Spider-Man: Homecoming' anticipation thread

[WebLurker]

Which just makes me wish they'd gone ahead and used Miles Morales as the MCU Spider-Man, instead of grafting his story onto Peter Parker.

I really don't wish that at all. On a purely subjective level, Peter Parker being Spider-Man is my number one deal breaker; if it's someone else in the costume, I have no interest in the story (fair or not). I also really wanted to see Peter interact with other Marvel characters on the big screen.

Also, I've always found the idea of the Miles Morales Spider-Man really problematic on several counts. I don't really think that Spider-Man works as a legacy hero, like Flash or Batman, etc. The mantle is too tied to Peter Parker for anyone else to be it nor is there any line of succession, like how Batman trains Robin. (The one exception would be Spider-Girl or a hypothetical future to the current Renew Your Vows series, where Peter's daughter takes over the role. That works since there isn't a convoluted explanation as to how she she has abilities and her taking on the role and she has legitimacy to the mantle, for lack of a better word.) Miles' backstory was extremely contrived to give him spider powers.

While this is purely subjective and could be fixed with different writing in a movie, I've found that comic book Miles is an extremely bland and boring character. While I do want to get copies of his stuff to complete my Ultimate comics collection and have been able to find some enjoyment out of what I've read (I find his comics were far more respectful to the Spider-Man legacy and Peter character than Slott's Superior Spider-Man and mainstream writings ever were), there is no benefit to having him in the costume than letting Peter be the character. (Note that this is all IMHO.)

Finally, and I think this is the best reason that a Miles movie would've been wrong from the get go, is that the Miles character is defined by being the legacy superhero. You can't tell his story without Peter coming first to pave the way for him (whether it be by Miles replacing him or becoming a superhero alongside him). Once you make him the first Spider-Man, you're just making him Peter Parker under a different name and defeating the point of a Miles movie. Do I want to see a Miles movie eventually? I wouldn't loose sleep if it was never made -- my dream for the future MCU Spider-Man movies would be to eventually adapt or take inspiration from the Spider-Girl/Renew Your Vows comics, and have an adult Peter raising a family with Mary Jane -- but if they brought Miles in without killing Peter, I'd be perfectly okay with it.

He was fine for what he was. He was just a version of Peter Parker that was changed to be Tobey Maguire-like. Not bad, but different.

I've found him to be really close to the versions of the character from the comics and cartoons I like, but that is all subjective.

My biggest problem with the Raimi/Maguire Spidey is that he almost never engaged in quips and banter as Spider-Man -- just one or two feeble jokes here and there, and otherwise silence. Spider-Man without the nonstop banter is like Thor without a hammer. It just doesn't feel complete.

That didn't bother me because of a few things. I've found that the joking is not the core of the character, just the icing on the cake, and the Raimi movies got the core right, IMHO. Second of all, as I understand it, Spider-Man shuts up when things get really serious and the problems he faces in those movies tended to get serious really quickly. I also found that they scattered his jokes and lighthearted comments across both his superhero and civilian lives, so it wasn't ignored and seemed like a facet of his character. Finally, the movies themselves had a light-hearted tone and incorporated hUmor into the story that, even without Peter making regular jokes, it wasn't needed to get the spirit of it all across. (Your mileage may vary.)

That said, I do very much like the more chatty Spider-Man (Brian Michael Bendis did this really well in Ultimate Spider-Man and the Spectacular Spider-Man was good for humor as well) and I like that not only is Tom Holland getting to do the chatty Spider-Man, but he seems to be really good at the delivery and getting good writing for it, too.

I see it very differently. There's a lot of anger and frustration in Peter/Spidey. You can't really grow up as a bullied nerd without having some pent-up rage and resentment. It's just that he usually directs his anger at himself, at his own failures, or channels it positively into his crimefighting.

That's a really interesting idea I've never thought of before. I still have to say that Spider-Man has never struck me as an angry character, though. Guilt seems to be more his thing. Also, Garfield's Peter seemed to be far less of a bully victim and more of an antisocial loner, which doesn't really mesh with his other characterizations.

