Comic Book Resources

Logical, my muscular buttocks.

I dunno; I’ve been reading these interviews, and I just feel like Quesada has yet to say anything of substance. It’s a feeling I get from both EICs, Marvel and DC; they’re busy spinning the fall-out from their latest project, hyping their next project, and actual substantive commentary is maybe a distant third in priorities. (And unfortunately, comics journalists aren’t in a position to really press them on some issues; I’d love to see someone dig up quotes on the permanence of the unmasking, and confront Quesada with them.)

I’ll be fair here, and point out that it’s the EIC’s job to defend the company’s decisions and to drum up interest for future projects, and it isn’t their job to be honest with the fans, but I do think it’s possible to at least avoid being dishonest or disingenuous, even if you can’t be wholly honest, and I get the sense that Quesada isn’t really trying that hard. (Nothing personal, Joe.) He didn’t say at the time, “Spider-Man’s unmasking is the beginning of a major storyline that will run for the next two years,” he said, “Spider-Man’s unmasking is permanent, we’re not going to go back on it.” It’s hard not to feel, as a fan, like I’ve been lied to.

I liked this bit:

The truth of the matter is that if the fans truly want a married Peter and MJ with kids, then we have an incredible book called “Spider-Girl.” If this is truly what fandom wants, to see Peter go through the natural progressions of life, then I expect orders on “Spider-Girl” to go through the roof in the next month.

That should be the sollicitation text for Spider-Girl from now on.

I don’t agree with it by the way, but I’ve never even read that title and that comment almost makes me wanna pick it up.

I kind of stopped reading the title awhile back.

Can’t be bothered with all that continuity, but am in agreement that super-heroes should not get married in the first place.

Too much of a hassle on a relationship.

BUT I’m still not impressed that OMD was late in the first place regardless of explanation.

I think Quesada’s best argument is to say that this is a necessary evil to get “where we want to be.” The question is whether it actually DOES get him there, and this is where I think he’s probably miscalculated. On the face of it - and assuming that he’s not lying again - Quesada wants to tell Spider-Man stories in which this is simply the new status quo. Readers are likely to construe it as Spider-Man stories set in a warped version of reality - House of M, Mark II - and I think they’ve got a massive uphill struggle ahead of them to make the fans interpret the stories in the way they’re evidently “supposed” to.

Sometimes it’s better just to declare a continuity reboot, rather than try to justify it within the logic of the series.

Someone needs to start another grass roots campain to boost sales on Spider-Girl…

Interviewer: All right. Now, instead of having to build up this pact with Mephisto to dissolve the marriage, why not just divorce them?

Joe Quesada: Sure, that would have been a very easy solution. However, how would a parent feel when they had to explain to their kid that Spider-Man just got divorced from his wife? How would that headline read across the AP or on USA today?

HAHAHAHAHAHA YOU MADE SPIDER MAN MAKE A DEAL WITH SATAN INSTEAD.

Joe Quesada: The same can be said with an annulment. Sure, divorce is a reality of life, but Peter Parker and Spider-Man are not the types of characters that would do that. Spider-Man is a worldwide icon and is considered one of the good guys, like Superman.

………HAHAHAHAHAHA YOU MADE SPIDER MAN MAKE A DEAL WITH SATAN INSTEAD.

Ah, jeez, Edith.

If he’s being this goofy, I actually have to read the damn interview. And I really didn’t want to, because what’s the point? It won’t placate the people who don’t like the change, and it doesn’t need to placate the people who do.

It this can really be considered a “retcon” it has to eb seen as, at least, a different type of retcon that usual.

Most retcons basically “reveal” that something has been going on “the whole time” that the readers (and most characters) did not know about.

Some examples:
1. Norman Osborn has enhanced strength from a Goblin Formula.
2. Norman Osborn survived and was secretly living in Europe.
3. Norman Osborn has two more swiftly-aging kids in Europe.

Here, something is actually being changed. It’s not a “what you didn’t realize was…” like a normal retcon. It’s actually altering the events that occurred.

Plus, it has an in-world cause. Mephisto actually DID this. It’s not like they just replaced Spider-Man with Ultimate Spider-Man, there is an in-story cause.

