I don’t get why comic book publishers can’t get a hold of the concept of marriage? Marriages are not easy and that is OK, I don’t think anyone is expecting something that it is not, what gets to me is all the bad writing related to marriage that seems so prevalent in the comic medium.
What could be more challenging than a difficult marriage? but a marriage plus superpowers…. That got to be hard. At the same time I can just imaging how rewarding a marriage like this could be for the couple. If you have to guess why I am talking about this you probably don’t know that I am a Spider-Man fan but as many of my friends know I am mad about what Marvel Comics did to the Marriage of Peter Parker. Everyone that knows me knows that what I like is the character and the type of man Peter Parker is (yes I know he is only fictional) what I don’t get is why the writers have such a hard time writing an interesting marriages?
As much as I was not a fan of JMS run (just the magic part, I promise) he made the marriage interesting. There are other people out there that get the idea, a good example of a person that has made marriages interesting in comics is Geoff John. All that you need to do is just look at his run in the Flash, it was interesting! There were twist, and you would feel bad for both Wally and Linda. When things did not work out, you felt it. At every turn I wanted them to get back together again but when they split I understood Linda! and it made sense!! it was the right choice for the character to leave Wally when she did, they had their challenges and they overcame their problems and that is how a marriage is written!
I always heard how wrong Lois and Superman marriage is for the character… I just don’t see it that way; it is not surprise that Geoff John is the current writer of the book and a pivotal reason why the book is entertaining. Not just for the Superhero action and making Superman interesting but the way Lois cares and tries to be there for her husband!
I don’t know if I am being too harsh with Marvel, I get what they are trying to do but the fact of the matter is that MJ is part of the Spider-Man Mythos and having Peter and MJ not being together is just does not make sense…
About Me
- Jean Grey
- Miami, Florida, United States
- I just like to have fun and I want to say a few words about what is happening with my favorite hobbies
4 comments:
The thing about Spider-Man's marriage is that Quesada, since the day he took the EIC job, has had an intense hatred of the marriage. He wants Spider-Man the way it was when he read it - the 70's and early 80's. Everyone else that doesn't like it as far as he's concerned can jump out a window. Good writers can absolutely handle the marriage - it's weak editors and lazy writers who have a problem with the concept.
I agree. The Spidey-marriage also showed progress for the character: from high school school teen, to college studuent young adult, to married-person; what most-everyone eventually goes through. This also reminds me of the offing of baby May, but I can see semi-reason behind that, as that would forcably-age both Peter and MJ.
Looking at comic-book marriages I think there are two big problems:
1. There are an awful lot of writers who find writing a marriage or indeed any kind of lasting relationship too hard to do. It is much easier to run through romantic triangles etc. because here you have a lot of proven old tropes and recipes, and if things progress too far, well, there's always the ol' refrigerator option. For a lot of writers a marriage or marriage-type situation may be too daunting because - certainly in the field of superhero comics - it is still unfamiliar territory.
2. Way too many creators and editors do not want to do something new, they want to do the kind of comics they read when they were young (what I like to think of as "antiquarian writing", although in its more extreme forms it's more like "fanboy fanfic writing") and frequently they tend to treat their idealized version of the comics of their youth as the one and only "true" one. Although, when you look at it, you'll find that this "true version" more often than not diverges from how the comic actually was in the old days.
In the case of Spider-Man for instance, there are certain purists who think that the one true version of Spider-Man is the Ditko version, or to be more precise, the version before Peter graduated from high school. But this of course misses a most essential feature of Spider-Man, even during the Lee/Ditko run: Peter Parker and the other characters keep evolving, they are not trapped in a 1940s or 1950s comic where at the end of each story things return to the status quo and characters simply do not learn from experience.
And then there is the cult that Quesada and others at Marvel make about Spider-Man's "youth", which has had some horrible results for him. First they had to get rid of baby May because they thought that having a kid aged him too much. (Leaving aside that they are currently saying he's about 25 and there are parents younger than that). And what annoyed the heck out of me was that they then almost never referred to Peter and MJ having lost a baby, which really was bad writing, especially when you saw their reactions to Luke and Jessica's baby (it was completely out of character that they were written as if they had never even considered having a baby, let alone gone through the painful loss of one). Then, on Joe Quesada's orders, JMS had to rewrite Sins Past so that Peter was not the father of Gwen's twins (as he originally planned) and instead Norman Osborn became Gwen's posthumous lover (and we all know how the fans reacted to that). Then the marriage was also (in part) sacrificed on the altar of "youth" and most recently in BND Peter was portrayed as a not-too bright slacker who made rookie mistakes that allowed a non-powered mugger to escape and kept running out of web-fluid (one malfunction is bad luck, three malfunctions in the first three arcs is plain incompetence).
The marriage was a natural progression for Peter and of course very in character for him (back in the early '60s he seriously wanted to marry Betty when he still went to high school). It offered lots of potential for new stories, if only more writers had thought to explore them instead of thinking of ways of getting rid of the marriage! JMS showed what can be done, and so do a number of other comic creators. (Alison Bechdel comes to mind, since most of the characters in Dykes To Watch Out For are involved in relationships that have spanned years or even decades and remaine involving for readers).
And over the years Mary Jane has become a most important part of the Spider-Man mythos, which became evident when you see how she was introduced right from the start in the Ultimate and the Movie version. She is also one of Marvel's best supporting characters, and if they are intent on losing her or relegating her to background status, I don't think I'll be returning to reading ASM.
Relationships really take the edge off the character. Having to ask Mary Jane for permission to fight the Green Goblin is lame. The three Spiderman movies with the non-stop Kirsten Dunst droning through is a perfect example.
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