#if slott had actually wanted to write anything with him he had like. 40 issues and also a whole plot thread about the ff searching for him

[athena14044]

finally read slott's last issue of f4 and all i have to say is good riddance

[hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger]

The Anti-Spider-Girl Agenda within Marvel

In 1998 Tom DeFalco, former EIC of Marvel, created Mayday Parker/Spider-Girl. Her debut did gangbusters and a first edition of it still fetches a lot of cash. She got a solo series in 1999 which launched an entire interconnected universe of characters, the MC2 universe. 

The universe ultimately wrapped up in 2010 but throughout that time Mayday was being regularly published in one format or another, she was even the FIRST ever Marvel character to get a digital ongoing series before it went to print. An impressive accolade to add to the fact that she still holds the record for the female Marvel solo protagonist with the longest running continuous series. That is to say no breaks or relaunches, just over 60 straight monthly issues...

... And THEN she went another 40 straight issue for good measure before finally being continued in a relaunch. 

So, given how the anniversaries of both her debut and the debut of her series/the MC2 universe have come and gone I have to ask...why has there been 0 acknowledgement from Marvel?

We’re in the middle of a 2099 celebration, and that imprint (that lasted less time and was arguably less successful) was an on and off presence between 2013-2017.

We’re going to get something acknowledging Iron Man 2020 a character who is hardly in the zeitgeist of Marvel fandom to the same extent as Spider-Girl.

Now in fairness both of those examples are reliant upon the literal names of both properties. It does make a certain amount of sense to celebrate the 2099 line in a year ending in the number 9, thus bringing us ever closer to the real life year 2099. Equally it makes sense to revive Iron Man 2020 during well...the year 2020.

But then you get to Marvel celebrating the Earth X stuff. Now for all you out there who haven’t read the Earth X stuff I want you to ask yourself a question and be very honest with yourselves. How much do you actually know about the Earth X universe just via osmosis, without having read it. I’m willing to bet it ain’t much if anything and what you do know probably amounts to:

It was Marvel’s answer to Kingdom Come

Alex Ross did art for it

MAYBE you know Norman Osborn was the President

Oh and you probably remember that really cool Venom/symbiote looking character who was a version of Spider-Girl!

Golly, it’s almost like if Marvel are going to celebrate the not-that-well-remembered Earth X line (which like 2099 also lasted for less time than the MC2 universe) then they should do SOMETHING (beyond releasing some trades) to mark EITHER of the appropriate anniversaries for Spider-Girl and/or the MC2 universe as a whole.

But no. We get some trades and also Mayday appeared in Spider-Geddon for a few issues...at no point being solely in the spotlight...

This my friends is simply the latest in a very, very, very, very, very long list of instances where Mayday/the MC2 brand is mistreated.

  And a lot of that mistreatment I think is due to Tom DeFalco’s hand in creating Mayday and the MC2 universe. Because frankly, in particular relation to the MC2 universe, DeFalco’s work has also been mistreated in recent years.

  The facts are: 

Mayday’s ongoing (Spectacular Spider-Girl volume 2) was turned into a mini in spite of solicits 

She was cancelled so Anya Corazon could get the name Spider-Girl 

The very next time she shows up her Dad is killed off, thus fundamentally wrecking the whole premise for her character 

The guy who killed her Dad proceeded to treat her as an abused babysitter 

That same guy finished things off by removing her unique name and costume 

That same guy (Slott) in the same run before and after Spider-Verse wrecked other elements from DeFalco’s ASM work AND threw shade at his origin for MJ, calling it reductive 

Slott also was hired by DeFalco and had to uncomfortably admit he’d conned the man. Which combined with everything else makes me wonder if DeFalco maybe threw some shade Slott’s way back when he was an intern. Like he looked upon him as underhanded and unworthy of his place in the company, and Slott knew that and resented DeFalco for it. And again, being EIC earns enemies and DeFalco was the EIC when Slott started 

Slott also wrecked Ben Reilly a character DeFalco did not create but had strong associations with. 

During secret wars the story focused HEAVILY upon Hope Pym, Stinger and Ant-Man at a time when coincidentally the Ant-Man movie was happening. 