I agree Garfield's Peter was edgier than usual, but I felt he was closer to the mark than Maguire was, because he was a wiseass. Maybe a bit too much of one, but he still was one.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think being a wise guy is the defining trait of Spider-Man and that the rest of the characterization was really problematic. So, I'm not convinced on this point.

Now Garfield did get some good punch lines (his response to Electro's announcement that he would become a god was my favorite). However, it's pretty limited, too (did he even joke that much outside of the carjacker scene in movie one?) and somehow seemed more mean-spirited than his other versions and nowhere near as well-written. Also, as a comedian, I think that Holland was far better at that aspect of the character.

Although it might've been better if Garfield's Peter had been more subdued as Peter and only let the full wiseass out as Spidey. That's the usual approach -- that being in the mask loosens his inhibitions and lets him be more bold and assertive.

Maybe, although I think the lack of the power and responsibility theme was the bigger problem.

I think ASM2 did a great job with Spidey/Peter as a character, and Stone's Gwen in both movies was a far more effective character than she ever was in the comics. The problem with ASM2 is that it got Peter, Gwen, and May so right and got everything else so wrong.

As I mentioned before, I think Garfield was given an awful Spidey/Peter character (although I've found Dan Slott's interpretation even less to my tastes). I have a similar opinion of Gwen. Using Gwen was a good idea, IMHO and Stone was perfect casting and gave it her all, but she had a paper-thin character. Now, I will concede that I came into the fanbase after Gwen was long gone, so I don't have much appreciation for the character, but, as far as the movie version went, she was not very well-written. Her only major defining trait was that she was Peter's girlfriend. She was a plot device; everything about her was solely to advance Peter's story.

The fact that the relationship they had seemed very undefined, shallow, and chronically unhealthy didn't help me much either. Once Peter admitted to stalking her on a daily basis and we and her were supposed to accept it as cute and touching, I pretty much lost any support I had for them as a couple. (While this is an unpopular opinion, I submit that Kirsten Dunst's Mary Jane from the original movies was the superior love interest character to Stone's Gwen; I thought Dunst gave a decent performance, the character was given backstory that paid off in the present, she grew over the course of the movies and her her own story arcs, some of which was completely independent from her role as the love interest, and the relationship she had with Peter in the story progressed in a way that made sense, was understandable, and seemed to have more depth; the characters related to each other outside of the boyfriend/girlfriend setup and were given far more range of types of scenes and emotions to work with. In fact, I'd argue that the original movie's Mary Jane is one of the better girlfriend characters in the genre period.)

Now, I did really like Sally Field's Aunt May. While I think Rosemary Harris was excellent in the role and I have high hopes for Marisa Tomei's take in the new films, Field is my favorite version of the character to date. She reminded me a lot of the Ultimate comics version of the character. In that version, they put a strong emphasis on May and Peter being mom and son, something Field captured and preformed well. In fact, one of my complaints about the Webb movies is that May is criminally underused in the movies. While I think the movies have some inherent flaws and am not sorry that the series ended, I'm also aware that a lot of stuff in them that had so much promise that was squandered or ignored.

Again, I disagree. Just because someone's interpretation doesn't agree with yours, that doesn't mean they "don't understand" the character, just that they understand the character differently than you do.

At what point is something changed so much that it's no longer the same thing?

Define "we." The audience is not monolithic in its familiarity with the characters or its attitudes toward them. In any fandom, in any audience, there will be multiple conflicting points of view. As I said, in the '90s, a lot of comics readers argued vocally that a Batman who didn't kill was quaint and unbelievable and that the character "needed" to become another Punisher or the like, some overblown, gun-laden vigilante drenched in blood and testosterone. Knightfall was the Batman writers' and editors' counterargument to that perception. The fact that many in the audience didn't already know or accept that is why they felt the story needed to be told.

Okay, fair enough. Bad use of "we." I still find Superior Spider-Man to be a mockery of the character, though and the thing that made me decide I want nothing to do with Slott's writing. (I did make an exception for his Renew Your Vows series, but that was in spite of him writing it.)

Understanding is not a given. It's something that needs to be worked for and earned. Sometimes people lose track of the real essence of an idea because they take it too much for granted. And so the core messages need to be restated from time to time, the core ideas re-examined. Repeating the exercise helps to maintain the strength of the idea, just as with a muscle or a skill.

