strejdaking asked:
jordandwhiteqna answered:
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.
Huh.
Who knew Kurt Busiek is the Word of God? I mean, Astro City is good and I still love Untold Tales of Spider-Man, but…that seems like an awful big promotion. If only J.M. DeMatteis were the Word of God instead! Or Tom Beland! Or Tom DeFalco! Or even *gasp* Stan Lee!
Since nearly every retelling of Superman starts with a baby crash landing in a cornfield (don’t believe me? Here), I guess Superman is about the nutritional effects of starchy grains on growing infants. Eat enough, maybe your baby will fly and have x-ray vision, too! Wonder why the Corn Ad Council never latched onto that…
In other words, stories need to start where the problem starts. That’s, like, Creative Writing 101. In fact, it’s the very first hour of Creative Writing 101. The story starts with an inciting incident. In Joseph Campbell terminology, this is the call to action that kicks the hero out of his ordinary world and into the “special” world of the story. For Spider-Man, the inciting incident/call to action is the spider bite. And it occurs when he is a teenager. Hence, why Spider-Man retellings tend to start there. This ain’t rocket science.
Note, however, that few retellings leave Peter in high school for very long. Raimi films - he leaves high school. Webb films - he leaves high school. The 1990s Spider-Man animated series started with him in college, as did the MTV animated series, IIRC. The 1970s series - started with him as a working adult. Spectacular Spider-Man animated series had him in high school, but the plan was to age him. And while the Ultimate Spider-Man comic book did keep Peter a teen, Bendis killed him. There really wasn’t much room for the character to go without aging him. Silly me, however, thinks aging is preferable to death! Note that Miles is also aging…he started at 13 and he’s now 17.
The real reason why Superman re-tellings start with the Kents finding the crashed capsule? It emphasizes Superman is Clark Kent, not the other way around. It emphasizes Clark grew up in the American heartland, of salt of the earth midwestern parents. While his nature may be extraterrestrial, he was nurtured as a human, with human wants and desires - which include falling in love. Smallville is Clark’s ordinary world, the world that keeps him grounded.
Superman is the ultimate nature vs. nurture parable. Since I’m not afraid of strong female characters with agency nor of emotion, I prefer the tellings that lean on nurture and emphasize our shared basic human desire for connection, love, family, community (oh, but I’m sorry, maybe that would result in too many girlie cooties in your boy picture books?).
The good news is fans can indeed look at comics any way we damn well please. But frankly? I see far more perceptive fan commentary on the nature of storytelling, how humans are wired to process story, the craft of writing, and the care and feeding of archetypal characters than anything I’ve seen come out of Marvel since…oh, let’s pick 2007.
Holy hell, no wonder Marvel writes their characters like crap. Their own editors don’t understand them.
I wonder: if the story is so much better off without them being married, why was there such an outcry for it to return? Why had the quality declined consistently since OMD? Why is one the most universally-praised Spider-Man titles an AU story where they’re still married? Why is that book outselling Miles’ Spider-Man book at times with no mainstream connection and almost no comparative advertising?
Clearly just us peons not knowing good storytelling, I guess.