Really, if you think about it, “Continuity” has NOT been changed. This event happened NOW in that continuity, becoming part of it. All that has changed is the “now” and the future.

I hope that sounds sensible.

Let me put it this way: it’s sort of like Power Girl’s origin in JSA Classified. Everyone was all excited: “What is Power Girl’s origin in the Post-Crisis, Post-Zero Hour DCU? They’re going to tell us!” And they answered “You KNOW her origin. She was Supergirl from Earth-2, and then the Crisis mushed the Earths together.” The old continuity still happened, and not only that, it’s essential for making the new reality what it is.

So, Peter and MJ WERE married, Harry DID die, the Other DID happen. Then Peter met Mephisto, reality was changed, and things go forward from there. But there could be no Brand New Day without the marriage, just as the current DCU would not be what it is without the original Earth-2 idea.

After looking over part 3, I’m suddenly unclear as to the nature of what Mephisto did. Here’s what Quesada said:

What didn’t occur was the marriage. Peter and MJ were together, they loved each other — they just didn’t pull the trigger on the wedding day. All the books count, all the stories count — except in the minds of the people within the Marvel U, Peter and MJ were a couple, not a married couple.

The first sentence makes it sound like this is a straightforward retcon; Mephisto changed history, so Peter and MJ were never married to begin with. That’s what I figured this whole deal was up until now.

The second sentence, with its reliance on what’s going on in the minds of people within the MU, makes it sound like all Mephisto did was make everyone (including Peter and MJ) simply FORGET that they were ever married. Very much like what the Spectre did with Wally West’s secret identity, and what Joe explicitly says Mephisto did with Peter’s secret ID. And that wouldn’t be a retcon at all.

So which is it? Did Joe just phrase himself poorly in the second sentence?

Either way, I suppose Mephisto had to do a combination of memory-wiping and history-changing. Because resurrecting Harry has to be changing history, but Joe himself confirms that the return of Peter’s secret identity is just a worldwide memory wipe.

I think I understood him, Loren, though I guess he could have phrased himself better.

I think he’s basically saying that, if you were to pick up a random issue from 15 years ago where Peter says, “This is my wife, Mary Jane,” he didn’t really say that. WE can read the word balloon, but to everyone in the comic, he didn’t say it.

Here’s where I get confused…if Peter and MJ were together all this time, and still loved each other the whole time, then what exactly did Mephisto take? Just the future love that they would have had if they’d stayed together?

Ah! Peter & MJ were cohabiting all that time, living in sin! They’re both going to H-E-double hockey sticks! They played right into Mephisto’s hands!

Yeah, color me confused.

So if the idea is Peter and MJ were together for all those stories, just not married (imagine her without a wedding ring, as Brian suggested) then wouldn’t they still be together, in an unmarried way? Or was part of Mephisto’s deal that they were never married, and then they broke up after making the deal?

It seems like Joe is trying to say “they are not and never were married, but in all those stories where they were married, they were still together, up until now, for some reason” which is fine, from a “keep the old stories ‘valid’” point of view.

But toss in Harry’s resurrection and the secret ID mind wipe and things get more complicated.

Are Harry and Liz still married? What about Normie? Do the New Avengers know Spider-Man’s ID? Does Norman? Does MJ? Does Tony Stark? If not, what about Civil War? Does everyone remember that Spider-Man unmasked, but now no one remembers who he was when he did it?

Those may all seem like nitpicky fanboy questions, but they can be important in a shared universe setting, especially when you’ve got Spider-Man not just guest appearing in other titles but starring in one with other characters (and Bendis has said Spidey is still part of the New Avengers).

I guess if some good stories come out of it, it’s easy enough to overlook most of that, but that’s a lot of loose ends and unanswered question.

Here’s where I get confused…if Peter and MJ were together all this time, and still loved each other the whole time, then what exactly did Mephisto take? Just the future love that they would have had if they’d stayed together?

I was going to say “their memories of their love,” (Eternal Sunshine of the Spider-Man Mind) but as you point out, they still loved each other the whole time. Basically, Mephisto gave Peter several years of dating a supermodel with no commitment.

But this raises another question: if Mephisto was going to let them retain a loving relationship all those past years, wouldn’t it have been easier (and more devastating for Peter) to make their marriage fall apart? They still lose their love and their marriage. What does Mephisto gain from changing history, instead of just affecting the present?