I fail to see how Superior Spider-Man accomplished anything, but your mileage may vary.

I don't know if this is part of what you're talking about, but just to be clear, Slott wasn't responsible for ending Peter and MJ's marriage. That happened while J. Michael Straczynski was still the head writer, and it was mostly Joe Quesada's decision, IIRC. Slott was just one of the team of writers who came on board after that to restart the series with its new status quo, along with Mark Waid, Marc Guggenheim, Bob Gale, Joe Kelly, and others. Slott didn't become the solo writer until about three years later.

That is correct. I don't think Slott deserves blame for "One More Day" (although I do feel that the "One More Day" corrupted the source material, for lack of a better word, so IMHO, Slott's version is inherently flawed because he's working off a version that's tainted), but he has made creative decisions that don't really work for the character and themes. For example, take his current Parker Industries story. While I'm not following it, so I can't comment on the actual quality of storytelling, on paper the idea is very much anti-Spider-Man. A core piece of Spider-Man is that he's an everyman who lives a normal life outside of his superhero gig. Turning him into an Iron Man clone is not a Spider-Man story. It's stuff like this that lead me to believe that Slott doesn't get Spider-Man. He comes up with stuff that aren't organic to the character and don't fit.

And as much as I hated the decision to end the marriage -- and as utterly dreadful as the writing in that story was -- I felt that the subsequent work by those writers in the wake of the change was good enough that it made amends for the awfulness of the change itself. It's like they were the team brought in to rebuild a city after a hurricane wrecked it, and I think they did a good job of that.

I cannot look at this objectively, since "One More Day" broke my second deal breaker. I'm not interested in trying to create a different romantic setup for Spider-Man. I do come by this honestly, since I was introduced to the franchise through the Raimi movies and the Ultimate comics. So, for me, the idea of Peter and Mary Jane being a couple (married or otherwise) is as key to the franchise as Spider-Man being a spider-themed superhero. (I will concede that stuff like the Spectacular Spider-Man cartoon, the Marvel Adventures comics, and hopefully the Homecoming movie, can make it work, but it's always felt just a little off to me.)

However, excusing that, everything I've read of mainstream post-"One More Day" Spider-Man comics, every creative decision, every status quo change, my gut reaction (speaking as a Spider-Man fan) has been: "I hate this"/"I hate the sound of that," "I do not want to read that," "That's is not the character I'm a fan of." There is literally nothing in the mainstream Spider-Man comics that I have any level of appreciation. I can only call it as I process it, but to me, this is not Spider-Man.

On a technical point, I find that Slott's dialogue tends to be clunky and wooden and his plots favor surprise and shock and awe over logical plotting and usually run out of steam (this even applies to his Renew Your Vows miniseries, which I do love). So, regardless of how he views Spider-Man, just from a writing standpoint, I submit that Brian Michael Bendis and Greg Weisemann's writing/supervision of the Ultimate Spider-Man comics and Spectacular Spider-Man cartoon created better written and crafted runs than Slott has.

Yes, it was different from what came before, but it was interesting in its own right.

Obviously I vehemently disagree about it being interesting. However, with the current Renew Your Vows ongoing, I do at least have a running Spider-Man I can call my own. With that in mind, I am content to leave 616 for those who like it, but I still feel that this series shouldn't have to exist, since it's what the main series should've become a long time ago.

(I'm sorry if I cross over any lines, but this is not only a sore subject for me, I've also felt extremely disenfranchised as a Spider-Man fan for quite some time.)

 

[Greg Cox]

I do come by this honestly, since I was introduced to the franchise through the Raimi movies and the Ultimate comics. So, for me, the idea of Peter and Mary Jane being a couple (married or otherwise) is as key to the franchise as Spider-Man being a spider-themed superhero. )

Interesting. I'm old enough to remember when Betty Brant (!) was Peter's love interest, and then Gwen, and then Mary Jane, so folks of my generation may have a different take on how "key" the whole Peter-MJ thing is. Ditto for the constant wise-cracking, which was a staple of the comics and Saturday-morning cartoons for decades before the Raimi movies came long.

