#mtu presents iron man and the hulk

[cinematic-literature]

The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005) by Judd Apatow

Book title: MTU Presents: Iron Man and The Hulk #4 (1972)

[hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger]

Does Spider-Man NEED to be in a shared universe?

As of right now it seems as though Peter Parker is going to be out of the MCU and in his own entirely separate universe.

Most people have reacted negatively to this and one of the most frequently cited reasons for that is the inability of Spider-Man to interact with the wider MCU.

We can talk a lot about whether from a production and audience interest POV, there is any steam behind the idea of Spider-Man in his own separate universe again.

However I want to take a different angle with this and talk more broadly about the character rather than strictly just the movies.

Essentially I want to address whether or not Spider-Man truly NEEDS to be in a shared Marvel Universe at all or not?

Now look I’m not advocating Spider-Man pull a Transformers or ROM Space Knight and be pulled out of the Marvel Universe.

Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut from a creative POV strictly speaking...he really, really, really does not NEED to be in that universe.

There are advantages and disadvantages to that.

In a shared Marvel Universe Peter operates as the ‘heart’ of that universe as was the intention with Civil War 2006. He also has close ties to the F4, the First Family of the Marvel Universe and to Captain America who is more or less THE leader of the whole Marvel universe. His kinship with Daredevil in particular is a joy to behold and has rarely been used badly. His status as an outsider in the eyes of the more publically accepted Marvel heroes like the Avengers offers a great parallel to his initial life as an outsider in high school and helps to highlight part of Lee and Ditko’s conceit with the character, that he was atypical of the heroes who’d come before him.

On the other hand though...The Marvel Universe of the comics at least demands a shitton of suspension of disbelief because you have all this huge concepts co-existing with one another but also within a context of trying to keep the world relatively similar to our own, the world outside your window.

Sooner or later though this presents a challenge to the suspension of disbelief for guys like Spider-Man who’re not merely supposed to exist in a world relatively like our own with heroes, but in fact be relatively normal within it besides the fact that they are heroes.

But if Spider-Man is a superhero, lives in a world of heroes, and has interacted with so many of them inevitably you have to wilfully ignore the obvious facts that so many of his relatable problems in life could be fixed through the fantastical elements of the universe he lives in and is aware of.

Just one example would be if Aunt May was dying there would be at least half a dozen solutions to that problem. Magic, clones, suspended animation, time travel, healing factors, transferring her mind to a robotic body, extra terrestrial medical care and if all else fails resurrection and higher deities are a fact of life in the Marvel Universe and Peter knows it.

Now the way around this stuff is, in the context of the story you are telling, to simply treat such things as not existing and thus side step the issue.

Suspension of disbelief might stretch to ignoring all the older appearances of Reed Richards or Doctor Strange in Spider-Man’s history, but if they show up in an issue where Aunt May’s death is also a factor then having Peter ignore their abilities to obviously help is nonsensical.

All of this is leading me to saying that, for the most part, Spider-Man is actually able to be MORE realistic and cohesive if in his own isolated universe than if he is in the same universe as magicians and aliens.

When you watch the Raimi movies or the Spec cartoon you never really have to scratch your head over why Spider-Man couldn’t just do this or that to solve his problems because other than his own fairly grounded cast and villains those other solutions don’t exist.

Even having other heroes exist but still be fairly grounded presents problems as you always have to ignore or contrive a reason for their lack of help when Spider-Man needs it.

Moving on, let’s talk about Spider-Man’s ability to team up with other heroes.

Of course there have been whole ongoing series specifically about that...and they mostly suck.

Don’t believe me?

Okay, ask yourselves this, how many New Avengers, Avengers, Marvel Team Up, Avenging Spider-Man or Superior Spider-Man Team-Up stories starring Spider-Man make it into most top 10 or even top 20 Spider-Man stories of all time?

Not many if any at all.

How many of the top 10-20 Spidey stories could be regarded as team ups, as in Spider-Man himself is actively interacting with figures from the wider Marvel universe as opposed to people introduced in his own series? And we aren’t talking cameos either.

Again, not that many.

ASM #1 perhaps.

Nothing Can Stop the Juggernaut, but that’s just giving Spider-Man someone to fight he’s not really teaming up with anyone, a juiced up Rhino could’ve done basically the same thing.

