Panel(s) of the Day #864

16 Comments

1. @Andrew C Dude nobody is arguing here, nothing is heated. We’re having a debate but for the sake of everyone else I suggested we move it to a private conversation

2. Well… THAT escalated quickly. [/Ron Burgendy]

   Seriously guys, don’t make me use the “it’s just comics” cliche. Furthermore, it’s not even a particularly relevant subplot, but one that’s over 40 years old. I get arguing about OMD/BND, but jets need to be cooled over this nothingburger. I regret even bringing it up.

3. @hornacek. As I said, let’s continue this on PMs

4. @Alex

   Yes, the comic shows us Betty kissing Peter, and Peter kissing her back. We don’t see what happens next. But comicbooks require the readers being able to “read between the panels” to interpret what happens that we don’t see. The comic heavily implies here that Betty and Peter have sex – she kisses him, he resists, then he kisses her back – what are we logically supposed to imply happened here? That they just stopped kissing?. We don’t need the comic to hold our collective hands and walk us through that scene. It is pretty obvious what happened next.

   For example, we didn’t see what happened at the end of ASM #149 when MJ was in Peter’s apartment and Peter closed the door. We didn’t need to – it was heavily implied what happened next, and generally accepted because it is the logical progression from what we are shown.

   If we assume that nothing happens in a comicbook except what we explicitly see, then most comicbooks will not make any sense. As readers we’re supposed to fill in the gaps of what happens that isn’t shown.

   After the Peter/Betty incident, Ned is furious at Peter. From what we see he doesn’t know that sex happened, but he knows that Betty left their honeymoon and is hanging out with Peter, and he thinks Peter (Betty’s previous boyfriend) is trying to interfere in his marriage. Peter just wants to get away from the whole situation – he feels guilty for what he and Betty did, does not want to pursue it, and doesn’t want to be involved in Ned and Betty’s problems. As far as he’s concerned Betty is married and he made a mistake and wants to stay as far away from the two of them as he can. Meanwhile Betty is telling Ned to leave her alone and is trying to spend time with Peter.

   “Maybe I’ve been misreading you and your argument is that Peter wouldn’t feel guilty after the fact because of how he felt at the time. As in he was able to feel okay with sleeping with her at the time and therefore was okay with justifying that to himself after the fact.” No, I never said anything like that. Peter made the mistake of sleeping with Betty, he felt guilty about it, he knew it was wrong, and he wanted to get away from Betty and Ned because he doesn’t want to be responsible for breaking up their marriage.

   “If Peter did sleep with Betty, however you slice it, he wasn’t doing the right thing.” You’re making my point for me. Peter does the wrong thing here. He makes a mistake. Peter is our hero, but he makes mistakes, and this was one of them (like the mistakes he’s made that I mentioned in previous comments). Afterwards he realizes it’s wrong and wants to stay away from Betty and Ned. He has no intention of getting back with Betty here.

   “if something went down, he WOULD have felt guilty about it. And realistically there WOULD have been some awkwardness between the three of them at some point.” Yes, that’s my point – Peter does feel guilty. He doesn’t want to around the two of them. Ned doesn’t know they slept together but he thinks Peter is trying to break up his marriage, or butt in where he doesn’t belong.

   “You yourself have supported my argument.” Uh, what?

   “But Peter NEVER felt guilty about sleeping with Betty.” He literally does. In the subsequent issues he wants to stay away from Betty. He realizes what they did was wrong. When the three of them are together he doesn’t want to be there. He tries to get away from them.

   Sorry, but as far as I’m concerned Peter and Ned were never friends. In the Lee/Ditko era Peter constantly talks about wanting to tear him limb from limb. Yes, he’s his best man but as I’ve said, that was a writer’s convenience to have Peter and his supporting cast involved with Betty’s wedding. Plus after they were married Ned treated Betty horribly for awhile (they’re on their honeymoon and Ned is working). Why would Peter want to be friends with him? Even after their marriage problems were resolved (before the Winkler device was used on him), Ned was just “the guy that’s married to Betty” – he and Ned were never friends.

