Robobear wrote:Hey guys. I'm new here, saw this topic and thought I'd add my two cents. While I don't love OMIT, I can kind of see why they made this change. Like Raine, I think MJ has been in the fisherman's wife role for far too long (I worry about my husband so.) However, unlike Raine, I don't think this is a failure of the writers. Yes, there could be many, many more stories that deal with MJ that show an adult Spidey, but I don't read ASM for that. I read Vertigo for that. Peter has always been a normal guy trying to get by with super powers. Yes, getting married is a part of that, a very grown-up adult part of life thats, and lets be honest, boring. Living with my girlfriend for 4 years, I get the idea that married life wouldn't make for an exciting comic book. While none of us like it, they have a market to reach, and I (and Marvel clearly) don't think a married Spidey is going to reach that market. Getting angry over artistic integrity in comic books doesn't seem to be a winning proposition.
Also, I don't think future writers of a series should be beholden to what came before. It should definitely inform, and provide a basis for what a writer does, but if they didn't try new things that haven't been done before, it would get stale pretty quickly. I liked the first few Spider Slayers, but I don't want to see Spider Slayer Model LXV.
I've been thinking about how and why I like comics over other mediums, and I've come to realize that only in comics do you have, essentially, the same characters for decades. These characters are written, drawn, penciled, inked and printed by hundreds of people. They are read by millions of people. The character doesn't come from any one person, they come from everyone who touches the character. Characters are essentially long-term memes. So when one person writes for that character, they aren't writing their character, but our character. We all have a vision of who this character is and what they're about. In a sense, we've all written fan fiction for the character, because we're fans. And really, would you want someone who isn't a fan of Spider-Man to write him?
Edit: Did I kill this thread?... fml
Heh, didn't see your post because I don't check out the comic forum that much. It's all batmanbatmanbatman, so usually not too much for me to read.
I gotta say, I disagree with you, but your reasoning for unmarried Spider-Man is totally sound, reasonable, and logical. What the fuck are you doing on the internet!? Not supposed to have that kind of stuff around here.
I really don't think people that are huge fans of a character should write that character. I think writing a character through the goggles of a lifetime of fandom can skew the writing in a bad way. I said ". . .they're just grown up fanboys, prejudiced by their decades of fandom and how they always viewed the character when they were wee little lads reading books off a spinner rack at a local gas station", and I stand by those statements. A writer like that would have had years of fanfic under his belt (even if it's just "wouldn't be cool if. . ." stuff they thought about when they were a child) and would end up writing through the eyes of a lifelong fan and not the eyes of a good writer.
Now, a writer should understand the character, they should know the character, and they should like the character, but I really don't think they should be crazy huge fans of the character. Take myself, for instance. I love Spider-Man. I've been a huge fan since I found some paperback collection of early ASM issues in the library at the age of 7. I should never write a Spider-Man book. On the flip side, I don't like Superman, never read Superman, don't really understand Superman. I should never write a Superman book. Ditto for Thor, I don't like Thor and should never write Thor. Now, Batman, I know Batman. I like Batman. I know what the character is about, but I'm not so in love with Batman that it would prejudice my writing. Same thing with Daredevil, Iron Man, or Fantastic Four.
That's what I think about writing decades old characters. Of course, I could be wrong, and if a company ever tried this approach it could be a disaster.
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