Ah yes, I've read about One More Day; Marvel's massive fuck up. I could link you but I'd rather talk through it. Okay, so as Bob said Aunt May got shot and was dieing (due to him un-masking himself), the thing was, she was ok with it and everyone (including May) was telling Peter to just let her die in piece. So he forgoed the "with great power come great responsibility" thing, you know, that little motto that has been the secondary trademark of the entire Spider-man franchise since Uncle Ben got shot, and made his deal with the devil and gets to be a free man and date girls again. You know what happened next? The editor at this time, who Bob mentioned, wrote Peter in a new love interest who has the exact same name as his daughter. Outstanding. This is the kinda stuff that gives me my schizophrenic relationship with comics.
The thing that got me about it was that it could of been easily about the pain of seeing a loved one die, having to deal with that and accepting that loss and death are real even if you do have spidy powers. Except they had him make a deal with the devil, which is a straight out bad guy thing to do, especially when against someones wishes. Yeah the terms were pretty slack but still, you shouldn't dick around with reality.
I don't accept it being impossible to keep a married man interesting. Marriage is just as filled with petty squabbles and moments when you realise how in love you are, as dating, in fact more so as you tend to be living together.
The reason I prefer manga though is that manga has a definite beginning, middle and end. Becuase of that franchise characters don't get built up and thus impossible to kill off. And crucially, it doesn't drag on forever.
popular internet comic reviewer Linkara hates one more day with incredible passion. He even went so far as to call the writer an absolute hack. I personally love comics, but I don't have much money or storage space, so I limit myself to only one series, a comic I have been collecting for over 15 years now, and love with a passion, but most "comic" nerds don't give any respect to. I'm referring to the Sonic the Hedgehog comic published by archie. If I had a bigger place and more money I'd probably collect some of your precious marvel DC Darkhorse stuff too because I do think they're cool, but no, I can only afford my favorite, and I will support it to the end.
Of course, lots of weird stuff happened in the Sonic comic too, at one point he WAS engaged to be married, but they broke it up by having ALIENS invade, which launched him clear across the galaxy with some super weapon...I WISH I was kidding, that proved to be one of the comic's worst story arcs in ten years, but at least they didn't fire a retcon beam at everything.
I think these sort of plot problems are mostly unavoidable if you have a canon that runs for a very long time, the only way to really avoid it is to keep the story and characters moving like they would in real life. Of course that would mean letting popular characters grow old and die, which financally is too much of a risk to take for many series.
Yeah see this is the thing with long running comic book characters. I mean most stories end eventually. The bad guy is beat, the cure is found, they get together, blah, blah, blah. Not with comic book stories. Nope, some of these have been going on for decades now. The writers keep having to try to make the stories interesting, but as they progress down certain paths they find it isn't leading to somewhere that they like. So they retcon it, or do something silly like this, and "start a-new". So you end up with multiple universes, time-lines, and plots which can get very confusing to anyone who doesn't devote the proper time to figuring it all out.
Although its nice to know that if I ever want to sell my soul (or something similar), there's someone out there who actually does a fair deal. I sold my soul (well more like leased it for a set period of time) with a devil (and a demon, and a daemon) and let me tell you, things got out of hand fast. I sure learned my lesson.
To everyone that's still using the tired old, "Comics have been around too long, it's way too confusing for us 'normal' folk": Wikipedia exists for a reason. 5 minutes, and you're caught up on a character that you're mildly interested in.
That aside, Queseda used OMD/BND was his flashy red sports car for a mid-life crisis. How convenient it was that as he was going through a divorce, that he was suddenly on the warpath to end one of the few long-lasting, and healthier (by comic standards) relationships out there. The argument that marriage dulled the character down is nothing but BS, because Reed Richards and Luke Cage are still married. Hell, Marvel refuses to end the marriages that actually do bring a character down (looking at you Black Panther/Storm).
The whole thing was just another example of writers/editors letting their own lives influence their work too much.