   “During those issues he tries to reconcile with MJ and get Betty and Ned back together.” “He even makes himself out to be a jerk to have Betty leave him alone and go back to Ned.” Yes, because he doesn’t want to be the reason their marriage falls apart.

   “I really don’t agree that Stan portrayed Betty like that once Gwen showed up.” Peter and Betty are broken up by the time Gwen shows up. But in the Lee/Ditko era after they start dating, the book tells you many times that they are in love. The splash page of ASM #11 literally says “Is Spider-Man destined to lose Betty Brant, the girl he loves?” In that issue Peter thinks “As soon as we get back to NY (they’re in Philadelpha) I’m going to tell Betty I’m Spider-Man” – something he *never* decided to do with Gwen – that was one of the major roadblocks in their relationship, that he didn’t want to tell her. Plus in that same issue Peter goes all the way to Philadelphia to rescue Betty, the woman he loves. These issues portray Peter as being in love with Betty – whether it was “first love” or “puppy love” it was real to Peter (and Betty). After the second Vulture issue which ends with Peter and Betty snuggling together in the Bugle, when they start dating, they’re very quickly in love and the comic tells you that many times.

   If you want to believe that Peter and Betty never had sex after these Wolfman panels, and that Peter never loved Betty pre-Gwen, it’s no skin off of my nose. But that’s not what the comics what the comics want us to believe by what they show us.

5. @ Zachariah Johnson

   ???????? Dude chill out. I’m not attacking anyone. I said I disagree and laid out my reasons as to why. Hornacek disagreed and we’re debating it. I know Bertone and JR have their views but I’m offering a counterpoint. I think you will find I’m allowed to do that. I hold respect for JR and Bertone but that doesn’t mean I can’t think they are mistaken on a specific point.

   @hornacek

   You are not getting my point. I’m not saying Peter wouldn’t sleep with Betty because she’s a married woman. I’m not even discussing what he thoughts might’ve been before or during the incident.

   My argument boils down to two things:

   a) An implication is not a confirmation. Neither of us now for sure what happened because as far as what is on the page betty kisses Peter, he kisses back, we cut away and cut back a while later and Peter is having romantic thoughts about Betty. Is there an implication? Yes, absolutely. But if it ain’t on panel then what happened ultimately not pinned down. E.g. there is no end of characters who were implied to have died but we later learn were very much alive.

   b) How Peter, Betty, Ned and arguably MJ behave AFTER the incident seriously goes against the idea that Peter and Betty slept together.

   Maybe I’ve been misreading you and your argument is that Peter wouldn’t feel guilty after the fact because of how he felt at the time. As in he was able to feel okay with sleeping with her at the time and therefore was okay with justifying that to himself after the fact. However, that just doesn’t add up with his character. Peter beats himself up over stuff that really wasn’t even his fault and brings it back up even years later. This is particularly true when he screws up. Case in point he felt bad about letting Georgie walk free in Stern’s run because it led to the creation of the Hobgoblin as you mentioned.*

   If Peter did sleep with Betty, however you slice it, he wasn’t doing the right thing. It might be believable in context that he’d succumb to his feelings in that moment but objectively he was not right. And he’d know that. He pretty much acknowledges that once Ned comes back. He doesn’t fight to keep Betty as a girlfriend and he actively tries to get them back together. Even in this issue he clearly feels it’d be wrong for them to get together and is merely open to the idea after their kiss.

   So Peter consistently can recognize when he’s done something wrong after the fact even if he maybe didn’t feel that way (or care) when he actually did it.

   With that in mind after the fact Peter WOULD feel guilty. He wasn’t in the same place of emotional vulnerability for all the years between this kiss and Ned’s death so my point is, if something went down, he WOULD have felt guilty about it. And realistically there WOULD have been some awkwardness between the three of them at some point.

   But we never got any hint of that at all. The only evidence that anything happened between the Peter and Betty begins and ends in the issue in question.

