Gerry Conway Returns To Write Spider-Man Mini-Series

72 Comments

1. Several terms, being used in this comment section, seem to be difficult to grasp, for some. In particular, the “Mary Sue” one, here’s Wikipedia’s definition: “a Mary Sue is an idealized character, often but not necessarily an author insert”.
   In “Parallel Lives”, MJ is depicted as the perfect match for Peter, is the story’s whole point. And to idealize the character, Conway retconned her history. That makes his version of the character a Mary Sue, and that particular comic a bad retcon.

2. Aaand just so I’m not guilty of plagiarizing, here’s where that donkey-dung quip came from:

   “We are intelligent beings: intelligent beings cannot have been formed by a crude, blind, insensible being: there is certainly some difference between the ideas of Newton and the dung of a mule. Newton’s intelligence, therefore, came from another intelligence.
   When we see a beautiful machine, we say that there is a good engineer, and that this engineer has excellent judgment. The world is assuredly an admirable machine; therefore there is in the world an admirable intelligence, wherever it may be. This argument is old, and none the worse for that.”

   You would be surprised who said this.

3. @Chase the Blues: thumb’s up.

4. Everything in the world is not subjective, Francisco; and a value judgment can be objectively true. Einstein’s intelligence is objectively more valuable to the world than donkey dung. Relativism is a logical self-contradiction, and impossible to defend.

5. Oops – Just realized comment #37 is still awaiting moderation, so I’m the only one who sees it as #37. So, um, the response that I thought was to me, um, isn’t. Sorry about that!

6. #40

   Huh? I’m speaking about your misuse of the term “Mary Sue.” Conway’s MJ is in no way, shape or form a Mary Sue. She’s not better at being Spider-Man than Peter, for example. She’s not universally lurved by everyone who meets her. She has flaws – she abandons her sister in her sister’s greatest time of need. MJ does have as a tragic, if common and realistic backstory of being raised by an abusive, alcohol father who left her mother – but that was originally set up by DeFalco, to demonstrate why Peter and MJ are two sides of the same coin. She ran from responsibility and commitment – Peter, thanks to the lessons learned from Uncle Ben’s death, ran toward them.

   Personally, I like the Parallel Lives retcon. It explains why MJ, in her very first appearance, asked Peter to take them TO the Rhino rampage. In retrospect, she knew he needed an excuse to be there. It’s also amazing how many times MJ brushed off Peter’s absences to the rest of the gang – which in hindsight can now be read as covering for him. But at the same time, MJ is set up as someone who wears a facade and pushes her true feelings deep down – which explains all the times she is less than sympathetic to Peter/Spider-Man. Also, DeFalco put forward that MJ didn’t want to acknowledge she knew his secret, even to herself, until the attack by the Puma made her breakdown and admit it to Peter.

   So Parallel Lives fits in with continuity rather nicely.

   But I understand Slott not liking Parallel Lives. Can’t have fully dimensional characters with complicated motives and emotions, oh no. That would make writing, like, really hard. And especially not a female character. And especially not Mary Jane in particular.

7. @#40-But again, what if the change is a good thing or beneficial? We can’t do blanket statements with this sort of thing you’ve got to look at the specifics of exactly what is being retconned and how it is being retconned. Hobgoblin wasn’t supposed to be Roderick Kingsley according to DeFalco and the people who later unmasked him. Thank God that got changed though because the original ‘nature’ and ‘intent’ of those stories was not as good as what we got after the change.

   Oh c’mon man. JMS did nothing at all and his totem stuff was utterly harmless. The entire point of the story, as reiterated multiple times, was to just make you think. It didn’t set in stone “the Spider had a motive and bit Spider-Man because of totemestic powers”. The whole point was that there MIGHT be a higher purpose behind it and it was up to Peter (and us) to interpret it however we saw fit. The whole ending of that arc was a man saying that Peter could explain the sun will rise because of physics and he could explain it as the sun coming up just because it was meant to. They don’t contradict one another. In other words, it wasn’t saying yes the Spider bite was magic and you don’t have to see it that way if YOU choose not to. I.e. JMS retconned jackshit.

8. @39 Trampling history or invalidating it are value judgements.