The fact that these guys (Quesada & DiDio) have to sit down for 5-part interviews to EXPLAIN their stories should give them pause about the direction they’ve taken their books.

The fact that people are STILL scratching their heads AFTER the 5-part explanations should frankly have them reconsidering what they do for a living.

I haven’t read a Spidey book in years, and I don’t really know much about Quesada, but reading this makes him sound like a HUGE pompous git. Every comment seems to be a different way of saying “Yeah, I thought of that…cuz I’m awesome.”

It also seems like he’s trying to share some of the blame with everyone else working on the book…making sure to note that they were for the changes as well.

Mostly though, it’s painfully obvious that he’s pulling most of his answers out of somewhere…and it’s not his HAT.

“The fact that these guys (Quesada & DiDio) have to sit down for 5-part interviews to EXPLAIN their stories should give them pause about the direction they’ve taken their books.

The fact that people are STILL scratching their heads AFTER the 5-part explanations should frankly have them reconsidering what they do for a living.”

Oh, *very* nicely put, that man!

“The truth of the matter is that if the fans truly want a married Peter and MJ with kids, then we have an incredible book called “Spider-Girl.” If this is truly what fandom wants, to see Peter go through the natural progressions of life, then I expect orders on “Spider-Girl” to go through the roof in the next month.”

Orrrr, if fans wanted a single Spidey they could be reading Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane, Marvel Adventures Spider-Man, or Ultimate Spider-Man. I don’t see his bass-ackwards logic here when fans of single Spidey already had just as many options as fans of married Spidey anyway…

And I think Joe is missing the point when he keeps insisting that ‘married Spidey’ fans wanted to see him get old and die. No, we just wanted to see him married. Not that aging a superhero is bad, but I think he’s being too extreme in how he portrays opinions of the pro-married faction. But then again, that’s spin control for you…

**I haven’t read a Spidey book in years, and I don’t really know much about Quesada, but reading this makes him sound like a HUGE pompous git. Every comment seems to be a different way of saying “Yeah, I thought of that…cuz I’m awesome.”**

Yeah, that about covers my reaction too…well, that and shared helpless hysterical laughter with Paperghost.

Right about there the entire thing becomes a simple exercise in how out of touch with reality the comics world actually is.

So if I’m reading Quesada’s comments right (and I honestly am not sure if I am), then in order to avoid having world-wide icon Spider-Man divorce, a story was concocted wherein:

Peter made a deal with the Devil so that now he was NOT married, but rather in a non-married long-term relationship with Mary Jane Watson and they just broke up, but no lawyers were required.

And as a side effect, the general public doesn’t remember him unmasking, Harry Osborne is alive but similarly unmarried, and Peter and Flash are friends again. And, because those organic webshooters always bugged him, the Devil erased them, too.

The Devil can be a picky son of a gun, can’t he?

The fact that these guys (Quesada & DiDio) have to sit down for 5-part interviews to EXPLAIN their stories should give them pause about the direction they’ve taken their books.

The fact that people are STILL scratching their heads AFTER the 5-part explanations should frankly have them reconsidering what they do for a living.

Word.

(Er, I meant to put quotes around those first two paragraphs. I agree entirely with Paul (and Paperghost).)

“Is it a perfect solution? Absolutely not. Does it get us to where we want to be? Yes”

This is a problem I have with Marvel as of late.

They can’t seem to end things well.

Look at the way Civil War ended. It was story by committee and they couldn’t quite figure out what to do at the end of it. They twisted a Whedon idea in the end but it still feels kind of crazy.

there’s enough talent at Marvel that they SHOULD be able to come up with perfect or near-perfect solutions almost all the time. They’re supposed to be the best at what they do.

The most interesting thing to happen to Spider-Man in a long time was the revelation of his secret identity. I remember Joe Q saying how great it would be to have this new twist for writers to play with for years to come. It was original, fresh. More to the point, it was interesting.

OMD, I don’t like it.

Also, Paperghost’s comments about Peter making a deal with the devil himself are funny, and more to the point, dead on.

