Spider-Man General Discussion

Iron Man was not very popular or best-selling in the '60s and the '70s, so I don't think it was popular with the hippies and I don't think Lee's scheme worked well. The hippies loved and preferred Doctor Strange, which was not an audience Ditko was targeting to say the least. Part of the reason Iron Man became a long-running Avenger is that he was barely able to carry his own title. And even then the most important Avengers was Cap and Hank Pym. And in any case, Stan Lee did get the hippies to like a suit...himself. It's not hyperbole that if you think of Marvel's mascot characters, the only person who is second to Spider-Man is Stan Lee. He's as famous and recognizable, and in some cases, moreso than many Marvel characters. Like Stan Lee is bigger than the Fantastic Four are at this point.

It’s all relative but it was Hank Pym, the Hulk, and the X Men who couldn’t hold a book

Iron Man may not have been as big as Spider-Man but he sold well enough

But he may have hit a different demographic than intended. Apparently the majority of female fan mail Marvel received was about Iron Man

Because whatever your feelings about Snyder, working with animation and working with live action are two different things. This inability to realize this is what leads to bad decisions like David Hayter being replaced with Keifer Sutherland as the voice of Big Boss. Not to mention that superhero animation doesn't exactly have a flawless track record either as seen with the animated adaptation of The Killing Joke and almost every Marvel animated show of the 2010s.

I feel like people are going too far in the opposite direction with this animation vs live action debate. Yes, ITVS was great but it doesn't invalidate every single live action superhero work and believing it does is no different than not taking animation seriously.

Edited by windleopard on Feb 14th 2019 at 10:36:20 AM

Huh. Was this before Claremont's run on X-Men which is seen as the first female friendly writer's run generally?

Spider-Man also had a strong female readership I believe.

I generally agree with windleopard. I am not a fan of any of the Post-DCAU movies. And you know Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Trilogy is pretty swell, and while it might be excessive and a little bland in spots it's still a striking series and tonally on point and tells a complete story, which isn't true of Raimi's movies. Likewise, Tim Burton's Batman films, especially Batman Returns is excellent.

I do think however that Zack Snyder is genuinely a bad film-maker. I saw Watchmen which everyone says is great but I don't think it holds up. I saw the Ultimate Cut that everyone loves and there's a total misreading of the book while having superficial similarities. Ozymandias is miscast. He is supposed to be a classical hero in appearance and demeanor and instead comes off as Obviously Evil. Snyder should have cast Affleck as Ozymandias/Veidt or someone likable. It adapts the entire comic but most of the runtime is spent on the first three issues and most of it goes to Rorschach and of course the richest supporting character, Dr. Malcolm Long, the major African-American character in the book gets shortchanged.

The quote I found doesn’t give numbers or dates

i wasn't exactly bashing live action DC movies when i made that comment, i do enjoy the Batman Tim Burton and the Dark knight, the Sam Raimi movies, ETC, i'm just saying the DCAU people still have a good record when it comes to building shared universes, and that Zack Snyder doesn't have a good record when it comes to movies, particularly Super-hero movies.Not saying you should hire Paul Dini to become the head of DCEU or anything, but maybe having someone from the DCAU staff on an advisory capacity if nothing else could have saved the DCEU or maybe not. And me saying ITSV outperforms live action Spider-Man movies does not mean i think live action movies are invalidated, and i was referring to Amazing Spider-Man which i think most of us can agree were not good.

But yes, Windleopard, does have a point, people don't translate to other Mediums well, like JK Rowling and Fantastic beasts, or Keifer Sutherland's bland performance as Snake.

Of course, Spider-Man has a strong female readership, (insert joke about webshooters here) Now seriously, on the topic of Iron Man, i honestly feel that if was the original Ditko-Lee incarnation, or even the Spectacular version, Spider-Man would spend a hypothetical crossover with Iron Man mostly annoyed with him.

Edited by RedHunter543 on Feb 15th 2019 at 5:25:11 AM

Also, has Steve Ditko ever commented on Mary Jane the same way he commented on his alleged refusal to make Norman Osborn Green Goblin? And has Stan Lee ever said who his favorite Spider-Man villain was? As a kid i recall him saying it was Doc Ock, but the quote i read this from disappeared.

Stan Lee generally says whatever fans want him to say. As Mark Evanier said, Lee cared more about fame than money, which means he generally tries to be everyone's friend. So literally any controversy in Spider-Man, you can both claim Lee and not claim Lee at the same time. Ditko strangely enough thanks to his permanent silence and inaccessibility is also someone everyone can claim. A lot of industry professionals said that Ditko wasn't keen on aging Spider-Man but there has never been direct quotes on that traceable to him.