The Alien Costume Saga arguably

The Death of Jean DeWolff

Spider-Man vs. Wolverine.

Spider-Man/Human Torch

MAYBE ASM #500, though that was mostly a background feature a means to an end (sending Spidey time travelling) that could’ve been achieved by numerous other means.

Arguably the first Carnage story though that was also a background feature, the main focus was Spidey fighting Carnage and teaming up with Venom.

...I honestly can’t think of any more off the top of my head.

You see what I mean. Sure, providing villains for Peter to fight is a real advantage the wider Marvel Universe holds for Spider-Man but actually milking great stories from his ability to interact with other heroes, not so much.

In fact Daredevil and the Human Torch or F4 are the most reliable examples of Spider-Man team ups working out but not for nothing there are quite a few similarities between them and Peter.

It doesn’t help most of these stories happened so Marvel could grant exposure to lesser selling characters by having them show up with their A-list hero.

I think more significantly the reason there are so few great Spider-Man team up stories is because of the core concept powering Spider-Man as a character and a lot of his appeal.

He was created in large part to be the hero who could be you, the average joe, the character for whom Peter Parker and his regular life was as much, if not MORE, of a draw than the superheroics of Spider-Man.

The nature of superhero team ups though are that they emphasis the costumed identities over civilian identities. This is a limitation of page space a lot of the time, but it’s also because the characters look iconic when they are dressed in their outfits and seeing them together in their outfits is really the main ticket draw of team up stories. How many people want to see Cap, Iron Man and Spider-Man interacting but it’s just in their civilian identities? Not many I’d wager, it wouldn’t make for a very eye catching cover that’s for sure.

The end result is that at best you focus upon an explore merely one half of who these characters are (and in Peter’s case it is arguably the less interesting half) or it becomes incredibly generic, it’s just heroes with different outfits, powers, maybe speech patterns hitting each other or hitting bad guys together with no exploration of their personalities bouncing off of one another.

And hey that is fine as a change of pace but not as the default setting, hence MTU usually was the lesser of the Spider-Man titles.

If you look at most of the team up stories I listed, noticeably all of them DO explore who the characters (or at least Peter) are and involve a lot of page time to them out of costume, their personal lives and such.

This brings us back to Spidey’s appeal. Like I said a huge part of it is his regular life and a huge part of what makes that appealing is his personal life dramas with his amazing supporting cast. He is said to have the best supporting cast in comics and that’s absolutely true, but when combined with one of the best rogue’s galleries in comics is it any wonder he was so successful?

Because Spider-Man has such a robust group of characters to interact with in both his identities his world is already pretty populated and can already do a lot of character exploration. And honestly when you have so many options to explore the human condition in a way so similar to the lives we lead are you really worse off if you can’t also have Spider-Man go on wacky adventures to the Negative Zone too? Are you really going to tell me that any of the psychedelic crazy scenes from Doctor Strange 2016 are as impactful or as meaty as May and Peter just talking at a table in Spider-Man 2?

 Whether in the movies or in other media so long as Spider-Man has supporting cast and a strong villain pool to explore he’s got a universe to play in no matter what. This isn’t the case for a lot of Marvel heroes. Iron Man for instance does not have a great rogue’s gallery or villain pool, it’s why in every TV adaptation of the character he is either lumped in with other heroes so that collectively they have a lot on offer or in his solo shows the wider Marvel Universe plays a significant part. In Iron man’s 1990s cartoon Force Works were regular characters, in Iron man Armored Adventures Nick Fury and SHIELD were recurring characters and the finale of the show involved them, Black Panther, Hawkeye, Black Widow, Hulk and others working together. The consistency of this with Iron Man points to his own series not being able to sustain itself without the wider Marvel Universe to support it.

 In contrast the majority of Spider-Man adaptations (which are much more numerous than any other Marvel character’s) either don’t feature characters outside his own series or they are relatively minimal. Even the 1994 Spider-Man cartoon which did feature a lot of guest characters and even did a Secret Wars adaptation, didn’t have most of it’s episodes involving guest stars.

