So last night I was rereading a chunk of the original Spider-Man comics for reasons, and ended up rambling a bit about why I think Mary Jane Watson is great when she's written well and how much it sucks that modern writers and readers have both more or less forgotten this. Well, that hornet was still buzzing in my brain today, and so I'm gonna ramble a little more about it. Specifically, I want to talk about how Peter and Mary Jane's relationship is thematically rich and meaningful on a level none of the other relationships in the book reach, and why I think it's not something that should be tossed aside. Ok? Ok.
The original run of The Amazing Spider-Man is a story about masks, not just literally in the sense that it stars masked superheroes and supervillains, but also thematically. Everyone in this comic wears at least one figurative mask in their day to day life, and the conflicts they deal with all stem from the different parts of themselves they're hiding, and how others misinterpret them as a result of those hidden facets.
I think ti's notable that Spider-Man is one of the only big name superheroes who is completely covered from head to to - you cannot see his skin, his hair, not even his mouth or his eyes. As the Spider-verse movies have popularized, a core part of Spider-Man is that anyone could be under that costume. There's a hopeful meaning to that - that any one of us could choose to be heroic and selfless, that being a hero isn't something you're born with but a choice you actively make with the power you're given.
But there's also a dark flip side to it - anyone could hide behind that mask. A truly evil person could masquerade as Spider-Man and use the good deeds tied to his name to obscure evil ones - and this happens on multiple occasions in the comic, just to make sure you realize it! A mask can help you be a hero, but it also means no one can truly know you, and thus no one can trust you, and thus even the most heroic person could easily be painted as a villain without any plausible defense for themselves. Masks can make us strong, but there are powerful drawbacks to them.
Many of Spider-Man's iconic villains are defined by the two conflicting masks they wear. They're introduced with a beloved mask, a persona that people respect and even adore: a genius scientist, a helpful university professor, a rich and influential businessman, etc. But beneath that beloved, respected facade is a second mask, one filled with dark ambition and the cruelty it takes to achieve it. Dr. Otto Octavius goes from a respected scientist to a crime lord with robot arms, Curt Connors gets so desperate in his struggle to regrow his lost arm that he fully succumbs to his base, primal desires and becomes a literal wild animal, Norman Osborn decides the cutthroat world of business isn't enough and starts literally killing the competition as the Green Goblin.
The mask the villains wear doesn't even have to be convincing. It is an open secret that Wilson Fisk is a mafia boss and the Kingpin of crime in New York. His monstrosity is so apparent that it even bleeds into his character design - Kingpin doesn't have human proportions, but rather the massive, ogre-ish proportions given to explicitly monstrous characters like Juggernaut, the Hulk, and the Thing. Yet everyone pretends they don't notice, just as they pretend they don't know he's a mob boss - because while it's an open secret, he's kept it just well enough that no one can pin his crimes on him, and so everyone has to pretend his mask of being a wealthy philanthropist with shady connections is real.
With this in mind, is it any wonder that so many people in the universe of this comic don't trust Spider-Man? This is a world where grinning murderers have hid behind good deeds all the time, so all the stories about Spider-Man saving people could absolutely be no different than Kingpin's donations to charity, Dr. Octopus's scientific advancements, Curt Connors's teaching career, or Norman Osborn's philanthropy. The fact that Spider-Man hides himself so much immediately draws distrust - because if someone like Kingpin can hide a thousand atrocities while still showing his face to the public, what kind of monstrous deeds would make a person decide no one can know who they are?
But, again, everyone in Spider-Man's story wears a mask. More specifically, every character is introduced with a big, loud and ostensibly simple personality. Flash Thompson is a jerk jock bully, Liz Allen is a vain cheerleader, Betty Brant is a mousy secretary, J. Jonah Jameson is a loudmouthed, penny-pinching skinflint who uses his newspaper as a megaphone for his personal biases. As the comic goes on, though, we're shown that these characters are more nuanced than their first impressions - even when, frustratingly, the other characters often don't see that nuance.
