#i am not completely decided on the ben is jason plot point BUT it has so much drama potential

[magicpiano]

We have seen Peter Parker in Gotham, now I propose Nightwing in No Way Home.

Dr. Strange's spell brings Peter alternate versions of himself, villains and... some guy no one has ever heard of? The hero identifies himself as Nightwing and is willing to help in exchange for help getting back to his home world. His home world is also apparently pretty different because he doesn't recognize a lot of important stuff? Weird.

(Yes, I know that is not how the spell worked in the film. Maybe it attempted to pull in another Peter, but because he didn't exist in the DC universe, it garbed the next best thing, Peter's dad.)

Eventually they have a Dick = Richard Parker realization. Maybe Aunt May is the one who puts it together? I think it would be funny if Dick just did something so him, and May just immediately clocks Nightwing as her brother in law. Maybe May can even live in this universe because Dick was also there and was able to save her?

At the end Strange is going to have to make everyone forget Peter, but Dick steps in and says, "how about we don't do that and instead he comes back to my home universe with me?"

May comes along too because she is not forgetting her nephew, nor is she going to abandon him to another world even if she does trust Dick. We can add even more drama to their arrival in Gotham if we make Jason = Uncle Ben.

[hellyeahheroes]

Ghost Spider problems

Disclaimer: the comic is not bad. Take this as constructive criticism

1. Start from the beginning

This is all you get when it comes to Gwen’s origin.

And before you say that this is mirroring Peter, no. Amazing Fantasy #15 was a fully fleshed out origin story. Amazing Spider-man #1 takes place immediately after Uncle Ben’s murder. Gwen’s origin encompasses years of her being Spider-woman with actual events that go beyond just a sparse origin. When Spider-Gwen starts, we are like coming in at the equivalent of Amazing Spider-man #300.

So Jason Latour tries to use flashbacks and detailed full page word dump expositions at the end of each issue to further fill in the gap between the shit the audience doesn’t know. The latter is quite frankly the laziest thing I’ve ever seen in writing. Rather than creating stories to establish characters and create a catalogue to their history, lets fucking just explain everything that happened in essay form.

This, til this day, pisses me off.

Anyways, when Latour did introduce a characters like a Harry Osborn, he relied on flashbacks to detail what happened. The issue however that he was simultaneously advancing a story while retroactively setting foundation of a character. One example of a past event being constructed entirely out of flashbacks: the death of Peter Parker.

In these flashbacks that are construed across multiple issues and not in chronological order of either the issue nor the flashback, Latour basically shows the audience for the first time Peter’s personality, how Gwen was after her dad indirectly told her about his feeling about Spider-Woman, and a little about their high school life.

The problem with this is that Latour relied on the interpretation of 616 Spider-man characters when he didn’t elaborate on their character for characters like George Stacy, J. Jonah Jameson, and Aunt May while simultaneously hiding behind the excuse of it’s an alternate universe to explain why characters are different. This comes with accusations of character shilling since he portrayed Em Jay as a selfish self-centered person, Peter as an arrogant misanthrope, but Gwen completely escapes her negative 616 characterization and comes off looking better.

So Spider-Gwen really doesn’t have an origin story. And no one actually bothered to make one even 4 years later.

2. Alternate Dimensions convolutes stories

Traveling to another dimension to just fucking go to school is cop out. Granted, the explanation as to why it was done was simply because Gwen doesn’t have a secret identity anymore, but okay, far be it for me from wanting a good time. It would have been more interesting if she persisted in trying to go to school in her universe while being known as Spider-woman, anxiety attacks be damned. “Man fuck consequences of a plot point, let’s just create a specific scenario to avoid them” is what McGuire decided to do. Didn’t even bother to retcon. Just fucking noped it.

MJ says what I’m thinking.

Barring this, it is a stretches my suspension of disbelief that ESU would enroll a girl who not only is named after a deceased student who you named a library after in memoriam but also looks like the girl who died and is around the same age. Oh and also, you hired the guy who looks exactly like her mentor who went on to practice unethical experiments and tried to conquer the world with them at one point but he has a different name so...

Granted, Latour twice left Spider-Gwen in a hole. He wasted Gwen revealing her identity to her father for the introduction of the character and Gwen then revealing her identity to the world to defeat Matt Murderdock kind of screwed the pooch. First, there has to be a way for Gwen to defeat him without sacrificing her identity like exonerating herself from being blamed for Peter’s death because clearly she’s innocent(self-defense and saving kids from some incel white boy turned monster is not an jailable offense).

