Spider-Man General Discussion

One EIC, I can't remember who said it was non canon. And I guess what you saw was a mistake or something that slipped by editors and re-readers (it's their job to pick this up). On a character sense, why is it that a memory of child abuse doesn't show up next to every other horrible thing that has happened to Peter? It doesn't make sense if it is canon. And it brings in stuff that the book is not meant to deal with. Like why didn't Peter confess this to Uncle Ben and Aunt May?

Apparently Mark Millar, being Mark Millar, requested permission to bring that molester back as an anal rape-themed supervillain. His request was denied.

Does Millar need severe therapy or something?

Wake me up at your own risk.

Gfdi Mark Millar

This is why he’s my nemesis

Forever liveblogging the Avengers

You know Mark Millar's Marvel Knights: Spider-Man is probably the only thing he wrote in The Oughties that has aged well. So I guess he can write Spider-Man when he's checked in. Everything else, Ultimate X-Men, The Ultimates, Old Man Logan, Civil War has lost its luster once the novelty wore off.

To alliterator. You're right about me calling Fanon Discontinuity. What I was trying to get at is that at this point what's the difference? When you have editors and writers Running the Asylum and claiming that they are choosing one set of fans (the pre-marriage nostalgics who never got over the wedding) as more legitimate than the general readership (who for the most part always liked the marriage and still do), then you are basically not thinking about the diverse readership. I am not wrong when I say that Spider-Man used to be on the realistic side and that until BND there were never long-gaps in the story. Those are objective facts. You didn't have large-scale mega retcons, Back from the Dead until The Clone Saga. You didn't have large gaps until BND, and the concept of using a demonic villain out of Spider-Man's rogues gallery to rewrite his mythos is also a huge break. But ultimately what counts are good stories over bad stories. OMD and OMIT are bad stories, as is Sins' Past as is most of the Brand New Day run.

Dan Slott Spider-Man is better than that easily, and it has many good issues and stories, and some new additions like Mr. Negative, Max Modell and Anna Maria Marconi who will definitely stick around. So I consider Slott to be a canonical Spider-Man even if I don't really like his run and don't really consider him the author of the Spider-Man passed down from Lee-Ditko. I think he would have done better and his stuff would have been happier had he written all this during the marriage. The best Spider-Man story he ever worked on as his defenders point out — The Human Torch/Spider-Man series happened in that era.

That's true but they did during The '80s and The '90s in Daredevil and elsewhere. And even then Spider-Man remained PG to PG-13. Like The Death of Jean Dewolff was unusual for its greater seriousness in attitude to street crime.

Yeah and even then it was dealt with in a way that wasn't realistic. Like drugs are a problem for a rich white kid and not an issue dealing with the criminalization of African-Americans (an issue even back then). And the message is that villain Daddy Norman must be good. And Harry's drug is LSD rather than cocaine or heroin which were the real problem drugs of that era.

The difference is that those editors and writers get to choose the continuity now that they are in charge. They aren't just fans anymore, they are the actual writers and editors. You and I aren't. If you wrote a Spider-Man story, it would automatically be non-canonical; if they wrote it and Marvel published it, it would automatically be canonical.

Basically, what I'm trying to say is: everything that happened happened. Trying to say it didn't happen is like saying that you can pick and choose what things happened in the entire Marvel universe. Time gaps and "realism" don't matter — you could easily say that Spider-Man aged realistically up until he didn't or he didn't fight aliens until he did or anything like that. So what if there wasn't a time gap — now there is.

Everything that Marvel published set in the 616 universe happened and there is nothing to say that it didn't.

That's true from a corporate perspective. But as a fan and critic, you can make your own judgment, supported by taste, by research, and long-term patterns. To paraphrase an overused Orwell quote, "All things are canonical, but some things are more canonical than others". And yes, this is my opinion and judgment. Nobody else has to follow this.