In any case, no Ditko has never commented on Mary Jane or what his plans were for the character. He did have plans though. Mary Jane's first "pre-appearance" is in ASM #25, which is the first issue for which Ditko has entirely a plotting credit. In other words, when Ditko had control on the issue, he devoted a big subplot about how MJ was so beautiful that both Betty Brant and Liz Allan silently agree that she has them beat. Her second one is in #38, i.e. the last pages Ditko ever drew and plotted. One thing is clear that Ditko's Mary Jane would not quite be the character we know. Like Ditko had MJ wear more conservative clothing. She wears a babushka. Then in #38 she's shown driving a car. That got changed and shuffled when Romita took over, Mary Jane is now a '60s girl, and she doesn't have her own cars and part of her reason for dating guys is their rides, either Peter's moped (which Peter takes her to the Rhino battle in what I think is a Roman Holiday homage) or Harry Osborn's car. I think Ditko envisioned Mary Jane as more middle class. But in any case, the stuff about Mary Jane, i.e. Aunt May saw her as right for Peter and said she would make a good wife for him...all the endgame stuff about the two, that was set up in Lee-Ditko Spider-Man itself.

John Romita Sr. incidentally who took over from Ditko, and always said that he tried to maintain consistency between the two eras and ground all his choices on what came before, pointed out that Ditko made Mary Jane this beauty who stunned people and he had to come up with a design that did that. It's one thing to match impossible expectations but another to exceed that. According to Mark Ginocchio's 100 Things A Spider-Man Fan Should Know (a good book), Romita Sr. wanted Peter and Mary Jane to be the couple and start dating then and there, but Lee changed his mind and wanted to make it Gwen. Romita Sr. and Lee argued before the former deferred to Lee.

Its probably for the best. Considering the relationship writing between Gwen and Peter, MJ would not have fared as well as she did if she got together with Peter so early

Yeah. Lee would probably have made Mary Jane the prime candidate for bridge diving.

And eventually Lee came around to MJ in his newspaper strip, where there's no Gwen.

I wonder if Ditko would have written Mary Jane as a sort of birds of a feather with Peter. While you are correct Jack, when Ditko left, things changed during the Romita era, but i'd argue that it's not as different as you'd suggest, for one if you look at the last few issues, Gwen does gradually warm up to Peter, Norman going from warm with his son to abusive by 39, you can still see that Norman was a jerk to him in 37. I mean Stan Lee was still half in charge so most ideas would have to go by him i presume.

And speaking of Smilin, Stan, i do recall him once defending Dr. Doom, as in during a visit to a young fan, when he said Doom was his favorite villain, Stan Lee actually defended Doom and argued he's more of a well intentioned extremist, interesting. https://www.cbr.com/stan-lee-explains-why-doctor-doom-isnt-a-villain/

Regardless, Doc Ock was the most used villain during Stan Lee's writing tenure, so i presume there is favoritism. ( for the record my favorite Spider-Man villain is Venom.) Poor Norman spent most of the Lee-Romita era as a lame dad with chronic head-aches. you can see where i went when i compared Doc Ock to Gwen Stacy and Norman to MJ yeah? Coincidentally i feel that the night Gwen Stacy died both solidified their status as the Arch-Enemy and THE love interest respectively.

Edited by RedHunter543 on Feb 15th 2019 at 7:29:05 AM

If Dr Doom wants to rule the world and is a well intentioned extremist then some of his early appearances take on a baffling quality

Surely there’s a better way to secure funding than forcing RICHARDSSSSSS into going back in time to steal pirate gold for you

Sealing from Pirates is pay evil unto evil though

That's an example of Lee saying what fans want him to say. He also said on another occasion that he never saw Magneto as a bad guy but a Well-Intentioned Extremist. Except that's not the Magneto he wrote. The one he wrote was basically Snidely Whiplash in a bucket outfit. Chris Claremont created the more important Magneto. In general, quoting or citing Lee is a problem because one he loved publicity and publicity loved him back, and he gave many interviews and was always accessible.

You know Abraham Riesman, the writer for the Vulture and other comics publications, is working on a biography of Lee which might illuminate some stuff about him.

Either that or Stan Lee's poor memory was showing. As i recall during the Green Goblin debate, Stan Lee mentioned he didn't know if it was his idea or Ditko's to make Norman the Goblin. So it's entirely possible, Stan Lee thought he wrote Magneto like he was complex. But i'm sure the interview is him contradicting a fan on what Dr. Doom actually is.

