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mandolinThis will probably not be as long as my usual rambling, since everyone has covered most of the bases already.
Okay, so I know most of the backstory behind Why Quesada Never Liked the Peter/MJ Marriage. And I agree that they were married in the comics for the wrong reasons and it was somewhat rushed. Trying to get Peter married in the comic book because you don't want him to be married first in the comic strip? The reasoning behind it was lame. I admit that the initial reasoning sucked.
But you see, if you make a narrative screw-up, pretending it never happened is even more lame. The mark of good writing is writing that takes an ill-thought-out event and develops it and improves upon it. The first few years he was writing Spidey (before the editorial mandates snuck into his writing), JMS did a fantastic job with Peter and MJ, even after they reconciled. And when Aunt May found out Peter was Spider-Man, the way she handled the situation was believable, brilliant, and allowed JMS to give her so much more development and show how strong she was. Before JMS came on the title, Amazing Spider-Man made a big production out of making Peter think MJ was dead and moving on with his life, but then the editors realized that fans thought it was stupid. So they spent at least a year getting them back together.
Come on, in spite of Civil War and Sins Past (which mainly sucked because Quesada dictated that the kids couldn't be Peter's), there were a lot of really interesting developments in the past few years: the Ezekiel storyline, Peter trying his hand at teaching, Pete and MJ reconciling and MJ finding a new niche in theater (the only good thing about Sins Past, IMO), Aunt May discovering the truth and becoming so much stronger for it, the New Avengers, the attempt to restore Peter's secret identity and certain parts of "Back In Black"...
...and all of that has just been flushed down the toilet. And then some. Because instead of making the most out of what current continuity had to offer, instead of focusing on Ultimate Spidey where Pete is still a teenager, instead of taking the series in a new direction and finding a believable source of tension between Peter and MJ (hey, even happily married normal couples have issues all the time!), Joe Quesada hit the Big Fucking Rewind Button. Rather than putting some effort into taking things in a new direction, he made Pete and MJ make a deal that they both should have known damn well was a bad idea (because of who the deal was with) and that Aunt May, had she known, would have been horrified about.
My issue with this has less to do with the marriage of Peter and MJ and more to do with the complete waste it's made of good storytelling. Even by 90's comic book standards. Now, with the bizarre reset, we have no idea how much if any of the Spidey stories of the last twenty years still apply. Spidey continuity now makes even less sense than before!
Seriously, the Rewind Button is one of the worst narrative cop-outs ever. It didn't work for Season 2 of Witchblade, and it certainly isn't going to fly here. I am now really glad I bailed out of Amazing when Civil War hit, I really am.
In the meantime, I'm going to be sticking with Amazing Spider-Girl and Blue Beetle, because those books at least can tell a straightforward story and their writers aren't lazy and sloppy.
...okay. I lied about it being brief. But that's all I'm going to say on this topic and go back to cleaning now.
Okay, so I know most of the backstory behind Why Quesada Never Liked the Peter/MJ Marriage. And I agree that they were married in the comics for the wrong reasons and it was somewhat rushed. Trying to get Peter married in the comic book because you don't want him to be married first in the comic strip? The reasoning behind it was lame. I admit that the initial reasoning sucked.
But you see, if you make a narrative screw-up, pretending it never happened is even more lame. The mark of good writing is writing that takes an ill-thought-out event and develops it and improves upon it. The first few years he was writing Spidey (before the editorial mandates snuck into his writing), JMS did a fantastic job with Peter and MJ, even after they reconciled. And when Aunt May found out Peter was Spider-Man, the way she handled the situation was believable, brilliant, and allowed JMS to give her so much more development and show how strong she was. Before JMS came on the title, Amazing Spider-Man made a big production out of making Peter think MJ was dead and moving on with his life, but then the editors realized that fans thought it was stupid. So they spent at least a year getting them back together.
