Marvel Spotlight: Mary Jane vs the timeline

Stol...downloaded from Spidey Kicks Butt

There they are, the happy couple. Two people who eventually found each other, learned to live with her modeling career, his running off to battle evil, and despite the highs and lows that come with any couple with high-risk and traveling jobs, love each other and raise a happy family.

Unless your a Marvel writer and hate marriage.

Better writers than myself (ok, that’s all from the same guy, but still..) have already approached the so-called “Spider-Marriage”, and why dissolving it (or at least the way they did it) was a bad idea. However, fans of the marriage between Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson are constantly given new reasons to be annoyed. The usual culprit? Marc Guggenheim, whom I’m convinced is payed extra to draw the fire from Joe Quesada.

The last time he got the blogosphere fuming was his claim that being pro-Spidey marriage is the same as being pro-gay marriage. Yeah, I don’t get that, either, and I can refute it. However, I’d rather not bring the gay marriage debate into a non-political blog, regardless of which side your on. (Seriously, I’ll edit either side out of the comments. I have the technology.) And now he’s back to slap the MJ fans for daring to question the current Mighty Marvel Mold. From an interview with Newsarama:

 There are fifty million different criticisms of the book. Reasonable minds can disagree about how many of those criticisms are actually valid. I will say that, out of all the criticisms of ‘Brand New Day’, the one I absolutely disagree with is the notion that this is not Spider-Man. I understand all the complaints about ‘One More Day’—I really do; those complaints didn’t fall on deaf ears. However, the one thing that ‘One More Day’ didn’t do was alter continuity as broadly as people think that is has. All that happened was that Mary Jane and Peter didn’t get married. They still dated, they still were in love, and they even still lived together. I always tend to get myself into trouble when I talk about ‘One More Day’ because it’s ‘One More Day’—how can you not get in trouble for talking about it? (laugh)

All the stories that took place—happened. It’s unfortunate that people think otherwise; the plan wasn’t to undo twenty years of continuity—Marvel Comics just chose a different direction for Spider-Man. If you want to still complain about ‘One More Day’—go ahead, I get it—but I’d rather you beat us up for what the story really is. If you want to quibble about Peter Parker making a deal with the devil then so be it. But don’t go saying that hundreds of issues of comics “didn’t happen” because they did.
NRAMA: That’s a great way to put that—this sort of unwillingness to commit to a side…

MG: It just kind of fits. And that’s truly how I felt until I started writing the character. I also tend to describe the act of writing a character like driving a car—in this case, Spider-Man just handles better in terms of the outcome of ‘One More Day’.

People disagree with that statement, and even people who hated the Spider-Marriage as much as Marvel writers did disagree with how the marriage was undone. It’s totally out of character for all parties involved save Mephisto. Don’t believe the writers would specifically sabotage the marriage, or make their characters act out of character? Go back and click the “better writers than myself” up there, and then read this line from a recent interview with famed Spidey-Writer Roger Stern.

THE PULSE: I know you’ve worked on Spider-Man before and written some very memorable stories. What made you want to return to the character now at this point in time?

ROGER STERN: Well, for one thing, I’ve been reading and enjoying AMAZING SPIDER-MAN ever since the beginning of the Brand New Day storyline. It’s great to see Spider-Man really acting like Spider-Man again.And when Steve Wacker was gracious enough to ask me to write a new story…well, how could I turn that down?

 

THE PULSE: As someone who has worked on the character and had an affinity for Spider-Man, what did you think of the decision made to have his marriage to Mary Jane erased?

STERN: I think it was a good thing. I might have figured out a different way to do it, but I always thought Pete’s marriage to Mary Jane was a mistake.As a matter of fact, Marvel’s been trying to correct that particular mistake for years. I believe that the original thought behind what turned into the Clone Saga was to re-establish an unmarried Spider-Man…in a way that didn’t involve divorce or death.

 

The saddest part of the Clone Saga? They had to parody themselves to save face. Didn't work.

“I sympathize with them, I really do. I myself had been reading Spider-Man for about twenty years — and had written Spider-Man for four of those years — when Marvel decided that Pete and Mary Jane should marry. Right around that time, Jim Salicrup — who was then the editor of the Spider-Man titles — offered me work on SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN. That was during a period when no one else at Marvel would even return my phone calls, and I needed the work. But I regretfully had to turn Jim down. I saw the marriage as so wrong-headed that I didn’t want to be a regular part of it.”

Guggenheim: “All the stories that took place—happened. It’s unfortunate that people think otherwise; the plan wasn’t to undo twenty years of continuity—Marvel Comics just chose a different direction for Spider-Man. If you want to still complain about ‘One More Day’—go ahead, I get it—but I’d rather you beat us up for what the story really is. If you want to quibble about Peter Parker making a deal with the devil then so be it. But don’t go saying that hundreds of issues of comics “didn’t happen” because they did”

The cartoony art really didn't work here.