This thread's for the Spider-Man comics and spin-offs, whether they're decades old or brand new.
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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
I've already discussed this at length above, I'm not going to repeat myself.
Over in the Infinity Comics -
- The Love Unlimited arc looking back at Peter and Gwen's relationship after Captain Stacy's death wraps up this week. It's not very happy. In the present, Miles also calls Peter out for secretly following Gwen out of the country, which is a plot thread I'd forgotten.
- Over in Spider-Man Unlimited 616 Peter and Insomniac game Peter are distracted from chasing the Spot across the multiverse. Lots of mood whiplash in this one - from a cartoon kaiju in Spider-Ham's world to an encounter with a homeless, disabled and depressed Peter with no powers. He tried to stop the burglar who killed Uncle Ben, and was shot in the kneecap, with Ben still taking a fatal shot afterwards. His life fell apart after that. Also, as established in a previous issue, Insomniac Peter has never had anyone named Gwen in his life...
The other Peters give him all their pocket change and tell him to go talk to Aunt May
Forever liveblogging the Avengers@Mrph 1 tbf for that one Gwen wanted Peter to come with her to Europe. Peter went as Spider-man instead which just scared her thinking the web head came to kill her next in the original comic.
Basically Peter should have just put the mask down for a bit and been a more supportive lover to Gwen.
Also I hate Peter is wearing the Goblin suit when talking about Gwen Stacy.
Edited by FKJ10 on Oct 20th 2023 at 10:23:30 AM
Peter was always a pretty terrible boyfriend to Gwen. Admittedly, she was a pretty awful girlfriend to him, so it kinda balanced out. I always laugh at people like Alex Ross or the current Spider-Editorial who treat Gwen and Peter’s relationship like it was some happy, perfect, one true love thing. Actually read any comics from when she was alive and their interactions mostly consist of them treating one another like crap while proclaiming to love each other.
In fact, Peter was pretty awful to all his love interests — especially poor Debra — until he and MJ finally got together for good, by which time he had gone through a metric ton of Character Development.
@Charles Phipps I mean this in the nicest way possible and you are entirely entitled to your opinions but whenever you talk about Peter and MJ’s relationship, you absolutely baffle me because you have such a weird take on them that seems totally disjointed from the actual comics (from my view).
Be as open and frank as you want, I won't take offense.
I am very aware I'm probably an utterly weird outlier. I have a very longstanding and personal relationship with Spider-Man. It was how I taught myself to read (or discovered my joy of reading at least) and was something that I was fanatical about until the Clone Saga with all of my pocket money being used to get older comics, reprints, and putting polybagged copies taped to my wall as wallpaper. The Mary Jane-Peter relationship was something that had been part of my earliest introduction to the character. Single Peter was always a guy I knew from past issues and alternate universes.
I wasn't a fan of Raimi's Spider-Man became Kristen Dunst's Mary Jane was so different from the one in the comic books. Mary Jane was many things but not the literal girl next door. I was however a big fan of the 90s Animated Spider-man cartoon where I developed a very strong affection for Felicia Hardy and gradually came to prefer her (even though Animated Felicia was actually more accurate to comic book Gwen—ugh, my brain)
I had my first long "break" from Spider-Man with the Clone Saga and all of my subscriptions meant I experienced the entire thing and watched it destroy the character I loved. I more or less skipped out on Dan Slott and Ultimate Spider-Man (so I took a break for a decade or more) until I came back with Spencer's Spider-Man fairly recently. The thing about the Clone Saga was well before One More Day, it shit on (and I don't use that profanity lightly—even though I swear a storm normally) Mary Jane and Peter for YEARS beforehand.
They'd tried to make fans against Mary Jane and Peter for a long-long time before One More Day. They'd gotten married in 1987 but the Clone Saga started in 1994, which means that the "Peter and Mary Jane have a deeply troubled and unhappy marriage" started seven years into it. Which is not that long in comic book terms.
I hated the retcon of One More Day but that was more the way it was went about. I view comics as soap operas and I don't actually put that much faith in continuity. Heroes get with someone, break up, get with someone new, break up, and get back with their original girlfriend. The melodrama never ends and I'm not against the melodrama. I'm against the misogyny and character assassination.
But weirdly, I think it's also because, "Spider-Man married a Hydro-Clone of Mary Jane!" That was a plot in the Animated Series. It's just a kind of thing I expect.
Edited by CharlesPhipps on Oct 20th 2023 at 11:25:31 AM
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.How was she horrible to him?
I'd say he was pretty decent to Felicia despite how badly she treated him and she'd probably be the first to admit that. I haven't read much on his and Betsy's relationship but I do know one of the factors that led to it dissolving was Peter having her brother arrested.
And yeah, Peter's treatment of Debra Whitman is one of the best examples of how horrible and abusive it is when superheroes lie to their significant others, especially the way Peter did it.
The way I remembered Mary Jane and Peter's relationship when they were married was constant fighting over Spider-Man endangering himself, some separations, and lots and lots of melodrama. Which is to say that I don't ever recall the two having a particularly harmonious relationship.
I could be wrong.
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.A thing to remember is that Gwen started out as one of Peter’s bullies before he and her started dating, outwardly helping Flash and Harry haze and torment him while inwardly thinking he was interesting, mostly because Peter was the only guy who didn’t fawn over her. The Lee-Ditko years wrote her as a total Alpha Bitch and that didn’t change much even when she and Peter hooked up. It wasn’t until Romita came in that she became more tolerable (at the cost of losing pretty much any and all personality) and even that was more part of Romita’s general softening of Peter’s social circle so he had people he could actually have human relationships with since Ditko could tend to drive things into World of Jerkass territory. Once Gwen was softened, she wasn’t nearly as bad as a partner as Peter was to her (she was the genesis of a lot of his issues with his dating life, like constantly running out on her, emotional neglect, and gaslighting to hide his identity), but their relationship was made especially toxic and unhealthy by the fact that Gwen hated Spider-Man and blamed him for her father’s death, which just led to Peter trying even harder to hide that huge part of himself from her.
Edited by immortaleditor on Oct 20th 2023 at 12:06:26 PM
Yeah, they really wrote themselves into a corner with Spider-Man's involvement in Captain Stacy's death.
Edited by lalalei2001 on Oct 20th 2023 at 5:39:22 AM
The Protomen enhanced my life.
The only thing left for Gwen was to learn Peter’s identity and develop from that.
They chose to kill her instead.
One Strip! One Strip!
