Spider-Man General Discussion

When was the last time we saw him anyway?

Spider geddon iirc

I always sort of liked the idea of Judas Traveller, as he stands out from the rest of Spidey's enemies, but unfortunately, like everything else in the Clone Saga, they changed their minds about what they wanted to do with him and the whole thing was messy anticlimax.

I'm just rolling my eyes at this. Judas Traveler just doesn't fit at all in Spider-Man, and his constant philosophizing about the nature of evil got trite fast.

But hey, glad for his fans at least. In an industry like this, every character no matter how obscure is likely to have one hardcore fan.

It’s not like he’s in a Spider-Man title, he looks to be playing the X-Men now.

Edited by slimcoder on May 4th 2022 at 9:33:06 AM

Aaah, okay, he's far more in their ballpark than he is Spidey's.

The X-Men fight all sorts of weird shit anyway.

Granted, so does Spidey and I still find it bizarre that Marvel keeps trying to force mystical elements in his origin story and rogues.

Yeah, but there appears to be some cross promotional work going on between the Spider and X-Men books (Free Comic Book Day will cover this also with MJ being attacked by Moira as well as the Dark Web tease between Ben and Madeline Pryor)

In fairness, they don't do it that often.

Madame Webb (who is dead), Judas Traveller (who got retconned into just being a mutant with illusion powers) and Morlun were as far as it got.

I didn't know you and Peter were dating.

In all serious, while classic Gwen wasn't without her issues, I don't think she was really that bad of a character during the run (and I disagree that she has *no* character, they just needed to reconcile her different portrayals which wouldn't be that hard to do).

But idk honestly, still fine with her death and the impact it had on Peter and the comic. The canonization of Gwen didn't start until *much* later, you can go without that.

She was just as smart as Peter *before* Peter was re-evaluated to be a super genius. Even though Peter has always had the inventions that prove his super genius status, early Peter Parker was more 'gifted' or 'advanced' than... one of the top minds on the planet.

I kind of like Super Genius Peter, but it's been pointed out to me recently that it's quite jarring to look at the web fluid and spider-tracers as evidence that Peter must be a genius - because it's ridiculously impressive by any real world standard - but ignore that the Marvel Universe is full of people who create equally ridiculous things and not all of them are put on the same pedestal as Peter. Like, it may just be easier to accept that such batshit inventions are within the grasp for reasonably smart people in-verse.

I don't think Gwen really lines up with the idea of being as smart as modern GIGABRAIN Peter.

How about her being a psychiatrist like her Nightbird variant? Or the 617 variant who became a detective.

Edited by Cortez on May 5th 2022 at 5:16:44 AM

Pretty sure life story has her as a psychiatrist as well.

Or, well, Joyce Delaney.

edit: wait... WTF is this Nighthawk stuff? A universe where they have some other existing hero take Spider-man's general role?

Edited by Saiga on May 5th 2022 at 2:20:15 AM

It was the Heroes Reborn event that ran a while ago.

Mephisto basically changed reality to a world where the Squadron Supreme are the top superhero dogs and this changed the lives of many many people for instance Peter never got bit by a spider and wound up dying preventing people from being hurt during one of Hyperion's battles.

Gwen in that world became Nightbird, Nighthawk's partner and a psychiatrist at Ravencroft.

Edited by slimcoder on May 5th 2022 at 2:27:26 AM

...why?

Just going wild.

There was a lot of tie-ins, really taking advantage of the new setting to do a bunch of stuff with characters.

It was just writers having fun and doing some DC homages since the Squadron are a Justice League analogue.

For instance there was the Squadron Savage one-shot which was a riff on the Suicide Squad featuring Kingpin, Elektra, and Punisher as the Amanda Waller, Rick Flagg, and Deadshot stand-ins.

Fittingly because Nighthawk is a Batman riff a lot of Spider-Man characters where changed to Batman analogues to a degree so Gwen there is kinda like Batgirl.

Edited by slimcoder on May 5th 2022 at 2:34:33 AM

Regarding Peter being a genius because he invented web fluid

Paste Pot Pete has invented a lot of adhesives. And even a solvent strong enough to dissolve Adhesive X, the super glue Zemo 1 invented which stuck his mask to his face

Peter's tech was impressive because a lot of it was invented while we was 15/17 in high school with no money. A lot of characters in Marvel have wild inventions, but most of them weren't children to start out with.

Have yall read Steve Orlando's Spidey 2099? Miguel talked way too much in-costume tbh

Booo!

Maybe, but it seems MJ was just better, and by pure accident. I agree with you, but I think when it comes to these sorts of things, some comic book writers just have tunnel vision.

The iconic-ness of her death was something of a double edged sword, since it also kept her out of adaptations for years, because they believed she was meant to die. I wonder if the canonization, as you call it, was an attempt by writers to break out of this.

Oh, MJ being “better” was no accident - Stan Lee has said more than once that the idea behind her character was that she’d be a one-in-a-million unattainable ideal, whereas Gwen while somewhat less glamorous (I mean she still has the brain of a rocket scientist and the body of a supermodel…) was an equal and therefore ultimately a better match.

Evidently a lot of fans when the 70s wanted the ideal to be not so unattainable.

Thing about Gwen is, she was a completely ordinary person. The fact that she was Peter Parker's love interest was her only connection to the world of superheroes. So if you were to bring her back, but didn't reignite the romance with Peter ... like, what would there even be for her to do?

That's probably what the writer who'd come up with this hypothetical scenario would explore.

Have their been other characters that have been in Gwen Stacy's situation? If so, were they able to get out of it?

Bucky and Jason Todd where also famously deaths that stuck until they didn't.

We’ve even recently had a return of a Death by Origin Story character: Maria Castle. That hardly EVER happens for obvious reasons.

Krakoa has also revived several characters who were created solely to die, like Jumbo Carnation who’s actually had some good sized roles.

Jason Todd's a fun inverse Gwen Stacy, because he was also killed off of the whims of the writer at the time, with even worse reasons. (Jim Starlin really hated sidekicks.) And after his death, he was depicted as way worse than he was in life, called a screw up and failure who smoked and drank underage despite us not seeing any of that.

Gwen's saintly depicture in the afterlife never gets that bad, honestly.