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seriousfic) wrote2010-08-12 09:10 am
seriousfic) wrote2010-08-12 09:10 am
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Let's talk about Sins Past
Yes, the last "oh god, what have you done to Spider-Man's history!" story. Let's start at the beginning. One of writer J. Michael Straczynski's friends was involved in an affair. Naturally, details are a bit fuzzy, but suffice to say the complicated feelings this stirred up gave JMS the idea of dirtying Gwen's character a little. Now, while it's a good idea in theory to take the saint-like Gwen's memory and then reveal she was a real, flawed person, I find the idea that she cheated on Peter to be uncreative, and fail-y in how the concept of a flawed Gwen jumps immediately to sex. I just feel there are other, less juvenile ways to tell that kind of story. Ways that don't make you want to take a shower.
Maybe America is finally ready to learn of Gwen's $1500 a day Fabergé egg habit.
Moreover, I would ask why you would want to develop the character of a dead woman, especially when Spider-Man's supporting cast was so conspicuously absent from the JMS run. Weren't we overdue for a nice Robbie Robertson yarn?
Famously, when developing the story, JMS wanted the Goblin Kids to be the Spider-Kids… the illegitimate children of Gwen and Peter. The idea was shot down as it seemed that adult children, even ones who were artificially aged, would make Peter seem too old. I can see the merits of that. It would be weird to have twenty-somethings running around calling Peter dad, and how would you ever integrate them into the Spider-universe? Would they stay villains despite the overwhelming evidence that Norman, not Peter, killed their mother? I couldn't see Peter taking time off from trying to redeem his wayward children to insult Doc Ock's weight problem. And if they died, how would Peter get over that? The last thing Spider-Man comics need is yet more angst and misery clogging up the works. Really, any story you'd want to tell about Spider-Dad would be better served with Baby May.
Like the story of his brief but bitter affair with Lindsey Lohan.
Then came the idea of Norman Osborn being the father of the little dickens… because how could any writer pass up a creative idea like Norman being behind something bad in Peter's life?... and you can see the degradation of the concept. The story itself has been compromised, and just to set it up, you have to make continuity jump through hoops, assuming that all along Gwen has had a thing for older men, a secret pregnancy, and bastard love children. At this point, the story should be either abandoned or sold to the nearest soap opera, preferably Passions.
But the story went ahead, and execution was not much better than conception. The resulting story featured such whoppers as MJ having known of Gwen's affair all this time, some convenient amnesia, and of course, no one noticing that Gwen was pregnant with twins. More than that, it spread modern-day comics' problematic issues back into the more innocent Silver Age, a little like revealing that all during the JLA Satellite issues, the heroes had been brain-washing fascists and the villains had been rapists. The only lasting effect was yet another Goblin character and a follow-up story arc with a disgusting cover in which Peter was seen making out with the daughter of his ex-lover.
Unsuitable for children: Divorce. Suitable for children: Sucking on the face of someone who is not your wife, but who looks identical to your dead girlfriend.
As for Gwen, she remained a flat character, albeit a flat character who now cheated on the boy she loved. We got no real insight into her character and why she would want to share a cab with the middle-aged, creepy Norman Osborn, let alone have unprotected sex with him. Even worse, Peter's feelings about Gwen changed not a whit, so the story was completely pointless aside from making Peter look like a creeper who still valued his high school crush over the wife he'd built a life with. Just a year later, House of M, when postulating Peter's perfect world, stated that he would love to be married to Gwen and simply friends with Mary-Jane… in retrospect, an obvious shot by Editorial against the Spider-Marriage.
"The scanners are picking up some joy and happiness. Crush it!"
So now The Night Gwen Stacy Died has gone from the story of how a man who gained superpowers from a radioactive spider-bite loses his girlfriend because his arch-nemesis discovered his secret identity, and then died himself as a result… to the story of how a man who gained superpowers from an African spider-god loses his girlfriend because she was going to have her bastard children raised by the man she cuckolded, and then her murderer appears to die as a result, but really he goes to Europe and starts a cult. Also, May Parker is Peter's biological mother, who gave him up for adoption because he was a bastard child and she didn't want to offend her fundamentalist parents. Oh, Joe Quesada, what did we do before you came along and turned Spider-Man into a Tennessee Williams play with spandex?
I've heard it suggested that now Gwen's death is more feminist, since instead of being fridged, she's now killed for being a threat to Norman. I don't really buy it. Death by love triangle doesn't strike me as being all that dignified, and moreover, she completely fails at anything other than provoking Norman into a deadly rage. She's killed, her children are raised in the worst conditions imaginable, and her poor schmuck boyfriend thinks it's all his fault. And the less said about the implications of Gwen losing her virginity to Norman while never having sex with Peter, the better.
