Invincible Iron Man #7 “Mary Jane/Spider-Man” Centric Review

19 Comments

1. @#18: You say that but I haven’t forgotten what happened when he adopted another major Spider-Man character as his own. Remember what happened to Norman when he became an Avengers villain?

   This 100% isn’t being done for Peter’s benefit though.

2. I have a lot more trust and respect for Bendis than many other people at Marvel these days, so I’d like to think he’s doing this for the long term benefit of MJ’s character and is basically telling us, “Look guys I understand your frustration with what they’ve been doing to her for these past several years, but don’t worry, because I’m gonna make sure she’s treated right from now on.”

   I really doubt this is just being done for the purpose of providing Peter with “Oh no, the girl I love is now working with my corporate rival” angst.

3. It’s not working for Stark enterprises itself so much as personally for Stark himself. She is working directly with Tony himself, more than likely interacting with him face to face a lot of the time based upon issue #7. This implicates her into his personal life thus exposing her to danger and chaos in a way I don’t believe.

   I do agree though that working in the MU in general comes with inordinate risks but for most people they do not directly involve themselves in those superpowered things at least not without a good reason.

   Yes the building would be well secured but what happens when MJ goes home. Or what happens to the people she knows when word gets out she is Iron Man’s personal life organizer (I dunno what her job title would be). With Peter the secret identity protected her and her family and he was much lower profile than Tony as a hero and as a civilian. Plus technically speaking all these high security places in the MU actually don’t work all that well given the number of times the Vault, the Raft, the Baxter Building, etc have had security breaches. But that’s done for dramatic purposes so okay fair enough.

   Nevertheless though it’s kind of questionable logic. MJ doesn’t want to be involved with super powered people so she works for somewhere where security against those threats would be tight but it’s tight because the nature of the place inherently attracts super powered people. Realistically it’d be more logical to just go somewhere where there was little-no super powered chaos going on. In a way she had the right idea by going to Chicago.

   That being said I maintain MJ is okay with tolerating those types of things in her life but not actively inviting them without a really, really good reason. Hanging around Harry potentially risked that but Harry was a really close friend and that friendship was important to her. Similar thing for Peter, except the risk was actually smaller (in theory, obviously drama meant it happened a lot). With this I’m not convinced she couldn’t get work elsewhere and I do not feel this would be a line of work MJ would be interested in doing, partially because she doesn’t want to have too much super powered stuff in her life and partially because it’s not really in line with the careers she’d adopted so far and expressed long term interests in. And of course you have the history with Stark.

   It’s like I said though. It’s a mess and a damned if you do damned if you don’t situation with Bendis. She’s in a general sense kind of closer to what she should be like. But the context is still a problem and he still portrayed her as like badly burned and fearful of life with superheroes. It would’ve been better had he simply had her either open up a club and not named the city or just left out all her hang ups about superheroes in the first place. As in she’s opening up Jackpot, things go South and MJ intervenes, she’s sad that her club was destroyed and then Tony offers her the job. No word about her hang ups with superheroes.

   But then you’d still have the problem of it being unlikely that MJ just generally not wanting to enter that work environment, certainly not for Stark. I get that you have to ignore that for the sake of her being in the series but to me that’s part and parcel why I was apprehensive about the idea of MJ becoming a supporting character in this specific series. Were it Miles Morales, were it even say Patsy Walker it’d make more sense for her character.

   But in my reading MJ seems to very much be someone who wants relative normalcy in her life and enjoys a dash of danger, but she ultimately just tolerates the super powered chaos in her life because it’s the biproduct of interpersonal relationships that mean a Hell of a lot to her. But she pushes past that chaos and strives to maintain that normalcy. She doesn’t overtly invite it in, not unless there is some incredibly big mitigating factor for her. E.g. being with Peter potentially exposes her to danger and super powered chaos, moreso than she would experience by virtue of just living in NYC. But he has a secret identity to protect himself and her and she gains important emotional fulfilment from that relationship.