While I keep hoping that is all a “trick”, a smokescreen covering something else… I’m a little disturbed by the intrinsec logic of the author of the change:
Note that I’m disturbed as a writer/reader not as a christian etc…

1 - Mephisto can dissolve a marriage that by definition it’s indissoluble before God… so he can retcon what God remembers… so he is more powerful that God??? Wow!!

2 - Mephisto can rearrange reality (what the people remember, what happened etcc) in a selective way. The storylines happened with PP/MJ married happened… also when something happened that was a direct consequence of the marriage… (like saving lives etc…). Wow Mephisto is very powerful…

3 - Mephisto keeps loosing anytime is in a comic book! Not so powewful…

I’m really not feeling how a Peter Parker who cohabits for years on end without ever getting married, even to the point where MJ was in an advanced state of pregnacy (before the ‘miscarriage’), is in any way ‘better’ than one who got a divorce.

Since this is a demonic wish fulfillment story, any chance that it’ll go ‘Monkey’s Paw’ and Aunt May will turn out to be Patient Zero for the Marvel Zombies?

Side question: who, exactly, in the Marvel Universe is going to know that there’s been a major reality shift around Spidey? Captain Mar-Vell, of course, since that’s really his whole cosmic awareness schtick, but who else?

So the entire story was because Spiderman and MJ couldn’t get a divorce. They just had a long-term, loving relationship that ended. Wow, what a crock. Half-assed editorial fiat, insulting the readers.

And who are these kids who don’t understand divorce, Joey Q? Are kids this stupid? How many five year olds read Spider-man anyway? Isn’t it mostly guys in their 20s and 30s? Anyway, how is teaching kids a DEAL WITH THE DEVIL is better than a divorce?

I guess it takes 5 parts for Quesada to fit all the BS into his answers.

Spidey’s marriage is taking the blame for decades of piss poor writing and deplorable editing.

Hope know one tells the evangelical churches that Spider-Man makes bargains with Satan and has been living in sin for decades. Tsk, tsk.

I actually think Quesada did a reasonable job explaining his position well.

Unfortunately, he never comes close to addressing what seems to be the main sticking point for most people: Peter Parker made a deal with the devil.

He keeps responding as if losing the marriage itself is what people are complaining about. And sure, a few people are, and have been for a while (because all anybody knew was that the marriage would be lost).

But, seriously… Peter Parker made a deal with the devil. Beyond that, he made a deal with the devil because he couldn’t deal with guilt. If that’s how Spider-Man is going to be, I’m just not interested in reading him.

So… the clone saga still happened, right?

This is pretty interesting:

http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=141756

Mephisto can rearrange reality (what the people remember, what happened etcc) in a selective way. The storylines happened with PP/MJ married happened… also when something happened that was a direct consequence of the marriage… (like saving lives etc…). Wow Mephisto is very powerful…

Which raises a further question: if Mephisto has this level of power, why didn’t he get rid of their marriage on his own? Did he need Peter’s permission? Why isn’t he rewriting history all the time to suit his whims?

This is pretty interesting:

http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=141756

There can be only ONE!

Which raises a further question: if Mephisto has this level of power, why didn’t he get rid of their marriage on his own? Did he need Peter’s permission? Why isn’t he rewriting history all the time to suit his whims?

This much, at least, I can understand. It’s an old staple of these kinds of stories that the devil can’t just do what he wants to mortals. He can only tempt them, which is why all of his shenanigans involve deals.

I suppose one *could* say that the reason why Mephisto does not routinely utilize the power to make massive changes to reality in order to just rule the entire universe is that the rules do not allow him to. Just as the devil cannot actually take your soul unless you offer it to him of his own free will, so perhaps he can make massive changes to reality only if he receives permission from the person he is bargaining with.

Oh, heck… if Franklin Richards and the Scarlet Witch are both able to rewrite existance and/or create entire separate universes, then I suppose that the devil can probably do something like that, as well.

Reading Quesada try to tap-dance around the fact that now Marvel is an even bigger continuity cluster-fudge is hilarious. What year does Brand New Day take place in? Is Peter still the same age, but now without the wife? If Peter is back on the dating scene, will it be in modern relationships with the temptation of premarital sex or will it be a fantasy 1960’s relationship where Peter’s satisfied just holding hands? Will he stop hanging around the New Avengers, and do they not remember his aunt and wife who came to live at their HQ before Civil War?

