One More Day - Part 4

[history79]

11 pages of 33

Comments

[cyberghostface]

Carlie Cooper brings back such memories. Remember when they put her on the cover for the "Spider-Man's greatest loves" one-shot before they even became a couple? Bwahahaha.

Also:



https://shortpacked.com/comic/spider-man-loved-mary-jane

[zachbeacon]

Carlie Cooper: Because you can never have enough Gwen clones.

[thehood]

She wasn't all that much like Gwen though.

[zachbeacon]

Which one is the blonde political activist science nerd with a dead cop father and a childhood friend who became a supervillain?

[janegray]

The difference is that Gwen was actually likeable.

[zachbeacon]

I like some of the versions of Gwen we saw after the original died but writing women was never one of Lee's strengths and Conway was pretty open about not knowing what to do with her.

People seem to want to remember her as Veronica to MJ's Betty.

[janegray]

Admittedly, I never read those comics. The Gwen I know is from more recent comics (especially the Ultimate Spider-Man ones) and cartoons.

[zachbeacon]

Gwen had been dead for about a decade before I was born but I've gone back and read enough of the early stuff through reprints that I see the idolized version of Gwen never existed. I was more attached to her literal clone (and some figurative clones like her cousin Jill) than I was to the original.

There are a lot of good alternate reality Gwens out there like Emma Stone's character, the one from the Spectacular cartoon, and Spider-Gwen.

[janegray]

Serious question, though: if the idealised version of Gwen is the one we have actually had for 90% of the character's screen/page time, doesn't that make it the real version of the character?

That is to say, isn't that a case of the "Characterization Marches On" trope?

I mean, I understand the desire to acknowledge something that people, both fans and writers, try their damnest to shove under the carpet. As a huge Jason Todd fan, I'm deeply annoyed with all the arguments, both in stories and in forums, that he was always a "problem child," when I read pre-DitF stories and I know damn well that the "reckless Jason" characterization is a post-death retcon meant to victim blame him for his death ("oh, if only he hadn't been so reckless as to trust that his own beloved mother wouldn't literally sell him to the Joker! It was all his fault!), and even post-Crisis he was actually portrayed as incredibly eager-to-please.

But at some point, it's fighting a losing battle. The amount of stories that ignore the character's original characterization is only going to increase.

[zachbeacon]

I guess it's a matter of perspective.

A lot of people consider the "real" Batman to be the one in the DCAU. He's mostly a composite of things that worked in earlier versions. While he is certainly my favorite Batman, I can't get behind him being the "real" Batman if only because we see so little of him. Also I have a huge problem with his relationship with Babs so he certainly isn't a perfect version.

(BTW the Fatal Five movie is great)

I think of Gwen like I think of Uncle Ben; most of their characterization happened after their death. The difference is Ben was pretty much a blank slate whereas the old Gwen is slowly being overridden by the character as she was presented in Spider-Man Blue or whatever.

[locuatico]

To a degree, yes. How Gwen's characterization was early on should not factor that heavily in later works, unless you are specifically doing something with it. Wether Flash's antagonism was bullying or not during the earlier stories should not matter because he is no longer an antagonist.

However, the part I take issue when it comes to people's idealised version of gwen is that, more often than not, it doesn't just ignore her canon, but MJ's as well. They tend to try and play up Gwen's "Peter Parker's one true love" and dismissing the years of development in Peter and Mary Jane's romance.
they do stuff like playing up Mary Jane's (realitvely short-lived) time as a Model to call their relationship "unrealistic" or that Mary Jane was a huge to Peter back then (having actually gone and read the old spider-man comics right after Gwen's death up to the end of the original "Clone Saga" I can tell the opposite was true. Out of the entire cast, MJ was the character who actively tried to help Peter as he became more and more of a jerk due to his grief) and basically trying to demonize MJ to make Gwen look good.

In short, I don't have problems with how people see Gwen and wether it reflects her original characterization. But I don't like the way they treat Mary Jane to do so.

[janegray]

An excellent point!

[goattoucher]

Zing!

[thehood]

Carly Cooper.

[shakalooloo]

It's implied here that what MJ whispers is an offer to Mephisto, but isn't it later revealed to be an additional, imposed condition?

[locuatico]

"One Moment in Time". Can't recall the quote, but I think it was basically MJ saying that Peter would only do the deal if she told him to. And she would only tell him to do so if Mephisto promised to leave peter alone from then on.
Quesada would go on to say that, because MJ did this Mephisto was defeated or something like that. In actuality, it felt more like they tried to put the blame onto MJ and to keep on framing them making the deal as a GOOD thing.

[owlbrigade1]

Tangential, but I loathe and despise the phrase "Nuff said" because it nearly always follows or precedes a load of old garbage.

[locuatico]

Only context in which it is allowed: https://youtu.be/hCpmXrS8QxM?t=31

[gadz00ks]

I think what angers me the most about this storyline is that 'Nuff Said! right on the cover.

It's supposed to be a dark twisted and tragic deal with the devil yet is stamped with slang colloquialisms the same way I approach throwing out last night's dinner. I know Joe Quesada had a vendetta agianst marriage in comics, but no other words express how tactless and out of tone this whole story was than 'Nuff Said!

[mazway_75]

It is interesting how JMS had issues with stuff like Harry brought back as he asked how it's possible and Queseda going "ah, it's magic, it can do anything."

Granted, some good stuff since but still harder to take given how horrible this entire idea was.

[cyberghostface]

A lot of the stuff post-OMD not even taking into context how the status quo came to be was either mediocre or awful.

A lot of forgettable villains were created and since ignored (Remember the villain who was a drug addict and turned into a monster by getting high or something?), Peter being a mooching lowlife, disgusting stuff like Lizard eating his son or the whole bit with Peter not telling his roommate that the Chameleon might have raped her until it inconvenienced him personally (as she became infatuated with him as a result of the Chameleon pretending to be Peter).

It's very telling to me that when Dan Slott took over full-time and presumably didn't have to follow the 'brain trust' he did his best to undo a lot of the crap. He did away with the "psychic blindspot" which was just stupid, put Carlie on a bus and tried to salvage the Lizard's character from what Shed did to him.

[deh_tommy]

I liked Carlie... well, I liked Dan Slott's Carlie, at least. In any case, I'm not too gone on the post-One More Day pre-Big Time era.

[thehood]

There were some good BND villains that stuck around though, like Mister Negative.

[cyberghostface]

Yeah he was the one I liked.

[locuatico]

For some reason, whenever I see that last page, I always think that's Mephisto's hand at the right.