But, of course, it only makes sense that the Raimi movies would be some fans' first exposure to the character--and shape their expectations accordingly.

This is not just a Spider-Man thing, btw, but can be seen with any long-running comics character. By coincidence, I was pointing out just the other day that Arkham Asylum, which is a staple of BATMAN comics and games these days, didn't appear in the BATMAN comics until the seventies, which meant that BATMAN got by without it for forty-plus years. And I remember some SMALLVILLE critics objecting to the idea of Clark and Lex being boyhood friends in Smallville--even though that was straight from the old Silver Age comics. It was only "wrong" to fans who preferred then-current comics continuity.

When it comes to venerable comic-book series, the "right" version is often just the one you grew up on.

 

[DigificWriter]

For me, personally, I try not to 'judge' something based on any "preconceptions" I might have, and I enjoy both the Raimi Trilogy and the unfinished TASM series for what they are, not what I wish they would've been, because if I didn't, the "standard" for Spider-Man for me would be the old 1994 cartoon series, against which none of the cinematic takes on Spidey we've seen so far would measure up because they're so dramatically different from that series.

 

[JD]

Really? He's a teenager, not an eight-year-old. We're not talking HOME ALONE or ANNIE here. Nobody is going to balk at subjecting to him to PG-rated comic-book jeopardy along the same lines as that found in any other Marvel movie. ("May contain scenes of fantasy violence.") And how "intense" do we want it to be anyway? This is Spider-Man, not WATCHMEN. Nobody wants an R-rated Spider-Man movie.

Here's the thing: a young-adult protagonist does not mean that it's a YA story, aimed strictly at teens, any more than making a child the protagonist in a story means that it's a children's story.

Just look at the books Game of Thrones is based on, in the original books most of the younger characters are barely in their teens. It's been a while since I read GoT, but I believe Daenerys, John, and Robb were about 14 or 15, and the Stark girls were even younger, and that is definitely not a kids' book.

That is correct. I don't think Slott deserves blame for "One More Day" (although I do feel that the "One More Day" corrupted the source material, for lack of a better word, so IMHO, Slott's version is inherently flawed because he's working off a version that's tainted), but he has made creative decisions that don't really work for the character and themes. For example, take his current Parker Industries story. While I'm not following it, so I can't comment on the actual quality of storytelling, on paper the idea is very much anti-Spider-Man. A core piece of Spider-Man is that he's an everyman who lives a normal life outside of his superhero gig. Turning him into an Iron Man clone is not a Spider-Man story. It's stuff like this that lead me to believe that Slott doesn't get Spider-Man. He comes up with stuff that aren't organic to the character and don't fit.



I cannot look at this objectively, since "One More Day" broke my second deal breaker. I'm not interested in trying to create a different romantic setup for Spider-Man. I do come by this honestly, since I was introduced to the franchise through the Raimi movies and the Ultimate comics. So, for me, the idea of Peter and Mary Jane being a couple (married or otherwise) is as key to the franchise as Spider-Man being a spider-themed superhero. (I will concede that stuff like the Spectacular Spider-Man cartoon, the Marvel Adventures comics, and hopefully the Homecoming movie, can make it work, but it's always felt just a little off to me.)

However, excusing that, everything I've read of mainstream post-"One More Day" Spider-Man comics, every creative decision, every status quo change, my gut reaction (speaking as a Spider-Man fan) has been: "I hate this"/"I hate the sound of that," "I do not want to read that," "That's is not the character I'm a fan of." There is literally nothing in the mainstream Spider-Man comics that I have any level of appreciation. I can only call it as I process it, but to me, this is not Spider-Man.

On a technical point, I find that Slott's dialogue tends to be clunky and wooden and his plots favor surprise and shock and awe over logical plotting and usually run out of steam (this even applies to his Renew Your Vows miniseries, which I do love). So, regardless of how he views Spider-Man, just from a writing standpoint, I submit that Brian Michael Bendis and Greg Weisemann's writing/supervision of the Ultimate Spider-Man comics and Spectacular Spider-Man cartoon created better written and crafted runs than Slott has.