To take Flash Thompson as an example - over the first couple dozen issues of The Amazing Spider-Man, we slowly see that Flash's bullying of Peter isn't as straight forward as "jerk jock picks on wimpy nerd boy," which is what it is so often reduced to in adaptations. Yes, from Peter's point of view that's what their dynamic is, but Flash doesn't see Peter as a wimpy nerd - he sees Peter as a stuck-up snob, someone who doesn't (seem to) work very hard but succeeds in school anyway, someone who is constantly blowing people off when they reach out to him to do, apparently, nothing at all. From Flash's POV, Peter is a selfish, lazy bastard who treats everyone else like dirt because they're not naturally smart like him, so he tries to deflate Peter's ego about his brain - which, in turn, reinforces Peter's idea that Flash is just a meat-headed asshole that he can write off, reinforcing Flash's conception of Peter as a stuck up snob, and on and on it goes. Neither one of them can see beyond the mask they've put up.
One of the funniest bits of irony in the comic is that Flash Thompson loves Spider-Man, because Spider-Man is the mask Peter wears that shows all the noble qualities he has that are so lacking in his Peter Parker mask. Spider-Man is brave, outgoing, has a great sense of humor, and reaches out to help others, all of which are things Flash values. We're shown that if Flash could see the entirety of who Peter is, he would like him - and the same is likely true if Peter could see all of who Flash is.
But that's not the case with everyone, which is the reason all these characters put up masks in the first place. All three of Peter's first love interests eventually catch on that there is more to Peter than there appears to be - that beneath his standoffish nature and tendency to disappear for long stretches of time is a person who has a strong moral compass and a good heart, and their relationship is in part an effort to find out what else is beneath the surface. But all three also end up vocally professing hatred for Spider-Man - even Gwen Stacy, who Peter gets closest to out of all three, ends up hating his alter-ego, and arguably with a LOT more passion than either Betty Brant or Liz Allen. Gwen thinks Spider-Man is responsible for her father's death - it's pretty hard to overcome that, and Peter feels certain that if he tried to tell her the truth, her hatred of the Spider-Man part of him would win out over her affection for his other mask.
The point of the mask is protection. It might be to protect you from the consequences of your evil deeds, or it might be to protect you from being hurt by people when they discover your vulnerabilities, or, in the case of Peter Parker, it protects the ones you love from whatever hatred you may incur by trying to do the right thing. Peter Parker the civilian has loved ones that can be hurt, but Spider-Man could be anyone, and no one knows for sure who he is, and that means no one knows how to hurt people connected to him. The mask keeps people safe.
But a mask prevents trust and understanding. A mask isolates you. And so long as Peter is wearing his masks - pretending that he and Spider-Man aren't just parts of the same person - he is never understood, never seen, never truly loved, and that loneliness increasingly becomes unbearable for him.
The events leading up to the death of Gwen Stacy and directly following it are one of the cruelest escalations of misery in the entire comic. Gwen's dad dies, Gwen takes it extremely hard and decides to go on break with Peter so she can leave town and get away from any talk about Spider-Man for a while. Harry Osborn, Peter's closest friend and roommate, is becoming increasingly unstable and withdrawing from everybody, in part because his own dad is a raging asshole (and secretly the Green Goblin). Curt Connors relapsed into the Lizard, another scientist working at the college turns himself into a "living vampire" (yes I'm talking about Morbius), everything keeps going to shit and it's only going to get worse.
Which is where we need to talk about Mary Jane Watson.
Introduced back when Peter was still in high school, Mary Jane was never meant to be a serious love interest in the comic. She was a complication, a temptation, a character who was meant to stir shit up from time to time and little else. And that, ironically, is what led to her being the best love interest in the comic. The previous three - Liz Allen, Betty Brant, and Gwen Stacy - were all designed to fit a pre-concieved notion of what a love interest in a superhero comic like this has to do. That's why each of them loves Peter but hates Spider-Man - there's an inherent drama to "I love this person but she hates my alter-ego!" that the comics are keen to exploit.
But Mary Jane wasn't meant to be a love interest - she was never a serious candidate in the race for Peter's heart. She was meant to be a temptation, someone who seems appealing in the moment but is pushed away for the more "serious" contender for Peter's heart. The Veronica to Gwen's Betty. if you will. The goofus to their gallant. So there's no need for her to have that seemingly necessary conflict of interest - no need for her to love one of Peter's masks while hating the other.