 To return to the topic of Spider-Man’s concept and appeal, because the character was supposed to be more realistic and relatable, smaller scale more street level stories have been the preference by writers and fans and indeed his most celebrated outings have usually been cut from that cloth; even a lot of the well regarded team ups.

Because of this doing more personal stories works better for the character and a wider Marvel universe hurts that. Having Spidey be the ONLY hero in NYC and the scale be citywide creates if anything much greater dramatic impact in a story than saving the world or saving the universe. Big fish in a small pond situation I guess you could say.

Finally I’d add that Ditko himself didn’t really care for Spider-Man being in a wider universe.

In conclusion the notion that it would be inherently bad for Spider-Man to be ‘stuck in a smaller’ universe not connected to anything else is wrongheaded.

At best it simply offers some advantages but also some disadvantages.

However you wanna slice it though it’s absolutely not something Spider-Man NEEDS

[hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger]

Did Spider-Man being married make finding big name writers hard (SPOILERS: no...)

One of the frequent arguments used against the Spider-Marriage was that it allegedly made high caliber writers unwilling to work on the series and/or made filling the role of writer difficult to do.

In particular Roger Stern’s unwillingness to work on the series due to Spider-Man being married and Ed Brubaker’s public frustration with how the marriage prevented him from writing a story he had in mind is cited to corroborate the above argument.

But let’s deconstruct that idea a little bit shall we.

Prior to the marriage’s introduction in 1987 there had been a total of four Spider-Man titles. Amazing Spider-Man, Marvel Team Up, Spectacular Spider-Man and Web of Spider-Man, which had replaced the cancelled MTU series. So for 25 years (Spider-Man was created in 1962) there was between 1-3 titles per month, 1-3 writing positions that needed to be filled.

And who filled these roles? Well a lot of people and I’m not going to list them all but broadly speaking (and prioritizing people with actual runs not fill in works or who only did side projects of annuals) we had:

Stan Lee

Steve Ditko

Gerry Conway

Roy Thomas

Bill Mantlo

Al Milgrom

Tom DeFalco

Roger Stern

Denny O’Neil

Marv Wolfman

Peter David

David Michelinie

Louise Simonson

Danny Fingeroth

Len Wein

Christopher Priest/Jim Owsley

That’s a lot of people and some HUGE names there. Of course some of those names got huge later on or else got huge ON their Spider-Man runs.

What was the state of affairs during 1987-2007, during the years the marriage was around?

Well if I recall correctly among the titles published in which the 616 married Peter Parker had an at least semi-recurring starring role we had ASM, Spec, Web, No Adjective Spider-Man (later rebranded Peter Parker: Spider-Man), Spider-Man Unlimited Volume 1 and 3, Spider-Man Team-Up, Marvel Team Up Volume 2, Marvel Team-Up volume 3, Spider-Man Family, Sensational Spider-Man, Marvel Knights: Spider-Man (later rebranded as Sensational volume 2), Webspinner’s: Tales of Spider-Man, Spider-Man’s: Tangled Web, New Avengers, and Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man.

Bear in mind this is excluding guest appearances, one shots, mini-series, annuals, What ifs, alternate universe appearances or flashback titles like Untold Tales of Spider-Man.

As you can see that is far MORE titles than in the 25 years preceding it. Now in the interests of fairness obviously those were not all published at the same time and some of those titles were anthologies wherein stories might not be set in the present day where Spider-Man was married...but most were.

In fact at any given time during the 20 years the marriage was in place there was always a minimum of 3 titles in publication and on some months in the 90s there could be as many as 5-7.

That is a lot of writing roles that need to be filled and on occasion writers would handle the chores on multiple books. But that was not the norm the majority of the time each book would have their own individual writer.

There was never ever an instance where there was a gap in the schedule that couldn’t be filled because there was just no writer available willing to work with the marriage, that just plain never happened.

Moreover looking at the glut of titles during those 20 years Marvel apparently felt confident enough that there WOULD be writers willing to work with a married Spider-Man because they drastically increased the amount of space about a married Spider-Man that needed to be filled. In particular there were multiple anthology books during those 20 years meaning there would be even more space per book that needed to be filled. 

But hey, that just tells us they found writers willing to plug those gaps. It doesn’t address the criticism that the marriage was turning away writers of high pedigree.

