character at all.
His name is Stan Lee.
I’m not saying Stan was incapable of mischaracterization in his work, George Lucas is testament to that.
But if we’re talking about ‘people say this so it that’s what it is’ then frankly Stan Lee is the endgame if we’re going to argue along those lines.
So along those lines Stan Lee says Spider-Man being married is okay so it must be okay. It doesn’t matter if most people say otherwise. Stan Lee created Spider-Man and he says they are wrong.
And yes that includes Kurt Busieck who’s only claim to fame is writing Untold Tales of Spider-Man. That was a great series for sure but every time he’s ever written a Spider-Man beyond the Silver Age he’s always been mediocre at best.
Or are we going to say that Kurt Busieck’s opinion on Spider-Man carries more weight than DeMatteis’, DeFalco’s, Peter David’s and Stan Lee’s?
Sidenote, Stan Lee was involved with the 1990s Spider-Man cartoon where Spider-man again got married. According to the showrunner John Semper Junior he was friends with Stan and told him in the 1980s that he was frustrated by the fact that Spider-Man hadn’t develop (in his eyes) for a very long time. Shortly thereafter Spider-man got married.
Mr Jordan D. White is also uninformed on the subject of the Clone Saga.
The Clone Saga did NOT happen to get rid of Spider-Man’s marriage.
It happened because Death of Superman and Knightfall were making a lot of money and Marvel needed something like that for Spider-Man. The original plan for the Clone Saga as far as EIC Tom DeFalco (who also worked as one of the core writers of the story) was concerned was to only initially place Ben Reilly as the new single Spider-Man before bringing Peter back as Spider-Man, now as a father and giving Ben a spin-off. That changed later but the point is the original impetus was not to get rid of the marriage.
Furthermore given the poor quality of the stories which seek to end the marriage would this not be indicative that it would be best to have not tried to get rid of it in the first place.
Mr White is also grossly mistaken when it came to their separation where MJ went to L.A.
That happened because J. Michael Straczynski wanted to just get a handle on Peter’s character on his own at first. His long term plan was always to reconcile the two characters.
That is literally why the first issue of his run has Spider-Man angry about the separation and the separation is an ongoing subplot.
That wasn’t an example of Marvel wanting to dump the marriage it was an example of JMS wanting to bring it back and reaffirm it.
If Mr White feels that from a storytelling decision Peter and MJ would’ve been better to have never gotten married then I sincerely hope he does not do much work in the Spider-Man office.
Spider-Man is about responsibility.
On a storytelling level giving him more responsibility is only adding tension and conflict to the narrativeand reaffirming the central idea.
Marriage is a responsibility.
MJ is a character similarly defined very much by issues related to responsibility and is also a wonderful character just unto herself.
Thus having them in an ongoing relationship enriches the narrative, it doesn’ take away from it.
Furthermore the argument regarding marriage fans read old stories is particularly disingenuous as the ame could very well apply to people who liked and wanted an unmarried Spider-Man.
In 2007 people who wanted to experience a non-married Spider-Man had
Marvel Adventures
Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane
Ultimate Spider-Man
The movies
And if they waited a year a really great cartoon too
I would love to hear exactly what the argument for why Superman being married irrecoverably changes him and is even worse for the character than Spider-Man getting married.
Superman has had one main love interest for decades. Lana and Lori amounted to side story distractions and Lois was understood to be the actual love of his life.
Why on Earth was ceasing to tease readers and repeat the incredibly tired (and dated) love triangle between herself, Superman and Clark damaging to the character?
Superman’s core concept is that of the ideal of American immigration. He came to America from a foreign land, integrated as a true citizen of America and used skills inhereited from that place to make his new home a better place, chiefly by averting natural disasters, fighting crime and the forces of evil and generally helping people by upholding truth and justice.
That is Superman at his core. That does not change when he becomes married t Lois Lane.
Similarly Spider-Man’s core concept is that of someone who’s relatively speaking a normal guy who tries to live up to the responsibilities of his life (those can change as his life changes, and as he ages) whilst balancing them with the biggest responsibility of all: using his super powers to help people where he can.
That also does not change when he is married, in fact being married only enhances that concept.
Additionally Silver Age Superman is itself a distortion of the actual original concept for Superman Siegel and Shuster intended. Putting aside the socialist ideals behind the original version of the character, the Silver Age Superman was someone who felt detached from humanity, more of an alien than an integrated human who happened to not be from Earth. Silver Age Superman did not truly consider himself ‘one of us’, but rather a Kryptonian. This is in direct opposition to the actual point of the character restored by the post crisis rendition of the character.
He was also a massive dick.
In fact the Silver age was a distortion of the original concepts for all of the Trinity. Batman became sci-fi heavy, bright colourful and goofy as opposed to the dark avenger of the night that he was intended to be in the 1940s and Wonder Woman was a very far cry from the (for her time, in the 1940s) radical feminist icon she was created and intended to be.
So really arguing that something with Superman, Batman or Wonder Woman is bad upon the basis that it goes against the Silver Age is an argument filled with holes.
Those characters outside of certain nostalgia projects like Batman 66 shouldn’t ever go back to being depicted that way.
Now let’s quickly address the logic of the marriage not screwing up the Fantastic Four.
To begin with marriage and being the mother and the father are not one and the same.
Secondly the marriage led to the introduction of Franlin a new character who offered a new dynamic so why did this not screw up the F4?
Finally by this logic then why would the marriage screw up Spider-Man? Before he married Mary Jane MJ’s function in the narrative was effectively identical to the role she played after they got married, the only difference being that they were living together and having sex.
That was it.