"I don't see anything wrong with it."
To me, it's a fool's errand trying to fix done-and-gone canon like Gwen Stacy's death anyway. It was transgressive when it happened and didn't have the unfortunate implications it would today. Going back to it would be like… you know how Star Trek famously had TV's first interracial kiss, but in the actual episode, it was evil aliens forcing Kirk and Uhura to kiss against their will? Well, imagine trying to fix that by revealing that really, Kirk and Uhura had always pined after each other, but they couldn't be together because of… oh, let's say the Borg… and so their kiss was really them taking advantage of the situation to finally express their love. Sure, you might say it's less offensive now, but you've put the entire thing through a wringer just to get it close to what you'd wanted.
With so many female characters absent or shabbily treated in the Spider-books, you'd think feminism would be better served by giving juicy, fun, intriguing plots to the likes of Felicia Hardy, Betty Brant, Liz Allan, and so on.
This doesn't count.
It's a shame, since with a little work, the concept could get some excellent mileage out of Gwen and her place in the Spider-mythos. Say House of M rolls around on a Peter Parker who's been sublimating his resentment of Gwen's betrayal (whatever it may be). In his perfect world, he married Gwen… but she died peacefully, leaving him to remarry MJ. Whoa! In Peter's perfect world, Gwen is just a dead saint! That'd be something to confront. Done right, it could be some interesting commentary on the tendency to… well… canonize canon among both readers and creators, usually resulting in all-out war as everyone tries to get in their own version of how things "really happened" and "should be."
"What do you mean Barry Allen isn't the Flash anymore? Since when? …25 years ago? I wasn't a kid back then! Change it back!"
Fanfic aside, after JMS left the book, he stated that he'd wanted to Superboy-punch Sins Past out of existence during the Great Canon Bonfire of OMD, but was denied. "I wanted to retcon the Gwen twins out of continuity, which was something I always assumed I could do at the end of my run. I wasn't allowed to do this, and yes, it pissed me off. I felt I was left holding the bag for something I wanted to get rid of, and taking the rap for a writing lapse that I had never committed." To me, it smells like an ass-covering, but that gives you an idea of just how unpopular the story ended up being. Its very author said that not only did he want it retconned, but he had wanted it retconned even as he wrote it… begging the question of why you would want to write something just to hit the reset button on it later on.
Maybe it was just too sexy to stay canon?
Maybe America is finally ready to learn of Gwen's $1500 a day Fabergé egg habit.
Moreover, I would ask why you would want to develop the character of a dead woman, especially when Spider-Man's supporting cast was so conspicuously absent from the JMS run. Weren't we overdue for a nice Robbie Robertson yarn?
Famously, when developing the story, JMS wanted the Goblin Kids to be the Spider-Kids… the illegitimate children of Gwen and Peter. The idea was shot down as it seemed that adult children, even ones who were artificially aged, would make Peter seem too old. I can see the merits of that. It would be weird to have twenty-somethings running around calling Peter dad, and how would you ever integrate them into the Spider-universe? Would they stay villains despite the overwhelming evidence that Norman, not Peter, killed their mother? I couldn't see Peter taking time off from trying to redeem his wayward children to insult Doc Ock's weight problem. And if they died, how would Peter get over that? The last thing Spider-Man comics need is yet more angst and misery clogging up the works. Really, any story you'd want to tell about Spider-Dad would be better served with Baby May.
Like the story of his brief but bitter affair with Lindsey Lohan.
Then came the idea of Norman Osborn being the father of the little dickens… because how could any writer pass up a creative idea like Norman being behind something bad in Peter's life?... and you can see the degradation of the concept. The story itself has been compromised, and just to set it up, you have to make continuity jump through hoops, assuming that all along Gwen has had a thing for older men, a secret pregnancy, and bastard love children. At this point, the story should be either abandoned or sold to the nearest soap opera, preferably Passions.
But the story went ahead, and execution was not much better than conception. The resulting story featured such whoppers as MJ having known of Gwen's affair all this time, some convenient amnesia, and of course, no one noticing that Gwen was pregnant with twins. More than that, it spread modern-day comics' problematic issues back into the more innocent Silver Age, a little like revealing that all during the JLA Satellite issues, the heroes had been brain-washing fascists and the villains had been rapists. The only lasting effect was yet another Goblin character and a follow-up story arc with a disgusting cover in which Peter was seen making out with the daughter of his ex-lover.
Unsuitable for children: Divorce. Suitable for children: Sucking on the face of someone who is not your wife, but who looks identical to your dead girlfriend.
