Is progression really bad? (Possible Spider-Man Spoilers)

[JLU Dude]

I'm going ahead and warning you right now: this does hane possible spoilers to Spider-Man: One More Day/Brand New Day.

From the looks of it, the anti-Spider-marriage Joe Quesada, who said the marriage was a mistake as it doesn't make him relateable to young people, is going to get his wish and the Spider-Marrige is going bye-bye. Many people, including myself, view this as short-sighted and not true. I also find it hypocritical in the wake of the whole Black Panther/Storm and Luke Cage/Jessica Jones marriages and that it's using the marriage as a scapegoat for the writer's failings (Good Spidey stories can be told with Spidey married). But I disgress. Anyway, I also find it somewhat amusing that there are several things different in Batman from what they were when they were first introduced, mainly Dick Grayson and Barbara Gordon.

This been over twenty years since DC first did the whole "Dick Geayson quits being Robin and become Nightwing" stuff and it's almost twenty years since Barbara Gordon quit being Batgirl, was crippled, and became Oracle. I don't think anyone in DC saying that these stories were bad ideas or mistakes. Hell, a lot of people view Barbara's transformation as giving handicapped people a hero and people like that Dick Grayson is not being the sidekick anymore (Though I think Alex Ross probably thinks they were mistakes).

True, they weren't the main characters of their own series when they started out, but they no longer serve their original purpose (which is to bring kids in) and the Bat-books are no worse for wear because of it. So, the question is if it's bad a "bad idea" for Spidey to be married, doesn't that also mean it was a "bad idea" for DC to have Dick and Barbara graduate? Or were they not "bad ideas" at all, but good ones?

[Jon T]

Alan Moore once wrote a nice little piece on this in 1983, and he summed up the feeling at the time with something along the lines of: "People don't like change, they only like the illusion of change". Appropriately enough, Spider-Man in particular was singled out as being a stagnant character, essentially unchanged since the 1960s. He was perhaps being a tad harsh (the character did grow in that time, albeit very slowly), but when you consider how comparatively little most mainstream characters were from the 1960s to the early 1980s, his argument was quite valid.

Of course, since then, with ever-dwindling comics sales (300,000 was roughly the top figure in 1983 according to Moore), many super-heroes have undergone great changes, some of which stuck for quite a few years. Spider-Man's marriage wasn't in itself an inherently bad change. The Spider-Man comics have always had soap opera elements to them, and this was the next natural progression. Unfortunately, it's been far too easy for successive editors and writers to simply blame the Spider-marriage as a scapegoat for poorly-planned and written stories.

My specific take on Spider-Man is not that the marriage itself was a hindrance to good stories, but that Mary-Jane suddenly becoming a world-famous supermodel shortly after marrying made it harder for readers to relate to the famous 'everyman' super-hero. People do get married, just like people have lousy jobs and fall ill, but it's a sure bet that there aren't too many readers that are in relationships with supermodels. It just added a large amount of unnecessary clutter to a hero who traditionally resided in a (largely) grounded reality out of the tights.

But what of change in general? Dick Grayson gave up being Robin in 1984 and hasn't gone back since - despite the all-important licensing of the character in other media perpetually having Grayson as Robin. The Incredible Hulk's characterization (and even coloring) was pretty much in a constant state of flux from 1982 to the early 2000s, and far from being derided, those drastic changes afforded some truly excellent stories. Superman and Lois Lane actually married over 10 years ago, and I've never perceived such negative feelings from DC Comics. So, although licensing may be cited as a concern for maintaining a status-quo, in reality (due to comics being increasingly marginalized), it makes little difference in the eyes of the public.

That's why the idea of keeping Spider-Man single is a hollow argument; the only people who are going to be affected by this are the 20,000 or so readers, most of which will be in their 20s at the least. And I would have thought portraying Spider-Man as an older character would be something that would continue to make the character relatable for the relevant audience. I'm afraid Joe Quesada is deluded if he genuinely thinks he can suddenly promote an influx of new young readers to Spider-Man; the comics market itself is so segregated into its own little corner that nothing less than an industry-wide push could ever do that.

[GWOtaku]

One more day kind of sums up my comic problem. I like superheroes, I like TV shows and movies based on them, their history and the way comics and culture influence each other intrigues me. I'd love to get deep into some of them, but then stuff like this happens and I feel like I'd just be setting myself up for disappointment if I spend money to get invested in a character, only for progression to be turned backward because execs would rather play it safe and make money off of the old status quo.