Obviously I vehemently disagree about it being interesting. However, with the current Renew Your Vows ongoing, I do at least have a running Spider-Man I can call my own. With that in mind, I am content to leave 616 for those who like it, but I still feel that this series shouldn't have to exist, since it's what the main series should've become a long time ago.

(I'm sorry if I cross over any lines, but this is not only a sore subject for me, I've also felt extremely disenfranchised as a Spider-Man fan for quite some time.)

As someone who just recently came into the comics at the start of Brand New Day, I've found plenty of things to recognize as being core elements of the character. They might have changed some of the details, but the overall character still feels like what I expect Spider-Man to feel like. I will admit that most of my knowledge comes from the animated series, movies, and games, but I think that could actually make me more objective since I don't have decades of comic book baggage building my expectations.

As for the current comics, I haven't made it to Superior Spider-Man yet don't know for sure, but I've been thinking they introduced introduced the whole Parker Industries thing because they moved Miles into the 616 Universe and wanted to a way to keep the two characters as different as possible. The current set-up leaves Miles as a small scale street level hero, while Peter gets bigger stories.

 

[WebLurker]

Interesting. I'm old enough to remember when Betty Brant (!) was Peter's love interest, and then Gwen, and then Mary Jane, so folks of my generation may have a different take on how "key" the whole Peter-MJ thing is.

Makes sense. I find the idea of Gwen being Peter's girlfriend really weird today (although I can appreciate how "The Night Gwen Stacy Died" works as backstory).

And new generations of fans will have their versions too. I could easily imagine talking to some young fan years from now who can't imagine the idea of a Spider-Man without Iron Man as a mentor, expect Ned Leeds to be involved as support, and find the idea of Peter having a girlfriend other than Liz Allen weird, because of Homecoming.

Ditto for the constant wise-cracking, which was a staple of the comics and Saturday-morning cartoons for decades before the Raimi movies came long.

I do like the wise-cracking and don't want that lost. I guess the Raimi movies handled themselves that I was okay with what I got from them in that department.

But, of course, it only makes sense that the Raimi movies would be some fans' first exposure to the character--and shape their expectations accordingly.

Yeah, while I did have some hazy understanding of the character before that (and thought he was really cool), seeing the original Spider-Man movie on DVD was my first time actually experiencing a story about him. So, I can attest that it has shaped my opinions on what I think of when I think of the franchise and prefer stuff that echoes it in some way. I mean, I got into the Ultimate Spider-Man trade paperbacks because that version really reminded me a lot of movies, and, while I've admitted to not being a huge fan of the Webb films, I did find it cool to see Ultimate ideas incorporated into the mix. And now, with the MCU Spider-Man, even if I would have preferred a few different characters in the mix, it feels very much in line with what I remember from before.

This is not just a Spider-Man thing, btw, but can be seen with any long-running comics character. By coincidence, I was pointing out just the other day that Arkham Asylum, which is a staple of BATMAN comics and games these days, didn't appear in the BATMAN comics until the seventies, which meant that BATMAN got by without it for forty-plus years.

Wow.

And I remember some SMALLVILLE critics objecting to the idea of Clark and Lex being boyhood friends in Smallville--even though that was straight from the old Silver Age comics. It was only "wrong" to fans who preferred then-current comics continuity.

I'm not much of a Superman fan (although I have been a fan of the Supergirl TV show, albeit having fallen behind) and haven't seen Smallville, although I thought that Luthor and Superman having known each other for years before they adopted their main roles was part of the basic origin story.

When it comes to venerable comic-book series, the "right" version is often just the one you grew up on. [/QUOTE]

Yeah. I guess it's one of those things were I don't mind different takes on material (I like some versions that don't mesh exactly for other reasons), but don't want the interpretations I'm invested in to fall by the wayside or be totally replaced. Case in point for Marvel, it's probably not so much that I object to there being a new iteration of Spider-Man, but that it feels like they've tried to ban and erase the existence of the iteration that I care about.

As someone who just recently came into the comics at the start of Brand New Day, I've found plenty of things to recognize as being core elements of the character. They might have changed some of the details, but the overall character still feels like what I expect Spider-Man to feel like. I will admit that most of my knowledge comes from the animated series, movies, and games, but I think that could actually make me more objective since I don't have decades of comic book baggage building my expectations.

