#deb whitman

[ewzzy]

If we're going by the "closing the door behind you means sex" standard then by 1981 Pete's been with Mary Jane, Betty Brant, Deb Whitman, and Marcy Kane. Just figured you'd all want to know.

[huntingtonnow]

Juneteenth Celebrations Around Huntington

Juneteenth has blossomed into multiple celebrations this year in Huntington, with music, fashion and poetry among the ways people will mark the end of the American legacy of slavery. Wednesday On Wednesday, the Caribbean American Poetry Association, with Deb Thivierge, Founder and executive director of ELIJA, will host a poetry reading for Juneteenth and Caribbean American Heritage Month. That…

[marcmarcmomarc]

The Owl House: The New Year’s Special

Sarah-Nicole Robles

Wendie Malick

Alex Hirsch

Mae Whitman

Tati Gabrielle

Issac Ryan Brown

Zeno Robinson

Elizabeth Grullon

Cissy Jones

Avi Roque

Keston John

Matt Chapman

Michaela Dietz

Grey DeLisle

Erica Lindbeck

Ryan O’Flanagan

Kimberly Brooks

Ally Maki

Kari Wahlgren

Cast:

Dee Bradley Baker as Princess

Eric Bauza as Gilbert Park & Faust

Bob Bergen as Barcus

J.B. Blanc as Professor Hermonculous

Steve Blum as Salty

Issac Ryan Brown as Gus Porter

Kimberly Brooks as Skara & Eileen

Bruce Carey as Mason

Matt Chapman as Steve Tholomule & Harvey Park

Parvesh Cheena as Tibblet-Tibblie Grimm Hammer III “Tibbles”

Wilson Cruz as Manny Noceda

Noshir Dalal as Adrian Graye Vernworth

Felicia Day as Bria

Ariana DeBose as Tía Valentina Noceda

Elijah DeJesus as Prima Gabi Noceda

Grey DeLisle as Masha, Katya, Cat, Usurper, & Bonesborough Brawl Security Guard

Jorge Diaz as Matt Tholomule

Michaela Dietz as Vee Noceda

Nik Dodani as Gavin

Deb Doetzer as Gwendolyn Clawthorne

Jason Douglas as Osran

Tati Gabrielle as Willow Park

Eileen Galindo as Flora D’splora

Peter Gallagher as Dell Clawthorne

Noah Galvin as Jerbo

Kimiko Glenn as Long-Haired Bat Kid

Elizabeth Grullon as Camila Noceda

Harvey Guillén as Angmar

Arin Hanson as Eye-Eating Monster, Snaggleback, & Papa Titan

Alex Hirsch as King Clawthorne & Hooty

Holly @hollowtones as Mohawk Bat Kid

Chris Houghton as Bill

Oscar Isaac as Tío Emilio Noceda

Keston John as Darius Deamonne

Cissy Jones as Lilith Clawthorne

Mela Lee as Kikimora

Jason Liebrecht as Vitimir

Erica Lindbeck as Emira Blight

Kevin Locarro as Braxas

Rachael MacFarlane as Odalia Blight

Ally Maki as Viney

Wendie Malick as Eda Clawthorne

Shannon McKain as Morton

Mosco Moon as Olive (Gabi’s Girlfriend)

Rita Moreno as Abuela Luna Noceda

Ryan O’Flanagan as Edric Blight

Johnny Ortiz as Tío Mateo Noceda

Penny @snapscube Parker as Bucket Hat Bat Kid

Jim Pirri as Alador Blight

Anairis Quiñones as Azura

Matthew Rhys as Philip Wittebane/Emperor Belos

Kevin Michael Richardson as Tarak, Bonesborough Brawl Commentator, & Tom

Eden Riegel as Boscha, Amelia, Bo, & Abominations

Bumper Robinson as Hieronymus Bump

Zeno Robinson as Hunter, Derwin, & Male Camp Friend

Sarah-Nicole Robles as Luz Noceda

Avi Roque as Raine Whispers

Isabella Rosselini as Bat Queen

Roger Craig Smith as Jacob Hopkins & Warden Wrath

Hailee Steinfeld as Female Camp Friend

April Stewart as Greater Basilisk

Christopher Swindle as Graveyard Keeper

Fred Tatasciore as Malphas

Jen Taylor as Hettie Cutburn

Dana Terrace as Tinella Nosa & Severine

Morgan Terry as Hecate & Harper (Gabi’s Other Girlfriend)