I guess the answer is to seek out the more awesome standalone stories, because long-running series just seem to get inevitably screwed with sooner or later.

[JLU Dude]

One more day kind of sums up my comic problem. I like superheroes, I like TV shows and movies based on them, their history and the way comics and culture influence each other intrigues me. I'd love to get deep into some of them, but then stuff like this happens and I feel like I'd just be setting myself up for disappointment if I spend money to get invested in a character, only for progression to be turned backward because execs would rather play it safe and make money off of the old status quo.

I guess the answer is to seek out the more awesome standalone stories, because long-running series just seem to get inevitably screwed with sooner or later.

That, I fear, is part of the real problem both Marvel and DC have as of late: There's rarely, if ever, any stand-alone stories. Everything over the past few years has been crossovers, crossovers, crossovers or big events, big events, big events. Either a lead-in to a crossover or a tie-in or there's no rest between big events. At least with Identity Crisis, there wasn't a whole lot of having to read outside of that main title.

No wonder the only things I'm buying now are Justice League of America (which, if it does tied to Final Crisis, I'll probably bolt) and The Batman Strikes.

[Shawn Hopkins]

One more day kind of sums up my comic problem. I like superheroes, I like TV shows and movies based on them, their history and the way comics and culture influence each other intrigues me. I'd love to get deep into some of them, but then stuff like this happens and I feel like I'd just be setting myself up for disappointment if I spend money to get invested in a character, only for progression to be turned backward because execs would rather play it safe and make money off of the old status quo.

I guess the answer is to seek out the more awesome standalone stories, because long-running series just seem to get inevitably screwed with sooner or later.

Good point. I've been reading comics for 25 years, and they're scaring me away. I'd hate to imagine how daunting it must be for new readers. However, I would suggest maybe looking into some older stuff, maybe even starting with the early Stan Lee and Steve Ditko stories, or some of the Roger Stern issues.

[Ed Liu]

My generic answer to the question asked is, "No." When he took over Swamp Thing, Alan Moore managed to take a moribund character whose title was about to be cancelled and proceeded to turn the comic's whole world upside-down. It's the textbook case of how to run an "Everything You Thought You Knew Was Wrong" play correctly. He took everything that came before, thought about it really hard, and came up with a plot twist that built on all the prior history while permanently changing the direction of the comic. Along with reviving the title, he worked out a lot of stuff he'd exploit further in Watchmen and essentially kick-started Vertigo.

To much lesser extents, Dan Slott and Kurt Busiek manage to do the same trick, although occasionally I feel Busiek's work would do better if he would jettison some of the earlier stuff or figure out a way to write it out rather than incorporate it. As you mention, Barbara Gordon is at least as interesting as Oracle as she was as Batgirl. Personally, I think what John Ostrander and Kim Yale did with her in Suicide Squad and what Gail Simone did in Birds of Prey made her WAY better as Oracle than as Batgirl. But, at the time, people were shocked and horrified that Moore had changed the status quo so dramatically.

The other counter-example I can come up with is in Spider-Man's continuity. There was a terrific issue where Aunt May "died," and revealed that she knew who Peter was all along. Terrific issue, all things considered. JMS revisited this same territory in his first or second story arc, where Aunt May finds out Peter is Spider-Man in a pretty good story that, IMO, was only marred by a few bits of the execution. Obviously, the second story can't happen without somehow undoing the first one. Maybe the way they did it was cheesy, but if it wasn't done, then we wouldn't have gotten the second story.

Continuity does not make bad stories. Bad stories make bad stories.

Then again, I also have a selective memory on comic book superhero continuity. If I don't like it, I ignore it until someone else builds on it in a way that I like.

-- Ed

[Antiyonder]

Frankly the whole MJ super model problem is really nonsense as the writers who made the change ruined her career, thus giving her a more modest job in the long run. Pretty much Joe and crew are just looking for problems when there's none to be found.

[JLU Dude]

I find the whole "Spider-Man married doesn't make him relatable and/or deviates from his core" to be an excuse and bull, to be honest. I mean, he was always trying to help his aunt out and liked MJ from the dat he saw her. They dated for a while and it was logical that they could marry. I mean even other media stuff evolves over time.

Take Buffy: The Vampire Slayer for example. The show started off about a high school girl who didn’t want to be a Slayer, wasn’t interested in learning about it, and had normal friends aside from a vampire for a boyfriend. But over the course of the series, relationships broke up and reform, Willow became a witch, Xander was briefly engaged and lost an eye, Buffy lost her mother and gained a sister (albeit I think Dawn was a stupid idea, but still…), Giles left for a while, they went to college and then left, and Buffy became very capable and dependable as a Slayer and later a leader.