During Secret Wars the same writer who wrecked her in Spider-Verse COINCIDENTALLY happened to a story about the daughter of Spider-Man who was born during the 1990s, but it was his own OC 

During Secret Wars, Mayday appeared on the cover of one of the ongoings she was set to appear in, but it was then revised to be Anya 

Mayday when she began appearing regularly in a new title was seemingly killed off early into it and didn’t appear for awhile, not getting much spotlight when she did

Mayday had to share her spotlight moments in Spider-Geddon with Anya (again), still wasn’t allowed to be called Spider-Girl again, and the story was mostly about Annie not her. 

She was going to appear in the USM cartoon but then that was totally changed to be a gender flipped Peter Parker

Eric Masterson/Thunderstrike, another well remembered DeFalco creation, has also gotten little-no attention this decade despite it being a 20th/25th anniversary of him too. One of the more notable acknowledgments of his character was turning him into a Neo-Nazi for Spider-Punk to beat up.

Spider-Girl’s VERY SUCCESSFUL digests were discontinued but conveniently other digests for other Marvel properties either continued or started up after Mayday’s were discontinued. 

The ‘complete’ Spider-Ham trade paperbacks ‘conveniently’ do not include Spider-Ham’s equivalent character for Spider-Girl, Swiney-Girl

Gee that’s an AWFUL lot of coincidence, especially when you consider fucking Spider-Ham has been getting more attention from Marvel than Mayday; and that was BEFORE Into the Spider-Verse came out.

I’m sorry, but it’s really, really, really, really, really, really obvious that there is an anti DeFalco/Spider-Girl/MC2 sentiment within Marvel.

But why you may ask?

There are a few reasons for that. The biggest one though is that Tom DeFalco is the former EIC of Marvel comics.

At the time of me writing this, Axel Alonso recently stopped being EIC of Marvel and no bad words are muttered about him. People in the industry equally have little bad to say about Joe Quesada, especially those within Marvel.

But then again...Joey Q is still working for Marvel and in a position ABOVE the EIC. He never stopped working for Marvel even when he stopped being the EIC. And Alonso, one of Quesada’s right hand yes men conveniently took over for him and do you know he didn’t run the company all THAT differently to his former boss. Funny that right?

It’s almost as funny as how other former EICs of Marvel absolutely don’t have the same treatment. Jim Shooter is routinely BLASTED by countless fans and creators, especially the ones who worked under him, even though he oversaw arguably the height of Marvel comics’ creative history. Bob Harrass and his decisions are often talked about less than flatteringly. Tom DeFalco meanwhile had a whole disparaging phrase named after him.

Yes. That is is a real life Marvel letter page from the mid-2000s literally using the term ‘DeFalco’s Folly’ in reference to a former Marvel EIC and outright BLAMING HIM for their bankruptcy in the 1990s.*

When you are the EIC you make enemies. It’s rare that the boss of any business isn’t resented on some level by their employees. And your words take on much more meaning that what you simply say, being subject to misinterpretation.**

But now imagine you are the boss of a bunch of creative nerds (for most creators of superheros are nerds). Creative people A LOT of the time tend to be fairly sensitive as is, it’s likely critical to their craft. Nerds historically have tended to be sensitive (that’s neither a good nor bad thing). If you are the boss of those people, hoo boy will you ever make enemies. Tom DeFalco in fact once told a fellow editor that an innocuous comment about how an artist under said editor’s employ drew a character was being taken by the artist as an insult to their whole career.

NOW imagine all that and also under your tenure the company goes bankrupt and a lot of people lose their jobs?

Enemies. Enemies galore. 

Even if it wasn’t necessarily your fault, you are the most visible person in authority so you get the blame. If the internet wasn’t that much of a thing do you really think that Ike Perlmutter would be the guy who got the blame for deep sixing the X-Men and F4 in the 2010s? Hell no, it’d have been Axel Alonso and/or Tom Brevoort.

So yeah, Mayday was DeFalco’s baby and the MC2 universe more than anything was the logical extrapolation from the Marvel universe as it existed under HIS tenure as EIC. It’s very much seen as representative of DeFalco himself. Thus if people have an issue with DeFalco, they’re not going to do all that much positive as far as his stuff is concerned, in particular if it gives him anything like royalties.