9. @#39-Because there is more variety than that. You can invalidate the original meaning of a story and STILL it can be a good retcon because what you get in return is an improvement on what was there originally. The original meaning of many 1980s Spider-Man comics was that Richard Fisk was the Hobgoblin, then it was retconned into being Ned Leeds. Neither one of those is actually as good as what we wound up with which was it being Roderick Kingsley.

   Harry Osborn wasn’t supposed to be a drug addict before ASM #97, so establishing that changes the original meaning but developed Harry’s character.

   The original meaning of why Mary Jane left Peter in Mackie’s run was because ‘they’d changed as people’ or some BS like that, but then JMS retconned that it was actually because Mary Jane mistakenly believed Peter didn’t need her/didn’t love her anymore.

   In all these cases retcons were used to alter the original meaning of stories in BENEFICIAL ways, so you can’t just say the only good kinds of retcons are ones which don’t invalidate the original meaning of past stories.

   With PL it didn’t even necesarilly invalidate all of of the orignal meaning of MJ’s scenes. A few scenes here and there had to change and usually in a beneficial way. Other than that you can very easily interpret those scenes as playing off mostly the same as originally intended if you wish or as something deeper if you also wish.

10. I don’t mind retrospective stories that “fill in blanks”. But I don’t like retrospective stories that change the fundamental nature of a character, or change the meaning of whatever the story originally had going on. But even that second one depends on the story. I don’t much care if they change some story from some issue of What If from back in 1979, involving Xemnu and Woodgod.

    I do roll my eyes at writers who can’t seem to control the itch to mess their little potty-fingers around in origin stories. JMS did that, with his whole insane totem thing. He fundamentally changed the origin of Spider-Man, from a happenstance scientific accident to secret mystical destiny. I once imagined a story in which it turns out the spider-spirits were mistaken (because even inter-dimensional beings can make boo-boos), thought Peter was somebody else, and it’s all a big inter-dimensional “oops!” moment. And the bottom-line would be that everything happened exactly like we’ve all thought it did all these years.

11. @37
    “When I talk of “good retcons”, I mean those which don’t invalidate past events (original meaning). Bad ones, are the more common form, those which trample history.”

    What’s subjective about that?

12. @#38-I still don’t think a retcon which facilitates character development can be called a bad retcon

13. @36 Close but not quite. I’m calling attention to the fact that the arguments for good/bad retcons developed here are largely on the subjective side and therefore it doesn’t make much sense to try to set a standard that works for everyone. Nothing against that retcon in particular.

14. #34:

    You’e my hero.

    Also, anyone who calls Conway’s MJ a “Mary Sue” needs to stop using that term until he/she learns what “Mary Sue” actually means. For starters: http://www.fanpop.com/clubs/writing/articles/4391/title/mary-sue-101-how-spot-how-stay-away

    (And for fun, note how many boxes Danny Sue Silk checks off the Mary Sue Litmus Test: http://www.unc.edu/~jemarti/marysuetest/)

    I really, really enjoyed Conway’s run on Web and Spectacular, and I thought he wrote a terrific Peter, MJ and the rest of the cast. He used Robbie Robertson quite well in the Tombstone story, IIRC, and I’m very excited to have him back – depending on how much Slottified tripe he has to deal with/incorporate.

15. @#32-He’s trying to say the retcon about the Burglar was a bad retcon and stupid. I don’t necessarily agree or want to put words into his mouth, but I think that’s what he means.

    Surely draining the power of the original story is obviously going to be a possible factor for why a retcon is labelled as good or bad.

16. Gerry Conway wrote one of the very best short stories in all of Marvel history, “Though Some Call It Magic”, a Dr. Doom tale. Find it if you can; it’s wonderfully written AND boasts the art of Gene Colan!

17. @#31-I’m
    I’m not saying derailment CAN’T be done to any character, but I’m saying a) it wasn’t done with the characters you cited and b) even if it was derailment it wasn’t that big of a deal because THEY weren’t that big of a deal. I’m sorry but was there a story which said “Miles Warren ISN’T in love with Gwen Stacy”, how was that changing a fact? And at the same time, yeah no how was what DeFalco did or what Conway did not ‘a proper fashion’. Again, it revealed to us information we didn’t previously know, contradicting a few mere moments outside of Marvel Team-Up, the trade off being MJ becomes a richer and more complex character. Retcons, like many other things in stories (such as character deaths) operate on a cost/benefit basis. I.e. what do we lose in the PL retcon vs. what we gain?

