CBR Spider-Man Forum FAQ

[Mister Mets]

When he was Editor-in-Chief of Marvel, Joe Quesada had an edict against glorifying smoking. There wasn't a ban on the depiction of smoking, as writers and artists were able to do stories and scenes in which smoking is depicted in a negative manner. An Amazing Spider-Man two-parter (562-563) is an example.

But Quesada decided that showing cool characters like the Thing, Nick Fury and Wolverine enjoying cigars or cigarettes sent the wrong impression to readers, including children.

It's not known how strictly this policy is enforced under Alex Alonso, the current Editor-in-Chief.

Click here if you're interested in a discussion on the wisdom (or lack thereof) of this approach...

[Mister Mets]

From some of the comments, it seems that there's a widespread impression that the primary purpose of the Editor is to be a continuity cop. That's one aspect of editing, and it's certainly noticeable if there's a continuity based error (IE- a villain returns from the dead without explanation), but editors do other stuff.

The duties may vary from individual to individual, but the tasks can include assembling creative teams, making sure that everyone's working at the right pace, setting & readjusting deadlines, serving as a bouncing board for writers & artists, and more.

Click here for a discussion on the subject...

[Mister Mets]

The in-story explanation for Norman Osborn's return was that the Goblin serum came with a healing factor, which allowed Osborn to survive being impaled by the Goblin Glider. He then spent a few years in Europe, before returning at the end of the Clone Saga.

As editor Glenn Greenberg explained in Life of Reilly why Marvel chose to go with that story...

It was around the time that these stories were produced that Bob Harras told us who should be revealed as the master villain responsible for the entire clone saga. The reaction was not enthusiastic. I don't think ANYONE - from the writers to the editors to the assistant editors - agreed with Harras's idea, although his rationale certainly made sense to a certain extent. Harras felt that there was only one person who could have had the money, the resources, the connections, the knowledge, and the motivation to orchestrate the clone saga and disrupt Peter Parker's life to such a profound extent. Harras felt that the mastermind had to be Norman Osborn.

I was one of the most vocal opponents to this idea. "But Norman's dead!" I argued. "I mean, there was a body! We saw his funeral! There was no doubt left in anyone's mind that he died. Beyond that, he died in one of the most powerful Spider-Man stories of all time. It was a key event in Spider-Man's entire history! We would be totally betraying the trust of the fans if we went in and undid that story!" I remember someone muttering, "Who are we gonna bring back next? Gwen? Or how about Uncle Ben?" But Harras felt that no other option would work, and he made it absolutely clear that he would not be bound to a story that had been published almost 25 years earlier. Harras felt that for the here and now, Norman was the only solution, continuity and history be damned.

[Mister Mets]

During the Clone Saga, Peter & MJ were expecting a baby. Alison Morgain, a woman working for Norman Osborn, poisoned MJ. It seemed she had a stillbirth.



Though there were still clues indicating that Baby May was alive.

During the story, Morgaine delivered something to Norman Osborn.

She was doing something for Norman Osborn, and seemed to be taking care of something in a playpen.

Except the thing in the playpen turned out to be her cat.



A "package" was taken from Morgain.



She later told Peter that May was alive. Except it turned out that she was referring to Aunt May, and not Baby May. The twist was that Osborn had faked Aunt May's death 40 issues earlier.

So all the clues that pointed to Baby May being alive were set-ups to Aunt May's return to the series.

It seems that Baby May was killed, although this was kept ambiguous so the readers wouldn't be too upset by the death of Spider-Man's child (which is also why this isn't referenced often.) It's something the writers wanted to sweep under the rug as quickly as possible.

The only reason the editors and writers chose to give Peter & MJ a child during the clone saga was that with Peter revealed as a clone, this would provide an excuse for him to go off into the sunset, while Ben Reilly takes over as Spider-Man.

Some readers interpreted Mephisto's taunt in One More Day as having something to do with Baby May, but it seems to reference a daughter who had not yet been born (or conceived.)

In One More Day, history was changed so that Peter and Mary Jane were never married. In One Moment in Time, it was revealed that one reason the two were never married was that Mary Jane realized that she didn't want to have kids with Spider-Man. So it's strongly suggested (as Quesada has said in interviews) that she was never pregnant. As a result, things in the Clone Saga had to occur slightly differently, although Norman Osborn still came back, Ben Reilly still died and Peter still met Kaine.

[Mister Mets]

Because of the swerve with Peter finding Aunt May when he was searching for his daughter in the much maligned "Final Chapter" storyline of the 1990s, there's some question about whether the writers were going in a different direction with the hints that Baby May was alive, before being ordered to do otherwise.

As editor Glenn Greenberg recalled, it was meant to be ambiguous.

