#traincat talks comics

[traincat]

sometimes you really just lounge around going "what if I reread all of Spider-Man from the beginning again."

[traincat]

ive seen a recurring thing of peter liking fruit pies in fic enough for me to take notice. is this actually canon???

It's a joke based on the Hostess fruit pies Spider-Man ads! In the 70s, Marvel published a series of ads for Hostess brand fruit pies starring Spider-Man where fruit pies would get him out of all kinds of situations because everyone loves them so much. These are little individually wrapped snack-sized hand pies, not the full size thing. I have a soft spot for these ads, admittedly, because they're cute and fun.

The ads weren't just for fruit pies. There were some for cupcakes and other snack cakes, too, like this one. "The Hostess cup cakes you left me with were a lot more rewarding to me than you've ever been!" Damn, Mary Jane, just kill him.

[traincat]

WHELP, now that spideytorch is becoming mainstream i have seenn the worst takes on johnny, like people GENUINELY fight you if you say johnny could be a bottom or just making spideytorch somewhat a jock/nerd trope or the playboy/nice guy . Free my boy johnny from his mischaracterizations and let peter be a man full of rage and sarcasm

Yeah on the flipside it's kind of funny to me because like. Obviously this is not my first rodeo. And I don't think there's any escaping this. Johnny is just never going to be as popular as Spider-Man, so a lot of the draw to the ship is always going to come through Peter, but like the thing is Johnny is very much his own character. So there are people who treat Johnny as like, this stand-in cardboard cutout boyfriend for Peter, because a lot of popular m/m Peter ships don't like, require huge amounts of canon knowledge. Either they're crossovers or they're ships based more on potential than interaction. This isn't a value judgment blah blah blah. It's just true. There's pros and cons to that, from a fic writing perspective -- no preexisting relationship gives you a certain amount of freedom. In a crossover ship with no shared canon, you never have to worry about conflicting with that canon. I can see the appeal, even if it's not my tendency.

Spideytorch by comparison offers a lot of flexibility. Depending on what canon you're going with, there's as much or as little to work with as you want. Using 616 as the default, they've known each other half their lives. Johnny knows Peter's real name and his face. He knows him so well that when Spider-Man's identity was wiped out of the minds of the entire planet, Johnny knew that he used to know who he was, and was hurt that that knowledge had been taken away from him. Peter's one of the few people who knows the details of Johnny's Skrull marriage. They know each other's families, friends, what the other likes on pizza. They've lived together. Peter bought an entire building to keep it safe for Johnny. Johnny's slept naked in his bed. It's a deep, grounded relationship that really matters to both characters.

For something like the original Ultimate universe, you're working with less canon, but still a very intense relationship. Johnny admired Peter. They lived together. Peter died underneath Johnny. Johnny couldn't attend his funeral because he could only literally explode with grief. It's a lot.

Then you have universes where they never met, but the potential is there. We have roadmaps for how their relationship goes. Something like TASM!Peter/Fant4stic!Johnny, which I obviously have a lot of feelings about because I wrote 80k of it, where they never meet in canon, but you can build a relationship. And Johnny is half of that relationship equation. It can't just be Peter. Johnny who is weird and nerdy and doesn't have a lot of friends, Johnny who longs to be seen, Johnny who has a complicated relationship with fame and who loves his powers but recognizes the inherent destruction in them. Johnny the romantic who wants to be loved for himself and not for his celebrity.

And one of the keys to Johnny is that he's always a little bit of a nerd. Peter's smart, Peter's a genius, but his dedication to any kind of pop culture is a recent phenomenon. 616 Johnny collected comics and makes horror movie references and listed Titanic as his favorite movie. Fant4stic Johnny has a Fire Flower dangling from the rearview mirror in his car and a Lego mug in the lab. I have mixed feelings about how First Steps utilized Johnny, but it showed that he's not a dumb jock. He's smart when he chooses to apply himself. Johnny's biggest enemy has always been his own self-image, not an actual lack of intelligence. He's not a polar opposite for Peter in some imaginary nerd/jock dynamic -- and if that dynamic did exist, I have bad news about Mr. Peter "Why Won't Anyone Love Me For My Hot Body And Incredible Athletic Abilities Instead of My Intelligence" Parker.