As for Gwen, she remained a flat character, albeit a flat character who now cheated on the boy she loved. We got no real insight into her character and why she would want to share a cab with the middle-aged, creepy Norman Osborn, let alone have unprotected sex with him. Even worse, Peter's feelings about Gwen changed not a whit, so the story was completely pointless aside from making Peter look like a creeper who still valued his high school crush over the wife he'd built a life with. Just a year later, House of M, when postulating Peter's perfect world, stated that he would love to be married to Gwen and simply friends with Mary-Jane… in retrospect, an obvious shot by Editorial against the Spider-Marriage.
"The scanners are picking up some joy and happiness. Crush it!"
So now The Night Gwen Stacy Died has gone from the story of how a man who gained superpowers from a radioactive spider-bite loses his girlfriend because his arch-nemesis discovered his secret identity, and then died himself as a result… to the story of how a man who gained superpowers from an African spider-god loses his girlfriend because she was going to have her bastard children raised by the man she cuckolded, and then her murderer appears to die as a result, but really he goes to Europe and starts a cult. Also, May Parker is Peter's biological mother, who gave him up for adoption because he was a bastard child and she didn't want to offend her fundamentalist parents. Oh, Joe Quesada, what did we do before you came along and turned Spider-Man into a Tennessee Williams play with spandex?
I've heard it suggested that now Gwen's death is more feminist, since instead of being fridged, she's now killed for being a threat to Norman. I don't really buy it. Death by love triangle doesn't strike me as being all that dignified, and moreover, she completely fails at anything other than provoking Norman into a deadly rage. She's killed, her children are raised in the worst conditions imaginable, and her poor schmuck boyfriend thinks it's all his fault. And the less said about the implications of Gwen losing her virginity to Norman while never having sex with Peter, the better.
"I don't see anything wrong with it."
To me, it's a fool's errand trying to fix done-and-gone canon like Gwen Stacy's death anyway. It was transgressive when it happened and didn't have the unfortunate implications it would today. Going back to it would be like… you know how Star Trek famously had TV's first interracial kiss, but in the actual episode, it was evil aliens forcing Kirk and Uhura to kiss against their will? Well, imagine trying to fix that by revealing that really, Kirk and Uhura had always pined after each other, but they couldn't be together because of… oh, let's say the Borg… and so their kiss was really them taking advantage of the situation to finally express their love. Sure, you might say it's less offensive now, but you've put the entire thing through a wringer just to get it close to what you'd wanted.
With so many female characters absent or shabbily treated in the Spider-books, you'd think feminism would be better served by giving juicy, fun, intriguing plots to the likes of Felicia Hardy, Betty Brant, Liz Allan, and so on.
This doesn't count.
It's a shame, since with a little work, the concept could get some excellent mileage out of Gwen and her place in the Spider-mythos. Say House of M rolls around on a Peter Parker who's been sublimating his resentment of Gwen's betrayal (whatever it may be). In his perfect world, he married Gwen… but she died peacefully, leaving him to remarry MJ. Whoa! In Peter's perfect world, Gwen is just a dead saint! That'd be something to confront. Done right, it could be some interesting commentary on the tendency to… well… canonize canon among both readers and creators, usually resulting in all-out war as everyone tries to get in their own version of how things "really happened" and "should be."
"What do you mean Barry Allen isn't the Flash anymore? Since when? …25 years ago? I wasn't a kid back then! Change it back!"
Fanfic aside, after JMS left the book, he stated that he'd wanted to Superboy-punch Sins Past out of existence during the Great Canon Bonfire of OMD, but was denied. "I wanted to retcon the Gwen twins out of continuity, which was something I always assumed I could do at the end of my run. I wasn't allowed to do this, and yes, it pissed me off. I felt I was left holding the bag for something I wanted to get rid of, and taking the rap for a writing lapse that I had never committed." To me, it smells like an ass-covering, but that gives you an idea of just how unpopular the story ended up being. Its very author said that not only did he want it retconned, but he had wanted it retconned even as he wrote it… begging the question of why you would want to write something just to hit the reset button on it later on.
Maybe it was just too sexy to stay canon?
no subject
Oh, but it's worse than that. Because if you retconned the Kirk/Uhura kiss that way, it doesn't make either of them look like complete losers or bad people. It's more similar to, what if the reason they couldn't requite their love was that unbeknownest to all of us, but known to Kirk, Spock and Uhura were secretly married. So now Kirk and Uhura are expressing their hidden passion, at Spock's expense and the expense of making Uhura look like a cheap ho and Kirk someone who screws around with his best friend's wife. Also, the WTF factor of "Spock married Uhura? When? What the hell?" kind of parallels the "Gwen had an affair with Norman Osborne?" thing.
no subject
And it really does highlight how, under this editorial regime, any time they want to explain something or "add depth" to something, it seems to involve turning a female character into a slut... and dragging down every man her life has touched in the process.