Anyway, I was 9 when I first got a Spider-Man comic. It was in the middleof the early stages of the Clone Saga and my only exposure to Spidey was the 90s toon. It didn't bother me that Peter and MJ were married. I was wondering what was going on, but I didn't let them being married alienate me. Why? Because I had no problem with it. I was a little younger when I got my first Batman comics. One was the third Robin mini-series and another was one of the Knightquest issue. Jean-Paul Vallery, Tim Drake, Huntress, KGBeast, and Oracle didn't scare me anyway, either.

When all is said and done, what's gonna happen with OMD/BND isn't making Spidey relatable, it's regression and will probably cause a negative backlash (whetever it'll affect the books is another matter...and another subject).

[Jacob T. Paschal]

That, I fear, is part of the real problem both Marvel and DC have as of late: There's rarely, if ever, any stand-alone stories. Everything over the past few years has been crossovers, crossovers, crossovers or big events, big events, big events. Either a lead-in to a crossover or a tie-in or there's no rest between big events. At least with Identity Crisis, there wasn't a whole lot of having to read outside of that main title.

No wonder the only things I'm buying now are Justice League of America (which, if it does tied to Final Crisis, I'll probably bolt) and The Batman Strikes.

And you've just summed up why I do not read American comis regularly. Crossovers lost their special feeling a long time ago.

[Lorendiac]

And you've just summed up why I do not read American comis regularly. Crossovers lost their special feeling a long time ago.

Marv Wolfman has said, rather apologetically, that he's afraid the surprise success of his own "Crisis on Infinite Earths" started a horrible tradition of having Big Company-Wide Crossover Events at the drop of a hat!

According to him: DC agreed to let him go ahead with "Crisis on Infinite Earths" in the mid-80s, but they didn't expect its sales to be anything really special. They were very pleasantly surprised by what actually happened. So editors at DC (and at Marvel, and at other companies as time went by) started saying, "Eureka! We need lots more huge, convoluted story ideas that will give us excuses to tie together lots of monthly titles as smaller pieces of a jigsaw puzzle being published across a span of months!"

Wolfman has made it clear that he wishes this hadn't happened. He wasn't trying to start a new trend along those lines, but he inadvertently created a monster!

(I'm paraphrasing, of course, but I believe that was the essence of his remarks on the subject, when he was looking back on it many years later, as a sadder but wiser man.)

[Antiyonder]

Since the Spider-Marriage relates to the topic, I thought I'd list the 4 Anti-Marriage comments and my response to them:

1. Keeping the character single for newer generations.

A. We've seen many readers online admitting that they begun reading the titles with Peter and MJ, without having any problems with it.

B. It's agreed that the writing and overall storytelling had been sloppy for quite sometime. The marriage is merely a scapegoat for those who don't want to own up to their work standards.

C. I can think of a reason why there are scarely any new kids reading the comics. Once upon a time comic books were just as available as milk, bread and laundry detergent. Now they are restricted to the occasional bookstore or specialty shops. Some kids might be lucky and live near a comic store, but the majority of them are too far for mommy or daddy to bother going to pick up the comic.

D. I could understand a return to single Peter back when Marvel only had one continuum, but today you have Marvel Adventures or Ultimates to sate your single needs.

2. Because then the character is happy, and that goes against the character.

A little too black and white isn't it?

While there's no denying that Peter is suppose to be down on his luck I doubt Stan or even Steve were going for suicidally depressing either. The character has to have some sampling of good luck and happiness. Heck, the story introducing The Vulture (ASM #2) ended on a high note for the character.

Even then, a healthy long lasting marriage doesn't exactly mean that life is going to be perfect. It just means that the character isn't a total downer.

3. He married a supermodel.
She became a supermodel after the marriage, and even then they remedied it by giving her a more modest career.

Classic example of looking for problems that are nonexistent.

4. It's too hard to write for a married Spider-Man.

Funny, I thought any job whether you like it or not is suppose to be hard. If you have to have everything easy to achieve success, then any success you get is an undeserved success.

Any writer can tell great stories when they're faced with no restrictions, but the best writers are the ones who turn up great work with restriction.

[Captain Highwind]

It was annoying having Mary Jane constantly whine that Peter was out risking his life every issue in the nineties, but other than that the marriage never bothered me either.

I guess they could have just gotten a divorce somewhere along the line; but wait, Peter's an everyman, and nobody's ever had to deal with divorce...