One of the fun things about Spideytorch is that Peter and Johnny click, all their weird idiosyncrasies, and their bickering as a love language. Half of the equation is Johnny, for the character that he is, and not as some stand-in boyfriend. Weird, former and current lonely kid, insecure, self-hating, dreaming of true love, secretly nerdy Johnny.

[traincat]

hi traincat, so this entire time i thought peter being jewish was a unanimous consensus… apparently today i realized that was not the case 😭😭

i saw a whole debate on whether hes christian or jewish and so obviously i thought i went to you and ask ur of ur opinion :)

him being from forest hills was a glaring sign i assumed, but then people started saying he wasnt given a clear religious denomination and now im like… confused??

I think the only thing Spider-Man fandom feels unanimous about is that Peter Parker was bit by a radioactive spider. And we can probably still find a few outliers. But no, no, this one is definitely not a unanimous conclusion -- a lot of people hate this idea. But I don't find that particularly surprising from the fandom that keeps coming up with reasons why hardline canonically Jewish characters like Magneto shouldn't be Jewish in movies.

So, I mean, first things first is that Peter is not hardline canonically Jewish, in that Marvel themselves, as a company, has not declared it canon. That doesn't stop a lot of creators from outright saying he's Jewish, and it doesn't have any bearing on the decades of heavy Jewish subtext. But it is a fact, and it has to be taken into consideration in the conversation. This is the same thing I talk about when I say Johnny isn't hardline canonically queer; Marvel the company says he isn't, no matter what individual creators have done. In longrunning canons where corporate makes the rules, we do have to have some kind of distinction for the sake of conversation. Doesn't mean we can't cover the grey areas. I can't say Peter is canonically-according-to-Marvel-the-company Jewish, because that's just not true, but I can say he is heavily implied to be Jewish, because of all those decades of subtext and dancing around the subject and Forest Hills and Yiddishisms and the way Peter conceptualizes his relationship with God and, again, all of the creators who have said he's Jewish and written him as Jewish.

The problem with the Jewish vs Protestant Peter argument is that Peter being Jewish informs his character in a way that him being Protestant does not. (I have seen people argue that he's Catholic, but that's so. lol. lmfao. listen my dad's family is Catholic and: no.) I've talked a little bit before about how "with great power comes great responsibility" is just a reframing of tikkun olam, healing the world, but it's more than that. It's in the way he doesn't recognize basic tenets of Christianity, the way in which he speaks directly to (and has a somewhat antagonistic relationship with) God, the way he interacts with the world and with his world, with New York. (I have also seen people argue that Peter is neither, because he's an atheist -- we have no proof he's an atheist, although I could see him being agnostic, but none of this matters because you can be Jewish and an atheist. Like I need people to realize that's a thing. Judaism and Christianity do not work on a 1:1 comparison but with different winter holidays.)

But there's a problem here wherein, even if people are open to the idea of Peter being Jewish, it requires readers to have enough passing familiarity with Jewishness and Jewish coding to recognize that subtext is there. To you and me, Forest Hills is a very clear "oh, he's Jewish" flashing alarm, but I wouldn't expect someone who isn't from New York, let alone from the USA, and isn't Jewish to recognize that. I wouldn't expect someone who isn't familiar to see those echoes of healing the world in "with great power, comes great responsibility." I wouldn't expect someone to grasp the finer details of Peter calling it Shavuos and not Shavuot when they don't even know what Shavuos is. I don't expect them to look at his parents and see at-the-time attitudes surrounding the Rosenberg trial. I don't expect people to see Jewishness where we don't say it directly, not understanding how Jewish it is by that very act of not saying it directly. And you can explain it to people, sure, but the problem with Peter's Jewish coding, and what makes it feel so especially authentic to me, is how it isn't said, how it lurks in the margins, even when it doesn't. (Take a shot of Manischewitz every time he says "oy." Red or purple?) He stepped on a glass at his wedding in Into the Spider-verse, but how much of that is because there are people who don't know what that means?