Weird. I came to the franchise through non-comic stuff, too and only started collecting specific comics and series a couple years ago and have a different reaction. Guess it goes to show how everyone processed stuff differently and what elements they want to see the most.

As for the current comics, I haven't made it to Superior Spider-Man yet don't know for sure, but I've been thinking they introduced introduced the whole Parker Industries thing because they moved Miles into the 616 Universe and wanted to a way to keep the two characters as different as possible. The current set-up leaves Miles as a small scale street level hero, while Peter gets bigger stories.

That's a big reason why I'm at an impasse with the current comics, as I want to read about Peter being the street-level hero.

Hope you enjoy the series, though.

 

[Greg Cox]

There will come a day, if it's not already here, when younger fans will be stunned to find out that Harley Quinn has only been around since the nineties and wasn't always part of the BATMAN universe.

I've actually seen people ask why Harley never appeared on the old 1966 BATMAN tv show. I like to think they're joking, but . . .

 

[Thestral]

Well, yeah, but that's the advantage of waiting eight years to bring Spidey in. Now the other characters have a collective weight and history behind them that MCU Spidey doesn't yet, and moreover, he's grown up in a world shaped by them. This Spidey starts out as the protege of Tony Stark, so even if he ends up replacing Iron Man as the anchor of the MCU, he's still carrying the influence of Iron Man and Stark technology.

There's also the consideration that, even with the integration of Spidey into the MCU, Sony still controls the character's film rights. So that would give Marvel a reason to continue playing up the characters they own fully, rather than relying too heavily on a Sony-controlled character.

Granted all of this, but now that they have Spidey, where's the impetus to make, say, another Ant Man?

 

[JD]

Yeah. I guess it's one of those things were I don't mind different takes on material (I like some versions that don't mesh exactly for other reasons), but don't want the interpretations I'm invested in to fall by the wayside or be totally replaced. Case in point for Marvel, it's probably not so much that I object to there being a new iteration of Spider-Man, but that it feels like they've tried to ban and erase the existence of the iteration that I care about.



Weird. I came to the franchise through non-comic stuff, too and only started collecting specific comics and series a couple years ago and have a different reaction. Guess it goes to show how everyone processed stuff differently and what elements they want to see the most.



That's a big reason why I'm at an impasse with the current comics, as I want to read about Peter being the street-level hero.

Hope you enjoy the series, though.

I think the big difference with me is that when I hear about something like Superior Spider-Man, or the whole Parker Industries thing, I find myself curious to see how this new situation will be handled, rather than being mad that they're moving away from the traditional version of the character.
I think it's more interesting to see a character in a new situation, than
to just seeing them do the same thing they've already been doing for decades. If I want to see old, traditional versions of the characters, there's a pretty good chance there are a lot of old stories about that version of the character I haven't read yet. And with companies like Marvel, they still tend to produce new stories that go back to that traditional version. Marvel just recently did the Spidey series, which took place back during Peter's early days as Spider-Man, and I wouldn't be surprised if we got something similar closer to Homecoming's release.

 

[Christopher]

Granted all of this, but now that they have Spidey, where's the impetus to make, say, another Ant Man?

I just gave that answer in the very post you responded to. Sony, not Marvel, controls the Spidey movie rights. Marvel makes less money from the Spidey movies than they would make from movies based on Ant-Man or other characters they own the rights to. That's all the impetus they need.

 

[DigificWriter]

Like Christopher said, Marvel Studios doesn't and cannot make as much, financially, from Spider-Man movies as they will and can from movies featuring characters like Ant-Man, the Guardians of the Galaxy, etc. because, as I have pointed out already, they only benefit financially from films featuring Spider-Man that they themselves finance.

Marvel Studios, in spite of driving the film creatively and putting their logo above the title, won't make a single penny from Spider-Man Homecoming or its two planned direct sequels (the first of which has already been pegged for release in July 2019).

 

[Kahless the Unforgettable]

Like Christopher said, Marvel Studios doesn't and cannot make as much, financially, from Spider-Man movies as they will and can from movies featuring characters like Ant-Man, the Guardians of the Galaxy, etc. because, as I have pointed out already, they only benefit financially from films featuring Spider-Man that they themselves finance.

