Wondrously Wierd World

Confession #2351

“Spinneret >>>>>> Spider-Gwen”

Unless MJ siphons off more of Peter’s power.

Then again Gwen was nearly beaten by cop Frank and some baseball bats, so it seems the “Spider-God” wasn’t very kind to her.

However pre-Venom MJ vs Spider-Gwen would depend upon how her suit works.

Does it work by giving her half of Peter’s powers?

Less than half?

Or does it literally give him some of Peter’s powers as Peter himself has developed them.

That is to say does MJ have half the proportional strength of a spider and that strength is dependent upon her own body proportions.

Or does she siphon off Peter’s literal strength so she’s getting half the super strength of the guy who could kick Fire Lord’s ass.

Because if it’s the latter MJ takes it.

As you said Spider-Gwen struggled against Punisher.

But even if MJ had HALF of Peter’s powers you’d have to factor in Peter’s feats up until at least like 1994 at which point even with half of that power MJ could easily defeat Spider-Gwen.

Like pre-1994 Peter was able to smack down the Rhino who’s battled the Hulk. 

Even at half strength that’s going to make her ridiculously powerful.

I didn’t consider her with Venom, mostly because I’d forgotten that story-line. And you tend to debate using the current version of that character, which would be after the unfortunate time-skip.

Doesn’t Spider-Gwen have a  symbiote now, or something? I try to avoid that series like a plague so I’m not sure. I assume that if you did want to MJ witht he symbiote the far comparison would be Gwenom.

I’m not sure how much wait I’d give to experience ordinarily, but given Spider-Gwen is Spider-Gwen it’d likely be more than enough.

I have no idea how it works, it’s not something they’ve ever bothered to explain. As I said it makes scaling Peter and MJ in RYV very difficult because it’s hard to tell how disadvantaged either of them is at any given moment.

As far as then be proportional, I’d say they definitely aren’t. They’re entirely dependent on Pete.

I’ve always just assumed it was half, as we can see clear examples when she takes more than “her share”, significantly weakening Peter.

Such as when they were fighting Mysterio.

Which makes sense, considering MJ is just using adapted Regent Tech.

I don’t really count Firelord, Peter has some insane high ends. I mean when you’re company mascot, it’s going to happen. Can’t have him looking bad.

Well yes, Spider-Gwen is definitely one of the weaker Spider-People of current comics. Even though I think her official Marvel Bio has her as “10 tonner” (Pete’s standard) as opposed to the typical 5 given to female Spiders.

Just more reasons feats > statements.

(And now that you point it out, giving her the same stats as Pete isn’t proportional as Pete is approximately 6 inches taller and weighs 35 pounds more than Gwen does.)

In general she seems to struggle with peak humans, something that would be a joke to Pete.

I know she and Matt haven’t thrown down yet, but I imagine it’ll be the fight of her life. Cementing her on the lower end.

I think it’s probably fair to include at least up to the 90′s, even though it’s hard to know where the timeline “diverged”, we saw that Harry is still dead, at minimum SSM #200 happened, ad we know from the X-Men crossover issues that the CW almost happened.

If we assume the unfortunate events with May still occurred, then we could probably use Pete’s feats from even up to OMD.

But back to the point, even at half with Peter’s abilities she should have Gwen out-classed in every stage from what I recall (when I still get through her series), given all her poor performances I think even a third would be sufficient.

I’m not sure how much of Peter’s movement can be attributed to experience (aside from web-swinging) but she’d certainly have a better basis than Gwen has ever had (unless I consider her “training” from Noir).

It’s really only debatable from a stat standpoint, as in hard stats Gwen is likely higher.

However taking into account feats, it’s easily MJ. Her feats in RYV are probably enough.

Even this, I can’t see Spider-Gwen pulling off. But then again, haven’t seen anything from her as Gwenom.

Though like I mentioned before, a Spinneret respect thread would be pretty cool.

It’s definitely on my to-do list. But yeah, all things consider MJ probably wins. And when it’s a comparison between Gwen and MJ, not an unsurprising result.

Initially I was just thinking of strictly as a “stat v stat”, but looking at it through feats it’s just not even close.

So we’re not allowed to fancast Mary Jane and ship her with MCU Spidey anymore because Homecoming creators decided to put him with a random girl and give her MJ acronym. They even admitted they did it for fun, not because Michelle is new version of actual MJ.

But she is just representative of the problem.

Live action Spider-Man adaptations seem pathologically afraid of giving us anything OTHER than OCs for love interests.

Dunst MJ. Basically an OC with some broad strokes from 616 MJ along with being a high school contemporary of Peter’s like Ult MJ and Liz allan. Has a legitimately good character arc unto herself using MJ’s chosen profession but has none of her personality. Even her abusive Dad and home life serves doesn’t motivate her in the same way. Also she gets taken to a bridge by Norman and is the first love/girlfriend like Gwen and Betty.

