How do you know love, when it hits you straight up?, does it matter who you love?, how do you know that other person knows you love them? Well when Stan Lee created Spidey not only did he make him a guy who had to learn (With Great Power, Must come Great Responsibility with him gaining the powers of a spider, yet failing to stop his uncle Ben's murder before it occurs even though he had the chance a week before: This is in part 2 of 5 of "Why I love Spider-man over any other comicbook character: Spidey's Motto"), another aspect Lee put on the character was he had problems with the ladies. Whether he was working on an class project for school, working at the Daily Bulge as a freelancer photographer to earn money to provide for his & May's everyday living expenses, & of course running off to stop the villains running about in New York. He'd thought of dating Betty Brant from the Daily Bulge whilst working there he even did for a short time, till her brother was killed while he was being spidey trying to stop a crime. She'd always like Peter Parker but resent his heroic persona of you know who?, There was also at that time while he was seeing Betty there was Liz Allen who he knew from high school, Who liked peter as a friend mostly at first, when he found out the Motlen man was Liz's half step brother things were simply ended between them at least in the romantic sense of things.Then in his first year in collage he met the only other Woman besides Mary Jane he'd ever love her name Gwen Stacy she was known as Peter's "true love" & she liked neither Peter or Spidey at first she liked Flash Thompson before even noticing Peter at all, But she to came to resent Parker's alter ego as well for she thought Spider-man killed her dad George Stacy who was a retired police captain, when he was fighting Doc Ock. What had happen really was Peter used a chemical in his webbing to make Ock loose control of his mechanical arms & ock's arm hit a brick chimney loose that almost kills a young boy,luckily George Stacy saves the boy from harm but is hurt very badly & spidey tires to get him to a hospital only have George tell him he knew who was under spidey mask & to take care Gwen then he died. Then of course there's Mary Jane who because she knew of Parker's secret avoided meeting the young man her aunt was setting her up to go out with on "a date with" Peter on the other hand was just starting to like Gwen a whole bunch, and resented anyone his dear aunt would want to set him up with.
When Stan Lee went on to other things & left the Marvel universe & it many characters to other writers he didn't know that a writer by the name of Gerry Conway a young new writer in comics would cause one "VERY BIG" rip in the hearts of Spider-man fandom, by killing Gwen Stacy with his own approval of course. They then realized their mistake at Marvel so instead of trying to fix the said problem they made it worst. How?, With Conway two years into his spidey stories came up with the idea of a villain obsessed with Gwen decided to clone her to torment who he had believed killed the girl that he loved, but as if that wasn't enough this villain known as the Jackal had created a clone of Spider man as well. During this time in the story Conway may have pushed things too far as other writers are concerned by having Peter & MJ kiss for the first time while he was off to Paris on an assignment for the Daily Bulge. Anyway how the "first" clone storyline ended was Peter dumped his clone down into a smoke stack not really knowing if he was real or the clone. Some years passed with stories of Peter not Graduating from collage because of all things he failed Gym class because of fighting villains all the time during classes. He thought at this time in his life he wanted to settle down, so he proposed to Mary Jane for the first time with a box of "Cracker Jacks" with a real diamond ring inside the box ( I want to do something that way, when I propose to my girlfriend). Of course Mary Jane's response is a flat out "NO!"
At this time it was the late 70's Stan Lee had started writing "The Amazing Spider man newspaper comic strip & Marvel comics had created Debbie Whitman a co ed student in the collage scene for Peter & Felicia Hardy a villain at first known as the Black cat but later reformed as replacements for the missing Gwen love interest, since at this time in the story Mary Jane was off to California & Florida pressuring her modeling career. Also at this time Peter made aunt may very mad with him for he had decided to quit collage altogether. When Mary Jane paid a surprise visit to Peter's apartment during the Roger Stern stories boy did she ever get a surprise herself when she found Pete smoothed in lipstick from a fellow freelance photographer Amy Powell, she went back to her modeling gigs once more for a short time, while Peter was whisked away to the Beyonder's world with other heroes & villains where he got a new Black & white costume.