Marvel Studios, in spite of driving the film creatively and putting their logo above the title, won't make a single penny from Spider-Man Homecoming or its two planned direct sequels (the first of which has already been pegged for release in July 2019).

And your point is... what exactly?

 

[DigificWriter]

^ My point is that, like Christopher said, having access to Spider-Man doesn't give Marvel Studios less initiative to use other characters because those characters profit them to a far more significant degree that their use of Spider-Man does.

 

[Kahless the Unforgettable]

^ My point is that, like Christopher said, having access to Spider-Man doesn't give Marvel Studios less initiative to use other characters because those characters profit them to a far more significant degree that their use of Spider-Man does.

Who the fuck cares?

The whole point of that discussion -- if you had kept up with it -- was that Marvel has a more vested interest in making the character great than Sony ever did. So much so that they are giving up butt loads of cash in order to do so. The more the character is in their hands, the better.

 

[DigificWriter]

The whole point of that discussion -- if you had kept up with it -- was that Marvel has a more vested interest in making the character great than Sony ever did. So much so that they are giving up butt loads of cash in order to do so. The more the character is in their hands, the better.

No, the point of the discussion to which I and Christopher were responding was the notion that having Spider-Man in the MCU overshadows and pushes aside other characters, which isn't the case at all.

You're the one who "missed the boat" on this one, not me.

 

[Kahless the Unforgettable]

No, the point of the discussion to which I and Christopher were responding was the notion that having Spider-Man in the MCU overshadows and pushes aside other characters, which isn't the case at all.

You're the one who "missed the boat" on this one, not me.

Ah, you're one of those people with ADHD. Got it.

 

[WebLurker]

There will come a day, if it's not already here, when younger fans will be stunned to find out that Harley Quinn has only been around since the nineties and wasn't always part of the BATMAN universe.

I've actually seen people ask why Harley never appeared on the old 1966 BATMAN tv show. I like to think they're joking, but . . .

I think I've heard in a Batman comic that continued the '60s show, they included Harley Quinn.

Granted all of this, but now that they have Spidey, where's the impetus to make, say, another Ant Man?

The fact that people like Ant-Man, too?

I think the big difference with me is that when I hear about something like Superior Spider-Man, or the whole Parker Industries thing, I find myself curious to see how this new situation will be handled, rather than being mad that they're moving away from the traditional version of the character.
I think it's more interesting to see a character in a new situation, than to just seeing them do the same thing they've already been doing for decades.

I guess there's a place for everything. I guess I'm the kind of person who would pick up something completely different.

If I want to see old, traditional versions of the characters, there's a pretty good chance there are a lot of old stories about that version of the character I haven't read yet. And with companies like Marvel, they still tend to produce new stories that go back to that traditional version. Marvel just recently did the Spidey series, which took place back during Peter's early days as Spider-Man, and I wouldn't be surprised if we got something similar closer to Homecoming's release.

Was the Spidey series any good? I gathered it didn't do that well and was kind of a mishmash remake of old stories and may or may not have been canon to 616. I was kind of curious about it, though.

 

[Christopher]

I think I've heard in a Batman comic that continued the '60s show, they included Harley Quinn.

Yes, and other '66-ized versions of modern characters, like Killer Croc. IIRC, Harley started out as an Arkham psychiatrist named Holly Quinn. Although I wasn't crazy about that storyline in the comic, because Arkham itself wasn't introduced until the '70s, and the bad guys in the '66 show were treated as criminals to be sent to Gotham State Penitentiary, not as mental patients. The only one who was considered mentally ill was King Tut, and he was always "cured" with a simple bump on the head. (Although there was that creepy episode where Batman tried using a high-tech hair dryer to brainwash Black Widow and her goons into not being criminals anymore. Holy Identity Crisis!)

 

[Neroon]

Ah, you're one of those people with ADHD. Got it.

Take it easy with the rejoinders. No need to get personal.

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

I really don't wish that at all. On a purely subjective level, Peter Parker being Spider-Man is my number one deal breaker; if it's someone else in the costume, I have no interest in the story (fair or not). I also really wanted to see Peter interact with other Marvel characters on the big screen.