I will say he doesn't have a "clear religious denomination" if that is something you need said directly and with words right to your face. If you're comfortable reading between the lines -- I mean, come on. But I will also say he is never depicted as anything more hardline than a casual Christmas celebrator in terms of Christianity. So if we're going to split hairs here, then I guess we're all going to have to stand on our own sides of the religion gym and stare at each other in awkward silence. There is more evidence for him being Jewish than him being Christian. But since Christian is considered the default, it's assumed anyway. People have to choose what matters to them in readings of a character when a specific identity is implicit and not explicit. You can have all the evidence in the world and it still won't be good enough for everyone.

There are a few Peters I do consider hardline canonically Jewish, because they come from extenuating circumstances. Ultimate Peter, because Brian Michael Bendis wrote him the whole way through, and BMB is a very vocal Jewish Peter supporter. Noir Peter, because of his whole deal. And TASM!Peter, because Andrew Garfield didn't get a third movie so the least we can do is give him his Jewish bisexual Spider-Man headcanon. Thank you for your service, Andrew ITSV!Peter B. Parker was clearly envisioned as Jewish. And 616 Parker gets to hang there on the outside of the web, calling himself Jewish, speaking Yiddish, growing up in Forest Hills, but not, strictly, allowed to actually say he's Jewish. So we get to have this debate until Marvel admits some stuff.

[traincat]

I know there's like 0 possibly of marvel ever letting Peter Parker officially be queer, but what about Johnny? Do you think it's possible that he could be confirmed as bi/pan at some point?

Johnny Storm exists in the weirdest canon sexuality grey area known to mankind. Is he constantly referred to as gay? Yeah. Is there evidence that several high profile Marvel creators think he's queer? Yes. Marjorie Liu confirmed that the intent in her run in Dark Wolverine was that there was a sexual relationship between him and Akihiro. Kurt Busiek retweeted an article I wrote that explicitly discussed the homosexual subtext of Johnny's character. Dan Slott reportedly wanted to write Johnny and Wyatt in a romantic relationship, which is believable if you look at the beginning of his run, but was told no. (Slott's written gay relationships before in Amazing Spider-Man, so I wouldn't find this so surprising.) And John Byrne wrote this:

(FF #251) John Byrne I desperately want to study you in a lab.

But is Johnny canonically anything but 100% straight? No, not officially. Marvel, the conglomerate, officially views Johnny as heterosexual, and if the Dan Slott thing is true even recently blocked an attempt at having Johnny come out. If this is true, it's most likely because of the new movie, because let's be honest, corporate Marvel does not care about Johnny Storm on the same level it cares about Spider-Man or the Punisher or Iron Man.

Because let's be honest. This goes deep. And it's been going on a long time. The above John Byrne panel is not the only example. There is a long-running thread of homophobic comments targeting Johnny running through 616 canon.

(Hulk vs Thing: Hard Knocks #3) "Light in the loafers" is slang for a gay man, for anyone who doesn't know.

(Dark Reign: Zodiac #2. I don't recommend reading this, by the way, not even if you're going deep down the Johnny Sexuality Well, but for the record Johnny, despite not being canonically gay, literally gets gaybashed in this comic.)

(FF #151) Does it get more blatant than a character named "Mahkizmo" referring to Johnny as "an effeminate"? Someone get me Gerry Conway on the phone, I need to know what he was thinking when he wrote this. (I know what Gerry Conway was thinking because Gerry Conway is a very good and very intentional writer.)

Then there's Ben's repeated teasing about Johnny's "crush" on Spider-Man, referring to them as "love boids" and so on. This is friendlier than the above comments, but then, if we assume Johnny is queer, Ben would know about it. He certainly knew what was going on with Johnny and Akihiro.

(Daken: Dark Wolverine #4) "Got what he came for, right?" Real double entendre here, since "what he came for" is both a weapon from Reed and, clearly, sex with Johnny.

The posing here is not subtle, even before you factor in that Marjorie Liu, who co-wrote this series along with Daniel Way, confirmed on social media that the relationship was meant to be read as sexual. (So you can probably add Way to the list of writers who think Johnny is queer, too.)

In fact, I'd say that Liu and Way depict the whole family as knowing about Johnny's sexuality and about the relationship.

(Daken: Dark Wolverine #4)

So if Johnny is in the closet, the way this issue frames it, he's only in the closet to the public. He's not in the closet to his family.

(Deadline #1) "All right, Storm, who were you with last night: Britney? Christina? Eminem?" in reference to Johnny getting caught "with a bottle in one hand and a blonde in another." So he's not doing a great job on that front, either.

