It's another post about comics! This time about Spider-Man
There's been no shortage of bitching about the fallout from Civil War for Spidey. I don't intend to bitch about it more here. What I'm going to do is copy a post I made in September of last year about what I would've done differently if I'd been in a position to have some influence over it. I don't think anybody I've friended has seen this and I'm interested in getting their thoughts on it.
Here's a recap for anybody who doesn't know about what happened to Spidey after Civil War, or who doesn't know everything:
-Marvel Editor-In-Chief Joe Quesada never did like the fact that Peter Parker got married back in the late 1980's, and decided to break up that marriage so Peter could be single again because he liked that better as a fan.
-As a result of Peter revealing his identity on national TV, Aunt May gets shot and is in critical condition in a hospital.
-Peter is desperate to keep her alive (despite her being ancient) and looks for somebody who can help him. Nobody he has met during his many years of superheroing is able to heal Aunt May, and he literally asks everybody he can think of.
-Peter gets a visit from Mephisto, who says "Hey, I can save your Aunt, and the only thing I want in return is..." (this is where things start to get really stupid) "...your MARRIAGE. Because breaking up two people who love each other so much is going to piss off God and your misery at being apart will give me a raging hard-on!"
-Mephisto further explains that he's going to alter the past so that they never got married in the first place and don't remember being married, but that some small part of them WILL remember and will be miserable, thus giving him the aforementioned raging hard-on. (It might be worth noting at this time that Mephisto did not actually use the words "raging hard-on" at any point, although if he did I don't think it would've made the story any worse.)
-Peter and MJ agonize over the decision, Mephisto says "Hey Pete, as a bonus I'll even make everybody forget what your secret identity is so that your loved ones won't be threatened again!", MJ and Peter think about it some more and then MJ accepts the deal. Then the past is changed, reality is changed, the two were never married, and Quesada gets his wish. Meanwhile, lots of Spider-Man fans are pissed off because they had become used to the marriage and they liked it.
That's how it played out. Now, back in September, somebody made a post on CBR linking to a different idea John Byrne and Howard Mackie had come up with for breaking the marriage up. (While popular among the current generation of Spidey fans, most of the writers didn't like the marriage much more than Quesada did.) That person asked, "would you have liked it better this way?"
I responded that I would have liked it better if they'd just left well enough alone and acknowledged that most fans either liked things the way they were or didn't care one way or the other.
Then I wrote the following. I was kind of just writing whatever ideas popped into my head as I thought of them here, but I still like what I ultimately came up with, and I think it would be easier for everybody to accept than what was actually done:
But all right, if the marriage were going to be broken up no matter what and I were somehow in a position to dictate the circumstances, here's what I would like:
Peter and MJ separate. Maybe one of them even files for divorce.
This is more or less what happened around the end of Mackie's run, but as I recall there really wasn't a good reason for it happening. MJ just said she needed some time away from Pete or something.
Now, Mary Jane has always had a legitimate reason for walking away from Peter: the man always puts his work as Spidey first. I mean okay, there's responsibility and there is obsession, and I really believe that the word to best describe Peter is "obsessed" instead of "responsible."
New York City, on Earth-616, is full of superheroes and Peter ought to know that even with his powers he is only one man and he cannot save everybody. Look at it this way: police and firefighters and paramedics do their best to prevent people from dying or being victimized, but police and firefighters and paramedics all take some time off sooner or later. They acknowledge that they can't do it all, and that there are other people who can take over for them while they get some R&R.
Peter has never really been able to acknowledge that. Whenever he's heard of a crime in progress or a super-baddie causing trouble, he always considers it his personal duty to do something about it. Off the top of my head I can't think of a time where he asked himself "are there other people who can take care of this?" I can't think of a time when he's thought "the cops can probably handle this without my help." I can't think of a time when he's said to himself "You know, this crime currently in progress is happening very close to Four Freedoms Plaza. The FF will probably have it under control soon, so there's no reason for me to go web-swinging all the way across town."
This has been a constant source of stress for MJ, who has had to deal with her husband running out the door (or jumping out the window) to fix some problem he's seen on the news every few hours, or abandoning her in the middle of dinner, or a date, or maybe even their anniversary. She wanted him to stop being Spider-Man before, he's said he would, and he's never kept his word. She's asked him to just take a break, and he hasn't been able to do that either.