And you know what? More or less from the start, Mary Jane likes both masks of Peter Parker, which in turn makes a lot of sense, because, like everyone else, Mary Jane is wearing a mask herself - but unlike most of the rest of the cast, she's also very good at seeing through the masks other people wear.
Mary Jane pretends she is a shallow party girl who just wants to have a good time as much as possible and never commit to anything deep or serious. She likes to dance, she likes to flirt, she likes to date a lot of different people and stay with none of them, she lives life to the fullest and has no cares in the world. That is the mask she wears, the one she tries to make everyone see, and she is SO successful at it. Everyone assumes she is just as vapid and shallow as she wants them to think she is. Everyone assumes MJ is a great person to have at a party and a terrible person to have around when shit gets real.
Just like everyone thinks Peter Parker is a brilliant but lazy snob.
But it's a mask. It's a mask for Peter and it's a mask for Mary Jane. Mary Jane knows how to craft a convincing mask because she's had to for survival - she's a victim of domestic abuse, learning how to get people to leave her alone has been vital to her existence. And she's learned to see beneath the masks other people project for the same reason - reading other people better than they can read her is kind of Mary Jane's whole deal. She's essentially pulling Columbo's big trick on everybody, letting them think she's dumb and lacking in substance all while she studies them closely to see if they're secretly a monster in disguise.
Like Flash, she sees and believes in the heroics that Spider-Man has performed. And like Liz, Betty, and Gwen, she sees that Peter clearly has more going on than the aloof persona he puts on around others. Unlike any of them, she investigates Peter's depth cautiously, keeping him at arms length just as he keeps her, yet still watching close. She learns that Peter, for all his apparently flightiness and irresponsibility, is nonetheless extremely trustworthy when shit goes down. When others think he's being a brooding snob, she realizes that he's covering deep grief or anxiety. She sees him better than anyone else in the comic does, and she's respectful enough to keep quiet about it. After all, she knows better than anyone that you wear a mask for a reason.
When their shared social group starts breaking down in the leadup to Gwen's death, Mary reaches out to Peter on a number of occasions - always subtly and quietly, but still, she reaches out. She tries to tell him that Harry Osborn's behavior is worrying her, but Peter's not sure if it's her flirty mask or a sign of something real - for all his virtues, Peter is not as good at reading others as MJ is.
Then the big horrible thing happens - Gwen Stacy dies, and soon after so does Norman Osborn. Peter goes home to what should be an empty apartment - Harry isn't staying in when his dad is dead, after all - but finds MJ there, having waited for hours to see either of them because she's shook up by Gwen's death. Peter, still seeing only her mask, chews her out, telling her to stop pretending she isn't shallow and careless.
And in response, MJ shows a maturity no one believes she has, and completely drops her mask. She makes the choice to reveal her vulnerability, her real, full self, because that's what's needed for her and Peter to heal, consequences be damned.
From that point on, Peter begins seeing more and more of who MJ is behind the mask, even when she tries to put it up again. And MJ sees more of who Peter is in full - not just the mask of Peter Parker, but the entire man behind it. Once Harry Osborn fully crashes out and breaks it off with MJ, she fights her own instinct to avoid commitment and begins dating Peter, surprising herself with how seriously she takes it.
Eventually they retcon it so that Mary Jane always knew Peter was Spider-Man - i.e. that she's known his secret since high school, and kept it all this time. And it's one of the most successful retcons in comics because MJ had been written in such a way where it would not be surprising that she did! She always understood both of Peter's masks better than anyone else - why wouldn't she put two and two together and realize they're the same man?
This is the thematic reason why she is the best love interest in Spider-Man, and really one of the best characters in the entire cast of the story. In a story about masks - the facets of ourselves we let people see, the facets we hide, and the facets they choose to see to the exclusion of all other sides of us - Mary Jane is a character who is sharp enough to see that there's more than just the mask people put up, and the first one who's brave enough to let her mask slip when she needs it. In a world full of people hiding themselves, she takes the risk to show the truth when lives are on the line - and, while it takes a while for Peter to reciprocate, he eventually did the same. This whole theme of deception and compartmentalization is taken to its logical conclusion with their relationship, and with each other they finally find someone who can handle the whole truth of who they are.
That's the most poignant relationship you could create in a story like Spider-Man's, and it wouldn't be possible without Mary Jane Watson.
