I responded to this generally good video and consequently got a reply from the video's author. In the past I have found my comments getting deleted from Youtube, and the same is true of links to this tumblr. If anyone who knows better than myself how to post tumblr links onto Youtube please feel free to link this reply in this video's comments.
Me: Remember guys, the Spidey and MJ we've had since 2008 is literally sn alternative timeline version of the characters, ones defined by an editorial ideology that fundamentally misinterprets Spider-Man. Tom Brevoort is still at Marvel and wrote a manifedto for Spidey writers to follow all the way back in 2007. In that manifesto he literally says Spider-Man is not defined by responsibility and never was, that that idea was artificially grafted onto Spider-Man after he married MJ in 1987. This is obviously untrue and if you realise that Marvel since 2007 have literally believed 'With Great Power comes great responsibility' is nothing more important than 'Its clobberin time!' or 'Hulk Smash!', you understand why they hated the marriage and idea of Peter being a parent. Because marriage and family is the ultimate responsibility.
Every Spider-Man Ever: I was very close to just deleting this, because there's already enough baseless hate around a creator, and there's plenty of places to leave this online. My channel is not one of them. But I wanted to use this opportunity to address some points: First of all, what you're stating is not true. Yes, he wrote a manifesto in which he very intelligently breaks down the strengths of Spider-Man and where he felt it had been going wrong. You can disagree with him at points, and I do, but let's not pretend that he's not somebody who understands how comics and comic characters work. Nowhere in this manifesto does he mention Youth or Power and Responsibility in the way you mention. Separately to that, he wrote a blog post where he argued at Spider-Man is about Youth. That this is the core of the character. This is not addressed to staff, in the way the manifesto is. It's something that Gerry Conway has also put forward and it's something I mostly agree with. For me, Spider-Man is about that time in life where you're on the edge of responsibility, when your life is on the verge of coming together. You might disagree, and you're fully entitled to. But you present his argument in very bad faith and then present that it's "obviously untrue". But you not agreeing doesn't make it untrue and it definitely doesn't mean there's an alternate timeline with one "correct" Spidey and MJ. They're the same as they ever were.
My comment wasn’t coming from a place of baseless hate, as I will elaborate on below.
I will freely admit I Mandela effected myself to believe that Brevoort’s ‘Youth’ assertion was part of the Manifesto. However, the principle of my point remains unchanged. Brevoort, in being in a senior and influential position at Marvel, believes Spider-Man is about youth and this in turn has had a downstream effect upon how Peter Parker and his supporting cast have been depicted. Here is an excerpt from elvingsmusing that elaborates on the point:
“Around the time Tom Brevoort was working on Brand New Day, he also wrote an online blog where he once wrote a post titled “Youth”. This blogpost attained a level of notoriety in the Spider-Man fandom at the time. So well-known is this blogpost that it’s often conflated with the Brevoort Manifesto itself, even if nothing said there directly appears in the Manifesto itself. The people who make this mistake aren’t just fans but also the creators who worked on Brand New Day itself, chiefly Dan Slott [5]. Nonetheless, the general consensus] expressed by Brevoort himself in his 2020 Podcast Interview with Ginocchio and Gvozden, is that this blogpost is a supplement to the manifesto itself, and that it should be seen as an extension of it.”
So, the statement was around the time of BND, major writers like Dan Slott mistook it as being part of the manifesto, and Brevoort himself regards it as an extension of the manifesto that absolutely was intended for the creative team to bear in mind even if it was not directly addressed to them.
You claim that Brevoort ‘very intelligently’ broke own the strengths of Spider-Man and where he felt it had gone wrong. The problem here is that an awful lot, more than half, of what is contained within the manifesto either gets major pieces of information completely in correct or is highly disingenuous.
Brevoort claims Spider-Man is the life story of Peter Parker, whose superhero career is merely a component of his life and that this idea has been something lost in the previous decade or two. Whilst his initial claim is true, he neglects the fact that in the 1990s, exempting the Clone Saga or major event stories like Maximum Carnage or Torment, most stories were indeed focussed upon Peter’s life, that was the throughline. This was even true of large swathes of the JMS run and particularly the case in Paul Jenkins work in the early-mid 2000s. Noticeably the shift towards Spider-Man over Peter’s normal life began around the time he joined the Avengers, which led to him living with them and consequently them becoming in large part his supporting cast. However, this shift occurred in 2004-2005, a time period when the decision to reset Spider-Man had already been made, they just hadn’t pinned down the details yet.