   On the proactive/reactive thing to clarify my position. Basically I don’t think reactive characters are bad, it’s more forgivable with supporting cast members, MJ has been proactive a lot in the past in her own subplots that we follow because we like her unto herself along with other cast members, neither her nor other cast members’ actions have to directly impact upon the main plot because of how Spider-Man divides his civilian and superhero life and she and other characters influence the main plot by virtue of having mental/emotional impact upon Spider-Man himself who is the lead.

   Agree to disagree.

4. #15 “Because of this, even behind a desk MJ would be potentially exposing herself and her family to an inordinate amount of risk which I don’t buy, especially if one were to examine her (out of character) rationales from BND-Superior.”

   If working for Stark Enterprises is SOOOO dangerous – then why would ANYONE work there? Yet it’s a major international conglomerate with presumably thousands of employees across the globe. (Same goes for Parker Enterprises and its mascot Spidey attracting bad guys).

   At some point, just merely existing in the Marvel U. brings with it an inordinate amount of risk we don’t face in the real world.

   It’s a desk job. At Stark Enterprises headquarters. Which, by Marvel world building rules, means it has amazing security, the best intel and so the best advance warning systems, and I bet safe rooms designed to survive a direct nuclear attack. It probably even has Dr. Strange-approved wards to keep out demons. If I were MJ and I wanted to avoid being a casualty of superhero shenanigans, I couldn’t think of a safer place.

   And yes, the Slotter of MJ and her ridiculous “I just can’t do this anymore” excuse was horribly OOC to begin. So Bendis had her change her mind, and brought her more in line with the established characterization of MJ. That deserves a cheer and a hearty round of applause in my book.

   But agree to disagree.

   I still think we are talking crosswise about reactive vs. proactive characters, but again, agree to disagree.

5. @#12: That article was a very interesting read.

   I think that cleared things up for me a bit as I was I think using ‘proactive’ and ‘reactive’ in a more literal sense.

   I feel in looking at that though there is a dynamic shift because MJ has, outside her own solo-series and the odd story, always been a supporting character. Supporting characters do not have to be purely reactionary of course but since they are not the focus of the majority of stories inevitably invite scenarios where they are reactionary. In Spider-Man it’s even more common because the set up of the story is that he is a superhero who lives a normal life and so when things from his super hero life enter into his civilian one it’s a kind of act of imbalance. That’s not supposed to be in that half of his life because that half of his life is supposed to be normal, leading most of the cast who are part of that normal life to inevitably be reactionary against that element.

   Even Mary Jane who is in on his secret would be reactionary because she strives to live a relatively normal life herself (again outside of her career aspirations which come with celebrity and potential wealth). She of course can and has been proactive such as when she actively sought to find a missing Peter or else organized some help for him.

   But with Spider-Man the lines of delineation between his two worlds are relatively stark. Throughout the decades characters from one half of his life impact upon the other mostly through how they personally affect him. Jameson is something of an exception but with Mary Jane or Harry Osborn in the 1970s his relationship with them impacted his emotional state thus guiding how he’d act as Spider-Man and visa versa but they were not necessarily character’s who’s actions directly changed the course of the primary plot because that was the nature of the series and part of it’s appeal. Peter and Spider-Man’s world’s were generally seperate but we saw the emotional impact of one also impact the other. But really you followed Peter’s world for all the soap opera stuff which could most of the time be it’s own regular down to Earth drama and then follow the bombastic superhero stuff unto itself at the same time. A classic example is ASM #6 where Peter’s adventure with the Lizard had nothing to do with his high school drama but what Liz did there had an impact upon the latter and what Jameson did had an impact upon the former.

   Things got more interesting when things crossed over though such as when in the 80s MJ became a confidant, a role which was akin to Alfred in Batman in my opinion as it allowed for Peter to have an emotional anchor which helped balance him as a hero but at the same time his being a hero caused conflict in his relationship with MJ.

   For MJ though she also had her own subplots throughout the decades many of which showed her to be proactive such as the JMS plot where she tried to make it as an actress or how she took it upon herself to settle the legal case with Jonathan Caesar and get her cousin Kristy help once she found out about her health problems.