Edited by RedHunter543 on Feb 15th 2019 at 8:10:45 AM

His memory was so so bad

Peter Palmer anyone

Don't forget Mary Jane Watkins.

He once called the Hulk Donald Blake

Which is an entirely different person

In fact, isn't that how Scott Summers got the "Slim" nickname? Because Lee accidentally called him Slim in one issue?

A lot of stuff people say about Lee can be questioned. Like everyone says that he favored Alliterative Name as a mnemonic device. When in fact he made typos and forgot stuff even with alliterative names. And yet he never misspelled Gwen Stacy or Anthony Stark, who don't have alliterations. Remember that Lee didn't want to write comic books for a living. He wanted to write the Great American Novel, and he had literary ambitions. He got the job at Timely as editor because of relatives and he saw it as a dead-end gig, until he turned 40, and found himself to be the most important editor in superhero comics.

I think Lee generally wasn't a fan of superheroes and he approached the genre with irreverence. And I don't think he was as personally invested in those characters as people assume him he is. For instance, Gerry Conway said on multiple occasions that Gwen Stacy is a stand-in for Lee's wife, and he also said that Lee's daughter is the spitting image of Gwen...which suggests that both Peter Parker and George Stacy are Author Avatar for Lee, except I think Conway is wrong there. And again that raises the issue, that if, as per Conway, both Susan Storm and Gwen Stacy are mirrors of Mrs. Lee and the relationships are patterned on Lee's life, than well, I mean it's not very flattering, since Susan Storm is a famously sexist portrayal of a woman and certainly a married woman and Gwendy is basically Susan Storm without superpowers. Mary Jane was easily the best female character Lee wrote and that was by accident and not by design.

In more sober and private interviews, Lee often expressed fondness for smaller characters. Lee said that the Daredevil story he wrote where Matt Murdock defends a Vietnam Veteran was his favorite of his own works and he often talked about how cool it was to get Wally Wood to work on a Daredevil issue.

Edited by Revolutionary_Jack on Feb 15th 2019 at 8:39:31 AM

Ironically I think it may have been that irreverence that helped distinguish Marvel from the competition (also distinguished) and helped build their popularity

Absolutely. Stuff like the comics being set in New York rather than versions of NY like Gotham and Metropolis, or Central City (which I think is Detroit or supposed to be at any rate, or maybe Chicago). The parodying of tropes. Spider-Man was originally a deconstruction of Superman and Batman...what if you took a balanced version of those two, but removed the sidekicks, the older Friend on the Force, and switched the public approval the other way, and denied your character stuff like fancy headquarters (Batcave, Fortress of Solitude) and made him entirely alone who had to solve stuff on his own and invent solutions on the fly since he doesn't have time and space and money to do it. So that's what Spider-Man is. Bruce Wayne had Alfred, this Cool Old Guy mentor who validates and supports Master Bruce, but Spider-Man got his Alfred killed, you know Uncle Ben.

Even though Peter and Gwen weren't a thing in the newspaper strip, the strip did eventually integrate her bridging into the strip's continuity. Norman died for real at the end of the strip's take on events, hence why he's no major threat to the Parker's happiness there. Harry used to appear in the strip back in the 70s, and returned in 2015 as the Hobgoblin of all people, this was due to being brainwashed by a psychiatrist (yes, Harry has a bad track record with those)

Speaking of the strip, Mary Jane managed to put a temporary stop to the Purple Man and freed Peter and Luke from his control

So, i'd like to discuss the depressing prevalent syndrome of Karma houdini in Spider-man's rogue's gallery. First of we have Green Goblin who despite evading justice for years is currently in prison as of this post and ironically he's one of the few A listers currently in jail. ( side note, Sorry Jack, but Green Goblin playing Karma Houdini during the Ditko-Lee era does not qualify as Arch-enemy qualities. As Peter himself notes in 39, all that amounts to is Green Goblin running away, plus Doc Ock played that card during If this be my destiny so what does that tell you?) Let's see I'm pretty sure Carnage is free, Venom is an anti hero, Doc Ock is currently cosmic powered, Hobgoblin is free but was suddenly vaporized by Captain marvel but is now working with Mile's uncle. ( taking comic book death to a new level) The sinister several are also free, and hell Beetle is working as a lawyer freely. The Kingpin is mayor, and Shocker last i checked is on trial.

Man, Spider-Man sucks at his job.

I'd argue Aunt May was supposed to be Alfred but if Alfred hated Batman.