    We lose some consistency and simplicity. We gain a more developed character and a more equal relationship since MJ was the one and only woman Peter literally could not lie to, who was genuinely aware of the baggage of dating a super hero but chose to do it any way, and unlike any other girlfriends Peter had, she honestly had a clearer idea of who he really was, thus enriching their relationship together.

    “Gwen must be in Seventh Heaven! This surely clears Peter! And I must admit …I’m pretty relieved myself!”

    Again, Peter wonders if George suspects in that issue, George is revealed to know the truth later on and the line is very easily interpreted as George knowing or not knowing. “This surely clears Peter” i.e. Peter has succeeded in clearing himself to the others, not necessarily that George himself DOESN’T know. “I’m pretty relieved myself”, i.e. I’m pretty relieved Peter’s identity hasn’t been exposed because it’d cause bedlam for him and Gwen and Gwen was becoming hysterical when she learned the truth therefore I am relieved that he has cleared himself and thus my little girl is okay again. To quote Bertone’s ‘Finding Gwen Stacy’ articles:

    “Why is Captain Stacy relieved? Didn’t he want Peter to reveal his ID to Gwen? Yes he did, but not in the traumatizing way he did. ”

    http://www.spidermancrawlspace.com/2009/10/08/finding-gwen-stacy-part-9-the-secret/#more-4171

    What are you talking about? The ASM #47 flashbacks are implied to be Kraven’s LAST appearance, i.e. ASM #34. ASM #15 doesn’t factor into this whatsoever and even if it does it again makes zero sense because in that story he went up against Spider-Man on the Chameleon’s behest, not the Goblin’s. He literally came to America on Chameleon’s invitation. What? The Goblin paid him and then coincidentally Chameleon invited him and he used that as an excuse?

    And it still makes no sense because in the ASM #47 flashback Kraven seemed to have 2 battles with Spider-Man and if you’re saying the first one was from ASM #15 and the second was from ASM #34 then that still doesn’t make any sense because why would the Goblin be at all willing to pay Kraven YEARS apart for one job, why would Kraven even THINK he’d get paid in that fashion. Second of all the ASM #34 confrontation was just ONE fight with Kraven, but the flashback implies there were two, that Kraven retreated and then came back and was beaten. But in ASM #34 it didn’t happen that way, Spider-Man just had one extended fight with him and won.

    GG’s insertion cannot be done at all and again it 100% goes against the Goblin’s appearance in ASM #27 and #39 and completely contradicts his entire motivation for targeting Spider-Man. The Goblin wanted to kill Spider-Man mainly to build up a rep for himself, but if Kraven takes out Spider-Man Kraven will get the credit, the Goblin would get jackshit.

    First off Romita’s MJ is still an original character with or without the retcons, in fact she’s arguably even more original now. Second of all no…no MJ’s character is by no stretch of the imagination a melodramatic cliché. Melodrama is “OMG I’M A CLONE NOOOOOO”. Mj’s backstory was genuine human drama, it was “Growing up with my parents was Hell and made me terrified of relationships”, because THAT can’t and has never happened right (spoilers: yes it can Mj’s backstory was apparently based upon a real life person’s)?

    And where precisely in comicdom where there these plethora of examples of female characters who used facade’s to hide their inner demons, who used masks to protect themselves? You know…kind like a certain super hero? Where were these female characters in great droves that rendered MJ ‘a cliche? MJ was a woman who had serious issues which made sense of how she used to act and made her a bit more like Peter and a stronger (more complex person).

    I’m not sure you know what a cliché or what melodrama are because you’re using the terms incorrectly, along with term ‘Mary Sue’, because are you for real? A Mary Sue is an IDEALISED (often female) character. I.e. someone who’s great at everything and mostly lacks flaws. In both PL and Conway’s own run that term could never be applied to Mary jane because she had very big smack you in the face if you bothered to look flaws to her character. Like, I dunno, the facade thing, avoiding commitment and responsibility, struggling to be a good friend vs. her natural instincts to run. E.g. when she threw out Peter who was looking for comfort or came onto him at Christmas even though it was too soon after Gwen died or needed prodding by Aunt May to not let Gwen’s clone walk in and take Peter away from her. Those are FLAWS. Genuine human flaws. A Mary Sue character would be someone like, I dunno Silk or arguably Carlie Cooper, or hell when written badly BATMAN is a goddam Mary Sue.