I vividly remember all the little bits and story elements that Bob Harras absolutely insisted had to be in the "Revelations" story line. Among them was the sequence where the Parker baby is apparently delivered to Alison Mongrain, and Norman Osborn tells her to make sure it's never seen again.

Some of us on the editorial staff (myself included) absolutely disagreed with this sequence being included, because it raised a question that shouldn't have been raised. We strongly felt that the baby story line should have a clean, clear, definitive ending, and that there should be no lingering doubts or mysteries about the baby's status. If the baby's dead, then let's say the baby's dead and move on. I remember discussing this matter with Harras, and his response was that his way of ending the baby story line "gives hope to the readers who have been waiting for the birth of the baby, it lets them believe that the baby is still out there somewhere, alive, and maybe Peter will find her someday. It'll keep them coming back."

The problem with that was that there was NEVER going to be a resolution. In fact, Harras said that he didn't want the baby referred to again once the Clone Saga was over. He even wanted it established in the first post-Clone Saga issue, SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN #241, that six months had elapsed since the end of "Revelations, " so we could just skip over Peter and Mary Jane's mourning period and show that they were pretty much back to normal and Spider-Man was his old, wisecracking self again. Harras wanted the Spider-Man books to move on and away from the Clone Saga as quickly as possible… but he also wanted to play with readers' expectations.

When some of us editorial staffers privately discussed the situation, we agreed that Harras's approach was very unfair to the readers. Deliberately dangling a plot thread in front of the readers and then just as deliberately abandoning it, with absolutely no intentions to ever resolve it, just didn't seem like the right thing to do, but at that point, we knew better than to even try to talk our editor in chief out of something he obviously felt so strongly about.

Then again, if we hadn't done it Harras's way, there probably never would have been a SPIDER-GIRL comic book series. As I'm sure many of you already know, writer Tom DeFalco eventually picked up on the Harras-dictated plot thread and ran with it, creating an entire "alternate reality" in which the baby was eventually recovered, alive and well, and grew up to become a web-slinger in her own right. SPIDER-GIRL has certainly earned the critical acclaim it's gotten-it's a fun, enjoyable comic, and it's managed to stick around for several years, escaping cancellation more than once, so I guess something good CAN come out of something bad!

[Mister Mets]

In interviews, Joe Quesada suggested that the pregnancy never happened if Peter & MJ weren't married.

Since the marriage was derailed, but so many stories hinge on these two living together, are you saying that Peter and Mary Jane were co-habitating? And that MJ almost had a baby out of wedlock, but (presumably) lost it? In the end, I still plan on enjoying 'Brand New Day,' but I'm curious as to what kind of history these two share now."

The question sort of answers itself when you quoted my saying that "almost" everything happened. The funny thing about the pregnancy issue is that Marvel at the time scrambled to derail the story as quickly as possible. I don't know exactly how that story got as far as it did, but they ultimately realized it was a huge mistake. So, taking that into consideration, I personally feel that that's one that didn't happen, chiefly because Peter and MJ now not having been married, would have taken proper precaution to avoid getting in the family way in the first place.

The truth of the matter is that we're committed to preserving as much of these stories as is humanly possible, but because the marriage is no more and now never was, there are going to be elements that have changed. It's inevitable. But we're striving to keep those ripple effects minor, and you can suss them out in most older stories if you just give it a moment's thought. So Jonathan Caeser stalked a single Mary Jane rather than a married Mary Jane, Norman Osborn and Venom once knew that Peter Parker was Spider-Man but forgot along with the rest of the world, and so on.

Look at it this way: Norman Osborn was dead for twenty years, and then was suddenly revealed to be alive. And that changed elements of all sorts of Spidey stories that had come before it, the entire Harry cycle, the stories where Harry's shrink becomes the Green Goblin, and the whole Hobgoblin cycle. But the details of how this could all work eventually got revealed, for good or ill, and today, nobody much questions the fact that Norman is back and never really died. What we're talking about here is the same kind of thing.



In the case of MJ's pregnancy, that storyline was itself created to end the marriage -- the creators involved only made MJ pregnant because they were planning to reveal that Ben Reilly was the real Peter Parker, and then have MJ and her clone-Pete ride off into the sunset and out of the series together. And it's an element that hasn't even been mentioned in "Amazing Spider-Man" in close to ten years, so it's not an omnipresent element that's suddenly being taken away. It was a turn down a bad road, and some of the creators even realized it at the time (which is why Mary Jane was pregnant for something like two years, as the creative teams struggled to figure out how to write themselves out of the corner they were suddenly in.) So that's an area where we maybe need to squint a little bit more in terms of overlooking it. Or, hey, you can chalk it all up to Mephisto's motivation of preventing Peter and Mary Jane's child from coming into the world.

This would mean that the Clone Saga happened slightly differently, although Ben Reilly still died, Kaine was still introduced and Norman Osborn revealed that he wasn't dead.