   She was also reactionary to a lot of stuff in the series as well but again Peter himself was also reactionary a lot of the time (in the literal sense of the word “Villain attacks my friends. I stop villain.”) and I just don’t see why that was a problem. Mary Jane’s life was trying to make it in show business (most of the time) whilst maintaining her social life and marriage. The villains just invaded her world and frequently she’d fight them off or else help others fight them off. Then things would settle down. That is reactionary but that wasn’t happening all the time and there wasn’t much she could do about it short of trying to obtain powers of her own or else installing high tech security. The same thing can be said of most of the cast though. Personally I feel that they used the ‘villain invades his personal life’ thing a bit too often, especially in the 90s so there is also a repetition problem. However again, MJ’s role within the narrative was through either impacting Peter’s life which then fed into his Spider-Man work, providing advice in regards to that or having her own subplots that we cared about because she was almost the deutagonist of the series, although the best of these subplots would then feed back into affecting Peter’s personal life.

   That being said though sometimes with Spider-Man we followed the supporting cast kind of again like a soap opera and followed their lives for the sake of it because we had emotional investment in them. For example DeMatteis’ alcoholism story for Flash in the 1990s once introduced actually had relatively little crossover or impact upon Peter himself. Up until ASM #276 the same could be said of Flash and Betty’s affair. That had little to do with the main plot of the series and even after ASM #276 it was a subplot fading in and out. But it still worked and people still liked it. Ideally you’d tie things into the main narrative with Peter but frankly past precedence has kind of allowed for that (in Spider-Man at least) to not necessarily have to happen. The same thing for MJ. We like MJ, we want to follow her as well as Peter and so we like seeing her own subplots and ideally they’d either directly impact upon the main plot with Peter or else they simply impact upon him by virtue of affecting her and MJ being somebody Peter cares about which in turn affects him.

   I suppose I’m on the opposite end of the article writer. I am happy for a character to be reactive depending upon the story and I’m more forgiving of that for supporting characters, at least within Spider-Man.

   Looking at some of those questions the article raised I think it becomes problematic when you apply it to Spider-Man or Mary Jane. For Spider-Man he doesn’t have an end goal in his life as Spider-Man. his state of being is putting on a suit and going out looking for crimes to stop or else intervening whenever a crisis crosses his path. He’s thus proactive in so far as he puts on the suit but he doesn’t have an outright end goal in that regard. Mostly his end goal is to just uphold his duty whilst also maintaining a normal life and obtaining a career in science, an end goal he’s taken detours from. MJ though has mostly been proactive in the narrative in getting to her own end goal but she doesn’t want to have to deal with supervillain crises, those just like Peter cross her path unwanted and often she deals with them as they come. She tolerates them but her goals don’t have anything directly to do with them. They come as a piece of baggage to her association with Peter which itself achieves another of her goals.

   I know MJ’s job description doesn’t state she will be entering into the line of fire or anything, but her life has been threatened multiple times by mere association with a superhero. By just having a former friendship or relationship with Peter super powered chaos has invaded her life against her will even when he isn’t around. Aunt May in fact was kidnapped merely because her nephew took pictures of Spider-man and Betty Brant was also kidnapped just because Spider-man rescued her once. If she’s going to be so closely affiliated with Tony logically that is going to mean she’s going to potentially expose herself and her friends/family to a lot of life threatening situations. Tony was an arms dealer and a major force in the tech world, the US government and so on meaning he has plenty of enemies domestically and internationally from terrorist cells to corporate saboteurs. That’s not even counting how his fame and wealth naturally attract potentially dangerous people. And of course he is also a superhero like Peter was only (in-universe) he’s much more famous with his name and identity known to extraterrestrial and other dimensional individuals in addition to Earth bound super villains with axes to grind against him. Because of this, even behind a desk MJ would be potentially exposing herself and her family to an inordinate amount of risk which I don’t buy, especially if one were to examine her (out of character) rationales from BND-Superior.

   Btw, I mean no offence or anger in anything I’ve written thus far. Apologies if it came off that way.

6. So I guess Pedro is out of the picture and MJ is single again. Heh, good riddance. I know Marvel won’t let Peter and MJ get back together, but still, I’m interested to see how this story turns out.