    No they are not. There are different types of retcons. One type of good retcon can take what was originally there and make it even better than it was before so long as it mostly fits and doesn’t invalidate anything big or important. Which is precisely what PL was because again, few moments irreconcilably fit, and what you alter from their original meaning is 90% of the time BETTER than what you had in the first place. An MJ who’s more psychologically complex than the Silver and bronxe age versions? Better. An MJ who deep down is fully aware that in dating Peter she is risking her life but does it anyway because she loves him? Better. An MJ who can’t be lied to, who can see Peter for the true hero he is as opposed to just half of who he is and falls in love with him based upon the full picture of who he really is? Better.

    And at the expense of that you have one or two lines of dialogue in Web of Spider-Man not quite make sense and you need to explain a few moments here and there, with those same psychological explanations amounting to again making MJ a more complicated and deeper character.

18. @#30-I think that there are genuinely different types of retcons. OMD is a retcon but an in story one where time and events are altered. It isn’t a case of Event A>led into Event B but now we learn that there was an event A.5 in between. It was a case of events being supplanted wholesale. So Event A led into Event C with Event C now wholesale supplanting Event B. I actually think the fact that it altered reality that way (and in a way which didn’t make sense for many reasons) actually makes it WORSE than your bog standard retcon like Sins Past. It’s literally whitewashing and undoing the stories you know.

    I think Gwen sleeping with Norman was something which could’ve happened but actually being pregnant wasn’t.

    I don’t think it drained the original power of the story at all because the idea was the Jean who died would’ve done exactly what Jean did in that situation and was tied into Jean. Plus it gave us Jean grey herself back Jean after she came back was an awesome character used for awesome stories, whilst the original death still resonated because it was something she remembered happening after Inferno and was also something she and the other characters feared would happen again, hence the whole trial of the younger Jean Grey in recent years.

    I don’t consider Kraven’s character to have been retconned. Even before ASM #47 I imagined he’d go into work for hire situations, he sort of did that in the Sinister Six annual even. It was more a retconning of events not character.

19. @29
    If you were to ask that, I would like to see it rephrased or expressed in an alternate language. I’m not sure I get your meaning.
    @30
    If this was a forum, you’d have a friend request right now.
    Although the “draining the power of the original story” is a very good reason not to like it. I don’t think it’s a reason for labeling a retcon, as a bad one.

20. @28
    ASM #87, page 19, last panel.
    Derailment can be done to any character, no matter how insignificant it may be. If a particular personality trait is stablished, it must be respected or changed in a proper fashion
    The scenes in the flashback from ASM #47, place Kraven in the same scenario depicted in ASM #15, page 10 and ASM #34, page 18. GG’s insertion, overlooking the fight, can be done, even if for the wrong reasons.
    I never liked Romita’s MJ, but at least that was a relatively original character. DeFalco’s version was a melodramatic cliché. Conway’s retcon was a total Mary Sue.
    When I talk of “good retcons”, I mean those which don’t invalidate past events (original meaning). Bad ones, are the more common form, those which trample history.

21. A good retcon adds information that was unknown before, but which still makes sense with the character(s) and time-line. You hope it improves the character; at worst, it doesn’t hurt them. A bad retcon violates character(s) for the sake of a plot, or drains the power of the original story, and usually doesn’t make sense in the original story-line.

    Sins Past is a fine example of a bad retcon, in every respect. It’s obvious from the original stories that Gwen was not pregnant, her time in France wasn’t long enough, and I still say that Gwen would not have done what SP had her do. I don’t consider OMD a retcon, because it was about magical agency in present-time going back and changing history. So there was acknowledgement that reality used to be “A” but now it is “B” (still ASM’s #1 worst story, but it wasn’t a retcon). I consider the retcon of Jean Gray’s original death on the moon to be a bad retcon, because making that Jean Gray a doppelganger drained the emotional power of the original story.

    I still prefer a Kraven who is the multi-millionaire descendant of pre-Soviet Russian aristocrats, over him being just a hit-man. The former characterization has a 1890s Jule-Verne/Robert Louis Stevenson feeling to it that I like.

22. @27 What if I were to point out that the burglar looking for a treasure was too out there and missed the point of “crime and bad things happen to anyone without reason or rhyme”, and while Peter not stopping him was still there, it made it too forced and even fated?