   Basically you are coming at this from the angle of what came before that’d justify Peter and Betty sleeping together. Hypothetically let’s say I accept everything you said. None of that stuff would be relevant to what my argument is though because I’m not saying Peter would NEVER sleep with Betty in this moment. I’m saying the AFTERMATH critically contradicts the idea.

   You yourself have supported my argument.

   “So even the mature and responsible Peter makes dumb decisions that he feels guilty about later.”

   You are exactly right. But Peter NEVER felt guilty about sleeping with Betty. It never came up. It was never hinted at ever again thereafter, not from Peter Betty, Ned, etc. Therefore the logical conclusion is that Peter and Betty never crossed that line together.

   Regarding Peter and Ned being friends, as I said before, friendship is a spectrum. Ned wasn’t as close as Flash or Harry to Peter but that doesn’t disqualify them as friends. KLH has Peter call Ned his buddy.

   “It’s been a long time since I read the Wolfman run but I feel like Peter *did* feel guilty about sleeping with Betty – you can see it in his interaction with Ned after he returns. And Peter doesn’t act like “Oh, I betrayed my best friend”, he acts like “Oh, I did a bad thing.””

   Betraying a BFF or not, Peter would acknowledge he did a bad thing and feel VERY guilty about sleeping with Betty. Remember, Peter places stock in the institution of marriage (hence he wants to be married himself). Now, I double checked ASM #189-195, i.e. the issues between the kiss and where Peter ends things with Betty and he really isn’t guilty at all. He’s irritated and angry but never guilty. He refers to Ned and Betty as loonies and is angry when Ned Leed hits him. During those issues he tries to reconcile with MJ and get Betty and Ned back together.

   One would imagine a guilt machine like Peter would feel like a punch from Ned was the least he’d deserve if he’d slept with his wife. But Peter is actively angry at him and in fact Betty. He even makes himself out to be a jerk to have Betty leave him alone and go back to Ned.

   So there really was no guilt to be found. One might argue Peter was in the wrong for getting as close to Betty as he did, but really if things never got any more intimate than a kiss then he didn’t really do anything that wrong. And that would then better synch up with his portrayal in the immediate issues following the kiss, and indeed all the years thereafter. Because he NEVER claims he did anything wrong. It doesn’t even really weigh on his mind he’s far more concerned with everything else.

   I really don’t agree that Stan portrayed Betty like that once Gwen showed up. When he meets Betty again in ASM #40 they are both clearly aware the spark has been lost between them. Peter’s dialogue reads:

   “What happened between us? We’re like two strangers groping for words?…All these months I’ve thought about her, dreamt about her, longed for her. And now she’s returned nothingsville…Once I thought I couldn’t live without her. Now she’s just another girl named Betty. Boy have I grown up these past few months. …I realize now we never had anything in common. It’s just that she was the first girl I thought I ever thought I loved…”

   Stan wasn’t ignoring Betty and Peter’s relationship nor sweeping it under the rug. Brilliant writer he was he actively addressed what it was, a first crush, puppy love. Which again is totally realistic, most people (especially as teenagers) don’t fall in love with their first girlfriend or boyfriend.

   I won’t deny they dated, of course they did. And of course he felt real pain when they broke up. You don’t need to be in love to feel heartbreak and when it’s your first break up (especially as a teen) it hits very acutely. But it doesn’t mean you were IN LOVE with the woman in question it’s more a matter of experience and mentality. For example he obviously loved Mary Jane in the 1970s but reacted much better when they broke up than when he broke up with Betty due to his maturity at the time. But when it’s your first time, when you THINK you are in love and when you are a teen everything gets MAGNIFIED. But he grew up in the intervening months and got over her. It’s perfectly believable.

   Basically…Peter was a dumb kid in regards to his romance with Betty, one who didn’t even realize how shitty she was treating him a lot of the time.

   I’m perfectly happy to continue this conversation but perhaps it’d be best to do so through PMs on the message board?

   *I would argue though that situation was a little bit different. There were capable cops all over the place, the sewers were a maze and he’d caught the majority of the crooks. So whilst the situation does hold some similarities to AF #15 it’s really not like Peter blithely ignored or forgot the lesson he learned from his origin. He gave the cops in charge all the information he knew. He made a mistake but it’s not 100% an equivalency to AF #15.

