I put myself on the 'real-change' side of things, but with reservations. In a novel, if you make a big real change, it's no big thing, because the novel will end, and then that's that. In an ongoing series, such as a serial comic book, you have to live with whatever change you make. Which gives you three choices:

a) don't make any big changes
b) make big changes, but find ways to weasel out of them
c) only make big changes if you know that you'll still be able to tell good and commercially viable stories about the character after the change has been made

I am coming to this discussion after 'Civil War' #2 has hit the stands. There was a big change in 'Civil War' #2, and a lot of people are arguing about it. What I say is, if the boys and girls at Marvel have a plan for telling good Spider-Man stories for years into the future with this change in place, then there's no problem.

I’ve been thinking quite a lot about this issue lately. I’ll start by saying that I place myself in the “illusion of change” camp, with reservations.
Let me state the obvious: When it comes to a corporately owned Old Established Character (OEC), there can be no long term plan for the future. Stories are told by writers, guided by editors, and constrained by past stories and by the current role of the OEC in his or her particular comic universe. Writers have a responsibility to leave an OEC in a condition that is minimally constraining to the next writer.

So, if we accept that the role of the writer is not to “advance the plot” (since there is no overarching plot to advance), then what is his or her purpose? In my opinion, the writer’s mandate is to tell good stories within the established mythos of the OEC. This sounds straightforward, but the constraints of 30+ years of continuity become a real albatross, and lead ultimately to things like the Elsewords, Ultimate, All Star and upcoming Confidential lines, which give writers the freedom to fiddle with or completely ignore the burden of continuity.

What does this mean for the “main-line” titles? I honesty don’t have a clue. Peter Parker is middle-aged and married and there is no going back. You can’t unmarry him and you can’t make him younger. Wait a second, these are comic books we’re talking about here and absolutely nothing is out of the question. I give you exhibit A: Batman Annual #25. I thought it was pretty lame, but there it is anyway. Which I think, brings me to my point: since these are fictional characters inhabiting a fictional universe, any real change can ultimately be undone. Usually however, undoing major change requires lame excuses and goofy stories that are at best a waste of time and money, and at worst jar the reader into caring less about the characters in question.

So, summing up, I’m not really that worried about continuity anymore. As far as I’m concerned, each writer’s take on a given OEC is a separate entity. I’m not going to get upset if the next guy’s Batman isn’t the one I’ve come to enjoy with the current writer, in fact, I’m going to savor the subtle differences. As long as the stories are good, I’ll be reading them.

But think about the implications of those. The reason I listed them is because the way they happened, Peter had to tell the Avengers who he really was. Which is a BIG change, and hard to back down from. Likewise, Peter's teaching career was presented as an adult looking to give back to the place he grew up. It was not only a fully ADULT moment, it was shown as almost a middle-aged man's kind of midlife crisis epiphany. A middle-aged -- okay, LATE twenties, early thirties -- married guy who lives and works with a group of superheroes that know all his secrets is miles away from the basic Spider-Man idea of a young, vaguely school-age/collegiate, tormented loner. That was why I listed them... I was just ticking off the various changes to the strip's premise that were A) pretty major alterations to the staus quo and B) implied even MORE changes to the concept, hidden implications that are hard to back off of.

But really, all these back-and-forth comments about Spider-Man are getting a bit off the track. He's just the test case. I could just as easily made it Batman and Robin. Having Dick Grayson age and go off to college was a big change and it spun lots of other changes out of it that various writers have tried to back down from, and then other writers made REAL changes to THOSE illusion-of-change re-sets. And so on. You can take almost all of the long-running open-ended series in superhero comics and apply this and literally see the pendulum swinging between the two schools of thought. THAT was the epiphany. Spider-Man was just the example because I happened to be immersed in his adventures last week.

The '90s were not a period of "real change," but long-term "illusion of change." How long was Superman dead? A year? Heroes Reborn was abandonned after 13 months. Batman wasn't crippled for long, Gotham City was rebuilt, Daredevil ditched the armor, Hal & Ollie are back, none of the X-Men stayed dead for long...

The '90s' changes had two faults which were insurmountable. 1) As has been pointed out, most of the '90s changes were editorally mandated, and poorly written; 2) They were constant. Every month, it seemed, another character was changed. We fans got sick of it. I felt that none of the changes "mattered" because they were temporary.

The alternative, however, was mostly recycling past stories. How many times can the X-Men beat the Brotherhood, or Superman stop Luthor? Super-hero comics can become mired in familiar genre trappings when there are no "real" changes.

I can safely say that I stand for change. because People will allways write comics, and changes will happen. Why not accept that and have non change stories for as long as you can untill you can build up to a well thought out Real change that involves groth. As opposed to a change that reverts the charicter back to an earlyer version.

Night crawler, Ordained priest....
Nope! It Was All A Dream!

Wolverine: "Finally, I dont have to look like an idot in broad daylight."
And then back to costumes..