Kari Wahlgren as Amber, Eberwolf, Villainous Lucy, & Barista

Mae Whitman as Amity Blight

Gary Anthony Williams as Perry Porter

Debra Wilson as Terra Snapdragon

Fryda Wolff as The Collector

[orangeispice]

guys what if cissy ironwood and deb whitman got married

make peter their best man and all

[marvelousmrm]

Amazing Spider-Man #207 (O’Neil/Mooney, Aug 1980). MJ proves to be a tough act to follow. Pete’s dating Debra Whitman now, secretary for his grad school department. MJ never seemed to care when Pete took off for superheroics — Deb takes it personally every time, assuming she’s unlovable. It’s tough to read!

[oliveroctavius]

I think Deb Whitman and Harry Osborn should be friends

[brawltogethernow]

Professional comic nerd types really wander around writing cringing, apologetic articles with titles like “In Defense of Deb Whitman” that are still vaguely character-bashing like it’s not a top quality premise that the one time Peter Parker dates somebody who isn’t as up to eleven batshit as he normally unthinkingly goes for he accidentally gaslights her into a mental breakdown without changing his behavior, just with his own native shifty obnoxiousness, and later she writes a bestselling book slamming him. Unbeatable. I’m aware that this is one of those posts you scroll past like "Hmm you’re neck deep in a nonsense I didn't know existed until you started talking about it."

[traincat]

Is peter a cheater in relationships?

I wouldn’t say that Peter is a cheater because for me to label a fictional character a cheater there has to be a strong and consistent pattern of infidelity present in their relationships, and that’s not true with Peter. If anything in a serious relationship he’s incredibly loyal -- I think it’s a mistake to view, for instance, the Gwen/Peter/MJ or Betty/Peter/Liz interactions as “traditional” love triangles where one party is torn between two romantic interests because in both in cases despite being pursued Peter displays a clear and consistent preference for the girl he’s with. 

(ASM #96-97) Peter’s reaction to Mary Jane hitting on him, even while Gwen is in England, isn’t interest, but chagrin, which actually from Mary Jane’s perspective is I think a strong part of the reason she does hit on Peter in the issues leading up to Gwen’s death; it’s not to try and break up him and Gwen so much as viewing Peter as someone who is safe to play around with because he’s so loyal to Gwen, or as someone to test to see if he’d break that loyalty, in which case she could write him off as the same as other men.

It’s complicated! I love it! So no, Peter’s not a cheater -- I don’t think we can characterize him as having a pattern of infidelity in his romantic relationships.

This does not, however, mean he’s always behaved great in relationships. Which I think is realistic for a character with a long-running history, but for the sake of the discussion let’s run with it. Before Peter unmasked to Felicia, for instance, there is deception in his romantic relationships. It’s not the deception of infidelity, of sneaking around in a romantic sense, but he is sneaking around -- in his Spider-Man costume to fight crime. This kind of relationship problem isn’t unique to Spider-Man -- “masked hero hides identity from the object of their affection for their safety” is a pretty old tale, but Spider-Man does love to play it up for misunderstandings in relationships. Back when Peter and Betty were together in the Lee/Ditko run Betty often did wonder if Peter was seeing other girls when the reason behind his secretive behavior was Spider-Man. 

(ASM #13)

Which ironically ended up with Betty and Peter embroiled in an extramarital affair -- the marriage was Betty’s to Ned Leeds -- years later, after Mary Jane had turned down Peter’s first proposal of marriage. 

