Spidey Memories#41

6 Comments

1. Betty Brant likes to cosplay as Solid Snake

2. Honesly, this was about the time I stopped reading the Spidey comics. The writing was really bad, and all the characters I’d known & loved for years had changed dramatically, & not in a good way. If I wanted a dark, brooding vigilante, I’d pick up Punisher, Wolverine, or a certain pointy-eared caped crusader! Maximum Carnage was pushing it, but by the time Peter’s parents “returned” (Did ANYONE believe that was really them?), I gave up on the Spidey books. I’ll stick to my back issues & Essentials for my Spider-fix, thank you very much! Even as silly as some of those stories were (Doc Ock & Aunt May FTW!), they were Spidey stories. Any character development was actually DEVELOPMENT (Flash grows up & joins the Army, for example). Give me the good old days over a Brand New Day anytime! Excelsior!

3. Yes, Peter becomes “The Spider”, but he doesnt exactly “abandon his wife”, that’s bullshit. MJ, who knows Peter always gets through these mental flake-outs, decided to take a vacation and make amends with her family, giving Peter “space” to work out his problems on a conscious and subconscious level. It’s clearly written like this, and DeMatties gives us both Peter and MJ’s perspectives to enhance this in “Back From The Edge”. His “Dark Vigilantism” angle only lasts a week or two, and he’s back to normal the INSTANT MJ, his WIFE, returns from her vacation, having cleansed her soul and ready to embrace her impending motherhood.

   The sole flaw here is that the way it was set up and written made the whole depression angle looked like Peter did it because he was…welll…bored. ^_^ (“boring vigilantism numbs the pain of Ninja Parents)

   When Peter smacked MJ, he knows immediatly what he did and it causes him to flee, while MJ is BEGGING Peter to come back. It’s the least dirty-handed moment in comics, and sadly one that has had it’s rep blown out of proportion by people who just don’t give The Clone Saga or Peter’s 1990s depression any real thought other than “it sucks” without taking a closer gander at it.

   The second depression didnt last long, and he didnt know what he was doing, but it wasnt the “deal with the devil” that people make it out to be either. He was a lost soul and ripe for manipulation by his “father”. Peter makes the conscious decision to go back to MJ and reject The Jackal…and it didnt last beyond the MC arc other than during his stint under mind control. Peter wasnt out-of-character there, he was depressed, there’s a difference.

   As for why some are perfectly cool with the books from the 90s? Betty and Flash aside (and anyone else I’m excluding), everyone acted like an adult (most of the time), and they all ,to a degree knew there was a light at the end of the tunnel. BND does not have this sense of true-to-character strength nor optimisum, it deliberatly breaks it or sets it up to fail. I don’t find that very exciting, it’s drab and repetitive…and sends a negative message. It’s an avatar for people who just want to be miserable and dump all their own personal problems on to a character…not to relate to him or her, but just so they don’t have to deal with their private issues like grown-ups. Back when Spidey was written by people who UNDERSTOOD Spider-Man, they gave the characters issues and let them grow through them. BND doesnt do that, it’s a writers average day on twitter and nothing else.

   I don’t make excuses for 90s Spidey, but all the same, even during this period, Peter and MJ were going through faintly adult things like depression and coping with family trauma in recognisible and beleivable ways…and more to the point, they didnt wallow in their self-misery for two to three years, which is all you see now under Quesada’s reign of terror…heroes with no moral compass and constantly giving up on their loved ones. It’s sickening. In the early to mid 1990s, characters came out of this sinkhole stronger than ever, keeping somewhat in-character even when out-of-it, and IF Peter was acting out-of=character, you had Mary Jane’s point of view to fall back on because she was his anchor and best friend, and she reassured readers while reassuring herself Peter would always come through it.

   That’s something that isnt prevailant in BND, or even post-New Avengers and pre-Cival War Spidey. Everyone is selfish, bitter, assanine, and cowardly. It likewise astounds me anyone who liked JMS’s material (though it was moderatly stable and better written, it still did attrociously stupid things), or BND can say they like those books with a straight face.

   Apples and Oranges. Train-wreck or Plane crash. Everyone has thier vices.

4. Ugh. I’ve read that one. Frickin’ stupid.

   I beg to differ, though, Wellness. I agree that Peter had some good character development and was written well… during the half of that period that he wasn’t “On the BRINK!!!!” Too much super-dark and frankly out of character stuff in that period. Just before the Clone Saga, after the simulacra incident, Peter goes ape-shit crazy and abandons his entire life, including his wife, to run around as some boring dark vigilante– as if there weren’t enough of those in the ’90s. After recovering from that, things are good for a while, until Peter learns that he’s the clone. Then he goes nuts again, attacks Ben, smacks Mary Jane (an accident, I know, but frankly, it didn’t look that way in the issue itself), and then abandons her again, teaming up with the freakin’ Joker– I mean, the Jackal– for a few issues. There’s another guy that was totally out of character. The Clone Saga Jackal doesn’t even begin to resemble Conway’s Jackal.

   I agree, though, that the supporting cast got it the worst, and especially Betty.

   Not to say that everything from that period was bad or anything, but there were some supremely out of character moments, and it astonishes me sometimes that this period of Spidey is completely cool with a lot of people, but the current books are anathema.

5. The headband absolutely slays me. Long before Chapter One and BND absolutely ruined EVERY character in this franchise, Betty Brant really had the worst character development.

   Nobody was out-of-character that much. Peter, MJ, Liz, Harry, Felicia, May, Jonah and Marla all grew and matured further during the 1990s. It was the C-listers like Betty that suffered the most though, but she had’nt been relevant for twenty years by this point, Mackie must have figured “I’ve gotta do SOMETHING with her”.

   Has Betty been watching too many reruns of “Lois Kills Stewie”?

6. No wonder people were disillusioned with pre clone saga/post symbiote spidey. Everyone was acting out of character!