6. @Alex – “Would Peter REALLY knowingly sleep with a married woman, know that doing that harmed her marriage with her husband who ultimately wasn’t a bad person (it’s not like Ned was an abuser of any kind) and NOT feel guilty about it? King of Guilt Parker? No. Of course he would.”

   Normally Peter would not do this. But this is Betty, his first real love (more on that below), putting the moves on him. He’s not the instigator here. And ever since Betty came back to see Peter from her honeymoon she’s been bad-mouthing Ned, saying how he was working the whole time and didn’t want to spend any time with her. At this point Peter may not think Ned is a bad person, but he probably thinks he’s a bad new husband.

   There is precedent for Peter doing dumb things and making bad decisions – the history of Spidey is full of them, going all the way back to letting the burglar rush by him. And if you say that this was before he got his powers and had learned the “great power, great reponsibility” lesson, he does pretty much the same thing when he stops some crooks but when one escapes into the sewer he tries to find him but then gives up because he doesn’t want to spend the rest of the day in the sewers, so he lets him go. Who is this criminal? The guy who finds one of Norman Osborn’s hidden lairs and tells Roderick Kingsley about it, leading to the creation of the Hobgoblin. Spidey learns this connection later, that if he had just kept searching for this random criminal he could have prevented the creation of the Hobgoblin, and he feels guilty about it. So even the mature and responsible Peter makes dumb decisions that he feels guilty about later.

   As far as Peter and Ned being friends, agree to disagree – I still don’t think they were ever really friends. Yes, he was his best man, but as I said, that was more of the writer getting Peter and his supporting cast involved in Ned and Betty’s wedding (since apparently Betty and Ned had no friends of their own). Peter and Ned never had a friendship like Peter had with Flash and Harry.

   It’s been a long time since I read the Wolfman run but I feel like Peter *did* feel guilty about sleeping with Betty – you can see it in his interaction with Ned after he returns. And Peter doesn’t act like “Oh, I betrayed my best friend”, he acts like “Oh, I did a bad thing.”

   And agree to disagree again about Betty being Peter’s first love. Once Stan starts writing Gwen with Romita drawing her, it’s like he wants us to forget that Peter ever knew Betty and have Gwen be his first and one true love. But reread those Lee/Ditko stories – Peter and Betty were boyfriend/girlfriend. They dated. And Peter felt real pain when that relationship ended – he says that he wants to beat Ned up. I can’t remember him ever saying the L word but I feel like he did. And his actions showed that he did.

7. Why does your head canon make you have to argue with people? That Bertone guy pointed this out. JR did too.

   I mean, god knows you don’t have a 7 part essay to “take Fettinger down a peg”

8. @hornacek. For the sake of argument let’s say you are right and they weren’t friends. Would Peter REALLY knowingly sleep with a married woman, know that doing that harmed her marriage with her husband who ultimately wasn’t a bad person (it’s not like Ned was an abuser of any kind) and NOT feel guilty about it? King of Guilt Parker? No. Of course he would.

   And that’s my point. From whatever angle you look at it from Peter WOULD feel guilty, whether it was betrayal of his friend (which I insist is what Ned was even if they weren’t BFFs) or damaging someone’s marriage. Let’s be honest Peter would probably feel guilty if he slept with a married woman he’d never met before and who had never told him she was married. The lack of guilt after the fact along with the total lack of awkwardness between the three and MJ speaks to how it logically didn’t happen. Because even if Peter and Ned weren’t friends awkwardness would still very much exist. It’s not like Peter’s name WOULDN’T have been raised during their couples therapy.

   To dive deeper into this, I’m not saying it is necesarilly impossible for Peter to have slept with Betty. They were both lonely and vulnerable. I’m just saying based upon the evidence and the context it’s not logical that that’s what happened. I know he didn’t put the moves on her but he’d still be complicit all the same if he went through with it.