After all the unmarried Spider-Man had all those names I listed above work on his titles and after OMD he had the likes of Dan Slott, Mark Waid, Joe Kelly, Marc Guggenheim, Christos Gage, Chip Zdarksy and the guys from Jimmy Kimmel and Agent Carter!

Was the pedigree of writers during the marriage anywhere close to those guys?

Well we did have...

J.M. DeMatteis who during the marriage authored 3 all time classic Spider-Man stories, had an iconic Batman story and an iconic run on Justice League International that forever defined Blue Beetle and Booster Gold and continues to be influential to this day

Todd McFarlane co-creator of Venom, creator of Spawn, a founder of Image comics and the guy responsible for the highest selling Spider-Man comic book of all time

Acclaimed Playwright, showrunner of Riverdale and powerful editor of Archie comics Roberto Aguirre Sacasa

Gerry Conway, Co-creator of Firestorm, Killer Frost, regarded as the Goeff Johns of his day and oh yeah the guy who killed Gwen Stacy

David Michelinie co-author of the greatest Iron Man run of all time, co-creator of Scott Lang and Taskmaster and co-creator of Carnage and the most popular Spider-Man villain of all time, Venom

Tom DeFalco, editor-in-chief of Marvel and one of the two people who helped introduce Spider-Man’s iconic black costume.

Mark Millar co-creator of the Ultimate Marvel Universe specifically the Ultimates who became a major influence on the 2012 Avengers movie and MCU, such as the decision to cast Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury

Paul Jenkins, generally speaking acclaimed writer in particular on his work on Hellblazer/Constantine

President of Entertainment for Black Entertainment Television (BET) Reginald Hudlin

Acclaimed novel and comic book writer and author of the greatest run of the Incredible Hulk of all time, Peter David

Acclaimed science fiction writer and creator of Babylon 5 J. Michael Straczynski

Oh and by the way, among the people who did small projects or fill-ins were:

Ann Nocenti, acclaimed X-Men and Daredevil writer.

Roger Stern acclaimed Marvel writer, author of what many regard as THE greatest Doctor Doom story of all time and one of the greatest Spider-Man runs of all time where he created the Hobgoblin.

Acclaimed (for some reason beyond me) author and co-creator of The Boys Garth Ennis.

Once upon a time acclaimed and former Geek God Kevin Smith who was poised to be the main writer of Amazing Spider-Man once upon a time.

But that’s not all because want to know who ALMOST wrote for a married Spider-Man?

Acclaimed comic book writer on countless works and (for some reason) fan favourite Grant Morrisson, credited as authoring one of the best Batman runs and Superman stories of all time along with THE best Justice League run of all time.

But he isn’t even the biggest name who almost wrote Spider-Man. Because in the mid-1990s the then editors almost convinced a very big name creator to return to working on Spider-Man. Unfortunately he was turned off of the job when he saw Untold Tales of Spider-Man, a series about a teenage single Peter Parker.

His name is Steve Ditko.

You might remember his work as the creator of the Question, the second Blue Beetle, Doctor Strange and THE CO-CREATOR OF SPIDER-MAN HIMSELF!

Now I’m not saying every one of those marriage era writers did great jobs. I’m not even saying they were all necessarily great writers.

However all of them had a lot of prestige to them and either support from fan adoration or critical acclaim. 

And most of them probably could’ve turned the job of writing a married Spider-Man down if they wanted.

J. Michael Straczynski in particular did not need the job and had more than enough credibility to pick many of his projects.

He is without a shadow of a doubt the single most high profile writer to ever write for Spider-Man exempting Stan Lee himself.

And he not only accepted the job of writing a married adult Spider-Man he actively embraced both facts of the character’s existence. 

As did the author of the greatest Hulk run of all time, the co-author of the greatest Iron Man run of all time and the author of maybe the greatest Spider-Man story of all time.

So...it seems that being married didn’t make it particularly difficult to attract high profile ones.

But please, tell me again how Spider-Man being married was bad because we were turning away big name writers like the guy primarily known for resurrecting a long dead character, killing and resurrecting the hero and replacing the hero because screw originality I guess 

P.S. Wanna know another big name writer who didn’t agree with making Spider-Man unmarried?

This guy...

Who happened to create...this...