[Antiyonder]

It was annoying having Mary Jane constantly whine that Peter was out risking his life every issue in the nineties, but other than that the marriage never bothered me either.

I guess they could have just gotten a divorce somewhere along the line; but wait, Peter's an everyman, and nobody's ever had to deal with divorce...

I still say some better writing would help as opposed to dumping MJ. And besides, she didn't leave him after he was assumed to be a clone or after their daughter "died" then it's hard to believe she'd leave for other reasons.

[Captain Highwind]

I think the 'everyday whining about him risking his life' would do it.

[Antiyonder]

I think the 'everyday whining about him risking his life' would do it.

And again, the solution is to write the character better.

[Captain Highwind]

Works for me. ^_^

[Animation Freak]

Personaly, no, I don't think progression is bad. What I think is bad is people using it as a scapegoat for the bubble burst in the 90s when it was really the comics companies' greed getting the better of them and overflowing the market with gimmicks; the lack of stand-alone stories; some really poorly-written stories, most of which focuses on the wrong aspects of Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen; and the current lack of availability.

Any job is supposed to be hard, and that includes writing. Anyone who says Spider-Man being married hampered good stories probably wanted things be to how they were when they read the books. Quesada was merely using the marriage as a scapegoat for other problems that easily could've be fixed without OMD and was being a fanboy about it. Sorry, but at the end of the day, not only wasn't the marriage the problem, the real problems are still in place.

[Jono11]

What I think is bad is people using it as a scapegoat for the bubble burst in the 90s when it was really the comics companies' greed getting the better of them and overflowing the market with gimmicks; the lack of stand-alone stories; some really poorly-written stories, most of which focuses on the wrong aspects of Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and WatchmenSo basically Marvel in the 1990s. I agree. Marvel in the 1990s ruined what could have been a golden era.

[Matt Hazuda]

So basically Marvel in the 1990s. I agree. Marvel in the 1990s ruined what could have been a golden era.Yes, because DC, Image, Wildstorm and a whole cavalcade of long-gone companies have nothing to do with the insane speculation that went on during this period. Nope, all Marvel's fault :yawn:

[Animation Freak]

Yes, because DC, Image, Wildstorm and a whole cavalcade of long-gone companies have nothing to do with the insane speculation that went on during this period. Nope, all Marvel's fault :yawn:

Agreed. It wasn't just Marvel's doing. It's just for a few of their titles, Marvel decided to use scapegoats, and usually fueled by Quesada's personal perefences and ego than the truth.

[Tobias]

So, what are they going to do with all the new continuity once they inevitably go back and revert the timeline back to what it used to be, marriage & all?

Between Jameson becoming Mayor, Aunt May getting married, Flash losing his legs, etc. etc., what's going to happen to all the new changes?

[Jacob T. Paschal]

I'm a big supporter of 'progression'. Looking back, things like Dick quitting in BTAS was actually pretty exciting. It changed things, but the outcome was not negative. I've always seen the three Robins as being interesting pupils. Dick was the young phenom that a dark and in-flexible Batman drove off, Jason was the wild child who Batman could keep his eye on, and Tim was finally the one he got right. For Dick to have returned to his superhero roots and become the second Batman, doing things his own way, would portray Bruce as having learned from his mistakes and Dick as becoming comfortable with his own image and place in Batman's legacy. That, I find, is damned exiciting characterization that get's my jollies all tangle up in themselves (watch my entire view be debunked by the fact anything I described not being true at all).

On the subject of Lois and Clark tieing the knot, it's something I think is a breath of fresh air. Being that I don't follow the main stream titles much, and the fact mainstream media hasn't really touched upon it much, I think it allows for great dialogue between the two (via the Brainiac arc of recent). Being able to play off each other, compete with each other, outwit each other, without that silly secret identity getting in the way, that is what I'd love to see much more of, but with the way DC is just EVENTEVENTEVENTEVENTEVENT all the time...you just don't see it much.


So, what are they going to do with all the new continuity once they inevitably go back and revert the timeline back to what it used to be, marriage & all?

Between Jameson becoming Mayor, Aunt May getting married, Flash losing his legs, etc. etc., what's going to happen to all the new changes?

Woah, all that happened post-BND?


I suppose a simple fix would be simply to pull a Doomsday: make a story out of Peter Parker's memories of the old continuity return, either via Mephisto dying or an outside force (an alternate reality Peter/character) joggin' his memory, ala Power Girl-Two and Lois-Two. That way it's all canon, if only to Pete and the wife.