   As for Betty being his first love it depends upon how you define love. Frankly I really don’t consider Betty someone Peter was in love with. Puppy love sure, she was his first girlfriend. But his emotional attachment to Gwen was much stronger and his desire to marry her didn’t come from a desire to one up Ned and beat him to a race to the alter. He wanted to marry Gwen just because he wanted to. And honestly I think the Spidey mythos is much better and more realistic that way. The first girl Peter dated wasn’t the first woman he fell in love with. That’s much more believable.

   @Andrew C I’m not looking for a No. Prize. My point was just Peter was the best man and therefore that has to be considered in regards to his relationship with Betty, it’s not like it’s something that could just NEVER make sense and should thus be dismissed.

   @Jack I suppose you could argue MJ didn’t know if Betty and Peter had had sex and more poignantly she might’ve felt more threatened by Felicia because she was superficially more similar to Peter than she was. In a sense Betty and MJ were Peter’s GFs so MJ but Felicia was Spidey’s and not being super powered herself MJ couldn’t compete with that.

9. I think Marvel left it ambiguous on purpose. Future writers were free to imply more, or imply less. But it’s true that they could have made out, but never went all the way. MJ never had any issues with Betty, like she felt toward Black Cat. That would support the no-sex ambiguity. And Ned asking Peter to be his best man would have been really weird, if Peter was more than a former “kissing-only” boyfriend. I don’t think Ned was ever that relaxed about Peter.

10. @Alex, if you’re angling for a no prize, then you could explain Peter being best man at Ned’s wedding, but hornacek is right. It was purely plot-driven…done for the same reason the Simpsons play a huge part in every non-related supporting character’s wedding…. because it’s Peter’s comic, not Ned’s comic, so the focus needs to remain on Peter even on Ned’s special day. I believe nowadays they probably would’ve handled it more subtly, maybe him watching as a guest and thinking about why he never properly connected with Ned or maybe surprised that everyone at the Bugle was invited except him… but it was the 70s, and that was a decade not known for subtlety.

11. Agree to disagree. Despite all of Ned’s interactions with Peter during the Conway/Wein run, I never got the feeling that Peter considered him a friend. He was just “a previous antagonist who is now the fiancee of my ex-girlfriend”. He no longer hated Ned, but I never go the impression that Peter thought of him as a friend.

    As far as Liz and Sha Shan, Liz was someone that Peter wanted to be friends with (plus dating). And Sha Shan was his friend Flash’s girlfriend. Neither of these was ever Peter. During the Peter/Betty/Ned love triangle stories, Peter actively disliked Ned. There were even a couple of times when he hated him.

    So in my opinion Peter sleeping with Betty had everything to do with Peter feeling guilty about sleeping with a married woman and nothing to do with worrying about “betraying Ned”, who again was his ex-girlfriend’s fiancee/husband and not an actual friend. If Peter had never slept with Betty, and Betty and Ned broke up on their own, do you think that Peter would stay “friends” with Ned? Highly doubtful.

    Plus Betty put the moves on Peter – sleeping with her was never in his mind as something that could happen. But Betty was his first love (sorry, Gwen purists), or at least his first crush. She put the moves on him and he reacted poorly but it’s understandable why he did what he did.

12. @hornacek Friendship comes in many shades cek. From workplace acquaintance to practically family. The fact is Ned had Peter’s back in the Conway era, helping him with Gwen’s clone, and they worked together in Wein’s run too. They weren’t BFFs but they were friends the same way Flash and Peter were friends or MJ and Peter were friends before Gwen’s death. For a guy who had practically 0 friends before Romita’s run that means a lot to Peter. Indeed when Sha Shan and Flash had problems she turned to Peter. Liz turned to Peter. Peter’s friends turn to him because they know he’s a good friend.*

    So yes, for Peter to totally betray that friendship is a very big deal. The only time he really crossed that line was when Gwen died and he was nasty to MJ and Harry.

    That’s not even getting into how Ned’s death and reveal as Hobgoblin upset Peter. Peter was ruminating on Ned’s death in KLH, he held a grudge with both Foreigner and Macendale over it. He wanted justice for Ned when he learned he’d been framed. His immediate reaction after learning Ned’s secret was to believe he was a victim of mental illness and blame Macendale, not believe the worst of Ned himself.