23. Excuse me but what? A) how does that ‘loses’ any credibility about human nature and b) JR said it didn’t fool Captain Stacy for a minute and that’s a valid statement given that a mere 3 issues later Captain Stacy reveals he knew peter was Spider-Man and I believe in ASm #87 Peter even has a thought bubble where he wonders if Captain Stacy suspects the truth. You’re saying with iron clad certainty that Captain Stacy definitely WAS fooled by that? Heck there is arguably evidence that he knew the truth even before ASM #87.

    Character derailment? Poorly chosen? Because yeah Warren was such a wonderful character to begin with it was ‘derailing’ for him to become a bad guy??????? And Kraven being a guy for hire DESTROYED him as a character? It was a screw up, but it wasn’t like a big crime or anything. It wasn’t even like either character was that important or that great in the first place. With Warren he actually became much MORE interesting by being the Jackal than just being a background character, and the retcon that he loved Gwen actually really, really fits past stories. I mean if not for his being the Jackal no one would even remember Miles Warren, he was at best a background character.

    Kraven didn’t behave differently as a person to how he did in previous issues, his reasons were just jacked up. Before then he was a jungle hunter criminal. He was still a jungle hunter criminal, he was now just going after Osborn because Stan had a lapse in memory. He wasn’t OUT OF CHARACTER or anything, his actions just didn’t line up with the last time we saw him. It’s like if in one issue Spider-Man is in NYC and in the next he’s in space. It doesn’t make sense but if Spider-Man is still acting in character whilst in space that isn’t character assassination, derailment or anything, that’s just placing him in a scenario which doesn’t make sense.

    Er…yes it does. Because okay explain to me exactly the course of events in which Kraven in ASm #34 and ASM #47 lines up? Explain to me how he was ranting about going after Spider-Man for revenge and honour and all that, but actually it was because Norman Osborn paid him? And also explain to me how it makes any sense for Norman to have hired Kraven in the first place.

    That’s rubbish, it didn’t bury Romita’s MJ at all it enhanced her. First of all thanks to DeFalco we already knew Romita’s MJ wasn’t just a party girl, that her actions were often a result of her coping with the problems in her home life. Second of all it wasn’t saying MJ wasn’t really a party girl. It wasn’t as if Mj was only pretending to be what we saw. Mj really was goofy and fun loving and a party girl but the pretense was that that was ALL she was, when actually she liked those things but was much deeper. Third of all PL established that she knew he was Spider-Man which basically means whenever she dropped a line of dialogue that seemed like she didn’t know in those moments alone (which weren’t all the time) she was either messing with him, concerned about him, or willfully denying the truth to herself.

    Fourth of all, it did change Romita’s MJ and made her more emotionally/psychologically complex and developed as a result? What? That’s a bad thing? We enhance MJ, change her a bit and actually make her better than she was originally. That’s not a bad retcon that is by it’s nature a GOOD retcon.

    I think your confusing an objectively bad retcon with just a retcon YOU personally dislike. It’s not a retcon but I personally don’t like that Flash lost his legs but I can recognize that it’s not OBJECTIVLY a bad thing.

24. @22
    What the thief was doing at Peter’s home, hardly affects the fact that he could’ve prevented it, that’s the origin story.
    @26
    I didn’t want to address the quote from JR, because I don’t even know how that is, but someone who says that “having Hobie Brown (aka the Prowler) pose as Spider-Man […] didn’t fool George Stacy for a minute” looses any credibility needed, to talk about human nature.
    Character assassination (derailment) was practiced with both Kraven and Warren, in those issues. They behaved differently to what had been shown, and the reasons for doing so were poorly chosen.
    The internal monologue isn’t a contradicted fact, just one motivation which doesn’t preclude other motivations, the stablished character however, did.
    Big retcons aren’t inherently bad ones, but PL was. It basically buried Romita’s MJ and substituted her with a new character.

25. @#22-Human nature is not nearly as cut and dry as that. Mary Jane didn’t confront Peter with her suspicions because she either wasn’t 100% sure or didn’t want to believe it. This is the woman who pretended publically she was nothing more than a ditzy party girl when in reality she lived with a lot of emotional pain. Is it THAT hard to believe that she’d not confront Peter about this, or at least respect him enough to wait until HE was comfortable confiding this secret in her. If I know my friend likes, I dunno, My Little Pony or something and doesn’t want to tell me about it, I’d respect him enough not to mention it until he’s comfortable with it. Again see what J.R. wrote for a more detailed explanation as to why MJ said and did what she did in ASM #258

    You might call that character assassination, but that doesn’t mean that’s objectively what it is.