Agreed. Moreover, changing his identity would only serve to add controversy to a production that needs (arguably) the strongest, trouble-free debut than any other MCU character. IOW, this is the Spider-Man, not some latter-day story few know/care about.

That didn't bother me because of a few things. I've found that the joking is not the core of the character, just the icing on the cake, and the Raimi movies got the core right, IMHO. Second of all, as I understand it, Spider-Man shuts up when things get really serious and the problems he faces in those movies tended to get serious really quickly.

This is true, and contrary to the myth (created for some reason) Spider-Man was a human joke machine, I can point them to innumerable stories in the Ditko/Romita/Kane/Andru periods (collectively, well over a decade's worth of issues), where the character was quite the moody, or even grim hero...and it was not all tied to famous deaths, such as Captain Stacy or his daughter.

Marvel's 1960/70s PR and licensing did more to promote that joke-machine version of Spider-Man than anything that could be fairly tagged to the source. It was a way to make the character's personality more kid friendly in adaptations such as the Grantray-Lawrence cartoon (1967-70), and his thought-ballooning addition to The Electric Company (and its Marvel adaptation in the form of Spidey Super-Stories). The avoidance of the incessant joking is one of the reasons the Raimi Spider-Man films captured the feel of the character to a near-perfect degree, as opposed to the rubber-room / too insecure to be believed nonsense of Garfield's portrayal.

Also, Garfield's Peter seemed to be far less of a bully victim and more of an antisocial loner, which doesn't really mesh with his other characterizations.

It was poor and seemed to be catering to a minority of comic fans who (in the past decade or so) wish to paint all characters--particularly on the young end--as misfits or suffering from issues that would have forced Freud to switch to raising Guppies.

 

[Sci]

Well, yeah, but that's the advantage of waiting eight years to bring Spidey in. Now the other characters have a collective weight and history behind them that MCU Spidey doesn't yet, and moreover, he's grown up in a world shaped by them.

Interesting side-note: Assuming Peter Parker is 16 in Spider-Man: Homecoming, and assuming that the film takes place in 2017, that means this version of Peter Parker was born in 2001 (aka, one year before the original Sam Raimi film was released in real life); that he was 7 when Tony Stark became Iron Man; that he was 11 when Captain America was revived and Loki and the Chitauri invaded New York; that he was 13 when SHIELD collapsed and Hydra was revealed; etc. It means that Iron Man and superhumans have been a part of his world basically for 56% of his lifespan.

Interesting. I'm old enough to remember when Betty Brant (!) was Peter's love interest, and then Gwen, and then Mary Jane, so folks of my generation may have a different take on how "key" the whole Peter-MJ thing is. Ditto for the constant wise-cracking, which was a staple of the comics and Saturday-morning cartoons for decades before the Raimi movies came long.

But, of course, it only makes sense that the Raimi movies would be some fans' first exposure to the character--and shape their expectations accordingly.

This is not just a Spider-Man thing, btw, but can be seen with any long-running comics character. By coincidence, I was pointing out just the other day that Arkham Asylum, which is a staple of BATMAN comics and games these days, didn't appear in the BATMAN comics until the seventies, which meant that BATMAN got by without it for forty-plus years. And I remember some SMALLVILLE critics objecting to the idea of Clark and Lex being boyhood friends in Smallville--even though that was straight from the old Silver Age comics. It was only "wrong" to fans who preferred then-current comics continuity.

When it comes to venerable comic-book series, the "right" version is often just the one you grew up on.

Or the version of the story that feels like it's boiled down the different variations to their essentials. It's like how the original Superman movie boils down the Superman mythos to its most essential elements, the parts of the mythos that just have to be there for it to be a Superman movie. Or like how there are many variations, but there's an essential set of elements that just have to be there if you're doing a version of the Santa Claus mythos.

I grew up on the 1990s Spider-Man cartoon, and then later on the Raimi films and Bendis's Ultimate Spider-Man run. So, to me, yeah, Peter and Mary-Jane are the elemental coupling of the Spider-Man mythos -- even though I always preferred the dark and troubled version of Gwen Stacy from the USM line.