No deals with the devil though







As you may know, Stan was the one who decided they should get married back in the day. (at least for the newspaper strip though perhaps for both strip and comic).

That really is just how Marvel should have done it in the first place.

So much simpler, and no deals with the devil. Just a switch, and done.

I agree.

Let's face it, they would have lost fans no matter what, so better to just do it nice, simple and clean.

You're right. Although they wanted to be able to say it happened. That this wasn't a Crisis/MOS like event.

+1

Could not agree more.

Does anyone get this strip in their paper? We've never had any superhero strips, and few adventure strips, other than Prince Valient.

Didn't even realize they were together.

the NY Daily News carried it throughout my childhood in the 80s and well into the 90s. At some point, they stopped around 2000 or so.

If you followed the strip, you would. It was there Stan first decided to marry them, and every strip focused on their marriage, with little supervillains. More romance and low level crime.

I was joking that Stan and Spider-Man were married.

I've read the strip before as well. It's awful. I do love Stan though.

Now that is perfect Comic Book writing.

I didn't know that strip was still coming out.

Thats how to do it right.
And welcome back Rob.

I'm just glad he ain't married anymore.

I agree the strip solution is the best and Mephisto was dumb, but let's face it: most fans needed an explanation. If it happened like it did in the strip, there would have been months and months of speculation and head-scartching online.

Hey... maybe that would have been better for Marvel. DON'T give an explanation right away... drop some hints... whip fans into a speculating frenzy. Of course, this would have interfered with the great (a relative term) stories they are telling now in ASM.

Don't know who thought Mephisto was a good idea.

Nope, they wanted one. And there would have been months and months of speculation and head-scratching online whatever they'd done (there has been, in fact), because that's what the internet is there for. And since there was no single explanation which was ever going to satisfy them - whatever they'd gone with, including forgetting the whole thing and leaving Peter and MJ married, was going to piss a reasonably-large portion of the fanbase off - something like this would have been the least-worst option. A simple, honest ripping-off-the-band-aid moment, rather than stringing the whole ugly mess out over months' worth of story which absolutely no-one - not even the people who wanted the change to take place - was going to be happy with.

Pete/MJ still married was the option to piss off the least amount of fans IMO.

Well, it wasn't a matter of pissing people off or not pissing them off, it was a matter of putting the book on the footing editorial deemed best for the character; the best creative state for the Spider-man. Editorial decided that was an unmarried Peter Parker.

I happen to agree with that decision, even if the way they did it totally sucked.

If pissing off or not pissing off fans is going to be the main concern for big decisions, might as well just guide thr book through online polls or something.

"Should Hobgoblin be brought back? Yes/no"

Yes.

They pretty much do this, from what I've read.

Geezus, "need" / "want" semantics. Whatever. I think I'm using those inter-changably.

You are correct that the online crap has been there regardless. Point taken.

I have no answers or suggestions for the "how" of the break-up, just that I'm happy there is no more marriage. It bothers a lot of people. Not me.