(ASM #189 & #193) So not a cheater -- it’s not his marriage -- but maybe a little bit of a homewrecker, which is very sexy of him actually. Betty deserved to have a wild and sexually satisfying extramarital affair with Peter. (There’s at least one writer -- I think it was Marv Wolfman but don’t quote me on that -- who maintains Betty and Peter didn’t sleep together during this period because Peter would have “never shut up about it” which given how Peter is isn’t an unfair assessment, but my counterargument is that they did because Peter’s canonically great in bed and Betty deserved that dick.)

I think it’s fair to say that towards the tail end of his relationship with Felicia, Peter was having an emotional affair with Mary Jane, who he married shortly after. I don’t think he would have described it as such at the time or realized what he was doing, but I do think that’s pretty clearly what’s on the page. It’s not intentional emotional cheating but it’s hard to say he was 100% emotionally faithful to Felicia, which did cause problems later on down the line when Felicia returned to find him suddenly married to Mary Jane. There was also a brief period where Mary Jane was believed by both the public and eventually Peter to be dead -- she’d actually been kidnapped and her death faked -- where he almost slept with both Felicia and a former college student of his (which is a whole other kettle of bad behavior). But in the end he didn’t go through with either encounter, despite not knowing that Mary Jane was still alive. He did have a long running emotional connection/flirtation during this point with Jill Stacy, Gwen’s cousin and a friend of both is and Mary Jane’s, but I think this attraction towards Jill is actually something he shared with Mary Jane, not something that threatened to separate him from her, as long as I’m spinning out subtext. Jill disappeared from the pages almost immediately as soon as Mary Jane returned, too, even when Peter and Mary Jane really did separate shortly after for reasons entirely unrelated to another woman. 

Rather than a cheater, I think Peter’s just sometimes a little bit of a dog. When he’s dating Deb Whitman in grad school, I do think that in terms of romantic behavior this is when he’s the worst behaved in general -- he’s relatively unattached and directionless and it shows. I wouldn’t say that Peter cheats on Deb, but he yanks her around emotionally and it’s pretty clear that she’s not his first priority and that he’s not particularly interested in her romantically. But he keeps seeing her anyway, which gives her false hope for their relationship considering she really does like him.

(ASM #213) “I have a feeling Debbie’s gotten the wrong idea.” Oh, you THINK? But like, even considering he’s yanking her around emotionally, it’s pretty clear he’s not sleeping with her just because he could and then going around seeing other girls behind her back. I pick on Peter a lot for some of his behavior but I think in the grand scheme of things it’s hard to label much in his romantic affairs as intentionally hurtful on his part, even if he is sometimes careless with other people’s feelings. 

[justdealingwithsomeissues]

I’m honestly getting super tired of the “Peter is dragging Deb along” plot. Deb honey you can do better. 

[oliveroctavius]

#shes like fluttershys fuckin humansona what did she do to deserve any of this shit

Making my way through ssm and if there's one thing I've learned it's that, if there's one character who deserves to beat the shit out of Peter Parker, it's Debra Whitman oh my god, peter please be nice to her I'm losing it

[ewzzy]

OOOH YEAH that's the look of a woman who finally knows why her life is so messed up. My profile series of Debra Whitman ends here. Last time we saw Deb written out of the series with a mental breakdown after discovering Peter Parker was Spider-Man. That was 1983 and now it's 2007 and Spidey's identity is public after the events of Civil War.

So naturally Deb has written a tell-all book. Well it was ghost written anyway. That's made her a target for The Vulture.

It's also made her a target for investigative reporter Betty Brant. Betty's life has also been ruined time and time again by her association with Spider-Man.

OOF that's the least flattering drawing of Betty ever. Anyway her angle is that her life makes more sense now that she knows Pete's secret and she's not scared of Spider-Man anymore because she trusts who's behind the mask.

BRIEF INTERLUDE FOR PETE'S EMBARASSING DISGUISE AND DATED STEPHEN COLBERT CAMEO

So Vulture knocks out Spidey. He's in freefall as he imagines all the *deserved* terrible things Deb has to say to him.

