Spider-Man General Discussion

Well it's like Hal Jordan and Parallax. He was mind-controlled by this bug, and he killed a bunch of people but even after that, Hal Jordan is still facing consequences for it. Or Superman in DCAU who was mind-controlled by Darkseid. I have no doubt that Slott, (who worked on Batman Adventures and the tie-in comics for the DCAU) had that in mind. And in any case as Nick Spencer points out, Peter keeping Otto's stash after getting his body back is unethical. Those are ill-gotten gains. He should have divested himself right away. Instead he played billionaire. That kind of does make him less innocent.

And you know Post-OMD Peter...not classic Peter...so who ultimately cares for him? He's basically Patrick Parker (cf, Jake Skywalker). After he becomes rich, he acts like a jerk in the Regent arc, getting in a d—k measuring contest with Tony Stark that somehow makes Tony look like the good guy.

You know you fucked up when you make Tony look reasonable. I find it ironic, that OMD was supposed to make Spider-Man relatable, but man, the Parker industries era makes Patrick a thousand times more unrelatable than Marriage ever good.

You know, i'll play devil's advocate for a bit but how the hell would Peter wash his hands off of Parker industries? Without getting into a massive amount of trouble. Yes it's seriously unethical, but i could see why he got into the corporate world even if i hate it. Plus the man was a prisoner in his own mind for half a year-a full year, cut him some slack.

I'll teach you a lesson about just how cruel the world can be. That's my job, as an adult.

When your protagonist is a nerd smart enough to invent web fluid at high school, then he either goes Parker Industry (a.k.a. "unrelatable"), or a Failure Hero (a.k.a. nothing changes), or both.

Where there's life, there's hope.

Not necessarily. Peter could work in improving his formula and work as an independent inventor who wants his inventions to help people and ensure it works responsibly. He could be a Nikola Tesla—type, you know the scientist-inventor who wanted to give free electricity or whatnot. Sure he's a little mythologized but as an archetype, Tesla is this romantic ideal of the outsider inventor against Thomas Edison (aka Tony Stark). Make sure that his web-fluid doesn't enter the market and becomes a new kind of "non-lethal" gun and so on (which based on Back in Black where he tells Kingpin that he could stuff his fluid down his nostrils and clog him up is a scary likelihood of what could happen should Peter market his stuff). The web-fluid is essentially industrial engineering and chemicals, so Peter's field is applied sciences rather than the advanced engineering and robotics of Tony Stark. The only problem is that Marvel Universe use "science" as fairy dust, so if you are a scientist you can cross multiple fields even if it makes no damn sense.

Or alternatively, Peter could work theoretically and write papers and journals, and his work would be published and read by a few. He's interested in biology right. So he could write theories on metahuman biology which would be unread and unappreciated bu appreciated after his death.

Even Slott's defenders point out that guy doesn't write science well unlike Jonathan Hickman, so Peter's science work at Horizon and so on lacks detail and believability. Peter being a scientist is like MJ being a model. People have no idea what those professions mean and entail (props to Bendis for that cool MJ-centric issue in Iron Man where MJ discusses runway work and the whole bruised legs models cover up walking up and down the runaway). So Mary Jane is this supermodel somehow as famous as Gwen Stefani and other pop-stars (as per Slott in Human Torch series) which no supermodel who didn't act and so on has ever been. Supermodels were famous as hell in the '60s and '70s but even that was seasonal. (In general: supermodels who don't act only become famous when they date hot movie-stars, sports-stars, musicians. Take a look at Leonardo DiCaprio's love life as an example...since MJ has never done that, that puts her at a disadvantage).

i can back up Slott not writing science well. on of the most unintentionally hilarious scenes in Superior is in issue 1 where Modell confronts Otto on the fact that his work is potentially lethal, Otto just hands Modell a bunch of scribbly lines which is a a prime example of show don't tell because it somehow proves that Otto's work is revolutionary. May i remind you Dan Slott is now an Iron Man writer.

I'll teach you a lesson about just how cruel the world can be. That's my job, as an adult.

You don't need to know science to write Iron Man. Tony Stark is a rich billionaire captain of industry and robot guy. So any kind of weird stuff is justified with cash.

With Peter, he occupies a realistic center. So you need to define who he is carefully, and not go overboard. What kind of scientist is he? Reed Richards' annointed successor as the future Big Brain of Marvel...which to be honest I don't think Peter is there. And again that's fine. Science is a collaborative enterprise. Peter making endless suits at Horizon, going beyond his field and so on. That's not believable. There should be some kind of limit, at least implicitly.

Well, Pete is a bit of a Chemist (created the webbing himself), and a bit of an engineer (created the web shooters so he could use the webbing).

There should probably just stick to that.

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He's a science major, and only a science major can get hijacked by Doc Ock and then get coerced to sex by Cindy Moon.

Where there's life, there's hope.

Peter's origin story is still that he got bit by a radioactive spider and got super powers. I'm not sure how much of a realistic center he ever occupied.

Peter is meant to have a similar civilian life like most readers.

Where there's life, there's hope.