7. I was really digging this book with Marquez on art, but Deodato coming on-board was a deal-breaker for me (especially since they announced he’ll be doing the third arc as well). I might eventually read it on Marvel Unlimited, but it’s no longer worth picking up in floppies to me.

8. #11:

   “Reactive”/”Proactive” have a certain meaning when applied to characters. Here’s more information: http://joeberhardt.com/2012/01/26/are-your-characters-reactive-or-proactive/ So, no, it doesn’t depend.

   In Iron Man, MJ is given agency. Her decisions impact the plot. She decides to work for Tony. Tony doesn’t make her show up on her first day – she makes the decision to do it. She offers Tony Peter’s number, setting in action Tony’s call to him.

   In Superior/ASM, MJ was reacted upon. Only SpOck’s decisions impacted the plot. He decided to break up with her; her wishes meant nada. When MJ walked away, again, it was framed purely as a negative reaction to the events in Peter’s life, not because she was actively choosing something positive for herself. hers. It’s even implied MJ was with Pedro solely because after Peter saw the two of them together, Peter decided NOT to pursue her again and to let her be. Again, his decision; he never asked MJ; her wishes meant nada.

   MJ being reactive in previous Spider-Man stories is not exactly a glowing reason for her to continue to be reactive. Every character should have a reason for being in a story, and not just to be the one acted on – they should impact the narrative in some way.

   Peter is rarely reactive. He is the protagonist and his decisions almost always impact the plot and drive it forward.

   I think you’re overestimating the amount of risk in the job Tony offered her. MJ tells Tony right away she doesn’t want to be Iron Man. He offers her a job as an employee of Stark Enterprises with a (presumably) desk job. Now, upcoming covers suggest she will be in the field and facing danger. But on the face of it, Tony isn’t offering her anything more inherently risky than working as an assistant for Tim Cook of Apple or Mark Zuckerberg would be.

9. Also from my pov, I like characters being reactive and proactive depending upon the situation. With being proactive of course it depends upon how you are being proactive and in this case, yes MJ is being proactive moreso than under Slott but again the way in which she is being proactive is itself kind of a problem given her previous portrayals and the context of her history with Tony.

   At the same time I loathed and despised much of her portrayals since BND of course but her being reactive was not necessarily one of the things I saw as a problem. She’s been reactive in countless Spider-Man stories and the only reason she’s been used in such a way moreso than other Spider-Man characters can be attributed with her appearing more often.

   I don’t necesailly have a problem with her being reactive to certain things (I mean Peter himself has been reactive many times) so much as I do not like her being either passive or active in ways which depict her in a negative light, e.g. walking away from Peter’s life in Superior.

   Then again I suppose one can kind of debate whether certain things are reactive or proactive. You could say MJ is being reactive by taking on this job because her club was destroyed or you could say it’s her being proactive in taking her life in a new career path. You could say at the end of Superior she was being reactive in distancing herself from Peter or proactive in laying down how things were done between them and going off to live her life independently of him.

   It can depend.

10. @#7: See but it’s a damned if you do damned if you don’t situation.

    Bendis and Slott are both guilty in that regard. Slott was bad because he had MJ hang around NYC when she didn’t want anything to do with heroes. But the latter point was OOC for MJ anyway which means even though Bendis fixed what Slott did by moving her out of NYC MJ would never want to move out of NYC because she’d never have a problem about superheores in the first place. It’s a mess. Really if Bendis had just left out what specific city MJ was in during issue #4 and have not mentioned MJ having issues with superheroes that would’ve played some damage control.

    Everyone reading could’ve chosen to believe it was a different city or else that she was still in New York but the ambiguity would’ve helped matters. Like really MJ was a hypocrite in Superior #31 itself. And I mean even if you ignore her history she was a hypocrite just reading that story in isolation.