    Character assassination it screwing a character over like saying they’d make deals with the Devil or that they’d be unaware that a super villain has hijacked their lover’s body. PL was character DEVELOPMENT because it revealed to us something we didn’t previously know and made MJ more complex for it. And that is NEVER a bad thing. If PL was character assassination then technically speaking ASM #97 establishing that all this time Harry Osborn was a drug addict was character assassination too. So was establishing Flash was only a bully because his dad was beating the shit out of him.

    Er, Stan WAS contradicting both facts AND character motivation actually. He depicted the Green Goblin in scenes he wasn’t in, claimed Kraven was fighting Spider-Man for money which contradicted the INTERNAL MONOLOGUE of Kraven in ASM #34 and made no sense for the Goblin’s character because if the Goblin hired Kraven to kill Spider-Man then how the Hell was the Goblin going to build a gangland rep off the back of killing Spider-Man himself, which was like the whole point he went after Peter. Stan’s retcon is a million times worse than the PL thing, it requires you to like invent a whole other story to just explain it away. It’s practically irreconcilable, and it ruins ASM #27 and #39, in the former Gobby said he’d lie low before striking against Spider-Man and we saw that in ASM #39, but whoops, he hired Kraven in between that, WTF?

    Miles Warren being a villain was character assassination? How? Seriously how?

    Big retcons aren’t inherently bad ones. Roderick Kinglsey being the Hobgoblin was a big retcon. Warren loving Gwen was a big retcon. Harry being an addict was a big retcon. Hell the way Len Wien resurrected Hammerhead and Doc Ock was a big retcon. Aunt May knowing Peter was Spider-Man was a big retcon in ASM #400. Mary Jane NOT dying in the Mackie run was a big retcon. Retcons aren’t inherently bad you know, they’re just storytelling tools which, like all tools can be used or abused.

    @#24-Again, human nature doesn’t work like that. She could’ve wilfully denied the truth to herself, convinced herself she was or might’ve been mistaken and so on. Read what JR wrote, it all adds up.

26. @22 It seems largely arbitrary, I mean I could just as well say the ASM200 retcon is big because it fundamentally changes the way we look at the origin story much like knowing the identity of the Waynes’ killer at Batman. It’s not set in stone.

27. You don’t need confirmation for something you know.

28. @22 – MJ says she’s sure, but she’s never confronted him with it and had her beliefs confirmed. Even though she knew, it was still a shock to have it confirmed.

29. @16
    If you’re suspicious of someone, you don’t confront him with beliefs, you say you’re sure. But her reaction to the Black Cat’s presence in Peter’s apartment, leaves little doubt she wasn’t sure.
    @18
    I call that character assassination. Stan isn’t contradicting facts, but motivations.
    @20
    – More character assassination.
    – A small retcon, and a good one.
    – Another good retcon, but not a big one.

30. @19 – I am sure that DeFalco had MJ say “I’ve known for years” when she reveals that she knows Peter is Spider-Man. So he never gave an actual date (or event) of when she found out, but he clearly has her say that she didn’t just find out a few days or weeks ago. So “years” would seem to indicate she knew going back into at least the 100s issues.

    I have no idea, but I would guess that when Conway wrote PL he thought “ok, DeFalco said MJ has known for years, so when did she find out? In the second 100 issues? In the first 100 issues? Hey, she sometimes lived next door to him in the Lee/Ditko era, what if she saw him leave the house as Spidey in AF #15?”

31. @18 – Slott saying OMIT made more sense than PL (or anything) just feels like an employee toeing the company line by saying what Marvel is putting out is wonderful when they know that it’s not. I’m listening to the podcasts where they review Shed (shudder) and they mention that in the last issue there is a blurb in the letters page where Wacker says he is more proud of this story than any other Spidey story he has been involved with. I mean, really? If he really believe that, well, good for him I guess in his delusional state, but otherwise he was just standing behind the boss saying “oh, good idea!”

