Spider-Man Is Single Again
This morning, I read in USA Today that Spider-Man was returning to Bachelor-Land. Cool!, I thought. He's been going through a lot in the "Civil War" series, and it's finally taken its toll on his marriage. I don't think that there's been many super-hero divorces, plus it reinforces Peter's loser status, which is a big part of the character. Then I read the rest of the article, which described how it was going to happen (summary courtesy of Wikipedia):"...After his Aunt May is shot, the superhero Spider-Man searches for help in saving her life. Spider-Man meets the demon Mephisto, who offers to save her life if Spider-Man gives him his marriage. Spider-Man and his wife Mary Jane Watson agree, and the character's history is subsequently retconned so that he has never been married. The storyline serves to set-up a restructuring of the Spider-Man titles, resulting in the cancellation of 'Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man' and 'The Sensational Spider-Man', replaced by 'Amazing Spider-Man' revamped as a thrice-monthly publication."
That's disappointing - a Faustian bargain, literally with the devil. Who can relate to that? I realize that there's a lot of things out there that are far more worthy of worrying about, but it's still a little annoying. It's why I prefer close-ended stories to following an ongoing title.
Sigh.
Labels: comics, marvel, one more day, retconning, spider-man
posted by Jeff Pidgeon at
3:43 PM
1 Comments:
Big mistake because to me, the whole concept of Spider-Man(to me) is that it's a rite-of-passage story with tights and villians. We have a story where not only does a boy get superpowers, but he quickly becomes a man due to his uncle's deathg(the "great power comes great responsibily" deal and the fact that he never called himself Spider-Boy in the beginning). One of those rites-of-passage is having a mature relationship with the opposite sex, and in the case of the Peter/Mary Jane marriage, I thought it was a no-brainer. I always felt that the reader/ writer's criticism of the marriage is probably because they only saw the continuing story as standard-issue superheroics and not grasp the original meaning of the origin story.
However, Marvel made their bed and now they've got to lie in it. But I can't help but to think that some writer they hired would squeeze MJ back into the picture as a way to rectify what they(Marvel) had done and bring in a new perspective on it.
"Comedy is the truth done for laughs."
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