I’m sure the side deal Mary Jane made with Mephisto will come back to fix everything in the future, but what will be fixed? Will the unmasking, which did happen but that no one remembers, suddenly be remembered again?

Now more than ever, Marvel needs to have a Crisis event to fix the 616 universe. They have to establish some semblance of a timeline, so that Wolverine is not in outer space with the X-Men, the Savage Land with the New Avengers and Madripoor in his solo book all in the same month. Maybe it will get in the way of good storytelling, as Joe Q likes to say about continuity, but it can help fans understand the world better, which would be beneficial in the long run.

Bishop, here is your simple explanation (or, if you like, “x-planation!”…sorry) for Wolverine being all over the place:

The stories take place at different times, for different lengths. And Wolverine is a very helpful fellow.

There. No Crisis-type event needed.

The problem with that approach is that there is no way to establish any sort of timeline in the Marvel Universe.
Does Event #1, which takes place in January 2008, occur before Event #2, which takes place in April 2008?

There is no way to tell, because Event #1 is part of a six-issue arc and Event #2 is a one-shot. Do the actions of Event #1 have any bearing on Event #2 or vice versa? When does the timeline catch up with a character and all actions become relevant to their history and the history they share with other characters? Does Wolverine bring any baggage from the events in the Savage Land to Madripoor or outer space? Does the forgetting of the unmasking mean Spider-Man no longer has to hide as part of the New Avengers?

Too many problems to just chalk it up to “stories taking place at different times, in different places.”

“The stories take place at different times, for different lengths.”

I can’t believe how many people have trouble understanding this concept.

This is how a major comicbook company is run?

I agree with the stance on getting back to iconic Peter Parker but there are soooo many better ways to have gotten there than what was done. BND might result in the kind of Spider-Man comics I would like to see but Quesada’s way of getting there is going to cast a long shadow. A deal with the freakin devil, are you serious? Also, this could just end up in it being a temporary bubble thing before reverting back which again kills my potential enjoyment. It’s like this classic version of Peter Parker being treated as if he were Jon Fox during that run on The Flash. A sales-boost monkey.

Also Marvel you have to get over this whole thing of thinking you’re above a reboot but then trying to do a reboot. You can’t have it both ways and while rebooting might still have caused a s**tstorm at least fans of the previous continuity could have some closure and the new stuff could have a clean slate to start off on.

Also a good portion of the stuff that has gotten Peter away from being recognizable is these bloated, drawn out, tear apart the concept storylines many of which have happened under Quesada’s own regime like the unmasking. Do these editors EVER consider that when you go to an extreme like that you will be stuck with it or that it will have long-term effects?

I think they need to find more organic ways to “evolve” the characters over time. Like Aunt May knowing. *That* is the one thing out of all these storylines that felt like “progression” rather than cheap-heat. No big everythingyouknowiswrongdarknessanddeathoooh! umpteen part series. Just a logical and emotional thing between the main character and someone important in his life.

What’s the over/under on how long before it’s re-retconned back to the status quo ante? I’ll say eighteen months.

I think the first “new” Spider-Man comic I ever read (as opposed to a Stan Lee reprint) was an Amazing Spider-Man by Michelinie and Larsen, with The Punisher. Not long after that, we got:
- “Round Robin,” the first of about a dozen bi-weekly “guest-starring all these currently popular characters!” stories…
- Carnage
- The Clone Saga
- Identity Crisis (was that the name of it, the thing that led to “Slingers”?)
- Howard Mackie’s run
- “The Other”
- Iron Spider
- The Unmasking
- Now This.

I guess what I’m saying is, with a few exceptions (I liked the beginning of JMS’s run), I can’t really remember a time in my life where the regular Spider-Man books didn’t sort of suck. And I’m not sure how much Mary Jane had to do with that.

Maybe the Devil should’ve wiped out everything about Peter’s life EXCEPT the marriage…

So if I understand it correctly, the only reason why Joe Q wanted the marriage erase was that he felt that the marriage was holding Peter and his supporting cast back from telling a good story.

somebody should tell him that alot of Comic Character, that was nerdish in the beginning, are now married and all there supporting cast is still hanging around.