The fact is that comics don't really make too much sense internally. You don't come to a character cold. The Clone Saga really doesn't make any damn sense until you understand the state of comics in the '90s and a truly arcane bit of Spider-Man lore. And for most readers after around The '80s, 616 isn't really their baseline Spider-Man. Even Dan Slott admitted this. For me my first Spidey was the newspaper strip which I read as a kid and that was the first superhero comic I followed (I had known Batman from Adam West reruns and the Bruce Timm cartoons, and Batman was my first hero, but I didn't touch a Batman comic until years later). I only got into Spider-Man comics after the Raimi movies and then I read Ultimate Spider-Man. For most millennials and for others, Bendis' Ultimate Spider-Man is probably the baseline Spider-Man.

I consider myself fortunate to belong to the last generation that got to see the classical Spider-Man and experience him in real time. The one who grew up, who became an adult real-time continuously from Amazing Fantasy #15 to Sensational Annual #1 (which for me is the real end of that version of Spider-Man). The Peter Parker of Brand New Day is just not that guy, in my view.

Of course for a lot of younger fans who start with that (assuming they come to the comics from Greg Weisman's cartoon, the later Raimi movies, the Marc Webb movies)...this Peter is for them, but the minute they start following the references to Pre-OMD titles like the one in the Regent Arc where an editor note refers to a New Avengers issue where MJ stays in the tower, they will see a different Spider-Man from the earlier era and so on. And the minute you try adding in the dots, the greater the difficulty it will be to make sense of it.

I thought Marvel: 1985 was alright, one of the better things that Millar's written.

I don't think you really understood that Orwell quote ("All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others"). For one thing, it wasn't true and it was a complete reversal of their earlier statement. The characters were merely using it to justify their actions.

You can't have something be more canonical than something else. Either it's canon or it isn't. OMD and everything post-OMD is canon. Period. The end.

(Again, I say this as someone who hates OMD, but you've got to accept the bad with the good.)

Edited by alliterator on Dec 29th 2018 at 8:32:38 AM

Yeah, don't quote Stalinist (literal) pigs. Very much not the point of that book.

Orwell according to his tvtropes page which has many supporting links and so on, was also an anti-semite homophobe who ratted out students he suspected as gay in his boarding school, lied about shooting an elephant, claimed that Eton was a Boarding School of Horrors when he was probably the worst thing in that school and so on. So I honestly don't really think how he interpreted and saw things really counts a great deal. I don't always believe in Death of the Author but in the case of someone whose personal conduct in life is so far beyond what he tried to present himself, it applies. It's a paraphrase after all, and it's a quote that has lapsed into conventional usage...like I hear it used all the time. And yeah it does hit at a general truth. I don't know why Steve Ditko is so gratuitously slandered and misrepresented for his cornball philosophy while people like Orwell are made into saints, just because Orwell, mostly by accident and personal grudges, managed to be on the right side, even if in personal life he was a horrible person as opposed to Ditko who was widely known for being kind and affable by everyone who worked with him.

But in any case, continuity in comics is a different thing. On one hand it's changed thanks to the internet and instant availability of multiple back issues and so on, and sites that chronicle information. But that wasn't the case in the old days. For every writer like Roger Stern and Alan Moore who always did the Arc Welding and add on to something pre-existing, you have people who come in ride roughshod and then leave a wreckage for someone else to fix and make sense. Even good writers do that. There's this nice article on Comics Cube (not a website I always like) which discuses continuity in relation to Gwen Stacy.

Quite a debate we have here. I think we all have stories we want and don't want canon, but we got to accept it and hope a writer eventually addresses it. Speaking of editor canon, it's ironic that among Marvel writers and editors, OMD has a let us never speak of this ever again status. It both happened and didn't.

You know i always wondered why Spider-Man can't deal with the issue of rape at all, like Spider-Man has always been a socially conscious series, the above mentioned Harry Osborn does drugs issues were requested by the Government, and Stan Lee himself flipped off the Comics code authority by doing the story. Spider-Man has always dealt with controversial issues, let's see the AIDS story in Spider-Man unlimited,( the 90s comic not the cartoon or game) Debra Whiteman's martial issues, Flash Thompson's alcohol and troubled family life. Ned and Betty divorcing, Why should we draw a line?

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

This debates started with me saying:

And then Jack said:

Jack, if your argument is "the reader decides what is canon" then those stories count to me. I consider them canon to the 616 until Marvel says otherwise.