But then at the last second (or last 20 seconds actually) Deb actually shouts out words of support!

"Wake up you idiot!" It's what I've been shouting at Pete this whole profile series!

As a final note, Deb goes to Betty and confesses that she only agreed to the book to get the money for her mom's medical bills. She and Betty conspire to anonymously publish a backtracking of the more salacious details of the book.

It's decades late but it's nice to that Debra got some vindication. Wait this is 2007... that's the same year of One More Day. That means immediately after this everyone's memory of Pete's secret identity and all evidence of it was wiped from the earth. So... all her books were erased and she's back to thinking she's crazy?! Maybe for the best she's never been brought back since.

[splendidnothings]

peter parker like she's a 10 but I will gaslight her until she has a mental breakdown

[hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger]

I just rewatched an episode of Spider-Man the Animated Series Season 4 and...holy shit...it was the most soap opera/shipperiffic thing I’ve ever seen in an American cartoon.

Get this...

 So Spider-Man is grieving the loss of his girlfriend Mary Jane (she’s not dead, he just thinks she is) but is also feeling guilty because he’s starting to fall in love with his new crime fighting partner the Black Cat who’s making him feel better.

 She wants t take their relationship to the next step by having them reveal their secret identities to one another but he can’t bring himself to do that because compromising his identity led to the loss of MJ, so he strains their relationship.

 The irony of this is of course that they already know one another in their civilian identities because as Peter Parker and Felicia Hardy they attened Empire State University together.

 Meanwhile another ESU student Deb Whitman is straining her own relationship with Flash Thompson because she is trying to find Michael ‘I got turned into a Vampire in season 2’ Morbius who she was also in love with but was also rejected by because he was dating and in love with Felicia.

 When she finds him though suddenly Black Cat is torn between her old feelings for Morbius and her new ones for Spider-Man and starts being distant with him which gives him mixed signals.

 All of this is made worse because despite being a Vampire Morbius does still love Felicia who also still loves him and does reveal her identity to him unlike with Spider-Man. But now she’s got to decide whether there is any hope for their romance or if it would be better to just kill him and end his suffering...and if it’s the former what does it mean for her romance with Spider-Man?

 Like...Jesus Christ...That’s one big ass love polygon for a children’s cartoon show even by modern standards. I don’t recall anything from even Spec Spidey being that brilliantly complicated.

 This right here is why the 1994 cartoon was awesome. It had character drama that wasn’t played for kids, it had legitimate romantic entanglements that weren’t all that cliché among other shows aimed at the same target demographic and by doing that it also succeeded in replicating the spirit of the original Spider-Man comic books even if the relationships were original to the show.

[gwenjoon]

i only love gwen stacy 

[hellzyeahwebwielingessays]

Random question but how do you feel about the 80s era of Spidey?(Roger Stern/ Tom Defalco) I've always interpreted it kinda negatively as Peter getting burnt out, using Spider-Man as an escape from his personal responsibilities and subsequently getting lost in his own escapist fantasy.

I don't exactly agree with that.

So, first of all from the POV of 'how good were the stories', frankly they are in the conversation for the best era of Spider-Man ever. SO many all time classics and a lot of organic character development.

But if we are talking about Peter's POV...I think there is a lot to unpack from your assessment.

For the sake of argument I'm going to broadly (to the best of my recollection) be talking about everything from ASM #224 (basically the start of Stern's regular run) to ASM #288. The latter was not DeFalco's last issue, but it was the end of the Gang War storyline which was a multiparter begun by DeFalco. Also, we have to include other titles and stories alongside ASM to be fair here.

To begin with we could maybe argue Peter mentally/emotionally is in a very different mental/emotional places at the start of Stern's run vs. the end of Stern's run/the start of DeFalco's run vs. the end of DeFalco's run.