    Moreover you are oversimplifying my point. It’s not JUST that Ned was his friend whom he betrayed, it’s that sleeping with a married woman and in effect being complicit in damaging a salvageable marriage is something Peter would feel guilty about, you said so yourself. And therefore Peter King of Guilt Parker WOULD ruminate on that. He’d think about it at least in passing. We’d have some explicit bit of information that left us in no doubt on the matter. Peter though doesn’t beat himself up that much about his role in harming the Leeds/Brant marriage. Why? Because he probably didn’t cross the line AS badly as the issue might have implied.

    And again, an implication is not a confirmation. Stan implied Gwen and Peter slept together but we later learned they didn’t. In contrast when you see Felicia in a state of undress in Peter’s bed in the 80s or the 21st century stories makes it difficult to interpret it any other way. Similarly ASM 150 leaves you in little doubt what happened between Pete and MJ in ASM 149. Here though the above panels are the sum totality of the implication so how far they went really is debatable regardless of intent or implication. Death of the Author and all that.

    *Also if we are going to argue Ned was a friend of a friend then that’d apply to Sha Shan too but Peter was still there for her too.

13. “Sleeping with his friend’s wife” Calling Peter and Ned “friends” is a real stretch. Yes, Peter was Ned’s best man, but I feel that had more to do with getting Peter and *his* supporting cast involved in Ned and Betty’s wedding. They pretty much have none of their own friends at the wedding – it’s all Peter and his friends. Besides, if you look back at Peter and Ned’s relationship in the Lee/Ditko era, they were very antagonistic. I get the feeling that when Betty and Ned reappear much later to get married, Peter makes nice with Ned because (a) he’s over Betty by this point, and (b) Ned is more like a friend of his friend, not Peter’s friend.

    I can’t remember if it was Josh who said it (but it feels like he did) but it was like Ned and Betty didn’t have any friends of their own so Peter and his supporting cast had to fill out the wedding party. i.e. Ned didn’t have any guy friends so he asked his fiancee’s ex-boyfriend to be his best man, which is pretty crazy when you type that out.

    So I think Peter feels guilty about sleeping with Betty (yes, I think the issues make it clear that this is what happened) but the guilt isn’t from betraying Ned because Ned is not his friend.

14. @Andrew C

    Sacrilegious as it might be to go against JR AND Bertone I will stand by the idea that Peter and Betty did not actually sleep together here. For starters an implication is not the same thing as a confirmation. If it’s off-panel then it is nevertheless ultimately debatable as to what may or may not have happened.

    More importantly though when you consider how guilt ridden Peter is about everything wouldn’t we have gotten some kind of passing thought, angst or inner turmoil about sleeping with betty here? Sleeping with his friend’s wife (whom he was the best man to at their wedding no less) is honestly more than just a mistake. It was a really bad thing to do. Even if we all agreed it was in character for Peter in that moment his casualness about the situation thereafter and for years to come would not have been.

    He absolutely would’ve chastised himself or felt some form of relief when Betty and Ned were seemingly getting back together. Wouldn’t he have had a much more significant reaction to learning Betty was cheating on Ned with Flash if Peter had also participated in Betty cheating on ned before? Wouldn’t Betty and Ned setting him and Mj up on a double date with them have been WAY more awkward if Peter had slept with Betty as opposed to getting a little too close to her for a time? Wouldn’t there have been a perennial tension between Peter and Ned after Peter slept with Betty? Ned actively complimented Peter more than once and ated friendly to him once he and Betty were getting back together.

    No matter how you slice it the implication in the above doesn’t jive with the characterization in the years after. Therefore it’s actually much more believable to argue they made out but things didn’t get too far

15. Peter isn’t exactly fighting her off. Except with his tongue.

    What the hell was Wolfman thinking? One of the worst and most damaging subplots of the 70s.

16. Somewhere, Josh Bertone is shuddering and doesn’t know why.