Regardless, McGuire was dealt a shitty hand that nuked any possibility of continuing any story developments in E-65 without Gwen being under constant danger. I, for one, would welcome it and had Gwen continue to try, it would have made shit interesting.

But this is also taking away Gwen from her own supporting cast that she has had since the beginning and also from her setting. The more she is in 616, the less I am going to see of the Mary Janes. The less I see of Harry although I don’t mind that. The less I see of any character that was established in her series. And honestly, those new characters could have been introduced in her own setting. Hell, E-65 Jackal could have been a college professor at E-65 ESU without Gwen knowing if she attended there.

Why are we choosing to avoid superhero drama in a superhero comic book?

3. Don’t rely on 616 Gwen Stacy while simultaneously declaring this Gwen as a different character

For all intents and purposes, the Death of Gwen Stacy has nothing to do with Spider-Gwen. This book and her fans will deflect any criticism about the lack of parallels between Gwen Stacy’s death and Peter’s death by saying Spider-Gwen is not the same as Gwen. You sit there and complain that all Gwen Stacy is known for is dying yet you commentate using a completely amended character while simultaneously avoiding the literal hundred of issues of character that 616 Gwen previously had before her death.

If you read the Night Gwen Stacy Died as a stand-alone, what you did was the equivalent of watching the Red Wedding without the three seasons leading to the event.

Spider-Gwen can’t go five issues without harping on about every miserable or unhappy or dead Gwen in some other universe. It comes to a culmination that writers want to tie Spider-Gwen to 616 Gwen Stacy so much that she is actively going to school in 616. The same school that Gwen attended and has a library named after her in memoriam, and apparently her creepy stalker teacher still teaches at albeit with a different identity because no one apparently recognizes faces anymore.

This doesn’t redeem Gwen. In fact, you proved Gerry Conway’s point. 616 Gwen is so unlikeable that you’d have to completely change her character to make her not worth throwing off the bridge.

Point is that Spider-Gwen treading the stories of Gwen Stacy defeats the purpose of separating the two in personality. What happens if Kindred is revealed to be the ressurrected Gwen Stacy while Gwen basically caught treading her stories instead of continuing her own?

4. The Jackal? Fucking really?

Personal, but point still stands. I fucking hate the Jackal. Jackal is like the catalyst of feeling like you need to take a shower afterwards. Along with the Inherentors, this is one of the villains that go to far in being made for a specific purpose in that they really don’t have a motivation as to just why do they do the things they do other than to be a bad guy.

Warren Miles is a creepy professor with an almost paedophillic obsession with his barely legal and also dead mentee, 616 Gwen Stacy. And it’s only almost because Gwen was 19 and almost certainly would have engaged in a sexual relationship with her. I don’t buy that he saw her as his child because it’s not like Gwen was just this remarkable science prodigy that would warrant any special attention from a professor. No, she was a remarkable and hot co-Ed scientist that was in her sophomore year. He was trying to fuck her and hated that she was dating guys her age. I wouldn’t put it past him to quid quo pro her into some sick shit for grades.

And the thing about it is that this story has been done before with Mary Jane and it was more appropriate to her occupation as she was a model at the time and married to Peter Parker. She is going to get the attention of richer and skeezy men that would have the power to force her into questionable shit. Hollywood is pretty much a glorified sex trafficking ring, don’t @ me. Far be it for me to say male professors don’t abuse their station on women and sure, I’d like a Spider-Man story to explore that, but Jackal takes it to a whole other that defiles the memory of a dead girl. It is basically a type of necrophilia and ew ew ew ew.

His obsession with Gwen and clones doesn’t foil Peter in anyway. It literally carries this creepy and unsettling implication that if Gwen lived, he would have raped her. There has never been a good Jackal storyline. It is literally the CJ meme every time he appears. He is not an engaging or fun.

Guess who is the first villain Gwen faces in 616.

Why people insist on putting him in anything over more thematically appropriate and fun characters is beyond me. I don’t even mind 65 Jackal. He doesn’t seem to interested in teenaged girls. He just wants to kill her like a proper super villain from what I gather. But of course, we had to not be spared from the comic equivalent of taint that is Miles Warren.

@ubernegro