In hindsight, it becomes rather obvious (given how BND simply handwaved all of this) that the Other, the unmasking, becoming a fugitive and Aunt May’s coma, etc were all designed to take Peter away from a familiar status quo and thereby justify the reset via OMD, to make readers appreciative of a more ‘traditional’ Spider-Man. This playbook was also implemented in the Clone Saga btw. Aunt May entered a coma, Peter became a dark brooding vigilante, a move away from Peter Parker towards being Spider-Man, immense stress placed upon MJ and himself. All of that was designed to make Ben Reilly feel more familiar, traditional and in theory win the audience over. Indeed, Shrieking and the Other both even involve Peter entering a cocoon and exiting as more spider than man, although in the Other this was literal and in Shrieking this was more psychological. The bottom line is Brevoort is cherry picking things across 10-20 years, some of which Marvel themselves engineered deliberately to justify this reset.
Brevoort also asserts that somewhere along the line we became afraid of humiliating our heroes for a laugh. This is once again disingenuous. Under Straczynski’s run the villainess Shathra goes on TV and pretends to be having an affair with Spider-Man. This embarrasses him and even reduces MJ to tears. Later in this same run Peter meets a clothes manufacturer who asks who made his costume because, as a piece of clothing, it is very bad, to which coldly Peter replies he himself did. Peter also lost out on winning the lottery because he was busy the one day he played the same numbers he always does. A fellow teacher at his school sabotages his lesson resulting in him asking a student to read out a passage that inspired him as a teenager, only for the book to be about a totally different subject. Under PAD’s FNSM run Peter attempts a martial arts technique to catch two bullets, succeeding with one and getting shot by the other. In this same time period he pursued a villain by tearing open the roof of a car only to find his target absent and in their place a very angry J. Jonah Jameson. So even in the less than 10 years before OMD there were plenty of examples of Peter being ‘humiliated’. In the case of Shathra, the humiliation was in fact far larger in scale and more personal than anything Stan Lee did when Peter was a teenager, the time period you typically humiliate yourself.
Brevoort further asserts that, during Stan Lee’s era, nothing Spidey ever did turned out right, except this is outright untrue. Putting aside the innumerable times he defeated the villains and saved lives, ASM #2 ends with an unambiguous happy ending for Peter. He defeated the Vulture, sold photos to Jameson (thereby getting one over on him), paid the rent for a year, made aunt may happy and was told by her that Uncle Ben would be proud of him. In the back up story of this same issue he then foils an alien invasion to take over America. In ASM #12 Peter defeats Doc Ock and even earns some respect and sympathy from Liz Allan, Stan’s narration explicitly saying that Peter’s life isn’t always sad, he is like all of us with a mixture of ups and downs. In another issue Peter has a total win but is so neurotic he even feels like something is wrong, even when it isn’t. In the Drug Trilogy, Stan depicts Harry Osborn as in recovery, Norman Osborn as bac to his ‘’normal’ (not evil) self and has Peter and Gwen happily reunite in a romantic embrace. So in fact plenty of stuff went right for Spidey in Stan’s day, it was all about ups alongside downs in order to better capture real life.
This is also true of Brevoort’s assertions that Peter would always fight with a disadvantage when objectively that is untrue. He occasionally did this, but more often than not he was fighting fit and was simply pitting his mettle and wits against his formidable foes.
Brevoort says Peter is allowed to occasionally make mistakes. This is again true in principle, but not true in what Brevoort specifically says. The examples he cites are incorrect. He claims Peter has a moment of glee at the prospect of Dr. Doom hurting Flash Thompson but a panel later relents. In reality, this all happened in the same panel, there was no hesitancy, it was all in the same panel implying. The other example has Brevoort claims Peter considers stealing a necklace for Gwen’s birthday. In reality, due to stress and illness, Peter is not in his right mind and nearly, but does not actually, steals a necklace before putting it back. Brevoort’s assessment of Peter’s morality in both cases paints peter as much more immoral than he ever was, and this failure to attend detail is a rather damning flaw in a editor in general, let alone one of a senior position like Brevoort who is writing a manifesto to guide other writers. Indeed, under BND Peter breaks into hotel rooms with Black Cat to engage in a friends with benefits relationship with her, whilst he is aware she is actively being a burglar, fakes photos in order to exonerate J. Jonah Jameson and even tries to take photos of celebrities in private moments. And, unlike the examples Brevoort cites, Peter is not mentally imbalanced at these times nor is he a teenager, he is a 25 year old who should know better.