    But then you have the fact that it doesn’t make sense for MJ to be done with Peter himself in the first place. She’s not affiliated with him for reasons which inherently made no sense for her character in Superior #31. Because of that in a way leaving her in NYC was the best thing to do because it was comparatively closer to an in character MJ if you see what I mean. Like, MJ wouldn’t distance herself from Peter, let alone because she couldn’t handle superhero insanity right? But Slott forced her to do that. Well, leaving her in NYC at the very least isn’t perpetuating the OOC portrayal of her. I hope that made sense. It’s like if you had Peter murder a child in cold blood for no reason and laughing like a lunatic whilst he did it, it’d be OOC for him. After that if you portray him as having no remorse for his actions your making the situation worse than if you portrayed him as feeling guilt ridden. The situation shouldn’t exist in the first place but the latter portrayal is at least closer to who the character is.

    Going back to MJ, if you go with the idea that indeed she didn’t have a problem with heroes just the fact that hanging around Peter came with danger and stress she didn’t want in her life anymore, then she’d inviting that in by working for Tony. She was targeted by the Goblins because of her old relationship with Peter, they weren’t even talking. But now she’s working for a billionaire industrialist who has enemies across the world quite apart from being a major superhero with a public identity, she is a-okay with this? TBH I wouldn’t even buy that from a JMS ere MJ, I don’t think MJ would work for a publically outted superhero regardless because it attracts too much danger.

    Within the context of the narrative MJ’s actions here because of what she was established as in Superior do make her a hypocrite but it’s further complicated because her actions in Superior are integral for setting her up for Iron Man. Without Superior MJ you couldn’t get to Iron Man MJ so it creates this big problem. But I (and I presume others) are not outright blaming her but the writers. It’s like I don’t blame Peter for OMD I blame Quesada but his writing made Peter a childish sellout and morally repugnant.

    I agree Bendis is leaning her more towards a personality and character traits MJ should really have, but again the context is the problem. We’ve yet to get any proper justification for why she’d take on a job like this let alone do it for Tony Stark who hurt her family.

    @#8: I sort of see where you are coming from, but the problem again lies in how if she’s now realized superheroes are always going to be there (which really she should already know by now) then it then becomes questionable why she’d invite the risks of them in far more dangerously by working for someone with a public identity or else not re-establish contact with Peter, if nothing else than as a friend.

    This is besides the fact that I very much feel MJ basically wants a super powered free life tinged with a dash of danger. She tolerates the superhero stuff but she basically wants normalcy, discounting her aspirations in fields which would come with fame and glamour I mean. She’d never purposesfully implement herself into their world unless she didn’t have too much of a choice or else if there wasn’t some kind of big advantage for her. For Peter, Harry, Liz, etc that took the form of emotional fulfilment and in the New Avengers stuff part of her liked getting to be closer to Peter’s world and feeling a greater connection to him and partially they just didn’t have anywhere else to stay. Then her job and various crises kept cropping up.

11. Was the art really something to worry about? Rememebr Deodato has drawn Spider-Man and MJ before during JMS’ run.

    This depiction was divisive to my eyes.

    On a surface level and in isolation MJ was written well here and more in character in so far as she was tougher, she was assertive, etc. There were moments which didn’t ring true like her being assertive immediately amidst a situation she knew nothing about (with War Machine) but generally that was okay. It’s even kind of okay in the context of issues #4-5 where she was more OOC.

    But in the wider context of her recent and distant history in Spider-Man I don’t buy this. Again, she should have major beef with Tony, if she is doing this job there is no reason for her distancing herself from Peter, she wouldn’t want to endanger herself or her loved ones this publically and if nothing else, as MadGoblin himself has pointed out, MJ doesn’t want to play a mothering role to a grown man which is what her job description kind of sounds like thus far but I hope it isn’t.

12. I couldn’t agree more with Yvonmukluk.

    Look, we all know Dan Slott’s characterization of MJ is a blight on the craft of comic book writing. He has gone on record over and over about his dislike of the character because she pulls focus when she’s on page, how Peter shouldn’t be with attractive women because it’s “anti-Marvel,” etc. etc.

    So the writer Marvel allows to have a death grip on the Spider-Man franchise decided to jettison her from his story and came up with one of the most OCC and wholly contradicted by the character’s previous actions pretenses for it.