Where there's life, there's hope.

Because again how do you deal with that story and still start and end with a Peter who is in the same place or at the least salvageable to return to an earlier state? Spider-Man is at heart a comedic story. It always has to retain and carry an element of comedy. There can be seriousness and darkness but too much and it stops being Spider-Man, on the other hand a purely comedic Spider-Man is still fundamentally Spider-Man so that shows. How can you have Peter whine about Parker Luck when the story shines at the truly unlucky and unfortunate, next to whom Peter would come across, and indeed does actually come across, as really privileged?

Stuff like the drug issue, the marital problems of his friends and so on, happen to Peter's supporting cast, and they are problems that can be fixed or resolved peaceably. Harry can go to rehab and so on. His friends can move on and so forth. And look, nobody has ever to my knowledge successfully and convincingly invoked Thou Shalt Not Kill on a perpetrator of sexual assault...certainly not in a heroic story about a non-lethal vigilante.

Having said that, I do think that the Jonathan Caesar storyline, the guy who ends MJ's modeling career for rejecting his advances...it kind of does anticipate Weinstein and Co in retrospect. Since Me Too! highlighted that many women who said no faced social consequences. And MJ never getting too far in her modeling and acting career does speak to the problems of her fundamental goodness and fidelity not being rewarded in that sexist entertainment industry. But at the end of the day it's still fairly sanitized and so on. And it's kind of undermined by the Male Gaze many invoke with MJ over the years.

You are absolutely correct to do so. I meant that comment jokingly but I said what I said...and again you are correct. As is alliterator.

Officially OMD and other stuff is canon. What I should have said is that it's a bad story. That it contradicts stuff from earlier stories that are better and so on.

That's because, in order for it to work, neither Peter nor MJ could remember their past life as a married couple — but neither could they remember trading away their marriage, so Mephisto/Joe Quesada invented "One Moment in Time," the story that took place instead of OMD. Basically: Mephisto made everyone forget, but Peter and MJ instead remember going to Doctor Strange to make everyone forget.

My favorite joke about OMD is when Daredevil was looking to get back his own secret identity, Daimon Hellstrom told him that Mephisto could do it...and Daredevil told him that he wasn't that desperate.◊

I disagree with this sentiment. Spider-Man may make quips and may be comedic at times, but his very first story ended with his lamenting the death of his uncle and how he could have stopped it. Spider-Man is inherently a tragedy.

Edited by alliterator on Dec 29th 2018 at 9:09:08 AM

The full captions at the end of Amazing Fantasy #15 states,

"And a lean, silent figure slowly fades into the gathering darkness, aware at last that in this world, with great power, there must also come—great responsibility! And so a legend is born and a new name is added to the roster of those who make the world of fantasy the most exciting realm of all!"

— The Narrator, Amazing Fantasy #15, complete full closing caption. Written by Stan Lee.

Basically Lee is all serious about this lesson and then says, "Well that was fun, who's up for chinese." The fact is that "With Great Power..." was never an intrinsic part of Spider-Man until 1987, in Spider-Man Vs. Wolverine#1 that was the first time in-page, in-canon that Uncle Ben was attributed to "great power comes great responsibility". For most of the first 290 issues or so, that was never a consistent and definitive part of who Peter was. Spider-Man has a Downer Beginning but so does Kung Fu Panda or the sequel which has that line, "your story didn't start out happily but look what you've become". Harry Potter (who is basically Peter Parker if he was rich and lucky) likewise is largely a comedic story even if it has dark themes. I mean comedy in the classic sense, although in the case of Spider-Man it can have the modern connotation to. I mean J. Jonah Jameson is a comic character and he's as iconic a part of Spider-Man as anyone. Mary Jane Watson is also quite a ball of laughs when written at her best and she's essentially an optimistic figure.

Batman is a tragic figure. Superman, and even Captain America, can be interpreted as tragic. Wolverine, Daredevil, Iron Man are also tragic figures. As is the Hulk. But Spider-Man doesn't really work as a tragic character. Spider-Man: Reign proved that as did the overly serious Andrew Garfield movies. The Spider-Man of the last years who had the most complete arc, Ultimate Spider-Man also ends on a comedic note.