But on top of all of that I think Spider-Girl and the MC2 universe simply conceptually lean against Marvel’s ‘party line.

I didn’t notice this, but it was pointed out to me by an acquaintance that the MC2 universe is VERY similar to DC’s Earth 2 concept, wherein the classic heroes are older and/or retired with their immediate descendants picking up their mantles. Marvel and DC have this petty and asinine pissing contest between them, with many within Marvel even outright hating the fact that they have numbered universes like DC. It’s likely (definitely) the reason Earth 616 was rebranded as ‘Earth Prime’. This of course won’t stop them ripping off DC if they think it’ll make bank

The MC2 universe was a universe of OPTIMISM. In particular in the 2000s, and this attitude has definitely lingered, there is this emphasis upon cynicism and at best Pyrrhic victories within Marvel. Partially this is due to a misinterpretation of what ‘realism’ means, but partially this is due to  misguided belief that controversy sells and pissing the fans off makes bank. 

The MC2 universe is very old school. It’s deliberately designed to be nostalgic and feel Silver Age in it’s sensibilities. this is why the violence is not all that gory, the sexual references are at best reserved and tasteful and there’s that optimism I talked about. not to mention it kicks back hard against the decompression/writing for the trade storytelling model Marvel typically employs and has typically employed for almost 20 years now. Whether it’s simply because the universe doesn’t conform, or because Marvel views anything ‘retro’ as bad because it isn’t ‘modern’ (with no inspection of whether the modern trends are a GOOD thing) the end result is that the MC2′s sensibilities are not in line with how Marvel WANTS their comics produced.

Then you have Mayday herself. Mayday is a living symbol of both the Clone Saga and the Spider Marriage. Whilst Marvel are NOW willing to more openly reference the Clone Saga, few people i any kind of positions of power look upon it (or even aspects of it) with anything but disdain and embarrassment. Dan Slott for instance openly hated it. As for the Spider Marriage...I mean do I even need to explain that one?

I’m sure a frustrating fact for Marvel during Spider-Girl’s publication, and something likely passed down to Axel Alonso when he was handpicked by Quesada, was that the book refused to die. Spider-Girl was scheduled for cancellation multiple times and defied the odds multiple times. Marvel 90% of the time won’t kill a book if it’s making a profit (especially in a day and age when they were still feeling the fallout from bankruptcy) so they kept Spider-Girl around, but because it was so against the party line I’m VERY sure they’d have LIKED to have had the justification for killing the title. That’s likely why they shuffled her onto a digital platform in 2009. Amazing Spider-Girl did poorly enough to justify cancelling it but not so poorly that they couldn’t still make money from it. Another relaunch would’ve boosted sales for the series, but making it a digital series at a time when hardly anyone read digitially (let alone PAID for it), now that’s a shrewd manoeuvre. You make SOME money from it, you pay lip service to keeping it alive and appeasing very upset Spider-Marriage fans, but you’ve essentially guaranteed it’s failure long term.

Part of that annoying success was those incredibly successful digests that were possibly indoctrinating a lot of young impressionable readers on a character/brand Marvel wanted to bury and aspects of their flagship character (read: a married older Peter Parker) that they wanted to bury. Hence Spider-Girl digests disappeared but conveniently there were still digests for Ultimate Spider-Man sold featuring a young, buffoonish, Avengers worshipping Peter Parker.

Oh...and she also had the incredibly brand sexy name ‘Spider-Girl’ that Joe Quesada wanted for his own precious pet OC character, Anya Corazon. In fact Mayday was going to be rebranded as Spider Woman in Spider-Girl #75, specifically so that Anya Corazon could be given the name Spider-Girl. Years later Mayday was cancelled specifically for that purpose.

tl:dr There is a VERY OBVIOUS anti Tom DeFalco/Spider-Girl/MC2 agenda within Marvel.

My hope is that it’s rooted out, hopefully as a result of the 20 year nostalgia factor kicking in sooner of later (her series was most prevalent in the 2000s) and more female creators coming into the industry.

*Which is very much unfair. There is rarely one singular decision that results in bankruptcy. So whilst DeFalco making a single purchase might’ve been a contribution (emphasis on ‘might’) the idea that it was THE ultimate cause of Marvel’s problems is ridiculous.