    As far as Parallel Lives being “the first Spidey retcon”, here are some other Spidey retcons before PL:
    – ASM #148-149 – the Jackal is revealed to be Miles Warren, Peter’s college professor who had appeared since the Lee/Ditko era. I’m sure Lee did not intend this guy to be a super-villain.
    – PPtSSM #50 (?) – the aliens from ASM #2 are revealed to be humans in costumes and Quentin Beck was one of them. Spidey did not repel an alien invasion in his second issue!
    – ASM #200 – the burglar did not randomly invade Ben and May’s home, he was looking for the treasure of Dutch Mason (?).

    I almost feel like “Spider-Man Retcons” should be a category in the next Spider-Man Jeopardy … if we ever have one again (sniff sniff).

32. @#8-I think most of the superhero stuff in Conway’s 1970s run is at best hit or miss. But his emotional character stuff back then was some of the best in Spider-Man history. He was the guy who started the Peter/MJ romance really and also set up Harry as the Goblin and Flash as a more friendly character.

    @#9-No DeFalco never pinned down WHEN MJ knew Peter was Spider-Man. Conway was the guy who entrenched it as being from AF #15. During the DeFalco era it was assumed/somewhat implied MJ sort of figured it out at some point before Peter proposed to her in Wolfman’s run.

    The PL lives retcon actually makes MJ a more complex character BECAUSE you have to ask yourself why she’s saying or doing those things if she knows. In ASM #400 Aunt May makes mention about how she sort of pushed the knowledge that Peter was Spider-Man aside, wilful denial basically. You can argue MJ was sort of doing the same thing, plus she’s an actress after all. Also DeMatteis who wrote ASM #400 allegedly intended Aunt May to ALSO know the truth from the Ditko days.

    @#15-No she doesn’t. All she says is ‘it’s all true’. It’s a line which implies this is confirming what she’s always known, not that she’s finding out for the first time there and then. And that’s also a very explainable line, JR in fact addressed it in one of his articles. To quote him:

    “I think human nature led her to tell herself that there was just a possibility, however slight, that Peter wasn’t really Spider-Man, and that she would never have to face the reality of the situation. After all, Peter had conned everyone else though all of the years – even to the point of explaining that he and Spidey knew each other and had an agreement on the photo taking. Perhaps their relationship had originated even prior to Peter’s photography career. And then there was the fever induced “revelation” in ASM #87 that Peter was eventually able to work out of by having Hobie Brown (aka the Prowler) pose as Spider-Man and confront Peter Parker – although that didn’t fool George Stacy for a minute (and in retrospect, neither did it fool MJ). Of course it was all lies, but people often convince themselves of the lie when the truth is a little too much to handle. Plus, MJ’s previous experiences with Spider-Man had typically been seeing the dashing hero coming “from nowhere” to the rescue – so there was a safe distance between Peter Parker and Spider-Man. After all, she had never really seen one change into the other, right? But this time it was a lot different – this time Peter’s being Spider-Man came home to roost, and she was there listening to his apartment being trashed by a supervillain. And after the fight, as Peter tried to fumble for an explanation to the events that had just taken place – the Black Cat came flying in. So, whatever mental separation between Peter and Spider-Man MJ created in her mind in order to deal with it had just now been effectively demolished. There was no longer any clearly defined line between Peter Parker’s life and Spider-Man’s life. After years of pussy-footing around the truth (pun intended) to have it so suddenly slap you right in the face – well- that would be a bit numbing. Plus, face it, she still kind of liked the guy – and was startled to see some slinky sex kitten in black spandex barge in. Who wouldn’t be? Whether or not she’s ready to resume a relationship with Peter Parker – wouldn’t a little part of her have hoped that he hadn’t been able to live without her? And in flies evidence that such is not the case. As to why she finally told him after all of these years that she finally knew? Well, since the incident with Puma had literally thrown the whole problem in her face, she decided to toss it right back in his and catch him off guard.”

33. @#4-No I meant he seemed to buy into the dumb mentality that Spider-Man doesn’t work if he isn’t young, I didn’t mean it about Conway’s own age.

    @#5-Oh it gets better. Not only does he dislike PL, he said OMIT was not only better but ‘made more sense’, bwahahahahahaha

    @#7-First off ASM #47 was the first big retcon in Spider-Man history written by Stan himself. It makes NO sense at all. Second of all how is PL a bad retcon. Outside of a few tiny instances (mostly contained in pointless and shitty Marvel Team Up stories) PL is perfectly explainable within established continuity and also serves to greatly develop both MJ and her relationship with Peter, making it even better than it was before. It’s a bad retcon to some just because it changes what they knew, it doesn’t actually creatively make the stories themselves WORSE though, quite the opposite in fact.