Then there's Johnny's tendency, despite the perception of him as a womanizer, to look incredibly uncomfortable when he's kissed by a woman -- even a woman he purportedly has romantic interests in. Take, for example, the following panels:

(FF #562) He certainly is just standing there while Psionics, his one-time bad girl fling, kisses him and invites him to come see her again. Which he doesn't do, by the way. The next time he sees Psionics, she'll kill his close family friend Alyssa Moy right in front of him. Great!

(FF #259) Literally running away from Sharon Selleck. Now, we can say that he just wasn't attracted to her, which is true -- he was very ardently pursuing her roommate, Julie DeAngelo. Except.

(FF #263) That's certainly some kind of posture when she kisses him, and of course as soon as she kisses him, he's "over her."

There's more examples of this, too, where Johnny has a pre-existing connection with a woman only for him to completely freeze up or lean away from her when he's kissed, with no follow through on his part. (This is part of the reason I personally headcanon him as gay and not bi, but that's besides the point.) And it's a totally separate issue from the other longrunning thread of him being kissed as a form of assault. Which also happens. Like a lot. "Johnny Storm" and "consent issues" are basically synonymous at this point, which again is really interesting if we're looking at this from the perspective of Johnny and sexuality, since most of these incidents involve women as the perpetrators.

(Most. Not all. Dark Reign: Zodiac definitely implies some things, and I think it's interesting that Akihiro initiates his connection to the Fantastic Four by shooting Johnny through the thigh with an arrow.)

I've mentioned this before, but again, for a character who has the reputation that Johnny has developed, both in and out of universe, it is deeply bizarre that he does not have sex scenes. He doesn't have them. Peter Parker has sex scenes. Kinky sex scenes! There is zero doubt in my mind that that Peter Parker is attracted to women. I can't even show you Johnny Storm having vanilla missionary honeymoon lovemaking that fades to black. Whenever they want to show you he's had sex, it is always in the aftermath, and he is rarely having a great time about it. What's up with that, Marvel! I know, but do you!

Then there's Unstable Molecules: Fantastic Four, which exists in a metatextual area -- it's a fictionalized account of the "real people" who inspired the Fantastic Four, the story of four people rapidly barreling towards a disastrous dinner party that would be witnessed by two comic book creators. And it's Johnny is definitely queer.

(Unstable Molecules #3) "Johnny, it is the fiery night, and you are a holy flaming flower." The extras for Unstable Molecules even include a love poem written by the beatnik who calls him "a holy flaming flower" that is definitely supposed to be about Johnny.

So that's the grey area. You have all of this content that either implies or occasionally outright states that Johnny is not straight. But according to Marvel, the actual publisher and company, Johnny is straight. Personally, I don't like saying things are canon if they aren't explicitly 100% confirmed canon, but the wealth of evidence here is so substantial that I make an exception. It's just a matter of when Marvel the actual company is going to admit it.

(Fantastic Four: Marvel Snapshots #1)

[traincat]

Your tags for this post are cracking me up “to be fair he did canonically eat her out afterward —-“

A man who eats!⭐️

Link: https://www.tumblr.com/traincat/817521618247172096/traincat-does-peter-actually-do-a-pepe-le-pew

"Now, "monsieur," what was that about... dessert?" (Amazing Spider-Man #298)

There was that whole debacle about whether Batman goes down, but we don't have to ask that question with Spider-Man. We know he does. He's enthusiastically said it on page. It's really funny because there are characters where you can go their entire history without knowing that much about their sex lives, and then there's Peter Parker.

The Venus butterfly mentioned here, which like, credit to Michelinie for getting this one into the pages, honestly, is an oral sex technique. Michelinie was probably inspired by an episode of LA Law that mentioned (though never described) this technique. The writer of that episode claims she made it up, but the Venus butterfly later appeared in the 1988 book The One Hour Orgasm, and had been mentioned previously in the 1969 book The Sensuous Woman. So, like. Good for Mary Jane.

"If you weren't so good in the sack you'd be completely useless." (ASM #606)

[traincat]

one of the defining things for Spider-Man comics for me is that Peter used to be sooooooo casually physical with everyone in his life. the chin touch. the hair touch. the lift hug. arms around shoulders, hugs, there's just this very easy physicality to the character that's been missing lately and for me it's such a staple of his character. it's the easy intimacy of it and the language of physical touch.