A good example is Superman.
When Superman started he was this geeky/nerdy four-eyed guy. BUT look at him now, he’s married to Lois Lane and still able to maintain a good relationship with Jimmy, Perry, Lana, Ma and Pa Kent. And still able to write up some good story.

Weither a character is married or not, it’s up to the writers or editors to make good stories.

OMD is NOT a good story

Well, if Joe denies that it retconned the stories, and the only thing that never happened was the marriage, wouldn’t it be easier to do like in the X-men Animated Series, in which Scott and Jean’s marriage never happened because the priest was Morph? Retconning whoever celebrated it as being Mysterio, Chamaleon, a Skrull, whatever, would be much easier.

Ooh, a Skrull MJ. That would have been a nice easy out, if they hadn’t already de-married Johnny Storm that way.

Gotta admit, though, Johnny does seem younger and more vibrant ever since. Could be not being married. Could be not being written by Tom DeFalco.

This much, at least, I can understand. It’s an old staple of these kinds of stories that the devil can’t just do what he wants to mortals. He can only tempt them, which is why all of his shenanigans involve deals.

That explains May and the marriage: “I’ll save Aunt May’s life, but in exchange I want your marriage.”

It’s an awkward fit, but I suppose you can work in Harry Osborn and the secret ID thing as a counteroffer on Peter’s part: “I’ll give you my marriage, but you’ll have to do better than just Aunt May. I want my secret identity back too. And Harry Osborn. Not Gwen though. Or Uncle Ben.”

But how on earth does the reversal on the webshooters fit in here? Is it part of Peter’s counteroffer (”I also want my secret identity, Harry Osborn, AND I wish I never had organic webshooters”) or part of a further counteroffer on Mephisto’s part (”OK, you get May, Harry, and the secret ID. But I want your marriage and your organic webshooters!”) It doesn’t make much sense for either party to ask for that change, yet it happens anyway.

“It doesn’t make much sense for either party to ask for that change, yet it happens anyway.”

I hope someone takes away everyones Gumby face on that final page that Mephisto left them with. I mean seriously, look at them.

Brand New Gumby.

I started to read Superman when Lois and Clark was on, and all four triangled monthly books seemed to focus on different aspects of the Clark-and-Lois workplace relationship. Then, after the show was off the air, the workplace empahsis settled down. Around 2001, there was a big emphasis of Clark’s hometown of Smallville — no big surprise there. (Thankfully, they never died Lana’s red hair black, or dealt with the fact that Pete-Ross-African-American-Teen is in the comics Pete-Ross-Caucasian-vice-president.) And whent he movie came out, all this crystal-Fortres-of-solitude and Clark’s superpowered adotped son stuff started up.

The comics started out as the whole dog, but now they’re the tail. Not a dog-wagging tail, but a tail. Hence any attempt to bring Spider-Man back to how he is in the movies. It’s clumsy as all get-out, but it got Tobey and Kirsten where they needed to be. Uh, I mean Peter and MJ.

But how on earth does the reversal on the webshooters fit in here? Is it part of Peter’s counteroffer (”I also want my secret identity, Harry Osborn, AND I wish I never had organic webshooters”) or part of a further counteroffer on Mephisto’s part (”OK, you get May, Harry, and the secret ID. But I want your marriage and your organic webshooters!”) It doesn’t make much sense for either party to ask for that change, yet it happens anyway.

No, you’re right, it’s absolutely ridiculous. I’m just saying it’s not outside the realm of reason for a “devil” character to have this kind of power, even if the specifics of it are horribly contrived.

Wow… I can’t believe there are people who LIKE Superman being married!

I mean, we can argue about Spidey being married all day long. I’m against it for story purposes, but I can see the appeal.

But SUPERMAN? Comics with him married are not even REMOTELY as good as unmarried ones.

I’ll make a wish that can’t backfire! I wish for a turkey sandwich, on rye bread, with lettuce, and mustard, and –AND– I don’t want any zombie turkeys, I don’t wanna turn into a turkey myself, and I don’t want any more weird surprises, you got it?

THE TURKEY’S A LITTLE DRY!!!

Brian, I think if you read JMS’s response on Newsarama, Joe Q’s position starts to look a lot less reasonable. Especially the discussion of his version of the retcon vs JMS’s.

