#j m dematteis

mrsspidermanmaryjanewatsonparker:

The above images are from Spider-Man Unlimited #1-2, Spec #248 and ASM v2 #50 respectively.

As you can see they display MJ seemingly contradicting herself. 

Does she accept Peter being Spider-Man or not?

Has she ALWAYS accepted it or what?

Does she expect Peter to put her above Spidey duties or not?

Has she really NEVER had that expectation?

WTF is going on?

The real answer is different writers with different interpretations of the character and her relationship with her husband.*

There is little doubt in my mind that each writer feels their take is simply how MJ feels on the subjects, plain and simple.

DeFalco feels MJ struggles to accept the risks Peter takes.

DeMatteis feels MJ wants Peter to put her above being Spidey and has always  accepted the baggage of being Mrs Spider-Man.

Straczynski feels MJ in fact doesn’t expect Peter to do that…and never has. 

If we accept for a moment 1 of them has to be right and therefore the other 2 wrong, this doesn’t undermine their credibility as Spider-Man or MJ writers. 

When you are dealing with such long storied characters with so much details to their personalities due to decades of development, mistakes happen. It’s entirely possible for writers to misunderstand certain aspects  of characters whilst having strong grasps of others.

It all depends upon how many aspects they don’t get, how important those aspects are and to what degree they don’t get them.

DeMatteis for instance is a God tier Spider-Man writer but in the Child Within he asserted that the root of Spider-Man’s heroic drive was a guilt born from his parents’ deaths. This is illogical and provably untrue, undermining Spidey’s origin itself. It’s a MAJOR faux pas, but he gets so much else about the characters we can’t call him a BAD writer honestly. 

Shit Stan the Man himself was guilty of occasionally mischaracterizing Spider-Man. Hell, he literally got his name wrong int he early issues…twice…once by calling him Superman.

Regardless, who’s interpretation is on point here?

Well…DeFalco’s. Or at least DeFalco’s is the closest. In fact Unlim #1-2 by virtue of simply being published prior to the other 2 issues by default sets the precedence and therefore is the thing the other two issues should jive with.

Does this mean MJ under DeMatteis or Straczynski’s pens was out of character?

Well the nature of decades long characters with multiple writers makes that tricky to determine.

To unpack it a bit she was out of character in terms of DeMatteis’ and Straczynski’s (presumed) intents. 

But from an in-universe point of view…no she wasn’t. Or at least not necessarily. 

In an ideal world characters would either be written completely consistently or we’d get clearer ‘signposts’ within the story to explain their state of minds.

But often times it’s possible for a story, intentionally or otherwise, to provide us with enough material and leeway to work through an explanation of our own. Sometimes these can actually enrich the narrative and characters.

That’s the situation with these 3 takes.

Whilst DeFalco, Straczynski and DeMatteis each have their takes that they are likely going to stick to, if we treat MJ as a (relatively) realistic human being for a moment the fact that she acted in these contradictory ways is entirely believable.

When you look at MJ’s wider history it’s clear the tension regarding her feelings for Peter is that she loves him for who he is, which is someone who will risk his life to help others. But equally because she loves him she doesn’t want him to get hurt and thus not take those risks. 

This isn’t something that really can be resolved…but you can absolutely live with it as a person. The family members of everyone who partakes in a dangerous profession live with that.

But it’s hard. And if there are other life stressors then that’s going to affect how she might behave on any given day. A bad night’s sleep and maybe she’ll be a little less accepting that day. Riding high off a great model shoot and she might encourage Peter to ‘go get ‘em tiger’ with a smile. 

Or in these specific situations…

• The death of her friend (who tried to destroy her family) and the widowing of her other friend and she’s going to find it real hard to just accept Peter risking his life, potentially widowing her.
• When dealing with the grief and vulnerability that comes from a miscarriage she may well feel she should always  be more important than Spider-Man
• After over a year of virtual isolation from her husband, loneliness in L.A., a good long break from Spider-Stress and actively trying to see if things can be fixed between them, MJ may well feel more humble about her position in Peter’s priorities

Now, deep down at the end of the day she absolutely recognizes that the greater good Spidey does is bigger than her. But she expects to be valued at nevertheless extremely important in Peter’s eyes, possibly of equal importance. **

I mean if you start a family you might accept that your child is more important to your partner than you are (and vice versa), but you still expect to rate very highly in their priorities. And of course there are times when you should be more important to your partner than your child, at least to some extent. Similarly there are times and situations when MJ feels that she should  be prioritised over Spider-Duties. And sometimes she’s going to be justified feeling that way. Other times it is going to be understandablewhy she would feel that way even if she is in fact unjustified.

As a three dimensional character, there are times she’s going to be less than perfect, less than altruistic, less than heroic, less than understanding, less than wholly honest. Times when she might be selfish, somewhat deceitful, mean or even a jerk. 

You know…flawed…

That’s what’s going on in those three above examples, both individually and when you take them collectively. MJ isn’t telling the truth when she says she’s ALWAYS accepted Peter being Spider-Man and that she NEVER expected him to put her first. Whether she’s forgetting, being ‘liberal with the truth’ or in those moments has herself convinced her account of herself is accurate, it’s a reflection of how a real person might behave. 

It doesn’t make her a bad person. On the contrary the fact that she’s as heroic, as understanding and as good as she is in spite of those flaws  speaks to her strength of character. 

 *Specifically the 4 issues written by Tom DeFalco, J.M. DeMatteis and J. Michael Straczynski respectively. 

**For Peter’s part I don’t know if he honestly does value being Spidey more than his marriage to MJ or not. I think he at least values them equally and is constantly juggling to keep them up. But there is of course a distinction between saving lives vs making a movie date with his wife and saving strangers vs saving the life of his wife