Marvel were heading for the shitter the moment Ron Perleman purchased it in the 1980s. They were the victims of a ‘pump and dump’ scheme wherein sleazy yet clever financial people showed up, created a bubble to make a load of money, then moved on to the next thing when the bubble burst. To my understanding a similar thing occurred with baseball cards.

** In fact DeFalco’s friend, Ron Frenz, has spoken about how he was witness to DeFalco saying one thing and the people listening to him hearing and acting upon it in a totally different way than was intended.

The same happened to Stan Lee when he made an aside about Iron Man’s lack of a nose, which resulted in his employees believing Stan wanted them to give Iron Man a nose.

P.S. You know in the 1990s when all the 2099 books got cancelled sans Spider-Man 2099, they never got a second bite of the apple.

But between the late 90s and 2000s the MC2 universe was seemed successful enough that around 2006-2007 both Spider-Girl AND the wider MC2 universe were given second volumes, even the ones that only lasted like 6 issues.

Since then there’s been at least 3 attempts to revive the 2099 universe, we’re living through the latest one. 

And yet Mayday doesn’t seem to even be worthy of a spotlight issue in the current Spider-Verse series. 

[hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger]

Spider-Man: Life Story #4 Thoughts Part 3: Pathetic Parker

Aaaaaaand finally....let us discuss you know Peter Parker.

Or the stand in for him in this mess of a mini-series.

Positives should be gotten out of the way first. I like the new Spider-Suit’s look. I’ve liked all the suits’ looks so far.

Okay cool we’re done now with positives.

Soooooooooooooooooooooooooo...Peter is dating Jessica Drew huh.

Hahahahahahaha....fuck off.

Jessica Drew technically speaking existed in the 1960s but only because Bendis picked a random girl from a Ditko issue and decided he would make her his new original character (who was a rewritten Jessica Drew stand in...) Jessica Jones...which happened in the 2000s.

Remember how I said the Stark thing was remixing stuff from the 2000s and how this probably references the Ultimate Clone Saga?

Well between that stuff, the inclusion of Parker Industries, a obvious reference to Slott’s ‘No One Dies’ buzz word, and now Jessica Jones Zdarsky has entirely collapsed the ONE consistent thing about his writing in this series.

You can read my past posts on this series for more detail, but in a nutshell, this series is utterly convoluted in it’s premise and confused in what it wants to be.

However the ONE utterly consistent thing about it was the fact that it remixes elements from Spidey stories that happened in the decade each issue was covering.

Until now.

Now in fairness Parker Industries was a 2010s thing that debuted in the 1980s. I let that one slide a bit because I guess the idea was if Peter age 30 had money and time he could have a company by age 37 which would be in the 80s. Okay I guess.

But with all that other stuff...this issue isn’t remixing 90s stuff it’s remixing 90s and post-90s stuff so what the fuck is the conceit of the story again?

It’s anything Zdarsky wants whilst mostly remixing stuff from every decade per issue oh and Spider-Man ages in real time I guess and mentions various wars.

I (and others) have talked about how this series is fanficion. A time honoured tradition of fanfiction is the wacky indulgent ships that occur.

In professional works though these are best avoided, see MockingSpider.

That’s what Jessica Jones and Spider-Man being a couple is. Yeah she had a crush on him in high school.

Now tell me anything else that’d serve as a basis for their relationship instead of her being with Luke?

How the fuck did this even happen? At least with Peter and MJ you have canon as a roadmap. In this series...nothing. Peter and Jessica just hooked up somehow in the last 11 years!

What’s so insultingly asinine about this ship is that it emphasis another person who is conspicuous via her absence.

So...where the fuck is Felicia!

I know that the important life events of Spider-Man can be debated up to a point.

That point doesn’t cover though whether Black Cat is relevant of a mention or not across his ‘life story’.

No shit of course she is!

But she wasn’t mentioned in the 1970s when she debuted. She wasn’t mentioned in the 1980s when she became a regular. She wasn’t mentioned in the 1990s.

Surely in a world where Spider-Man’s marriage to MJ falls apart and he’s dating a private eye that should be fucking Black Cat not a character who wasn’t even invented until 10 years later! I mean c’mon Black Cat BECAME a private eye in the 1990s!

