Two takes on the Spider-Man/Mary Jane marriage
As I was researching this week’s Word Balloons, in which I wanted to mix the idea of “Friday the 13th” and Valentine’s Day, I came upon the idea of focusing it on Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson, who as a married couple in comics for 20-some years, had their share of romance and horror. I asked a couple of experts for their take on the Spidey marriage as part of my research, and I’ve included their observations.
The first is Paul Benjamin, a writer who grew up in Oklahoma City and recently wrote “Marvel Adventures Hulk” for Marvel Comics. He’s no stranger to Spidey, either, as he’s written for “Spider-Man Family” and was a contributing writer for “Spider-Man: Web of Shadows” for the Nintendo DS.
“Favorite story with Pete and Mary Jane as a married couple? It’s one of the earliest ones. It was around issue 300, I think. Venom had just become Spidey’s newest villain and he knew Pete’s secret identity. Venom was stalking MJ and it was terrifying to see this poor girl being terrorized by someone who just wanted to hurt her husband. It got to the point where seeing Spider-Man in his black costume freaked MJ out so much that she asked him to switch back to the good old red and blue tights. At the time, it resonated as a very visual indicator of just how scared MJ was of Venom and amped up his threat level as a villain. Now that I’m married, it has even more meaning. After all, what married man hasn’t thrown away a favorite piece of clothing at the behest of his beautiful bride?”
I also asked retailer Joe Field, of Flying Colors Comics in Concord, Calif. Joe is the president of ComicsPRO, the trade organization for direct-market comic-book retailers. His take on the marriage was that it was horrific in and of itself.
“I actually don’t have a favorite story of the married Parkers. For the most part, it seems to me, super-hero comic book writers have rarely been good at writing for married characters— or for family dynamics of any kind,” Joe replied in response to my e-mail.
Joe told me in his opinion, most of the Peter-Mary Jane relationship writing that worked happened prior to the marriage.
“The most exceptional relationship writing with the Spider-Man storyline was done by Roger Stern and Tom DeFalco in the ’80s as they explored Mary Jane’s background and her relationship with Peter. They gave her a depth of character that was previously unexplored…but was later subsumed when Todd McFarlane re-designed MJ to make her look like a bimbo. Gerry Conway also did some nice things with the Peter/MJ deal just after the death of Gwen Stacy in the mid-’70s.”
So there you have it, two different takes on the Spider-Man/Mary Jane relationship undone by “One More Day” in the comics. Peter is again a swinging single, to mixed reactions from fans. But as it turns out, there were mixed responses to the marriage, as well.
– Matt Price
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