Peter began this time period as kinda dating Deb Whitman whilst in grad school, but by the time Stern left/DeFalco took over he'd left grad school and was now dating Felicia, Mary Jane having recently re-entered the picture. By the end of the Gang War arc he and MJ had been through A LOT together, he and Felicia were in a very different place and Peter had frankly endured much darkness, loss and psychological turmoil.

So it's difficult to judge the time period you brought up because there are SO many ups and downs. Even if Peter was using Spidey as an escape at one point in that period, that doesn't mean he was doing it all the time in that period nor even doing that more often than not.

I'd especially argue this during DeFalco's run. Beginning around ASm #275 Peter actively wants to quit being Spider-Man and keeps going primarily due to resolving the Hobgoblin/Flash business. His reasons for quitting are heavily linked with his experiences during the 'Death of Jean DeWolff' arc and his encounters with the Beyonder/Mephisto during Secret Wars II. In ASm #275, MJ has to actively talk him into being Spider-Man.  

So, being Spider-Man isn't really as escape of an excuse for him to side step his responsibilities at that point in the timeline. This was an era where Peter's world was growing darker, partially because the book had transitioned into a post-education status quo for Peter so the darkness of the adult life encroached harder upon him, but also because comics in general were growing darker and that was partially in response to a lot of media covered about the rise of street crime, especially in New York city.

Consequently, street level heroes like Daredevil, Batman and Spider-Man and the Punisher found themselves more relevant and more popular than they had been in awhile. But they were also growing more psychologically complex in tandem with that. Under these conditions you can see why Peter would feel more burnt out. Like many people back then (probably especially in big cities like NYC, where the majority of Marvel's staff worked at the time) the world was getting worse and traditional heroic ideals were seeming harder to justify, and more outdated. Rather than respond by making Spider-Man more violent and cynical himself,* they had all that darkness and violence get under Peter's skin, so he became more emotionally vulnerable at that point in time. One of the best examples of this is in Spider-Man vs. Wolverine. Peter is not fighting some larger than life threat in that story nor is he in a fantastical supervillain underwater base or something. He's in Berlin, at the height of the 80s Cold War, seeing real life people gunned down or cut up in a conflict where there are no clear cut heroes at all. His 'ally' in the story is Wolverine and he wants to stab a woman to death as a mercy killing. That same woman then knowingly tricks Spider-Man into killing her, making him an unwilling instrument of her suicide.

Under these conditions, you can see why Peter would be emotionally and mentally burnt out and NEED an escape. These are not things people in real life should be subjected to and real life people who are struggle enormously to cope with them. Peter is dealing with them as much if not more than most real life people and has little outlet to help him, his emotional support network being Mary Jane, Felicia (who is manipulating him) and Aunt May who he cannot be totally open with in the first place. Compounding matters, some of the people Peter has seem die are people he knew and cared about. And some of those people have been doing morally questionable things that makes him question what he knew about them. Betty and Flash are having an affair, Ned Leeds is at times bullying Betty, Mary Jane has been deceiving him for years (justifiably and he forgives her), Black Cat lied about getting powers from Kingpin, Flash Thompson physically assaulted his girlfriend Sha Shan and might be the Hobgoblin.

This stuff was really great drama to read about, but you can sympathise how this would all be a GIGANTIC toll upon Peter's soul, so realistically speaking it isn't all that fair to expect him to be observant of all his major responsibilities.

Having said that, the only responsibilities that I can remember (my memory isn't what it used to be sadly) where he could be said to have been neglectful are maybe dropping out of Grad school. But to be honest, I actually think that was a very wise decision. He just about scraped by before, his life was not in a stable place (even for him) and he had just then adopted the new responsibilty of a relationship with Felicia. Felicia was not only injured (and needed money for her medical bills) but she was also a reforming criminal. Peter wanted to help her physically heal, turn her life around AND build a future with her too, so dropping out of school with a plan to pick it back up eventually is actually very reasonable.

*Outside of the Death of Jean DeWolff where they explored how that was so NOT who Spider-Man was, Daredevil (perhaps the poster child for the new grim and gritty style of heroes at the time) outright acting as Peter's conscience in the story.