Come on, in spite of Civil War and Sins Past (which mainly sucked because Quesada dictated that the kids couldn't be Peter's), there were a lot of really interesting developments in the past few years: the Ezekiel storyline, Peter trying his hand at teaching, Pete and MJ reconciling and MJ finding a new niche in theater (the only good thing about Sins Past, IMO), Aunt May discovering the truth and becoming so much stronger for it, the New Avengers, the attempt to restore Peter's secret identity and certain parts of "Back In Black"...
...and all of that has just been flushed down the toilet. And then some. Because instead of making the most out of what current continuity had to offer, instead of focusing on Ultimate Spidey where Pete is still a teenager, instead of taking the series in a new direction and finding a believable source of tension between Peter and MJ (hey, even happily married normal couples have issues all the time!), Joe Quesada hit the Big Fucking Rewind Button. Rather than putting some effort into taking things in a new direction, he made Pete and MJ make a deal that they both should have known damn well was a bad idea (because of who the deal was with) and that Aunt May, had she known, would have been horrified about.
My issue with this has less to do with the marriage of Peter and MJ and more to do with the complete waste it's made of good storytelling. Even by 90's comic book standards. Now, with the bizarre reset, we have no idea how much if any of the Spidey stories of the last twenty years still apply. Spidey continuity now makes even less sense than before!
Seriously, the Rewind Button is one of the worst narrative cop-outs ever. It didn't work for Season 2 of Witchblade, and it certainly isn't going to fly here. I am now really glad I bailed out of Amazing when Civil War hit, I really am.
In the meantime, I'm going to be sticking with Amazing Spider-Girl and Blue Beetle, because those books at least can tell a straightforward story and their writers aren't lazy and sloppy.
...okay. I lied about it being brief. But that's all I'm going to say on this topic and go back to cleaning now.
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no subject
Date: 2007-12-30 10:41 pm (UTC)I also hate the idea that there are no good stories to tell about married couples and that only UST is interesting.
Combine those two things and we can only be grateful that I didn't actually read these comics, or my scream would have shattered glass.
::goes back to loving Blue Beetle::
no subject
Date: 2008-01-08 06:43 pm (UTC)Like I said before, I didn't even touch on the marriage because everyone else has expounded on it better than I could. There was just so much ELSE in the way of character growth that was nuked by this that didn't even have to do with the marriage that it was incredible. (But not the bad stuff, apparently: JMS lobbied to at least erase Gwen's twins if Quesada was so insistent on a major retcon. Quesada said no. *facepalm*)
*goes back to loving BB as well*
I didn't pick up the books in question, I went to scans_daily for the info.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-31 03:45 am (UTC)I don't even really keep up with the Spider-Man books and this still smacks of laziness, since essentially they're saying writing a married couple is just too damn hard, with a nice subtextual side order of "and it's probably the girl's fault, too." Which, y'know, gross.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-08 06:38 pm (UTC)Yeah, the negation of the marriage pissed me off, but everyone else has touched on that far better than I could.
On top of that, there's just so much great character growth this retcon has nuked that's not even related to the marriage. I loved how they dealt with Aunt May learning the truth and how much it strengthened her character. I didn't really care for The Other, but I liked the implications of Coming Home that led up to it and Peter ultimately deciding that it didn't matter where his powers came from. And I think I'm in the minority, but Pete teaching science at Midtown was great.
The BND retcon basically seems to be saying, "Hey, look! Pete's life sucks again!" Not to mention that everyone I've talked to about this, on or off-line, has agreed that Spider-Man is better when Peter is dealing with life instead of being constantly down-on-his-luck. It doesn't have to be all coming up roses, but there's only so much Peter-as-the-world's-punching-bag I can take.
I can't find the numbers, but I seem to remember that when they tried to kill MJ off the last time, the resulting spiral of emo and depression actually hurt sales of the book so they brought her back.
I think this retcon had NOTHING to do with bringing in more readers and EVERYTHING to do with the fact that Quesada didn't like it - regardless of the readers' opinions. I think the only audience he was pandering to here was himself.
Amazing Spider-Girl has of late seemed a little bland to me, but good Lord, it's STILL a lot better than mainstream Marvel right now.