When Peter returns from the "Secret Wars" he finds out that his new costume is alive & it wants to bound with him permanently. He & the Black cat team up from time time but she likes his heroic side of the hero instead of his plain ol Peter Parker, Mary Jane returns & tells peter that she's known his secret forever & she also tell him that she's never truly faced the problem down or her own problems either. She tells him she's always running away instead of facing her guilt, Pete can relate to her in this way for that is why he knows he must be spider man. Spidey goes to to fantastic four for help in removing the alien costume since they were on the Beyonder world during the secret wars as well as he they remove the suit, but for a while Peter can't find the courage to return to the ol' Red & Blue just yet so he has the Black cat make him copies of it in cloth.
In 1987, Stan Lee wanted Peter to get Married in the newspaper strip, but he knew that he had a BIG problem yet again, how to do it with him married the in newspaper but NOT in the comic book. So Stan called Marvel's editor in chief & told him what he wanted to do with his creation. What had to happen because the way a comic book comes out & how a newspaper strip come out are very very different, they had to plan months in advance to get it right. So while Stan was finishing up his lead in story in the newspaper Marvel released a three part lead in on the annual coming out that summer in the regular "AMAZING SPIDER-MAN" title of comic books, (see also there were two other "Spider-man" titles running in Marvel's line of Spidey books at the time). So everything was set because not only were they going to do the marriage in both the Comic & the Newspaper strip but in New York on June 5, 1987 at SHEA STADIUM N.Y. Mets game (that's baseball for you who know your sports very well) they had a "live wedding of the webslinger & his beloved red haired gal officiated by Stan Lee himself at the game's halftime event (I wish I could've been there I know it would been fun for sure oh yes I do know that).
Marvel was fine with their flagship character being wedded,at first they let it be. Then they thought it was suppose to be a "gimmick" to boost their readership oh & how did it ever so when they put a Canadian comic artist Todd McFarlane on "Amazing" with issue #298 boy Marvel had a Grandslamer of a catch for new & old readers alike. Then Todd wanted to write not just draw comics so Marvel gave him their 4Th book of Spidey simply titled SPIDER-MAN, (at this time I & many other spider-man fans wanted Peter & Mary Jane to have offspring in the story). Little did we as fans knew that would pay off at least a little bit in Marvel's "first attempt" to reset the Spider man storyline in the "Clone saga", Yes I said clone saga, Marvel thought with the unfinished story from the 70's it could push spider fans to liking Spider-man being single again, but with overpopulated sales of to many comics & other related deals Marvel Comics faced bankruptcy.
In 2,000 Marvel had hired new editor in chief Joe Quesada, in September he'd help the company out of bankruptcy by BIG changes in bringing most of the company's characters back to basics. Joe is not a bad person at all I know or think in his benefits that he brought with him when he came to being Marvel's EIC he has connection to hollywood writers that can bring about more readership to ANY book that they write, But this Blog isn't about Mr. Quesada at all. It's about Spider-man's wedding to Mary Jane, Mr. Quesada unfortunately is very involved in the issue of Spidey wedding by how HE wants it to be that Spidey should be single & never having the past 20 years, NEVER HAVE HAD BEING EXISTED so he wants to say I write the character not you Stan Lee. The one thing to Quesada credit was a year after becoming editor 9/11/01 had happen he was kind enough to keep Spidey Married, when the world needed to see fictional heroes along side real heroes in dealing with people coming together with their families for dealing with fear in the Untied States after terrorists try to impose fear in our hearts & minds. Joe wants to show from the end of "One More Day" that no family is important to him. In "One More Day" Peter is desperate to save Aunt May's life after being shot by a bullet meant for him at the cost of making a deal with the Devil to save her life and the price to let May live the "Marriage" of he & MJ should this have ever happen in a science fiction based book Magic to resolve the issue. NO I think that in today's view of Marriage people also need heroes including GOD to strengthening that if you have problems dealing with everyday life there's always hope, whatever the problems maybe & so if you have fictional characters showing this what does it really matter in the long run? Do you the reader of this blog agree that family is most important in every way or form to you? For me family is what matters, what matters to me in fiction is constancy. Especially comic related fiction, so no what matter what happen to Spidey's future I know that he'll always be responsible in his love to Mary Jane his best friend in the world. To be Continued in "Why I love Spider-man over any other comicbook character pt.4 Spiderman movies"
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