So let me get this straight…

“Peter and MJ were a couple, not a married couple. All the stories happened”

They dated, lived togheter like a couple, but they weren´t married? They had a civil union?

What´s the big diference? A piece of paper saying they were married?

This sounds like someone who las a lot of problems with adult life… Grow up, Quesada!

Yeah. Because, the piece of paper doesn’t affect the love part (at least, not in this day and age) - it affects the responsibility part. Call me hopelessly cynical, but I have no trouble at all with the notion that a comic book editor would confuse the two.

After all his maneuvring, after all his back-patting, what Quesada essentially has here is…wait for it…a divorce. An amicable divorce, from the sounds of it, which - as Loren noted - just vaults the whole thing into the realm of totally impenetrable stupidity.

I’ll say straight-out that I’m one of the die-hard fanatical fanboys who blatantly oppose ending the PP/MJ marriage…but even with that as an aside…

This is EXACTLY the sort of corner you get backed into when the pointy hats at your company forget that they’re pointy hats and start trying to be artists/writers/whatever. I see it happen at my company too. And yes, I work in a very similar industry.

Say what you will about JMS and JQ…and I don’t think any of us would seriously dispute the fact that JMS is a great writer and JQ is not. JQ is an editor. Specifically he’s the EIC, which is basically a job that’s 50% CEO, and 50% cat-herder when it comes to managing the talent.

I’m so irritated that I’m not making a whole lot of sense, but suffice to say, this is what happens when you don’t let your writers WRITE. Granted, JMS might have been under orders to end the marriage…but he would have done it in a way that made sense, was emotional, and was ultimately revocable since you never know which way the editorial winds will blow in the future…which might have given fanboys like me enough hope to keep plunking down our $2.99 for another 18 years.

Hell with that.

I’m cutting off my Spider-Man collection at Civil War, I’m giving Batman and the Outsiders a try, and I am going to do my damn best to never think about this travesty of crap ever again.

Really bad story.

Really bad dissembling on Quesada’s part. His reputation is dead after this crap story.

“It’s magic! It doesn’t have to make sense!”

Therefore, nothing has to make sense in the Marvel 616 ever again.

In addition to telling a crap story, Quesada then throws a bucket of horse manure on top of the festering wound by reprinting pages from the marriage issue.

“Hey, fanboys, how do you like them horse apples?”

Good point, Paperghost; why on earth would it hurt to explain that Spider-Man is divorced? More so when the alternative is to settle for a pact with freaking _Mephisto_ instead?

I must also agree that JQ _does_ have an excellent point about Spider-Girl. Maybe it is indeed a good idea to reconsider that book.

About the webshooters: it sounds to me like JQ is implicitly saying that they were a movie thing which he feel somewhat repented about.

One thing that puzzles me: if things are as JQ implies, than Mephisto is being quite the fool. He supposedly is going through all that trouble because he wants to break apart such a “cosmically significant” love as that of Peter and MJ. Yet JQ makes it clear that the love itself is quite unhurt, it is only the marriage itself that never happened.

Gee, who’da’hav’thought that Mephisto was such a straight arrow to care so much about a wedding cerimony?

I just dropped Spider-Man. I made a point to fill it’s place on my pull list with a DC book too, only because of the JoeyQ interviews.

“I must also agree that JQ _does_ have an excellent point about Spider-Girl. Maybe it is indeed a good idea to reconsider that book.”

No, he really doesn’t. Peter’s a background figure only. In any case, the same argument can be made for why people against the marriage should simply pick up Ultimate Spiderman.

Quesada’s “point” regarding the marriage inevitably leading to grown children, grandchildren and then death is simply a strawman for him to knock down without actually presenting a logical counter-argument to people who disagree with him.

But how on earth does the reversal on the webshooters fit in here? Is it part of Peter’s counteroffer (”I also want my secret identity, Harry Osborn, AND I wish I never had organic webshooters”) or part of a further counteroffer on Mephisto’s part (”OK, you get May, Harry, and the secret ID. But I want your marriage and your organic webshooters!”) It doesn’t make much sense for either party to ask for that change, yet it happens anyway.

Could be just “Law” of Unintended Consequences, and/or/aka Butterfly Effect. Maybe that’s why Harry’s back too. I don’t know, I don’t care, I don’t follow Spidey.