Edited by Revolutionary_Jack on Dec 29th 2018 at 9:25:07 AM

Ultimate Peter ended with his death. Ultimate Miles ended with the universe exploding.

Where there's life, there's hope.

In case you haven't read the later issues. See Spider-Men II and Ultimate Comics: Miles Morales Vol 2.

Ultimate Peter comes back from his death. He passes his web-shooters to Miles, gives him his blessings, and runs away with MJ. At the end of Spider-Men II, the Ultimate Universe is alive and well, Peter is part of the Ultimates.

So yeah, it's essentially a comedic story.

If we counted Spider-Men II then it did not end anything. It re-begins a thing that has ended.

Where there's life, there's hope.

That's how comedies work. It's always "That's All Folks"...and that's why the panel near the end of Spider-Men II has Jessica Drew looking at the reader.

Spider-Man is a coming-of-age story that becomes a melodrama, with bits of romantic comedy, Black Comedy (at least in Ditko's years), Screwball Comedy, kitchen-sink working-class blues, and ultimately a love story (Peter and MJ). It's arc has generally gone upwards.

That's true of Ultimate Spider-Man because Ultimate Peter is legitimately funny.

It doesn't matter who said it, the phrase itself has been an intrinsic part of the Spider-Man story since its inception. So much so, in fact, that people attribute the phase to the comics, when it predates it.

And it doesn't matter what the last words written in Amazing Fantasy #15 were — narration was always added after the story itself anyway. What mattered was that last image of Peter crying. And then, subsequently, his life has been filled with further tragedies — from the death of Captain Stacy, to the death of Gwen Stacy, and so on. The only reason to think that Spider-Man was a comedy was because he makes quips, but, again, the actual story is inherently tragic.

I personally see Spider-Man as a tragic character who quips to cope. Spider-Man goes through a Cerberus rollercoaster over the years, like you can have a dark story where Kraven buries him alive, then you could have a story where Spider-Man loses all of his clothes in public then have a storyline where Spider-Man comforts a child cancer patient then finally have a story where a robot with Jameson's face fights Spider-Man and loses because there are too many spiders.

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

His life has also been filled with triumphs...defeating the Master Planner, graduating high school and enrolling in ESU on scholarship, almost never failing to attract the company of women, all of them beautiful. Never getting so poor that he's going to be chased out of New York. The reason I call it comic is precisely because these tragedies don't really happen to him and they don't always have the consequences that come with tragedies. Like in tragedy you have permanent inevitable change and consequences. That's what tragedy is about. Gwen Stacy's death for instance had no real long-term effect on Peter. It didn't change him. He was still the same person he was before her death. Just had someone else to mope over. Gwen's death affected Mary Jane and Harry Osborn more than Peter.

So Jameson isn't a comedic character? The entire set-up of Peter selling photos that slander his alter-ego isn't comedic? Mary Jane Watson's introduction and first set up isn't comedic? Comedy involves a lot more stuff other than a laugh track. In any case there are tragic elements in Peter's life and that of his supporting characters, but carrying through that is comedy. I kind of feel that seeing Spider-Man as tragic or primarily tragic is basically perpetuating '90s Grimdark sensibility. The fact is that if you read the Spider-Man Newspaper Strip, Renew Your Vows, and other child-friendly versions, you still get Spider-Man and who he is distilled clearly. Whereas The Amazing Spider-Man Series which took a very serious approach utterly failed. Likewise, Dan Slott's most universally liked Spider-Man story and still seen by defenders as his best is the — Spider-Man/Human Torch :I'm with Stupid — series. That's a comedy too.

Edited by Revolutionary_Jack on Dec 30th 2018 at 5:44:15 AM

Might want to pick it up. I'd like to see Dan Slott's best when he's actually writing Spider-Man and not Doc Ock or Bruce Wayne. All i really Spider-Man stories i really liked from Slott was Spider-Island and Big Time.

But back to the point, Even if Spider-Man's supporting cast are the ones to deal with serious issues, i still say the series in general is allowed to handle more mature issues. I guess Infinite Crisis dropped the ball so hard on the issue, the industry is too afraid to do it.

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