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Anthony J Lombardi
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 12 January 2005
Location: United States
Posts: 9410
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| Posted: 09 July 2015 at 1:02pm | IP Logged | 1
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After JB responds I would like to know what everyone else thinks as well.
John all the conversations that have been going on in regards to Spider-Man. Brought my train of thought back to the subject of continuity.
Peter Parker is a 16 year old high schooler. He will always remain that. But as he goes on his adventures as Spider-Man he'll have many adventures. After each adventure he'll obviously gain more knowledge.
So is it possible for a character to have growth with altering that character from what it was intended to be?
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
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| Posted: 09 July 2015 at 1:17pm | IP Logged | 2
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Fictional characters do not gain knowledge. Or wealth. Or weight. Or anything else, unless the writer(s) want them to. This simple fact seems lost on so many people, fans and pros alike. I recall one writer crying in his soup about how difficult it had been for him to write a particularly brutal scene. When asked why on Earth he DID, then, he said "Because that's what happened." Baloney. It happened because he WANTED it to happen. And if he HADN'T wanted it to happen, IT WOULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED. I used to argue a lot with Chris Claremont on this point. "Everybody should know who the X-Men really are by now," he would say. And I would respond that there is no "by now" in this kind of serial fiction. Our Hero has the most shattering, traumatic day of his life and next issue we reset. The Hero can make occasional references to his trauma (think Cap and Bucky), but it does not CHANGE him. Part of the reason for this is, of course, NEW READERS. Remember them? They needed to be able to dive into an issue and be immediately swept along, not to have to pause every third page to ask Who? When? What? And, as I have said so many, many times, when the readers start to notice the characters aren't changing, it's time for THEM to change, not the characters.
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Anthony J Lombardi
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| Posted: 09 July 2015 at 2:38pm | IP Logged | 3
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Thanks for the answer JB. I wondered how events that happened in the story. Like say the death of Gwen Stacy should be handled. Should it be different than say Uncle Ben's death.
Your response about the new readers makes me see that Uncle Ben's death is essential to the story. Gwen's death while an important part of the history. Is information that new readers don't need to know.
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Michael Penn
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| Posted: 09 July 2015 at 4:51pm | IP Logged | 4
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Peter Parker is a 16 year old high schooler. He will always remain that. But as he goes on his adventures as Spider-Man he'll have many adventures. After each adventure he'll obviously gain more knowledge.
***
The most "knowledge" a superhero character should exhibit of his past adventures is that he had them -- and even then it's not necessarily necessary. I think it's okay if a new reader comes along and has a first issue that says "The Evil-Guy Strikes Again!" As for the details of how, where, why, and most especially when he previously combated the superhero? Less is definitely more, I would say.
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Bill Guerra
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| Posted: 09 July 2015 at 5:00pm | IP Logged | 5
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"Gwen's death while an important part of the history. Is information that new readers don't need to know."
I agree! Gwen died before I was born, so I NEVER had any emotional connections to her. Yet I always felt I was hammered over the head with her ghost and being pushed into caring for her and it never worked. She was dead and buried several years before I picked up my first Spider-Man comic and she should have remained so.
I still feel her death wasn't any character growth moment for Spider-Man but a "stuck in a rut" moment instead. Every time I see a new version of Gwen Stacy pop up, I roll my eyes.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
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| Posted: 09 July 2015 at 6:25pm | IP Logged | 6
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I agree! Gwen died before I was born, so I NEVER had any emotional connections to her. Yet I always felt I was hammered over the head with her ghost and being pushed into caring for her and it never worked. She was dead and buried several years before I picked up my first Spider-Man comic and she should have remained so. •• The death of Gwen was the first issue I bought upon my return to comics. She meant nothing to me, and the Goblin barely any more.
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Anthony J Lombardi
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| Posted: 09 July 2015 at 6:29pm | IP Logged | 7
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Gwen was history by the time I began reading. Mary Jane was the one in the picture. I wasn't impacted by her death either. The only thought I gave to her was that like Uncle Ben and Bucky she should have remained dead.
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Doug Centers
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| Posted: 09 July 2015 at 7:08pm | IP Logged | 8
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Coincidently the first Spider-Man issue I bought was #144 , the beginningof the Gwen Stacy clone storyline. Just someone from Peter's past I had no history with so I just rolled along with the story.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
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| Posted: 10 July 2015 at 3:12am | IP Logged | 9
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Howard Mackie has commented on many an occasion that killing Gwen was one of the biggest mistakes Marvel made. Had she and Peter just broken up, a la Betty or Liz, today she would hold no greater significance in the mythos than do those ladies.Killing her, tho, drew a permanent line thru Parker's life. Everything from then on was measured as Pre- and Post her death. Mind you, it did not have to be that way, but Marvel had been virtually taken over by the fans-turned-pro who wanted to plug themselves into that "classic" story, and also pander to the anal fans who want every issue to be a cascade of footnotes.
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Michael Penn
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| Posted: 10 July 2015 at 4:41am | IP Logged | 10
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My experience at that time as an active comicbook reader of the Gwen (& Goblin) Death story is that, although it packed emotional punch in a couple of issues, in terms of the ongoing series it rather came and went. But I was a kid back then. I was not a teenager. I was not a college student. I was not an adult. Others kids like me read the story and moved on. Other kids came along after it and were not subjected to a constant barrage of GWEN IS DEAD OH NO! ruminations. A couple of years later, they came up with that Gwen Clone gimmick. And that too, in the context of the "Amazing Spider-Man" series, as we kid readers experienced it buying and reading the comicbook, was... okay, you told the tale, you moved on. It seems to me that only many years after those original 1970s stories were those actually very few comics featuring Gwen's death and clone referred to as "sagas." They were not that, and the entire Gwen subject was not that for us kids! So, although there was indeed before-after line now in Peter Parker's life, it really did not seem such a bright light back in the 1970s, nothing at all like the supernova that the Death of Phoenix seemed to be a decade later.
If you go back and read the issues of "Amazing Spider-Man" from the 70s you will, of course, find references to the late Gwen, but apart from the brief feint of the Gwen Clone, we kid readers were not smashed over the head with Dead Gwen issue after issue after issue, for years to come. Killing Gwen (accidentally) opened the barn door, but other comicbooks much later (deliberately!) set that damn thing on fire and drove all the animals out.
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John Byrne
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| Posted: 10 July 2015 at 5:54am | IP Logged | 11
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A lot of the recycling of the Gwen tale comes from some writers wanting to be "naughty." Hey, the Code is gone! The leash is off! We can fill the books with sex and violence!Somewhere, Frederic Wertham smiles.
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Michael Penn
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| Posted: 10 July 2015 at 6:21am | IP Logged | 12
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JB, I stopped reading comicbooks a little after you began on the FF, so I don't know the answer to this: how often, if ever, did your work reference the death of Jean Grey? (I suspect it's little to none.)
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Topic Closed)
