Amazing Spider-Man #24

[cyberghostface]

 

Comments

[buttz]

What a completely broken line of titles of the Spider-Man books have become.

[nyadnar17]

I just laughed so hard when I saw this.

Man someone is REALLY salty May Parker made it into the Spiderverse movies.

we truly live in a society.

[cyberghostface]

It really is funny how one of the best-received versions of the character is one that Marvel has been adamant should not exist.

[numeronone]

Not sure I'm following, where is May mentioend in these scans? Genuinely curious.

[scorntx]

Not normally a fan of Romita Jr's artwork, but that's not a bad hairstyle for MJ he's got going there.

[zachbeacon]

I will always be amused by the editorial line that having kids makes Peter "old" when Harry has had a kid the entire time I've been reading Spider-Man.

Looking forward to the 2040 story that retcons these two away like Gwen's kids. I'm sure Marvel editorial will be stringing readers along with a OMD reversal "any day now"

Sony will be on it's second Spider-Girl movie reboot by then.

[phantomfo]

Not only is Normie a kid, but he's apparently a tween hero of his own now. So Pete's friends and high school classmates can have kids, but that won't reflect on him.

[super_fly]

They're worried about making Peter look old, they don't care about anyone else around him looking old

[laughing_tree]

Oh boy, I’m sure the online reaction to that last page will be eminently well reasoned and demonstrate proper perspective and not be the least bit overly vitriolic.

[nyadnar17]

On reddit at least its been hilarious. Paul posting is something I only recently discovered.

[deh_tommy]

There’s something that feels a little gross to me about this premise. It’s not like it’d be unrealistic that two folks would fall in love when it’s nothing but the two of them and next tono hope of undoing the situation, but... I don’t know, I can’t find the right words.

[starwolf_oakley]

I remember thinking whatever Peter did caused a history change.
So Mary Jane was married to Paul and had been for “years.”
Turns out I was half right. Only with time dilation instead of changing history.
Comic books are weird.

[tcampbell1000]

Aren't they JUST?

[numeronone]

[angelophile]

Well, those kids look terrifying.

[numeronone]

The inking feels like a rush job when you look at the girl's right eye.

[tcampbell1000]

You know, "One More Day" gets a lot of grief, but there've been a few other Peter/MJ breakup stories over the years...and they've pretty much all been bad.* And I don't think this is because Peter and MJ are just meant to be. I've certainly enjoyed Spidey stories where MJ was not involved in his life at all!

I think it's because it's very, very hard to write a no-fault breakup that feels both emotionally true and compellingly interesting. Breakups rarely make most people into their best selves: we get hurt, so we lash out, or else we get extra depressed for a while. But Marvel cares way too much about you liking both characters to make either of them believably bitter. And no matter how old they should be, the genre's always going to push them to look and act like young adults, so their outgrowing the relationship never feels quite...right.

So instead of any of that, you get over-the-top madness like selling the marriage to the devil, or losing out to time dilation, or Peter being "revealed" to be not the real Peter, or MJ being made to forget Peter and him just being too self-destructive to remind her, or that bit in Ruins where MJ gets killed by Peter's theme song, or whatever.

I don't know about you, but I find I'm a happier reader when I just try to enjoy whatever the current status quo is and ignore the spider-leaps of logic taken to get to it.

*The best of them was probably that time in the 1970s when--depending on how you feel about retcons--she either didn't know Peter was Spider-Man and just got tired of his constant absences and excuses like Gwen did before her, or else she did know and got tired of his constant lying to her and disregard for his own life and safety. Both are believable breakup stories, both put MJ and Peter in understandable positions, and both stopped being viable as soon as MJ started getting built up as someone who could handle a superhero marriage. It still wasn't great...watching a hero ruin his happiness by passively clinging to old habits is not as much fun as it sounds like. But at least it was believably human.

I'm not counting "Divorced Disaster Peter Parker" from the Spider-Verse films, always a delight, because his actual breakup with Mary Jane was painted in the broadest possible strokes and they're basically back together by the end of the first film anyway.

[laughing_tree]

"But Marvel cares way too much about you liking both characters to make either of them believably bitter."

I honestly feels one of the biggest problems with the character is that it's somehow become this big thing that he's supposed to be some moral paragon. That's he's a Great Guy. Wasn't there even a Bendis Avengers arc that revealed he was a human with a perfect soul or something? It feels like the character's real world popularity leaking into the stories.

So much of the energy of those early stories comes from the fact that he could be petty.

[dewinged]

I am saying this with dead seriousness: I thought Paul was darker-skinned? I went back to the post of issue #1 and his complexion seemed darker.

[zachbeacon]

They can't seem to decide what Paul and the kids look like.

[super_fly]

You know they're going through some serious times when they're wearing a headband.

[deh_tommy]

Where do they even get food? Or baby supplies? Do toilets still work? How far does this pocket dimension reach? Have any of them ever had an injury since getting here?

[numeronone]

Also, this is my pattern brain kicking in with the second caffeine shot of the day, but: can't help but recall how in the older Spider-stories (and Marvel in general), the colours purple and green were always correlated with villainy.

So can't help notice that this is the colour scheme the colourist has gravitated towards for MJ and the weirdly-drawn kids.

[blues32]

Of course, neither Paul or Mary Jane look like they've aged a day, despite having kids that look to be about five or six years old. And Paul's hair and beard look so neatly trimmed.

This isn't adding up. How are they in such good shape while the kids are in rags, dirty and hungry?

[shakalooloo]

Of all the things to be annoyed by in this, I find myself annoyed by the FF calling to 'computer' to do things, as if they're on Star Trek and don't have some cheery, friendly AI to interface with. HERBIE on holiday?

[zylly]

Peter’s insistence on “can’t stop, can’t explain, can’t wait” doesn’t make him look determined. It just makes him look like a jerk. Especially when it looks like it took Norman the same few days it was going to take everyone else anyway.

“Poor communication kills” is a pretty standard trope, but I’ve rarely seen it done well. Just slow down for five seconds and freaking talk!

[zachbeacon]

The thing that gets me is the end of Beyond (and Peter and Ben's falling out) relied on the exact same thing. I seemed like a lot of people were more forgiving of it when it happened ONCE but it's becoming a pattern with this writer that the plots only happen because the characters act like idiots.

[steverequin]

The best Spider-Man book right now is Joe Fixit.