Ugh. I think you went a bit too easy on this, Bob. One More Day is quite possibly the worst comic ever written and I think merely dimsissing it as "weird" doesn't even BEGIN to cover the mutilation it inflicted on the Spider-Man books. For one thing, it is unquestionably the most out of character thing Peter Parker ever did. He made a deal with the motherfucking devil because he was too much of a whiny mama's boy to accept the consequences of his decisions- way to go Mr. "Power and Responsibility". The story itself is irredeemably stupid to an order of magnitude that cannot be exaggerated- Aunt May gets shot by a sniper and Spider-Man, one of the most well-connected superheroes on an entire planet full of fucking superheroes can't find ANYONE capable of saving her life. Reed Richards builds time machines. Dr Strange has gods on speed dial. Loki, a literal physical GOD, owes Peter a favour. The mutant Elixer has powers that basically boils down to "heals shit" and once regrew a guy's torn-out heart with a touch. And even if YOU think it's nonsense to think that Peter would want to settle down and get married rather than spend his life fucking hot superheroines like Black Cat, well, that's completely contrary to the way Peter Parker had been written for the first 20 years of his comic life- a serious-minded guy who only falls in love a few times, falls hard, and sincerely wants to be married. But as you pointed out the Spider-Marriage was a wasted opportunity because the writers just didn't know what to do with it. That's not to say there wasn't anything that COULD be done with it, it just means that the books were afflicted with a lot of poor writers who couldn't think of anything for MJ to do other than sit around worrying about Peter all the time.
And since OMD and the dissolution of the Spider-Marriage, has it done anything to improve the story? NO! Brand New Day has been one of the most wretched lows in Spider-Man's history as he's been written out of character, the stories have been tasteless, dull and stupid and practically NO stories have been told that couldn't have been done perfectly well with a married Peter Parker (apart from the ones about him banging random girls who no-one gives a shit about), showing that Marvel's claims that being married "restricted" Spider-Man and that they had so much they wanted to do with a single Peter were completely full of crap.
Marvel have completely lost their shit over the last few years. It's truly tragic to watch, especially the horrible abuse they've heaped on what was once their flagship character. Quesada has to go.
I liked Peter and MJ married, it added some maturity to him. But according to Marvel a man with a healthy marriage isn't relatable to kids so they decided to do a major asspull and make him a 30something bachelour who's still shacking up with several minor characters. Hey Quesada, why don't you listen to the fans when they say SPIDER-MAN.IS.NOT.FUCKING.BATMAN.
He is a Goddamn role model and what are you telling the readers with this bullshit? "marrigage is bad, be single and have many half-assed relationships!" or "Screw accepting death, make a deal with the fucking devil to bring them back to life!"
Quesada needs to go if Marvel hopes to get ANY credibility back in its name.
And it's shit like this why I never even get within 50 miles of a superhero comic book. Here's my solution to all these problems - you people should stop reading superhero comics and go read something that has a beginning and an end and is not retconed or changed every few years.
I have my own theory on why comics struggle to sell: They require actual reading.
Sounds like Linkara's rant on the Mary Jane marriage kabosh; the comic writers thought readers wouldn't be able to relate to a married hero. He had to be single & mingle because commitment is boring & unsexy.
Dunno about Marvel, but with DC, I expect massive retcons every 10 years. It doesn't all have to happen at once or even in the same series. Jason Todd is back, the Joker is sane, etc.
You're going to sit there and tell me that it's a smart idea to take a character that has had constant development throughout his entire stint as a comic character out of a situation that will continue to develop him is a SMART IDEA? Because you're a fat virgin who has never been in a relationship, and thus has a skewed idea of it?
right because spiderman fighting criminals is much more boring than spiderman talking with his wife. i forgot this was TMZ, and not the spiderman comic. /sarcasm.
"its SPIDERMAN! FIGHTING CRIME!"
not
"its SPIDERMAN! FIGHTING WITH HIS WIFE!"
no one cares about relationships. they want superheroes and read comics. If they want fake relationships they would watch reality shows.
And you obviously never read the comics when he was married compared to the comics now that he's single. He has more girl drama, and personal crisis now that he's back to being the super cool bachelor he never was.
Their relationship ended up working out well because writers gave MJ a personality outside of "Hi. I'm Spider-Man's woman!" She did her own thing and wasn't always getting kidnapped, or sneaking her way into danger (looking at you, Lois Lane). Parker had just as many adventures married, that he did single -or otherwise. The difference? He had his own place, and didn't have to make BS excuses as to why he couldn't go out to dinner. Now he's just a freeloading douchebag.
right because spiderman fighting criminals is much more boring than spiderman talking with his wife. i forgot this was TMZ, and not the spiderman comic. /sarcasm.
"its SPIDERMAN! FIGHTING CRIME!"
not
"its SPIDERMAN! FIGHTING WITH HIS WIFE!"
no one cares about relationships. they want superheroes and read comics. If they want fake relationships they would watch reality shows.
Yeah, man! Love is for losers! It's not like you can get meaningful character development out of relationships, and the trials and tribulations that come with them! Comics should just be wall-to-wall fighting with none of that girly "plot" or "characters" slowing it down!