The center of Peter's life is believable. He's smart, clever, and intelligent enough to create this revolutionary chemical formula, but he's poor enough, handicapped enough, and genuinely burdened from actually trying to build and improve that, or marketing it and so on. I mean at the very least Peter could take a secret patent for it. You can file secret patents and so on, that ensure that your invention is protected. I don't know if that's mentioned. I mean with Superior Ock, his webbing formula is now known to one of his enemies and that's dangerous. I mean I always wondered why writers didn't explore the formula of that more. Peter obviously worked on that for a while before getting bitten and so on.

The story of Peter Parker from my point of view is about some guy who does irresponsible things under the guise of responsibility, which is exemplified by OMD and Parker Industry.

Where there's life, there's hope.

Those stories don't count...

OMD and everything after is not, and never will be, the definitive take on the story of Peter Parker. It is a distraction from it.

Edited by Zarius on Dec 29th 2018 at 4:45:56 AM

But as much as we hate OMD it IS still technically part of Spider-Man's story. Yes it's a terrible story but according to Marvel it's as valid as any other Spider-Man story. I know we would love to toss away stories we don't like such as Sins Past, OMD, OMIT, Superior, and Parker industries, but these stories do show a part of Peter's character that is somewhat present in stories we do like.

Don't get me wrong, i hate stuff like OMD and OMIT as the rest of the fanbase and eagerly wait for when they get flushed down the toilet, but we have to admit they are part of Spider-Man's history.

Least Batman's lucky ASBAR ain't canon.

I'll teach you a lesson about just how cruel the world can be. That's my job, as an adult.

In the words of Steve Ditko, referring to another context: "A mythological demon made the whole Peter Parker/Spider-Man world a place where nothing is metaphysically impossible."

So that is all there is to OMD as far as I am concerned. It's such a violation of the story, setting, theme and world of Spider-Man, that to me that's just not Spider-Man.

Spider-Man has multiple choice histories.

Peter Parker also exists in the same world as Doctor Strange, so this was always a place where nothing is metaphysically impossible. That's the peril of a Shared Universe.

As much as I hate OMD, it still counts as a Spider-Man story.

It's not a peril if you do it right. Steve Ditko wrote the first Spider-Man and Strange crossover (being that he created both of them). So you could do it once or twice. You could have Spider-Man in one or two issues and stories be part of something outside his field but having Mephisto rewrite Spider-Man's reality so that Peter is trapped in what is a Lotus-Eater Machine is something else. The fact is that in the classical era, editors knew they had the Shared Universe but it was always understood and expected that each story and character was standalone and separate. Story consequences and stuff from Team-Ups almost never carried or stuck long in the single story series (the biggest is of course the Alien Costume era). Even the MCU understands that, everyone said after The Avengers that it should be team-up movies all the time. But Marvel's long-term business model is the sub-franchises, new teams, new characters IP all of which give the team-up movie their big feeling.

From 1962-1993 or so, Spider-Man was on the realistic side of the Marvel Universe. Dead characters stayed dead. Status-quo shifts from one era carried to the next (like Peter had been living apart from Aunt May since the Lee-Romita era, and then in an apartment in Chelsea for more than 150 issues). Peter grew up...slowly after Comic-Book Time, but he did grow and progress. No retcons, no characters coming Back from the Dead, no attempts to say the last 20 years didn't happen. The Clone Saga destroyed that forever. And Marvel were explicit about the fact in the Post-Clone Saga era that certain events there didn't happen. Baby May and so on was virtually forgotten and left unmentioned and Peter and MJ in the immediate aftermath lapsed back into a happy-go-lucky couple without the whole miscarriage thing. It was also downplayed in the JMS era. So basically, yeah I have precedent when I declare that OMD didn't happen. From a publication standpoint it did happen. But from that standpoint, the marriage happened too...and Marvel is saying that didn't happen and that somehow every story happened without the marriage but them in a live-in relationship which makes no damn sense.

I will say that Post-OMD and BND didn't happen for the simple fact that it is not continuous to Amazing Fantasy #15. As much as I hate to admit it, OMD is continuous. Spider-Man's serialized continuity is such that there has almost never been long gaps between stories and runs. But Brand New Day opens with a noticeable large gap that had to be filled with flashbacks (terrible ones). That has never happened before. So to me Post-OMD is an entire new continuity. It's basically New 52. It's not the Spider-Man of old. It violates so many norms and trends, that it has no legitimacy from a publication, aesthetic, and literary point.

Weren’t there time skips after Gwen Stacy’s death and the end of the Clone Saga so they wouldn’t have to realistically deal with the emotional fallout?

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Nope. ASM#123 opens with the funeral of Gwen Stacy. It follows right after that. There is some subtle time shifts to justify Peter and MJ falling in love over time. A bit like weeks being treated like months. The Sliding Time Scale moves events and characters back-and-forth. So Peter and Gwen's romance and her death happened at a younger time than previously did, and Peter and MJ's friendship, romance, and love blossomed over a longer period of mutual grief. Conway's First Clone Saga (which should never, in any capacity, be treated the same way as the second one) takes place after about a year or so that Gwen died. Certainly a long enough time that Peter is no longer in love with Gwen but in love with Mary Jane.