I could go on, but I think I’ve made my point. Brevoort spoke eloquently and made some good points in principle, but the substance of his argument was a combination of misinformation and misinterpretation. Meaning, on balance, this was not an intelligent break down of Spider-Man’s strengths or where he had gone wrong and the very poor results thereafter in BND speak to that.
You claim that Brevoot is someone who understands comics and how comic book characters work. Except his track record does not reflect this. To begin with, under Brevoort’s tenure, and as he has risen through Marvel’s ranks or at least remained in influential positions within the company, Marvel’s sales, and more importantly their market share have declined, as has fan confidence and good will. Brevoort was the man who, in the immediate aftermath of the HYDRA Cap reveal (which happened amidst the 2016 election cycle you might recall) defended the decision on the grounds that it is Marvel’s genuine strategy to piss off readers in order to boost sales. This is obviously at best a short term gain, long term loss strategy that can be reflected in Marvel’s decline in terms of directly sales, their shelf-space being given over to Scholastic, manga, etc. He also defended the trend of replacement heroes that pervaded the 2010s which also caused friction in the fandom and whose adoption into the MCU has often been cited as a direct contributor to its decline, Iron Heart and Captain America 4 performing particularly badly in terms of revenue and fan reception.
Moreover, your claim that I cannot pretend that he doesn’t understand the comic book characters, but that statement is entirely dependant upon the idea that Brevoort’s particular understanding of the characters is accurate. The examples we have gone over from the manifesto thus far are hardly encouraging towards that idea. It is further damaged when we recall one of his old posts from formspring in which he unironically claimed that he didn’t expect Norman Osborn would re-learn Spider-Man’s secret identity any time soon because it never made sense to him as to why, if Norman knew Peter’s identity, he would not simply kill him.
This is a rather damning indictment of Brevoort because Norman does in fact explain exactly why he doesn’t just kill Peter in both Peter Parker: Spider-Man 75 and Marvel Knights Spider-Man #12. The former is a splash page that reveals Norman as the Goblin for the first time since his death in 1973 and was the literal last issue of the Clone Saga, a comic book Tom Brevoort was actively involved in the development of. The latter was a major Spider-Man story in 2004-2005 that was Spidey’s equivalent of Hush, with the explanation being the literal last few pages. If you are an editor, part of your skillset is an attention to detail so knowing the core motivation for why your superhero’s main villain hates him but does not want to kill him is an incredibly basic thing to be in the dark over.
But lets move over to some other characters. Brevoort asserts. “Most of the best comic book series are about something–something that may not factor into every single last adventure, but which is the underpinning of the series as a whole. Fantastic Four is about family. X-Men is about prejudice. Batman is about revenge. And Spider-Man is about youth.”
He is totally correct about the F4, pretty much correct about the X-Men but his assessment of Batman and Spider-Man are at best questionable.
Frankly, Batman ceased being about revenge relatively early into his 85+ year history. He transitioned to being about justice later and then consequent adaptations have reconciled the two by acknowledging revenge as an initial motivator before he transitions into a more altruistic justice motivation. This was depicted in Batman Begins (2005), THE Batman (2022) and even touched upon in the kids cartoon, Batman: The Brave and the Bold wherein the Phantom Stranger and the Spectre, representing justice and vengeance respectively, tempt Bruce to take or spare the life of his parents’ killer. In Justice League the Animated Series, part of the defining DCAU, Bruce’s motivation (performed by the iconic Kevin Conroy) is stated to be that he wants to prevent any 8 year old boy losing his parents because of some punk with a gun, which speaks to the idea of justice not vengeance. In the DC Animated Movie universe Bruce instructs his son Damien Wayne that their mission is about justice, not vengeance. So, most media adaptations, and acclaimed ones at that, clearly assert Batman to NOT be about revenge, but rather justice.
So, on one of the 3 most famous superheroes of all time, Brevoort has made quite a significant misinterpretation, which hurts the claim that I, or anyone else, are merely ‘pretending’ that he doesn’t understand comic book characters.
Let us also consider what Brevoort was editing circa 2004, he was in fact editor on Avengers, during Disassembled no less, a pivotal story that hinges upon the actions of the Scarlet Witch. Actions that, in the 20 years since the story, have widely been decried as a misinterpretation of her character and abilities to the point where many claim it is an example of character assassination. So, that’s another knock against Brevoort ‘understanding’ comic characters.
Now we come to Spider-Man.