We forget so easily that what also came with that deal is that Spidey is back to his web-bands as opposed to his naturally made webbing. Not only this, but we probably have to discount the extra strength (literally) that Spiderman had obtained during his marriage with MJ, so he's actually "powered-down" in physical strength. Spiderman was never meant to be the strongest superhero, but it really hurts to see my favorite superhero drop in strength when everyone else is just getting further ahead.
I liked Peter and MJ married, it added some maturity to him. But according to Marvel a man with a healthy marriage isn't relatable to kids so they decided to do a major asspull and make him a 30something bachelour who's still shacking up with several minor characters. Hey Quesada, why don't you listen to the fans when they say SPIDER-MAN.IS.NOT.FUCKING.BATMAN.
He is a Goddamn role model and what are you telling the readers with this bullshit? "marrigage is bad, be single and have many half-assed relationships!" or "Screw accepting death, make a deal with the fucking devil to bring them back to life!"
Quesada needs to go if Marvel hopes to get ANY credibility back in its name.
The thing is, I think the elephant in the room is that for all the effort that's gone into making them "deeper," a lot of these comic characters aren't actually "complex" in the sense that they can survive a lot of "bending." SOME of them can - Superman works as an adult, a teenager or an old man, for example. But most of them can't. Batman (Bruce Wayne version, anyway) more or less NEEDS to be an adult whose already been Batman for awhile to work in the long-term, and to an only-slightly lesser extent he'll eventually NEED a Robin, an Alfred and a Comissioner Gordon.
Looking at the whole existance of the character, broadly, I think Spider-Man is in that 2nd category. His "thing" - skinny guy in brightly-colored full-body tights swinging around in broad daylight (partially) for kicks and doing his stand-up schtick while knocking around muggers - doesn't seem to work all that well outside the "confines" of a charater whose fairly young and not terribly "attached" to very much. It's a visual/textual synchronicity issue: He has no "headquarters," carries all his gear with him, etc - he's the unready-college-kid-backpacking-across-Europe-for-a-semester of superheroes. He doesn't "work" as, say, an old man (they tried, it was awful) unless you change everything else about him, and he doesn't "work" as a guy with a conventional family waiting at home for him (which he'd need a MUCH less superhero-friendly day job to provide for.)
We know why Batman is up on a roof at 2:00am - he's a depressed, possibly-insane self-hating loner and this is how he avoids dealing with it. Why is Spider-Man spending all afternoon swinging around Manhattan waiting to happen-upo that week's adventure when his inexplicable super-model wife is waiting at home? Peter Parker: Middle-aged guy watching Idol with the wife and kids, only ever putting on his uniform and heading out when he happens to hear about a crime on TV? That's just "not" Spider-Man. Peter Parker: Guy who's happily married but for some reason spends 90% of his day apart from his family looking for superhero stuff to do? ALSO not really Spider-Man. This is why you don't make huge changes to a character as a publicity stunt.
What strikes me as ironic is, after all the One More Day nonsense (FWIW, to the extent that you can "get past" OMD I think the Brand New Day stories have averaged-out pretty good, "New Ways to Die" being a high-point) when they finally went and explained "the rest of it" the big "extra reveal" was:
MJ opted-out of a chance for them to stay together even after they erased the world's memory of his identity because she just couldn't "do" the whole thing anymore.
Which would've been the BEST WAY to get them unmarried to begin with. But THAT solution can't be turned into a five-issue "event" to drive up sales and whip the fanboy press into a news-friendly coniption fit so... obviously couldn't do it
well fake love is. if you're going to be adult do it for spiderman's sake. Don't try to put in utter "i love you" tripe to try to draw in the "mature" crowd. maturity for maturity sake does not stand. relationships =/= maturity. Even douchey 12 year old XBL players have girlfriends but are they mature? meaningful character development? Next you're gonna say Leisure Suit Larry is the most developed and mature character than all of the main characters in the gaming industry.
You don't need relationships in order to have meaningful character development. Hell in some cases relationships stop character development.
Leisure Suit Larry? Really? You're going to use that amoral waste of time as an argument for your point? The whole point of the series is to move your unlikeable prick of a character into a conga line of one-night stands. Those are definitely not long-term, romantic relationships, and strong characters was definitely not the purpose for what is, essentially, an interactive wankathon.
Romance was a recurring element in Spider-Man going back to the 60's anyway, and the wedding itself provided character development. Mary Jane was flighty and insecure, afraid of staying in relationships too long for fear of showing her true self. Peter was scared of putting trust in anyone for fear of his enemies hurting them (hell, he even has nightmares about this on the eve of his wedding) and needed someone who would stand by him. A spouse fitted them both pretty well.
You can get character development out of a divorce. But having one of your most moral-driven superheroes toss away a relationship just to save the life of a woman who didn't want to be saved is not the best way of going about it.
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