Now, that would be enough to put a lot of strain on the marriage by itself, if Peter always returned home without a scratch on him. But it's very different when he goes through a really tough battle with somebody like Carnage or Morlun, or when he got buried alive by Kraven, etc.
All right, so picture this: Peter has just survived the fight of his life with (insert villain name here). Just barely survived. Imagine him in the hospital, bruised all over, bones broken, internal injuries. Remember how badly he was banged up when Aunt May found him passed out in bed, partly in costume? Imagine that level of injury, multiplied by ten. He's also in a coma, and nobody knows when or if he'll come out of it.
Mary Jane is notified, she rushes over to the hospital in a panic, she walks into his room and sees him...sees just how badly he's hurt...is informed by the doctor that they don't know if he'll ever wake up and that even if he does he might have brain damage...
...and it is at that moment when it all gets to be too much for MJ, when she breaks down emotionally, when she becomes so hysterical that they end up hospitalizing her as well, sedating her, getting a psychiatrist for her, etc. After she's had some time to calm down, she reaches a conclusion: "I can't take this any more."
She doesn't know if Peter will ever be the same again, to start with. But even if he makes a full recovery, she'll think to herself, what about the next time? How can she allow herself to love somebody who seems to almost have a death wish? Who repeatedly puts himself in situations where he could be crippled or killed, who has such little regard for his own well-being? Somebody who cares so little about the effect his death would have on HER, and on Aunt May?
And thus the stage is set for her to leave him. She wants to stop loving him, but she can't. Not if he's always around, if she's always seeing him or running into him. So she decides to walk--no, RUN--away from him and not look back.
I think that's better than the Mephisto solution because it's more believable. Also, the two of them still have feelings for one another and thus can easily be reunited. (If they did get back together, I hope that Peter would acknowledge the reality that he can't be the guardian angel for the entire world, agree to cut down on the web-slinging, and this time actually MEAN it.) Also, if it happens this way then nobody is really the "bad guy" who can be blamed for ending the marriage; Peter was just doing the same thing he's always done since the '60s and happened to bite off more than he could chew, and MJ had just reached her breaking point so a lot of fans would really feel sorry for her and sympathize with her rather than blame her for abandoning Peter (when you think about it, she was a saint for putting up with the Spidey gig for as long as she did!).
Anyway, that's how I would've done it, if it were up to me.
Here's a recap for anybody who doesn't know about what happened to Spidey after Civil War, or who doesn't know everything:
-Marvel Editor-In-Chief Joe Quesada never did like the fact that Peter Parker got married back in the late 1980's, and decided to break up that marriage so Peter could be single again because he liked that better as a fan.
-As a result of Peter revealing his identity on national TV, Aunt May gets shot and is in critical condition in a hospital.
-Peter is desperate to keep her alive (despite her being ancient) and looks for somebody who can help him. Nobody he has met during his many years of superheroing is able to heal Aunt May, and he literally asks everybody he can think of.
-Peter gets a visit from Mephisto, who says "Hey, I can save your Aunt, and the only thing I want in return is..." (this is where things start to get really stupid) "...your MARRIAGE. Because breaking up two people who love each other so much is going to piss off God and your misery at being apart will give me a raging hard-on!"
-Mephisto further explains that he's going to alter the past so that they never got married in the first place and don't remember being married, but that some small part of them WILL remember and will be miserable, thus giving him the aforementioned raging hard-on. (It might be worth noting at this time that Mephisto did not actually use the words "raging hard-on" at any point, although if he did I don't think it would've made the story any worse.)
-Peter and MJ agonize over the decision, Mephisto says "Hey Pete, as a bonus I'll even make everybody forget what your secret identity is so that your loved ones won't be threatened again!", MJ and Peter think about it some more and then MJ accepts the deal. Then the past is changed, reality is changed, the two were never married, and Quesada gets his wish. Meanwhile, lots of Spider-Man fans are pissed off because they had become used to the marriage and they liked it.
That's how it played out. Now, back in September, somebody made a post on CBR linking to a different idea John Byrne and Howard Mackie had come up with for breaking the marriage up. (While popular among the current generation of Spidey fans, most of the writers didn't like the marriage much more than Quesada did.) That person asked, "would you have liked it better this way?"
I responded that I would have liked it better if they'd just left well enough alone and acknowledged that most fans either liked things the way they were or didn't care one way or the other.
