My New Icon

[snurri]

OK, there are SO MANY THINGS less trivial than this going on in the world, but I'm going to get all fannish and pissy anyway. Those of you not reading scans_daily may not be aware of this, but Marvel, specifically Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada, has mandated a storyline which not only ends the marriage of Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson, but retcons it out of existence. A storyline which has been essentially disavowed by its writer, J. Michael Strazynksi. (Yeah, the "Babylon 5" guy. Whatever you thought of that show, he makes some good points about storytelling at the link. Also the level of editorial intrusion he documents is kind of amazing.) A storyline which, if one can judge by these (admittedly out-of-context) scans from an upcoming issue, seems to be the worst kind of mid-life crisis "if only I could be a swingin' single again" male wish fulfillment.

Joey Q. has been on record for a long time as being of the opinion that Spidey shouldn't be married, and his objections always smack of "OMG grown-ups are so boring" talk. I'm a pretty big cynic when it comes to marriage and relationships in general (OK, maybe I'm just a really bitter romantic), but MAN do I hate the message this sends. Fandom never wants to grow up! Fandom is made up entirely of adolescent boys looking for Girls Going Wild! (Read the scans. I'm not making that up.)

Superhero comics have a lot of problems, and they do a lot of things wrong, but I still love them and the Spider-marriage is was one reason why. It felt real, because Pete and MJ had lots of problems, but they loved each other and they worked on them like adults. Back in the day on the Buffistas board we used to tease some of the more adolescent Buffy/Angel 'shippers (and their spelling) by typing BUFFY&ANGLE4EVAH!!! whenever one of the episodes had a particularly schmoopy scene between the two. I'm applying the same formula here, only this time I'm firmly in the camp of the howling romantics. PETER&MJ4EVAH!!!, no matter what Marvel says.

Comments

[justinhowe.livejournal.com]

Bastards.

[fengi.livejournal.com]

Edited to add: I'm an idiot, I didn't scroll all the way down.

Wow, J. Michael nailed them to a wall.

I don't have access to scans daily, so I have to ask how Quesada wiped out Spiderman and MaryJane. The article about J. Michael indicates Quesada wanted to do it without altering the space-time continuum in some really radical, lame way, but I don't see how that is possible.

So can you summarize what they did?

[snurri.livejournal.com]

Sorry; some of those posts must be locked, I guess.

In summary: thanks to Pete outing himself as Spidey during the Civil War nonsense, Aunt May's house was burned to the ground and she was shot by a hitman hired by the Kingpin. She wasn't killed outright but she wasn't recovering, either. Mephisto, of all people beings oblique stand-ins for the Christian devil, made an offer to change reality so that Pete's identity was never revealed, May was never shot, and (for some reason) Harry Osborn never died. The price was MJ and Peter's marriage, because apparently their love was so pure that Mephisto was really going to get off on taking it away.

Good stuff, eh?

[snurri.livejournal.com]

Ha, oh well, you got your summary anyway :-)

[ecmyers.livejournal.com]

Holy crap.

I fell behind on Amazing after the Civil War nonsense, but I think I still have all the issues following it except for the One More Day arc, which I somehow didn't even know about until recently. Now there's no point in catching up on those, so thanks for saving me some cash and heartache! Now that I'm dropping Amazing and Y: The Last Man is wrapping up, there's not much for me to keep track of anymore.

[snurri.livejournal.com]

Read Gail Simone's stuff instead. She just started on Wonder Woman and it's the first time I've not been bored by that character.

Oh, and the Iron Fist comic that Ed Brubaker is doing is AMAZING. I've heard good things about his work on Captain America and Daredevil, too.

[ecmyers.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the recommendations--I don't think I've ever read Wonder Woman but it sounds like it's a good time to start. I'll check these out.

[justinhowe.livejournal.com]

Good to hear the Iron Fist comic is worth it. The BPRD books are pretty fun, though the last one ends with a WTF moment.

[snurri.livejournal.com]

It's really good. I think the first trade collecting the run just came out, too.

[dxmachina.livejournal.com]

Wow, so Peter steps out of the shower and no more MJ?

To be honest, I haven't read much Marvel in a very long time. When I tried to get back into it, it was just as Bendis wiped out half the Avengers, and I ran for cover. Right now the only Marvel books I'm paying attention to are Astonishing X-Men ('cause of Whedon) and Strazynksi's new Thor book, which has been very good.

[snurri.livejournal.com]

Astonishing is, well. You can finish that sentence your own self. I read the first Thor and wasn't convinced, but I've been meta-following what's going on there and I might try it again at some point.

[tacithydra.livejournal.com]

Rrrrgh. Do not like Quesada.

[snurri.livejournal.com]

The man has some strange ideas.