Brevoort believes staunchly that Spider-Man is about youth is not, and never was, about responsibility. If I am understanding your point correctly, you believe Gerry Conway agrees with him. You said you mostly agree with ‘him’ (which could mean Brevoort or Conway, but the point is moot. For you, ‘Spider-Man is about that time in life where you're on the edge of responsibility, when your life is on the verge of coming together.’
Here is the thing. This is not simply a matter of disagreement. Of course different interpretations can potentially exist. But so too can MISinterpretations. The latter is the case with the assertions that Spider-Man is about youth or indeed about being on the edge of responsibility, when your life is on the verge of coming together. The reality is that any interpretation of any literary work is only as strong as the weight of evidence the proponent can bring to bear in support of it. In the case of Spider-Man being about youth or merely on the verge of responsibility it is provably untrue. It isn’t a matter of this or that comics creator said so or did not say so, the narrative itself clearly rejects that interpretation in multiple ways. The narrative simultaneously makes a much stronger case for Spider-Man being about responsibility.
Brevoort asserts that ‘with great power there must come great responsibility’ was merely a lesson for Spider-Man’s first appearance. Except, this first appearance was also his origin story and the lesson of responsibility was his big take away from uncle Ben’s death, the thing that changed him. It thereby is foundational to his motivation and by extension what the series is about, in much the same way the F4 are about family. If he is being Spider-Man at all, it by necessity is underpinned by his reasons for being Spider-Man, and therefore his origin story, the great power=great responsibility lesson is present in literally every Spider-man adventure, even if it is not directly referenced.
Even if we were to accept Brevoort’s premise that it was ‘merely’ something relevant for the original appearance of Spider-Man and nothing more, the very first issue of Amazing Spider-Man depicts Peter seeking a way to earn income to afford the rent and bills Aunt May needs, something that continues into issue 2 and is a often recurring story element in Stan Lee’s entire run. The majority of the time whenever Peter is out of costume he is in his home or the Daily Bugle, not his high school. The latter is the logical location if your character was in fact fundamentally about youth and the Bugle is absolutely the wrong location if your character is about youth as it is a place of employment, a job, a responsibility. J Jonah Jameson and Betty Brant, who work at the Bugle, are undeniably more relevant characters in Peter’s high school adventures than Liz Allan or Flash Thompson, who are characters connected to his high school. Additionally, it was extremely uncommon for a kid Peter’s age in early-mid 1960s New York to even work a freelance job whilst studying at school, let alone in the capacity of a single parent household where his income was vital to supporting the family. This was very much an adult’s role Peter at a young age was shouldering because Aunt May was too old and infirm to do so.
On top of that, the Master Planner trilogy is pretty obviously a coming of age story and the narrative developed Peter and Gwen’s relationship very much in the direction of them being on the cusp of getting engaged, with both talking about marriage. We know this was indeed Stan Lee’s explicit intention, and Stan also claimed that the entire reason he dubbed a teenaged character Spider-MAN was to futureproof him for when he eventually grew into adulthood, both of which are indicative of the character not being about youth. After all, to be about youth you must by definition not be an adult, and the moniker of ‘Man’ and the fact that Stan intended Spidey to become one and keep going (let alone get married) proves that from his POV Spider-Man was never about youth.
And, by extension, the argument that he is on the edge of responsibility is incredibly shaky. If Peter is out there fighting crime because he feels it his duty to do so, if he is earning money to support aunt May, if he is remaining in school whilst doing this, if he is considering marriage, he is not ‘on the edge’ of responsibility but very much over it. He is *actively* engaging in life responsibilities.
We should also consider that in the mid 20th century people were considered adult at a younger age, Peter at age 22 in the early 1980s would have been expected to be far more mature than a 22 year old in the early 2020s, with marriage at age 24-25 being very common back then.
Furthermore, it was in the very same blog post I mentioned above where Brevoort not only claimed Spidey to be about youth, but explicitly (and incorrectly) claimed he was *not* about responsibility.
“Spider-Man is no more about responsibility than Batman is about criminals being a superstitious and cowardly lot. That’s the tagline to the first adventure, and a strong moral message to go out on, but it’s what that story is about, not what the series is about.”
So…how precisely have I been ‘bad faith’ about any of this? Brevoort and others claiming Spider-Man is about youth are objectively incorrect because the actual evidence of the narrative itself rejects the assertion. For Peter to be about youth he’d need to have never had a coming of age story, a story that transitions him from not-an-adult into actually-an-adult. And he had such a story all the way back in 1965, with another point of major maturity in 1973 when Gwen died.