In One Moment in Time, which explained how Peter & MJ decided not to get married, Mary Jane revealed that, as far as she was concerned, the main reason to get married was to provide stability for children. As she had decided not to have children with Peter, she didn't see a point to getting married.

This suggests that had she found herself pregnant, she probably would have gotten married to Peter.

[Mister Mets]

Disney recently purchased Marvel. Marvel Studios became a subsidiary of the Walt Disney Company.

Marvel Studios did not own the film rights to Spider-Man. Sony did. So the upcoming Amazing Spider-Man movie and its sequels, will be distributed by Columbia Pictures, a subsidiary of Sony.

One reason for the cancellation of the Spectacular Spider-Man cartoon, following Disney's purchase of Marvel, was that the cartoon was produced by Sony's animation studio.

The upcoming Ultimate Spider-Man cartoon will be produced by Marvel Animation, and air on Disney HD.

[Mister Mets]

The cryptic references to the profession of Peter Parker's parents in the Amazing Spider-Man film trailer led some to suspect that there will be ties between that franchise and the Avengers films. They even predicted that Spider-Man might be an Avenger. But the organization in the Spider-Man films turned out to be Oscorp.

Marvel does not own the film rights to Spider-Man, so Spider-Man will not be appearing in the Avengers.

The Avengers films consist of franchises Marvel owns the film rights to: Captain America, the Hulk, Iron Man, Thor, SHIELD and the Avengers.

No one from the Spider-Man films appeared in the Avengers films.

The creative teams did plan to have the skylines in the films match up, but that was as far as they planned to go. And it didn't work out.

http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/06/...lmost-happened

[Mister Mets]

There's a megathread for general discussion of the movie Amazing Spider-Man.

There is a separate thread for comparing the two movies.

There's another thread for speculation about sequels.

And there's another thread for speculation about Gwen Stacy's future in the movies.

[Mister Mets]

For some odd reason, we have a lot of discussion about the ending of Amazing Spider-Man #700.

Amazing Spider-Man #700 Spoilers and Discussion

The ending of Amazing Spider-Man #700

CBR's post-ASM 700 interview with Alonso, Wacker and Brevoort

CBR's review of Amazing Spider-Man #700.

The Superior Spider-Man's identity.

Avenging Spider-Man #15.1 Spoilers and Discussion

How would you rate Dying Wish?

How dense are Peter's family and friends?

How long will the Superior Spider-Man status quo last?

How does Amazing Spider-Man #700 affect One More Day?

What are the implications of a relationship between Mary Jane and Superior Spider-Man?

What to call Superior Spider-Man?

[Mister Mets]

Nope, it's a photoshop.

[ShaggyB]

Normally Mets writes these, but recently Bleedingcool ran an article where-in they found a way to take a look at the tiny garbled text from OMD:



BC goes on to say it reads “You will make me remember everything.”

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2013/01/...y-to-mephisto/


While this is fun look at something which we couldnt do before, we've already had the guy responsible for the lettering come and confirm both the script and the text:

In response to someone creating a fake "blown it up" version.

Nope. Look. Guys, end of conspiracy. The script just said indistinguishable dialogue. I made something up. It isn't anything. Let it go. :)

and yes it was the real Chris Eliopoulos and yes he was on the letterer on the book

http://marvel.wikia.com/Amazing_Spider-Man_Vol_1_545

So what that means is that the script called for nothing but word like things to be in the bubble. Now if it actually resembles a phrase, as it appears to, it also confirms that it was Chris who placed it there and not what the story had intended it to have.

OMIT would then come out and fill us in on what continuity records as being said between Mephisto and MJ.

[Mister Mets]

There are some questions about storytelling decisions in the Civil War tie-ins and One More Day, with some speculation that One More Day was written after Marvel painted themselves into a corner.

Here's my understanding of the sequence of events.

JMS announced internally that he would soon leave Amazing Spider-Man.

Joe Quesada saw this as an opportunity to reset the series to a status quo and schedule that he preferred. Initially, this was supposed to happen in a mini-series. Quesada decided to draw the storyline. His stated reasoning was that it would be unfair to ask anyone else to draw a storyline guaranteed to piss off some readers.

Mark Millar was plotting out Civil War. Quesada revealed that a reset was coming in the Spider-Man comics, which meant that Spider-Man could unmask.

Initially, One More Day was supposed to happen right after Civil War came to an end. But at some point, Marvel decided to wait a few months. So this led to the Back in Black era.

Ironically, as the unmasked era was always meant to be a temporary status quo, the first issue of Back in Black received the best sales of any issue of JMS's Amazing Spider-Man.

Delays on One More Day meant that Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man and Sensational Spider-Man were extended by one issue each. Peter David focused on Peter's post-unmasking relationship with J Jonah Jameson. Sacasa did a final issue in which God told Peter everything would be all right, which kinda clashed with what was coming in One More Day.