The thing is, what ever change you institute, so many writers just want to get their hands on charicters to make the book a continuation of the book they read as a kid, Real change actually happens very rarely.

When it does most writers just ignore it to make it easyer to write the story they wanted to.

The best example of this is the Warren Ellis Extremis Iron man. That story has been finished for two months and Noone is picking up an the ramafacitations of making Tony a futurist zelot.

I have to say as a reader who came into the fandom in the early 90s I find both sides of the fence to be partially right, and partially wrong. If the “Illusion of Change” crowd had their way we would have never seen the Byrne/Claremont X-Men, The New Teen Titans, Kyle Rayner, or even Impulse all characters I very much hold dear to my heart.

The “real change” crowd on the other hand has opened the door for gratuitous violence, huckster ism, and sometimes catastrophic editorial mismanagement.

As for me… I see the need for real character change, but I think it should be well thought out and not rushed. I mean seriously we got two decades of Wally West as Kid Flash, so why couldn’t I get a few more years of Bart Allen as Impulse? Why couldn’t they have stuck with the Morrison-era status quo for the X-Men a little longer? And why change the cast of New Mutants/New X-Men/X-23 & Her Amazing Friends just when I feel like I’ve gotten to really know the book’s cast.

I find it odd you list Spidey’s current status-quo as permanent changes, as well… I sincerely doubt Spidey’s going to be wearing his new outfit beyond Civil War, and considering how many times the Avengers roster rotates, he could easily leave the team at any time.

What really sets the average mainstream superhero comic book apart and unites both of these arguing sides is the implicit expectation that the story of Spider-Man will never end. That's an important underlying assumption which almost always goes unstated in these discussions, but which also establishes the grounds for the argument.

If you recognize this as the initial premise, then I think it's pretty clear that the illusion of change people will win in the end. There's no way you can have Real Change for any sustained period of time if your starting goal is to never reach the end of your story.

One other point to make is that I would not include Conan among the heroes who have endless adventures and the illusion of change, as I would with James Bond. Howard had a story thread for Conan's life, from his younger days as a green hick from the sticks all the way to seizing his own crown to sit upon a troubled brow. The distinction between Conan's serial fiction in prose and that of the average comic book is that the connective tissue between the stories was often left unsaid. That connective tissue is also how tons of post-Howard writers (including Kurt Busiek) have managed to expand on Conan, usually without fundamentally contradicting the arc of his life.

(Sorry, couldn't resist. )

I agree on all counts.

One point I would add is that this isn't necessarily a Marvel/DC issue, but more of an Old Established Character issue. Old established characters with a notebook full of history should not be changed much.

They've survived for decades of continuous publishing for a reason. All that's really needed is to tweak things now and then to keep the characters modern. In the seventies, Clark Kent dabbled in television news and later, Peter Parker moved on to college, then to graduate school. That's fine.

What doesn't need to happen is constant change for the sake of change. If every change was permanent, many characters would soon lose the facets that made them successful in the first place. That's fine for fans who have read those characters for a decade or more and who remember what once was. That's not so fine for fans who pick up their first issue of a certain comic which had endured constant change for three years. Daredevil isn't really Daredevil; he's a Daredevil who's undergone big major change after big major change. The costume's the same, but the man is very different.

Luckily, there's room enough for everything in comics. Writers who want to craft real, lasting change can work on non-OEC titles or independent titles. For instance, when Bendis changed Spider-Woman, who gave a flying flick. SW was dead to the world, and no one had her comics hanging on the wall. But when Bendis is working on an OEC, he should restrain his tendencies to effect real change. That's not the purpose of OEC.

Similarly, instead of working on third-tier characters, creators can work on independent comics. If you create your own characters from scratch, you have the right to change them in any way you see fit. If Erik Larsen wants to amputate the Dragon, he should go for it. If Todd McFarlen wants to kill Spawn and replace him with a 13-year-old Icelandic boy, more power to him. But don't do that with Batman. Don't do it with Captain America. Don't do it with Green Lantern. Don't do it with Ben Grimm.

If Gwen hadn't been killed off, I'm not so sure she'd even be considered such an important character in the Spidey mythos. She wasn't an "original cast member", she was just the latest in a string of love interests for Peter, following Betty and Liz. It was killing her off that cemented her as "Peter's one true love" in the eyes of many fans. I also wonder if her death was an attempt to push the book back closer to the original version of the character- the post-Ditko, Romita-era Peter had become a handsome guy with a steady girl and a gang of friends. He still had to deal with cashflow problems and Aunt May's health, but he wasn't the loser of the original stories. Gwen's death gave the book a fresh shot of pathos.

I always liked MJ much better than Gwen. She had much better dialogue- at least when Stan was writing. Gwen always seemed a bit vanilla, like Betty from the Archie books or Lana Lang. Who'd pick any of them over Veronica, Lois, or MJ? Those girls had some moxie.

