My formative Spider-Man reading years saw him swinging with the Black Cat, so I have no particular attachment to Mary Jane as the love interest of choice for the discerning wall-crawler. But...
Marvel editor in chief Joe Quesada wants to "unmarry" Peter Parker (Spider-Man) and Mary Jane because he says that Spidey is the everyman hero (true), that he could be any one of us, and that being married to a supermodel damages that concept, because the average bloke on the street has no hope of meeting a supermodel, let alone being married to one.
However, what Quesada appears to have overlooked is that the average bloke on the street doesn't have the proportional strength and agility of a spider either, and yet Spidey's remained an "everyman" with that particular baggage for over thirty years.
Stupid Marvel.
Maybe it's because of when I started reading Marvel (1986) is that I never quite saw Peter Parker as an 'everyman' because I wasn't *told* he was an everyman. He was an early twenties adult who had early twenties adult problems (by 1980s standards). I never quite got the 'everyman' vibe, though. Until the Internet came along and the 'real fans' started shoving it down my throat.
ReplyDeleteAlso, when I started getting "into" Spider-Man, Mary Jane knew Peter was Spider-Man but they didn't seem to be 'involved.' (I didn't know anything about their dating history at the time.)