Then I wrote the following. I was kind of just writing whatever ideas popped into my head as I thought of them here, but I still like what I ultimately came up with, and I think it would be easier for everybody to accept than what was actually done:
But all right, if the marriage were going to be broken up no matter what and I were somehow in a position to dictate the circumstances, here's what I would like:
Peter and MJ separate. Maybe one of them even files for divorce.
This is more or less what happened around the end of Mackie's run, but as I recall there really wasn't a good reason for it happening. MJ just said she needed some time away from Pete or something.
Now, Mary Jane has always had a legitimate reason for walking away from Peter: the man always puts his work as Spidey first. I mean okay, there's responsibility and there is obsession, and I really believe that the word to best describe Peter is "obsessed" instead of "responsible."
New York City, on Earth-616, is full of superheroes and Peter ought to know that even with his powers he is only one man and he cannot save everybody. Look at it this way: police and firefighters and paramedics do their best to prevent people from dying or being victimized, but police and firefighters and paramedics all take some time off sooner or later. They acknowledge that they can't do it all, and that there are other people who can take over for them while they get some R&R.
Peter has never really been able to acknowledge that. Whenever he's heard of a crime in progress or a super-baddie causing trouble, he always considers it his personal duty to do something about it. Off the top of my head I can't think of a time where he asked himself "are there other people who can take care of this?" I can't think of a time when he's thought "the cops can probably handle this without my help." I can't think of a time when he's said to himself "You know, this crime currently in progress is happening very close to Four Freedoms Plaza. The FF will probably have it under control soon, so there's no reason for me to go web-swinging all the way across town."
This has been a constant source of stress for MJ, who has had to deal with her husband running out the door (or jumping out the window) to fix some problem he's seen on the news every few hours, or abandoning her in the middle of dinner, or a date, or maybe even their anniversary. She wanted him to stop being Spider-Man before, he's said he would, and he's never kept his word. She's asked him to just take a break, and he hasn't been able to do that either.
Now, that would be enough to put a lot of strain on the marriage by itself, if Peter always returned home without a scratch on him. But it's very different when he goes through a really tough battle with somebody like Carnage or Morlun, or when he got buried alive by Kraven, etc.
All right, so picture this: Peter has just survived the fight of his life with (insert villain name here). Just barely survived. Imagine him in the hospital, bruised all over, bones broken, internal injuries. Remember how badly he was banged up when Aunt May found him passed out in bed, partly in costume? Imagine that level of injury, multiplied by ten. He's also in a coma, and nobody knows when or if he'll come out of it.
Mary Jane is notified, she rushes over to the hospital in a panic, she walks into his room and sees him...sees just how badly he's hurt...is informed by the doctor that they don't know if he'll ever wake up and that even if he does he might have brain damage...
...and it is at that moment when it all gets to be too much for MJ, when she breaks down emotionally, when she becomes so hysterical that they end up hospitalizing her as well, sedating her, getting a psychiatrist for her, etc. After she's had some time to calm down, she reaches a conclusion: "I can't take this any more."
She doesn't know if Peter will ever be the same again, to start with. But even if he makes a full recovery, she'll think to herself, what about the next time? How can she allow herself to love somebody who seems to almost have a death wish? Who repeatedly puts himself in situations where he could be crippled or killed, who has such little regard for his own well-being? Somebody who cares so little about the effect his death would have on HER, and on Aunt May?
And thus the stage is set for her to leave him. She wants to stop loving him, but she can't. Not if he's always around, if she's always seeing him or running into him. So she decides to walk--no, RUN--away from him and not look back.
I think that's better than the Mephisto solution because it's more believable. Also, the two of them still have feelings for one another and thus can easily be reunited. (If they did get back together, I hope that Peter would acknowledge the reality that he can't be the guardian angel for the entire world, agree to cut down on the web-slinging, and this time actually MEAN it.) Also, if it happens this way then nobody is really the "bad guy" who can be blamed for ending the marriage; Peter was just doing the same thing he's always done since the '60s and happened to bite off more than he could chew, and MJ had just reached her breaking point so a lot of fans would really feel sorry for her and sympathize with her rather than blame her for abandoning Peter (when you think about it, she was a saint for putting up with the Spidey gig for as long as she did!).
Anyway, that's how I would've done it, if it were up to me.