Wow… I can’t believe there are people who LIKE Superman being married!

But SUPERMAN? Comics with him married are not even REMOTELY as good as unmarried ones.

Wow… how self-serving.

So, are you basing your statement on All-Star Superman being better than all the other Super-books on the market? …or are you one of those people who could never get enough of those stories where Superman used his Super-Hypnosis or his Super-Ventriloquism or his Fortress of Solitude Super-Robots to deceive Lois into thinking he wasn’t Clark Kent?

In any case, I will take a story where Lois, Batman and Superman work as a team to infiltrate the White House over a story about Batman pretending to be Clark Kent so “Lois doesn’t know”, any day of the week.

But regardless of how you feel, let me point something out:

At least DC used to be smart enough to recognize that there was a market out there for readers who wanted to read stories about a more mature Superman. So rather than throwing the Baby with the bath water, they would create a new Universe where the reader could follow a new Superman’s courtship of Lois Lane, while keeping the old relationship alive.

The vested reader would have that new uncertainty of “not knowing whether this new Superman will eventually get together with Lois”; while having the satisfaction of knowing that his emotional investment paid off, and continues to pay off in Universe B.

With Spider-man on the other hand, Marvel has closed the book on Peter Parker’s romantic life, and stated as a matter of fact that “NONE SHALL PASS!!”

I don’t know about you, or what Marvel thinks will happen, but as a reader I can say with all certainty that I will never care about Peter Parker’s romantic life because Marvel has stated (in stone) that “it will never go anywhere!” ‘

In other words, Marvel has closed the very thread they wished to open up, because the reader now knows “not to care for it.”

Here’s my reaction to One More Day in the form of a One-Act Play:

http://community.livejournal.com/scans_daily/4728969.html

I Have Dropped Spider-Man and ALL MARVEL books except those written by Ed Brubaker.

May Joe Quesada tap dance with Mephisto in Hell for all Eternity.

A simple question: who really finds the drawn-out, soap-style love lives of superhero characters all that interesting in themselves? Wolverine and Batman get by as gruff loners without much in the way of romance subplots, the Hulk’s love interests tend to serve rather apparent plot purposes, and so on.

With Spider-Man, there were two rather distinctive characters who emerged from his love life: the Black Cat, with whom the poinbt was that the romance was doomed by her adventurism and callousness, and Mary Jane, who eventually turned into a multidimensional character by virtue of having been deemed “the one” early on by Gerry Conway.

And yes, there are others, like Gwen Stacy, who started out a spitfire, was neutered into a milksop, and died to provide a symbol; Betty Brant, basically a flat character who eventually developed a personality of necessity once she clearly wasn’t a potential love interest anymore; and Deb Whitman, who never quite became a love interest and was mainly there to provide an index of Peter’s growth as a character.

But none of the characters on this second list really do all that much as far as plots go besides pine or be pined for, and then marry even less central characters who in turn clutter up the cast. Other than his post-death Hobgoblin reveal, did anyone really care all that much about Ned Leeds? Does anyone even remember Biff Rifkin? Love interests in Spider-Man are not that numerous, and the lesser lights among them served short-term thematic or symbolic roles rather than long-term character roles.

Superhero love interests tend to fall into two categories: the anointed, with whom a Serious Relationship and the looming threat of a wedding story will inevitably develop, and disposable characters who annoyingly tend to draw in still more disposable characters in being written out of the love-interest circuit.
You may not want Superman to marry Lois, but it’s not as if anyone takes any other love interest of his seriously…perhaps excepting Silver Age Lois-a-like Lana.

For me it’s not so much an issue about a heroes love life but rather wholescale disrepect for comic creators that came before, the history of said characters…and just having a story that makes sense.

As others have said, I will just drop Spider Man for a couple of years, at least until the marriage is brought back.

I still find it completely stupid to just erase decades of writing. Just so Quesada can bring back the Peter Parker from the sixties? Yeah, right. I guess all those years previous writers and editors spent developing PP into an adult meant nothing.

And besides, Superhero marriage can happen. There’s Reed Richards and Sue Storm-Richards, Superman and Lois Lane… Hell, they even allowed the current Flash to get married! Why can’t Spider Man grow up?

gioco poker guida istruzioni…

eightieth?perched saturating …