The Second Clone Saga is different because rather than a sudden story over 2 issues (#121-#122) you have basically an arc that span wheels, circles, pentacles for 2 real-time years with huge clutter of stories and so on...and you need to deal with Norman Osborn back from the dead, and you need to paint Peter and MJ as the young sexy married couple and not as grieving over a miscarriage, which ages them. And in any case Norman Osborn coming back and then somehow becoming the owner of the Daily Bugle (which was dealt with in the Identity Crisis story, which is the best, most fun, and free-spirited of the Mackie-Byrne stories, where you see Peter outsmart Norman Osborn)...all of that didn't have gaps. It continued.

In the case of Brand New Day...you had a story that opened a considerable time after Civil War, after the (Post-Retcon) break-up of Peter and MJ's long live-in romance and relationship, Harry Osborn coming back to life and somehow being there all along, Aunt May's house being rebuilt and so on. JMS pointed all this out as his reasons for opposing Quesada's idea. As he pointed out, this is indeed a Continuity Reboot, it's just that Quesada and Co. are lying through their teeth and pretending it isn't, Gaslighting readers and so on. Those gaps were filled in when OMIT came out some three years later. Harry Osborn's resurrection was plugged in some tie-in books nobody read. I mean it's basically absurd. When One Moment in Time came finally that story was even worse than One More Day, and it made less sense than before. I mean Peter humiliated Mary Jane by standing her up on the altar...and yet they got in a live-in relationship anyway. It's not believable for me that any woman would do that, and no woman who is a Love Martyr to the extent of staying with a person who submitted her to one of the worst social humiliations ever, is ever going to walk away from him after he basically restored the status-quo and erased his Secret Identity. And of course Quesada's reasons for Peter missing the wedding. Spider-Man got hit by a rock. It was a big rock. It's silly.

Edited by Revolutionary_Jack on Dec 29th 2018 at 11:06:55 AM

Things don't have to be continuous for them to happen in the same timeline. Empire Strikes Back takes place three years after A New Hope, Return of the Jedi takes place a year after Empire Strikes Back. There are comics that jump forward in time — in fact, there was an entire Avengers storyline called "Eight Months Later" and a DC storyline called "One Year Later."

Nothing of what you wrote discredits OMD or the stories after OMD.

Not all continuities and stories and genres are the same. If we are talking about 616 Spider-Man, then the publication history I outlined above is accurate. The Time Skip between OMD and BND is unprecedented and against the norms of Spider-Man's publication history. Just because Spider-Man occupies the same Shared Universe as other genres and so on, doesn't mean it follows the same norms as everyone does, even in the same universe.

Like for instance, Spider-Man's comics almost never touch on stuff like sexual violence, prostitution, and child abuse (except for that one-off non-canon comic). There are instances where that is alluded to and discussed but they certainly don't go too far there. That stuff is dealt with in Daredevil, The Punisher, Jessica Jones all of whom are "Street-Level" New York Vigilantes. The reason is that Spider-Man's distinctive comedy-centric nature of storylines and Peter's wangst about Parker Luck would comes across as sociopathic and narcissistic (even more than it already does) when confronted with such real and far worse stuff than anything Peter has ever gone through.

That's one example. There are other kind of norms Spider-Man's stories need to follow for it to maintain its distinct tone. Mephisto and having a magical demon destroy his continuity is another of those. To give an example. When Peter got his Alien Costume and went on Secret Wars, the issue where he comes back (#252, Roger Stern's last issue, famous for the iconic cover with the Black Symbiote costume), Stern spent the first minutes of his comic picking up right where he left off when Peter stepped out of his setting in ESU. So he had been gone for days, he left his costumes and stuff and other knick-knacks in an alcove. He went to his apartment to see if everything was in one piece, he called Aunt May (since he was living apart from her, it was easy to explain his absence). In other words continuity is maintained Pre-During-Post Secret Wars and so on. Exactly in one piece.

Edited by Revolutionary_Jack on Dec 29th 2018 at 11:26:00 AM

Actually, the child abuse issue is canon. There’s a canon issue where Spidey thought-balloons about it, but I don’t know which issue off the top of my head

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Says who? It's only accurate if we go off of your own logic. Which I don't. I think your logic is flawed, because it's trying to separate Spider-Man from the rest of the Marvel universe, which can't be done.

Are OMD and post-OMD stories about Spider-Man? Yes. Therefore, they are Spider-Man stories. Do they take place within canon? Yes. Therefore, they are canonical Spider-Man stories. You can't just say "but there was a time jump" and say that proves you're right. It doesn't.

Again: as much as I hate OMD, it and the stories that follow it are still part of the Spider-Man canon. What you are talking about is exclusively Fanon Discontinuity, things you don't consider canon because you don't want to.

This is because most comics back in the day didn't deal with those things. Mainstream comics only recently (like in the past ten years) started doing stories looking at those issues. But Spider-Man did have an entire arc dedicated to Harry Osborn's drug abuse.

Edited by alliterator on Dec 29th 2018 at 11:41:58 AM