This isn’t a matter of my own subjective opinion. Analysis and interpretations do not operate on the philosophy of the participation trophy. An interpretation can in fact be incorrect. You need evidence to support your claim that can then be stress tested. There is precious little evidence in support of the claim that Spidey is about youth and what little there is is flimsy at best, whilst the idea that he is about responsibility, or that ‘with great power comes great responsibility’ is at least a crucial foundational component of his character has *much* more evidence in its corner that stands up to much more scrutiny.
Finally you said ‘it definitely doesn't mean there's an alternate timeline with one "correct" Spidey and MJ. They're the same as they ever were.’
I was in part referring to the fact that, by the narrative established by OMD, there is literally a pre and post-OMD timeline, much like there was a pre and post Crisis on infinite earths canon for DC comics. So, by any objective definition the current iterations are simply not the originals, which at least arguably renders them less legitimate than the originals just on principle of not being the originals. But hey, I am open to the argument that both iterations can be legitimate. Except…
Peter and Mary jane are provably NOT ‘the same as they ever were’. For them to be the same as they ever were they would need to behave in a way that would be consistent with their established characterisations and they repeatedly have failed to do so since 2007. If Peter and Mj were the same as they ever were then:
Why did Mary Jane seek Peter out after he’d lived through the traumatic, bodily violating experience of Doc Ock stealing his body for a year and proceed to make the situation about herself, delivering a break-up speech to someone she was not dating, and had not been dating for years. These actions wouldn’t even make sense if she was unaware of the Doc Ock situation, because, whilst she was unknowingly dating Otto for a few months, they weren’t together. Why seek out your ex to tell them you will be distancing yourself from them when you already were anyway? By contrast, compare to the MJ who recognised her friend’s emotional turmoil after his girlfriend died and chose to stay by his side and comfort him even though he’d chewed her out.
Why did Peter, purely for money, invade the privacy of celebrity Bobby Carr when he spent years being friends/lovers with Mary Jane who was a celebrity who had her privacy violated by paparazzi, including Nick Katzenburg whom Peter felt was a loathsome individual?
Why was Mary Jane incredibly dense and blasé about Peter’s incredibly uncharacteristic behaviour in Superior Spider-Man when she previously could distinguish Peter apart from his physically and mentally identical clones, Kraven when he was masquerading as Spider-Man, and a far more subtle mimic in the Chameleon? Otto wasn’t even bothering to talk similarly to Peter.
Why in Superior Spider-Man #9, during a psychic battle in Peter’s mind, was Otto able to gain the upper hand on Peter by claiming that, because Peter didn’t kill the serial killer Massacre, the blood of his victims (including Ashley Kafka) were on Peter’s hands? In Maximum Carnage, Carnage is a far more dangerous killer than Massacre with a higher body count and Spider-Man explicitly rejects the moral framework put forward by Venom that they should kill Carnage and that Spidey is at fault for anyone Carnage kills.
Why was Mary Jane opposed to even talking to Peter when she was involved with Paul? She still spoke to him when they were each with other people or single but not dating?
Why is Peter entering a friends with benefits relationship with Felicia when she is a burglar and their nights together involve him breaking and entering hotel rooms? Spider-Man’s origin story is about how he let a burglar walk free and he actively refused to enter any relationship with Felicia until she at least promised to reform. Moreover, Peter was never depicted as the type who wanted a purely physical relationship with a woman, he always viewed each lady in terms of a potential girlfriend/wife prospect. This was true of his relationship with Felicia back in the 1980s as well.
Why, in One Moment in Time, did Mary Jane break up with Peter and remain broken up with him on the grounds that being with him would endanger her family when common sense would have clued her into that in the preceding years and there were at least two occasions where her association with Spider-Man made her Aunt Anna and the town her sister, father and nephews lived in a target of Spider Slayers?
Why, during both Spider-Verse and Clone Conspiracy, was Peter either indifferent or unsympathetic to Ben Reilly considering he loved Ben as his brother?
Why did Aunt May in Slott’s run guilt trip Peter by claiming that she was hurt that, on the night Uncle Ben died, he didn’t stick around to emotionally support her when he was 15 years old. That last one isn’t about Peter or MJ’s characters, but it illustrates the point that ALL the Spider-Man cast were victims of gross mischaracterisation after OMD.
In conclusion: No. Peter and MJ definitely were not, and largely have not, been the same as they ever were. OMD was a staunch shift in the ideological framework Spider-Man comics operated under, one informed by a provable misinterpretation of the foundation of the character.