And wouldn’t that have been way more dramatic too?

In the 1980s instead of Peter being allegedly addicted to a costume or neglecting his family to clean up radiation or asking his wife to kill him if he turned into a brain munching alien the root of their break up involved his affection for Felicia?

I mean c’mon the symbiote was framed as a response to a mid-life crisis, a sexy platinum blonde who actually wants to hook up with Spidey not Peter isn’t prime real estate for a story about a superhero’s mid life crisis? Even the Incredibles did that!

And wouldn’t that have been more worthy of drama in this issue than literally 2 panels of Jessica Jones establishing they’re shagging but also he’s neglectful and she dumped him. I mean at that point you might as well have just had her be a private eye he hired and dropped the romance completely it served no purpose at all.

One aspect of the story that I will praise Zdarsky for even if I think he got it right by accident is that without his family Peter couldn’t keep on going as Spider-Man.

MJ, May, etc, they keep him together, he needs people, he’d fall apart without them.

Running out of gas as he did in this story could be seen as a reflection of that depending on future issues. Or it could just be he’s old and tired and don’t you know all superheroes would feel that way at age 48.

Too bad that seems rather at odds with issue #3 where he was a neglectful jerk.

Another problem inherited from issue #3 was the issue of Peter’s diminished prowess in his old age.

Remember how he wanted the symbiote to stay ‘relevant’ because he was slowing down.

Okay so it’s been 11 years later, he’s held onto Parker Industries and...he’s just accepted he’s gotten slower and weaker.

Remember how issue #3 implied he had a nano-weld suit.

Okay so he’s had 11 years to improve on that tech and...he hasn’t.

In fact his current outfit looks less high tech even.

Now brace yourselves because I’m about to do something nuts and call upon Dan Slott continuity as reference material.

In Slott’s run Peter with HORIZON labs and Parker Industries tech was able to whip up a variety of costumes for himself. These included nanotech.

In fact his MAIN suit in ASM volume 4 was nanotech armour that came complete with all sorts of gadgets.

Are you telling me that a Peter Parker with even greater years of scientific knowledge and experience, with even more time and resources, across 11+ years NEVER made technology like that?

He NEVER invented tech that could offset his diminished powers?

Seriously?

IRON MAN had strength enhancing armour in the 1960s and that technology got illegally distributed to countless people, hence we got Armor Wars. Even that aside there is countless inferior technology that could increase strength, speed, agility, etc, let alone protect from knock out gas.

But Peter in LF is such a jackass he...never employed this. He never considered this. He just let himself grow weaker and more vulnerable?

Either he’s stupid or he’s a sellout on Ben and May’s morals of responsibility because he had a death wish hence he never upgraded.

I mean Jesus Christ the Hobgoblin found a way to make the Goblin serum SAFE. Peter couldn’t investigate that avenue as a way to spike his power levels? Friggin Norman Osborn was in his 40s when he got the formula and it made him almost on par with Spider-Man.

It gets even stupider when you consider Peter hands over his mantle to Ben Reilly.

Ben is physically the same goddam age as Peter. In fact considering he clearly doesn’t crime fight as much as Peter does or else ‘Red Mask’ would be more famous, Peter if anything would be in better shape. So Peter is giving the mantle of Spidey to a less experienced, weaker 48 year old man who’s ALSO got diminished strength and speed.

But it gets worse.

He doesn’t just hand the mantle of Spidey to Ben. He hands Parker Industries over to him. You’d think this is a case of him passing it on to his relative Ben Reilly right?

Nope.

He wants Ben to...literally become him.

Peter wants Ben to literally pose as him forevermore and run his company.

This is the most gamebreakingly stupid thing in the entire issue.

Ben having Peter’s notes doesn’t mean he’ll be able to pose as Peter.

He doesn’t know the in jokes Peter has with people. He has 0 experience of running a big company.

He has less scientific knowledge and experience.

He will be way worse in business negotiations because he hasn’t got the measure of people.

And he’ll be seriously stressed out because unlike Peter who just knows this stuff Ben will have to study for a lifelong performance as Peter Parker every moment of every day.

