This thread's for the Spider-Man comics and spin-offs, whether they're decades old or brand new.
- Apart from the main Marvel Universe titles, Ultimate Spider-Man, Spider-Man "What If?" stories, crossovers, guest appearances in other books, Alternate Universe tales and things like Marvel's manga adaptations are all on-topic here.
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- Characters and comics that originated in Spider-Man but are no longer directly connected to the spider-franchise (e.g. Punisher, Silver Sable) are not on-topic, unless you're discussing historical connections and crossovers. If in doubt, check before you write a long post. If this isn't the right place, there's a more general Marvel Comics thread
which covers them.
Technically, Marvel's Infinity Comics (and their predecessors, Infinite Comics) are webcomics, not comic books, but it's fine to talk about their Spider-Man stories here.
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Edited by MacronNotes on Jul 10th 2023 at 10:58:13 AM
Yep. Everyone in this run has been horribly out of character to the point they could all be fakes and it would be perfectly plausible.
But then what would the real characters have been up to all this time?
The Protomen enhanced my life.It would be the most welcome synergy in a while if they used that to correct all this... not like it could possibly get much worse than the show.
Disney100 Marathon | DreamWorks MarathonI think Wells is very good on other properties.
He's just uniquely bad on Spider-Man.
And I note that this applies to Mary Jane as well. Her children are DEAD and this is going to be a life-defining horrible moment for her for the rest of her life. See what happened to Wanda Maximoff and Donna Troy.
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.I will laugh if it turns out MJ and Norman somehow swapped bodies before the run and that's how everything goes back to normal.
This would also mean that Paul has been fucking Norman the entire time.
"The Black Rage makes us strong, because we must resist its temptations every day of our lives or be forever damned!"Skirts around the was in a committed relationship with Peter at the time and knowingly hooked up with Paul "I caused a genocide" Rabin.
Also makes the affair Peter's fault for him "always being a mess" while being needlessly cruel anytime he tries to be cordial post break up.
That says a lot about Wells' MJ.
Like fans would be after Peter's head if he did half this stuff to MJ if it wasn't an elseworld story like Assassin Spider-Man.
Edited by FKJ10 on Sep 15th 2023 at 10:38:50 AM
Doesn't help the mystery box of
"What did Peter do?"
Amounted to burned every bridge in the superhero community to save MJ trapped in a another dimension who cheated on him with the guy that got her stuck their in the first place.
Seriously no amount or Spider-Totem bullshit will make me ever buy that it's was safer to keep MJ in that dimension than Peter.
To me, MJ is in the clear because of what Rabin did, he cast a spell on her, she's 'chained' to either the kids or to Paul. It's just the same as when she was under the OMD spell from Mephisto, she had two different boyfriends around that time and was cold/cruel to Peter for no reason, and we all know she recovered from that. WHEN Peter takes her back or vice versa I'll be fine with that.
Edited by Zarius on Sep 15th 2023 at 11:30:43 AM
Chained to the kids.
Not that being chained to Paul via hypnosis makes it any better as it changes MJ from a cheater to a rape victim.
Because MJ and Paul have been shown to be intimate in bed multiple times.
So Wells would have just pulled another "Rape of Ms. Marvel" in his bid to break up Peter and MJ for his "drama".
They haven't been shown to be 'intimate' at all. They've only been shown to share a bed once. In fact that bed scene showed them as far apart as possible. Yes, there was hand holding towards the end of that scene, but that's really nothing, that was them doing the bare minimum to cope with losing the kids.
Until there's a kiss or a declaration of love, which hasn't happened at all, there's nothing there
Edited by Zarius on Sep 16th 2023 at 1:02:40 AM
It's definitely something they should retcon.
But the "These are your chains" thing actually just makes it worse because it implies loving children is some sort of horrifying burden versus something Mary Jane (the real one) might actually do.
Even more so since they were adopted.
I also don't mind the, "Trapped on a Desert Island, you hook up with someone else" element. There's a reason that exists as a thought experiment. It's just Paul is particularly an awful choice.
Sort of like how Sins Past is horrifying because it's Norman Osborn when Gwen Stacy hooking up with, say, Harry would have been "okay, sure."
Edited by CharlesPhipps on Sep 16th 2023 at 1:54:37 AM
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.I suggest they go with All Just a Dream.
Edited by CharlesPhipps on Sep 16th 2023 at 1:55:13 AM
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.Aapparently Steve Ditko explained
that initially he wanted to kill off Betty Brant early on, explaining, "I had this idea we establish a real romance between Betty Brant and Peter Parker and then have her die in some kind of accident - nothing criminal, just the kind of unfortunate tragedy that happens in real life. Stan said no, and he was right."
The way to deal with all the messiness of Wells' run is to just let the next creative team tell the story they want to tell. There's no need to retcon any of it, because - for the online bitching - most of the audience isn't hung up on it. Either they enjoy the story or they don't, but they're not weeping about how Spider-Man is Ruined Forever or anything like that. When the next creative team comes in and largely ignores the Wells run, the readers will go along with it, and forget this run actually happened, because really, who cares? It's comics. Bad stories happen, and things move on.
A small percentage of readers spend a lot of time thinking about the comics. The vast majority just read them and move on. It would be stupid of Marvel to spend any time worrying about how to satisfy the vindictive anger of a small number of readers, since that would come at the expense of letting creators tell stories they actually want to tell.
In all honesty, the more I see people here talking about how awful Paul is, the more I suspect that he's probably the blandest and most inoffensive character possible and that the hate is almost certainly ridiculously overblown.
X-Men X-Pert, my blog where I talk about X-Men comics.