[traincat]

“His ability to pull perfect tens by just standing there and being irritating should be studied in a lab.”

Listen, can we talk? Cause it really does. I guarantee if you ask him how in the world did you do that he legitimately won’t be able to give you a reason, much less tell you how it happened. He’s just as bewildered as the rest of us are. No, he’s not ugly, stupid, fighting above his weight or anything like that —he’s not a degenerate.

But at the same time, I could see somebody possibly thinking “Jesus this guy can kind of wear on the nerves a bit, but he’s still…interesting”

Parker luck lol

So real talk this is one of my favorite exchanges I've ever written:

“I’m trying to figure out how to ask someone out,” Peter said, idly staring at the ceiling. He lobbed the stress ball at it again, catching it without so much as a glance. Harry snorted. “Stand around a coffee shop being aloof and disheveled until some supermodel trips over you. That always worked for you in college.” “I don’t remember it working like that,” Peter said. “You wouldn’t,” Harry snorted, and then immediately assaulted Peter with what he claimed was “actual work” for the “company he was responsible for.” (“The air quotes are so juvenile, Pete.”)

(From Go Out and Find Ourselves a Home, Parker Industries era Spideytorch.)

Because like I legitimately don't think Peter knows what he's doing, but it is observable when you're reading comics. So two things that I think are really important: The first is that Peter is a gigantic flirt, and the second is that he's actually a really good partner. Let's tackle the flirting first.

He flirts constantly. He flirts all the time, with everyone, and he has done this from the very beginning of his canon. Like, as soon as Peter had a little bit of confidence in himself, he started flirting.

THIS IS SEVEN ISSUES IN. "If you keep using that cool perfume, Betty, I might break down and tell you about it some day!" "Here, rest your head on my shoulder, blue eyes, and let's enjoy the silence!" "Nothing, baby... for at least an hour!" SEVEN ISSUES. And he will continue to be a total flirt because he's good at it and he enjoys it beyond even as a romantic thing but as a banter thing. There's a verbal give and take that Peter really enjoys, and you see it show up in fights and you see it show up in flirting.

"Aw, come on -- you know you're the only girl I ever loved." (ASM #143)

"Good afternoon, Maude. Looking beautiful as always." "Oh Peter, you lie beautifully, darling, have ever since the ninth grade, so don't stop." (ASM v2 #55)

He's such a flirt, and he's also fun. Like, I think that's something a lot of the more recent "banter" misses -- that the exchange between Peter and other characters should be fun, and that's where a lot of his charm comes from.

(Peter Parker #78)

It's a little bit of a cliche, but there is something very charming about a guy who can joke with you and make you laugh, and that's what Peter has to embody in his personal relationships. The quipping can't only be for fights, that's not any fun. I don't think it's a big secret that I'm a fan of the majority of Peter's canon relationships (and a handful of non-canon ones), but it's because they're genuinely fun -- and he's half of that dynamic. These relationships wouldn't be as dynamic and enjoyable if he wasn't a good character in his own right. He has to be able to stand up against these other characters, to be charming and charismatic and a strong character. And that plays into the second part, which is that he's a really good partner. Peter likes being in a relationship, and he's good at it. Even juggling it with his other responsibilities, he is a romantic person, and that's a big part of him.

(Spectacular Spider-Man #194)

So unfortunately, I do think a big part of it is his personality. He's funny and charming and makes people feel safe, and that goes for a lot. But yeah, I also think canon is pretty clear that he's also hot, and it's pretty clear about that early on.

And a certain amount of that is confidence, sure, but it's clear he is good looking. I don't think he has to be a movie star by any means, I think he can just be a normal looking guy with a big presence (and the kind of muscles that come from webslinging every day), but yeah, traditionally, he dresses pretty well, and he's generally interested in presenting himself well. I don't like the word degenerate, anon, sorry, but to use a different word -- yeah, he's not a schlub. But there's a big difference between "good looking average guy" and someone like Johnny or Felicia or Mary Jane, so I do think it's fun that on the surface level it might look like a "who, that guy?" situation. Famous Actor/Model/Socialite and Their Partner, That Fucking Guy Over There.