34. Exactly as hornacek said: TomD revealed that MJ has known for a long time that Peter is spidey but he never specified when MJ found it out. Conway just added to this revelation and specified the date as AF 15. And Kurt Busiek added to this story in a wonderful tale in UTS.
    I am excited to see him back! He is among my favourite Spidey writers (even though I must admit that his 90s work were… lacking)

35. @15 – I haven’t read those issues in years, but I believe DeFalco had her say “I know, I’ve always known. I know you’re Spider-Man!” (cue dramatic music). Then in a couple of issues Peter and her have a walk through the park and she talks about her origin story, but I don’t think she finds out in the present (i.e. when those issues came out), she specifically says she’s known for years. It was Conway that wrote that she found out back in AF #15

36. @9
    DeFalco’s reveal wasn’t strictly a retcon, because he didn’t specify since when, had Mj suspected. Notice that in his version, MJ actually finds out in ASM #258.
    @13
    He did a lot more than a few, and a bunch of WOS too. He was the main reason why, I stopped reading Spidey; between him and Micheline it was too much.

37. Besides 121-122 Conway wrote one my favorite arcs: 113-115. It’s great when Spidey battles gangsters!

38. Didn’t Conway write the first few issues of Spectacular vol 1 when it launched as well?

39. I have the Webslingers book on my Kindle. No idea JR wrote an entry in that! Awesome!

    Also I am excited to see what Conway comes up with. But he’s hinted that what he’s writing is not a Peter Parker story.

40. @10 – I wouldn’t be surprised if this was the case. I’m sure he loves Spider-Man: Reign too.

41. @8 – Slott’s favorite Spidey story is probably ASM #13 of the reboot where the plane explodes at the end and MJ dies.

42. @7 – PL didn’t create that retcon, it was Tom DeFalco in ASM that wrote that MJ knew (and had always known) that Peter was Spider-Man. I don’t think DeFalco wrote that she found out on the night Uncle Ben died, so that may have been Conway’s idea, but he managed to write a great story that reviewed a *lot* of Peter/MJ history.

    And difference of opinion I guess, but PL is a retcon that I love. And it works most of the time; some old issues you can reread and say “aha, it’s like MJ knows here” and other issues you say “if she knows here then what she’s saying makes no sense”. That’s probably true about any retcon.

43. I hated most of Conway’s original run when I first read it, but I’ve warmed to some of it as time has gone by. I’ll be interested to see how he does writing a modern Spider-Man.

    “He also wrote on of Dan Slott’s least favorite stories called Parallel Lives.” – Dan Slott hates a MJ heavy story, what a shocker. Has Slott ever said what his favorite Spider-Man story is? I’d be curious to know.

44. “Parallel Lives” was the first big retcon in Spider-Man’s continuity, and a bad one at that.

45. “He also wrote on of Dan Slott’s least favorite stories called Parallel Lives”

    Oh, what a coincidence! Slott wrote a lot of my least favorite stories!!

46. I am looking forward to this because although Conway wrote some silly stories (such as the second most famous wedding in Spider-Man history) he also wrote a lot of great stories (the first Clone Saga is awesome, and thank you for Tombstone). I am a bit concerned about how long it’s been since he wrote the character – has he continued to write comics over the years? Sometimes when the greats return years later you realize that they are no longer as great as they used to be. Cautiously optimistic!

    “He also wrote on of Dan Slott’s least favorite stories called Parallel Lives.” Despite all of Slott’s statements over the years (“years”, sigh) about how Spidey is his favorite character and how he really understands the character, his dislike for this story, the definitive Spider-Man/Mary Jane history, shows that he just … doesn’t … get … it.

47. He WAS young, but he doesn’t sound dumb in recent interviews… maybe he was targeting a specific audience.

48. this could go either way really….I do wonder though how conway as an MJ shipper feels about the current regime. tbh he always seemed to buy into the dumb youth mentality

49. The man who killed the blonde……… Lord Conway.

50. He’s had 20 years, to come up with a better plot, than the ones he used to parade around, let’s see.