Plus, if you’re only exposure to Gwen is a Jeph Loeb story, I doubt you got a good depiction. "

I'm not saying whether or not it impacted them negatively.

I'm saying that to the vast majority of readers, it doesn't matter because she's been gone so long. Most (including myself) have never read her character, so she doesn't make an impact apart from being a ghost.

All that is seen of Gwen anymore is poorly written comics that go for a cheap emotional response by referencing a death that the target audience has no emotional ties to. She's not relevant to Spider-Man anymore. As was said in the previous discussion on Spidey's marriage, he should be able to move on with his life by now, rather than thinking of Gwen every time some trivial crap happens in his life.

Of course, I didn't get a good depiction from a Jeph Loeb story. This doesn't make me want to see her though.

From the Spider-Man story reprinted in Deadpool, Gwen seemed just as much the party girl as MJ. Neither seemed to be written with any personality whatsoever. That's why I don't see her as too much of a loss.

No. But, nor do I think that the writers would have left Superman / Clark Kent without a female presence for the next sixty years, either. After your comment, T. Said:

"So how can you comment on whether her death impacted the books negatively? You don’t know about the tone of the books before her death, so you aren’t able to compare the before and after."

...which is true, in a hypothetical death of Lois Lane in 1950-ish time. Would that have been the time that Lana Lang was introduced? Or, possibly, a never-thought-of female character that turned into a Lois Lane-type later on? It's hard to say.

For the time that Lois Lane was created, I think there would have been an "illusion of change" moment. If Lois herself didn't come back, they would have introduced a character that was close enough to be indistinguishable to Lois Lane.

So how can you comment on whether her death impacted the books negatively? You don't know about the tone of the books before her death, so you aren't able to compare the before and after.

Plus, if you're only exposure to Gwen is a Jeph Loeb story, I doubt you got a good depiction.

Then you’re saying that move was a mistake."

Yes. because it took away everything that made Mary Jane fun and unique in order to turn her into a Gwen clone. You get something that pleases no one. She's now this weak amalgam character that's not quite together as Gwen but not quite as wild and out there as the real MJ. Personally, I liked Gwen as the smart, mature one and Mary Jane as the bad girl, party animal. I really don't think her maturation is a move up, it took away what made the character unique, so no I don't think it's an improvement. But since the writers and editors realized that killing Gwen is a mistake and they needed to find a way to fill the void she left, they decided to use Mary Jane to do it.

Look at the book after Gwen left, it basically became like Three's Company after Suzanne Somers left or Charlie's Angels after Farrah Fawcett left: a revolving door of auditions. It's just Pete alone in an apartment with no direction and uninspiring girlfriend after uninspiring girlfriend, until they eventually brought back MJ and turned her into a pale Gwen imitation. The "real" MJ, Deb Whitman, Marcy Kane, Black Cat, none of them worked as well as Gwen. So now we have "Pseudo-Gwen" MJ, which makes one think that if we had to suffer through all those years of lackluster supporting characters just to end up with a pseudo-Gwen anyway, what was so good about killing off the original?

Do you think the Superman franchise would have benefited long-term from killing off Lois Lane 10 years after his inception?

Keep up the good work.

SIDENOTE (Gwen did appear in the animated series - I saw pictures of her when I was searching for images for a custom figure I'm working on).

We have a more mature MJ, who wasn't "molded" to Gwen, but that grew up and has a more developed character. She isn't Gwen written with MJ's picture (although it's entirely possible that a few bad writers have tried to do so).

Neither of the Ultimate girlfriends are anythig like their counterparts, nor are a lot of Ultimate characters (Colossus, Doc Ock, etc...). It seems silly to flat out declare that Ultimate MJ is Gwen, unless Bendis has said that's what he was going for. Otherwise, you have nothing to back you up but your opinion of how a character should be written. This is just what happens when different writers getthe same characters.

Then you're saying that move was a mistake.

Still disagreeing with you, here.

Yes, a big retcon. But think about what the point of that retcon is. It's basically to explain to readers that Mary Jane wasn't what she appeared to be on the surface: a happy go lucky, superficial party girl. She had more depth and compassion and empathy, similar to Gwen. Just another example of how MJ was remolded to fill the void left by Gwen's death. Look at the original issues and none of that intent of an abusive father or emotional depth existed. Even in her thought bubbles, MJ was exactly what she appeared to be on the surface, a hot, shallow, superficial party girl. Another example that Conway realized he made a mistake. Changing MJ into Gwen was just a way to bring Gwen back without actually bringing her back.

That's a fairly radical oversimplification. The "old" MJ was a party girl with a troubled backstory, not - as Ultimate Gwen was - an outright delinquent with a "shot at redemption" storyline. Neither the Mary Jane nor the Gwen of the early seventies maps directly onto their own (or each others') Ultimate counterparts. There exist more than two "girlfriend" character types.