Not to mention is no one going to notice the sudden disappearance of Ben Reilly?

Didn’t he have friends or colleagues of his own like Lori from the start of the issue?

Peter starts the comic determined to not allow Parker Industries to fall into the hands of the war profiteer Tony Stark but by unloading his entire company onto Ben Reilly he’s placed it in a hugely vulnerable position that makes it MORE likely that it will be absorbed into Stark International.

Oh and of course there the teeny tiny problem of PETER AND BEN NOT LOOKING ALIKE!

Now realistically Peter and Ben Reilly, having lived such different lives, would look similar yet different, like identical twins. Identical twins might look the same at age 1 but they really wouldn’t at age 30 if one of them was a desk jockey and the other was a soldier.

But you know artistic licence and suspension of disbelief can bypass that.

What cannot be bypassed is when Mark Bagley is drawing both characters on the same page in the same panel and you can tell that they clearly look different to one another. Their faces, hair colour and hair styles are not the same.

Did Peter’s notes include the correct shade to dye his hair too?

But the biggest aspect of this which is betrayal pornoigraphy for Peter’s character is between handing over the reigns of Spidey and P.I. to Ben...how...the...Hell...is...that...at.all...responsible?

He claims that he can’t give up his responsibility but he can ‘shift it to where it matters’.

What a crock of shit. That’s some lame ass lawyer talk for giving up and letting someone else do your job for you.

In the 90s Clone Saga Peter’s retirement was justified. He had impending parenthood as a responsibility and he and his wife had nearly broken in recent months. In Spider-Girl he got his leg blown off and had a 2 year old child to care for.

In this? His ex-wife and children are doing just fine without him as far as we know but the city still needs Spidey and P.I. still needs Peter Parker.

So no, retirement under these circumstances is irresponsible and utterly unjustified.

Not to mention wouldn’t BOTH Peter and Ben being heroes be more responsible? Or at least have Ben take over hero work and Peter runs P.I., possibly training Ben up.

There is also this bullshit that because Peter is so loud and public Ben could never live up to his potential.

I’m sorry but what is it with the Spider-Man fandom’s obsession with the idea that success = owning your own business.

As if that is the one and only way Peter or Ben could fulfil their scientific potential. Why not work for Reed?

Why not work with a Think Tank?

Why not start up a company in a different country and establish that Ben is indeed Peter’s relative. He already had his last name in issue #2!

Hell the argument that if they both started up companies and 2 Spider Heroes showed up it’d raise questions doesn’t consider the ideas that:

a)      Ben could WORK for Parker Industries, thereby allowing Peter to be in the lab as he wants or Ben handle the lab work

b)      They could SHARE the Spider-Man identity, which if anything would help maintain their secrecy

 Finally this issue (and the last one) on the recap page and at the end of the story pushes some toxic, dated, bullshit narratives regarding MJ:

a)      That it was grief alone that hooked up Peter and MJ

b)      MJ is Peter’s Plan B

c)       Peter cannot be married/have kids and be Spidey

d)      MJ wouldn’t stay with him if he’s Spider-Man, hence he only regains his family by retiring from Spidey

 I’ve seen an assessment of this story that argues that issue #3 as the halfway point was the low point from which the character will gradually fight back.

In a sense issue #4 goes along with this idea. Peter is at his lowest in issue #3 and his happier by the end of issue #4.

But the narrative structure of this series, wherein each issue is a snap shot of his life in each decade leads me to think that we’re unlikely to have 2 more issues of ending on gradually happier and happier notes.

Rather I think this issue is giving a pretence of happiness before it comes crashing down next issue and then in issue #6 we will get our happy ending or a bittersweet exit.

Regardless writing these long ass posts has actually soured me even more on the issue.

It’s another shit show I’m afraid.

P.S. The solicit read:

“THE REAL-TIME LIFE STORY OF SPIDER-MAN CONTINUES! Spider-Man’s life enters the 1990s! The COLD WAR is no longer cold as PETER PARKER returns to a world gone MAD! But will he let that madness infect HIM and his family?”

Where the fuck was any of that in this story?

Peter didn’t have a family, Peter didn’t return from anything, and the only madness to be found was in Ben and Otto.