    Bendis is merely starting with the incredibly poor hand he was dealt. And he, at least, did show MJ attempting to move on from her involvement with superheroes to start a new life in a new city – only for superheroes to follow her there. So she’s damned if she does and damned if she doesn’t. At least Tony is offering her the opportunity to call the shots and to be proactive – which she is in this issue. Loved how she surprised Mr. “I think twelve steps ahead of everyone else and we already had this conversation in my head.” Whereas in ASM, ever since OMD MJ was forced pretty much into being reactive to whatever is happening to Peter.

    So it makes sense to me. MJ wanted to have nothing to do with superheroes, but superheroes kept informing her life regardless of what she did or where she went. And by accepting Tony’s offer, MJ finally has a chance to call the shots and shape what happens to her, rather than the other way around. Which is very MJ, the original “I’m nobody’s girl” and go-getter who took steps to go after her dreams.

    It’s kinda brilliant, IMO, especially since it comes out of Slott’s OOC writing.

13. What ticks me off is people apparently getting offended at MJ, a fictional character, for shoddy writing. You want to blame anyone for the inconsistency? Blame Dan Slott. Not only did he have MJ spout that nonsense, he still had MJ stick around in NYC, AKA superhero central. Bendis, at least, had her relocate (which makes sense if she wanted to get away from Peter/superheroes in general).

    I’ll be honest, it makes more sense for MJ to be specifically done with Peter Parker than superheroes in general, in which case her signing on with Tony makes sense (especially after her career as a nightclub owner imploded).

    I mean ideally MJ would still be a member of Peter’s supporting casts (and really ideally would still be married to Peter after all this time), but Bendis at least seems to be treating her motivations logically in light of the current circumstances.

    I’ll use an example. In I think it was the Logan Legacy, Elixir gets attacked and apparently killed by a villain, while X-23 stands aside nd does nothing – despite the fact he saved her life twice before and is one of her friends, meawhile she later saves aken’s life when he’s being attacked by the same villain, despite the latter being n antihero at best and an outright amoral murderer at worst. I don’t get angry at the character for leaving her close friend to (apparently) die, I blame the writer for not doing the research and writing the character without understanding her history. The ‘real’ (in terms of consistent to her prior characterisation) X-23 would have saved her friend. But writers make mistakes.

    So don’t call MJ a ‘hypocrite’ for being written inconsistently. The blame lies at the foot of the writers. And Bendis, at least, seems to at least be doing her characterisation justice, and more in line with her actual behaviour that the outlier of her behaviour in Superior.

14. @#5
    Yep, that’s the gist of it.

15. @#4
    So she completely cuts Peter out of her life because she can’t deal with the danger and craziness that his life entails (gee, haven’t seen that happen before), and yet she agrees to be the personal assistant to a superhero who’s identity is publicly known?

16. @#3
    It was due to what she went through during Superior, in issue #31 she goes to say that although she knows that things like this happens to him and that she still cares for him, she no longer wants any of it, it being Peters’ Spider-Man life, in her life, because she has a good life and a good man, uggh, after which Peter says he understands and wants her to be happy and then he leaves to deal with JJJ, seconds later Mary Jane meets up with Carlie, who tells her what Peter said about what happened with Doc Ock is true and they discuss life with Peter and the danger of being around him, including Mary Jane telling Carlie, who also left, that Peter is a great guy and she admires what he does, but she can’t do it any more and no longer wants to be involved in that part of Peters'(Spider-Man) life, ending with both going in separate directions, Carlie to the subway to leave New York and Mary Jane entering a cab, but not before telling Carlie that no one will scare her from her home, her home being New York.

    Here are some links you should be helpful
    http://www.spidermancrawlspace.com/2014/04/16/superior-spider-man-31-review-stillanerds-take/
    https://scans-daily.dreamwidth.org/4683277.html

17. So could somebody fill me in please? Why are Peter and Mary Jane no longer on speaking terms?

18. @PunyParker #1

    That might be, and I did say it was early and we still have next months’ issue. I stand by what I said about his behaviour in this one, what do they say first impression are crucial.

19. Good review.

    Eh, we can’t judge Spider-Man’s appearance by a cameo.