Stone Gwen: Basically its Emma Stone. No seriously it’s the actress Emma Stone’s exact personality but imagine she was called Gwen Stacy, was Spider-Man’s first love, had a police officer who died for a Dad and then had like House of M Gwen Stacy’s flanderized science skills combined with everything else from Ultimate Mary Jane…before she is killed by a Goblin.

Jones Felicia: Imagine an assistant to Harry Osborn and now imagine she has Black Cat’s real name and literally nothing else.

Harrier Liz Allan: Comparatively the least bad. Liz at least went to high school with Peter, did like him and parted sorrowfully from him when she left school. But she also wasn’t the Vulture’s daughter or a science nerd. 

Zendaya MJ: Daria mixed with  Ally Sheedy’s character from Breakfast Club who…maybe knows Peter is Spider-Man like from Parallel Lives?

1970s Nick Hammond Spider-Man TV show: Multiple OC love interests who didn’t really stick around but at least they never pretended they were anything other than OCs.

Everyone from the Japanese Spider-Man TV show that later inspired Power Rangers

Like how the fuck out of all these did Bryce Dallas Howard as Gwen Stacy wind up the most faithful?

A blonde woman called Gwen Stacy with an elderly police captain for a Dad who likes Peter and is in his college science classes. She didn’t like Spidey much and she didn’t date Eddie Brock but apart from that she wasn’t anything like an OC.

Dunst’s MJ made her seem too selfish and dependent, with none of MJ’s classic pizzaz, while Emma Gwen was pretty much the Gifted Child of her movie series. 

Although I think, despite the fanboys screeching, that classic comic book MJ can be adapted into the screen. Like, she’s very modern and contemporary, that I feel anybody could appreciate her, even audiences of 2018. She’s funny, she’s flirty, she’s unashamed of her femininity and sexuality, and she’s passionate and determined about her goals and her dreams. She calls Peter out on his crap when he’s bullshitting around, but she also helps him when he’s at his lowest. She overcame abuse on her own. She’s doesn’t need to don a costume or be a scientist to be strong. People would crush on her and at the same time wish to BE like her. She just oozes confidence without being a jerk (Hello Tony).

At the same time though if you are going to take an iconic character like MJ who’s the Lois Lane of Spider-Man’s series at least do her broadly speaking right and not have superficial traits from her.

I don’t think Dunst’s MJ was selfish or too dependent tbh. She was just dealing with some troubling serious issues. In a weird way Raimi invented the best OC Spider-Man love interest with his version of MJ since like comic book Felicia.

Gail Simone herself argued MJ in the silver age was ahead of her time and it’s very, very true. Its weird Lee wrote her so well and then wrote Gwen so bad.

What’s paricularly BS about how fans put Gwen over Mj because of her academics don’t even know that

a) If you study to be an actor you OBVIOUSLY aren’t stupid because you need to get the human mind in order to inhabit it. People don’t give english lit students shit for being shallow or not academic enough but many of the skills to be a decent literary annalist crossover into being a good actor and a good psychologist…speaking of which

b) MJ was a psych major which requires you to read…a lot…

c) Gwen in a Roy Thomas story (one Sony were considering adapting) went to the Savage Land for the express purpose of posing in a bikini. She was literally right there modelling and she did it before MJ ever did.

Amazing Spider-Man #505 

When your company remakes you to be a bratty woke hipster with no personality because “you’re not feminist enough” despite the fact you marched for women’s rights in the 70′s and owned your sexuality.

My part of an art trade with @treehasweapons

I’d time skip a year into the future and introduce the new status quo which would look a lot like the 2004 status quo but with more Bugle stuff.

Redraw of this

 It’s so unoriginal that it’s ripping off THREE DeFalco/Frenz Spider-Girl stories at one. 

 a) Normie Osborn ascends as a new Goblin. 

Check. 

b) A ‘Kid Carnage’ is created by part of the Carnage symbiote breaking away and bonding to a minor? Check. 

c) Norman Osborn powers up to God tier levels via symbiosis? 

Check.

WEIRD SCIENCE CONTINUES!

• Is this the start of Annie Parker’s own clone saga?

• Can Peter and Mary Jane save her from herself?

Okay just….c’mon…

So an ongoing Marvel comic book where there is a predominant focus upon the adventures of Spider-Man and Mary Jane’s teenage daughter has said daughter come into conflict with an apparent clone of herself who’s dominant colour is blue…

Where have I heard this before?

Seriously Marvel/Houser people have already complained the post-time skip stories are too derivative of Spider-Girl now this shit?

I don’t know what’s worse.

The possibility they’re dense enough to not even realise how they’re too similar to Spider-Girl.

Or the possibility that they do know that and they’re just too dense to realise why that’s a BAD thing.

Do they think that they will catch the Spider-Girl fanbase by doing a series about a different teenage daughter of Spider-Man’s?

Because they won’t.

(Take in mind that this is written by a person who likes both Gwen and MJ, and the only person i really dislike here are the obnoxious fans who try to instill their toxic views onto others. So if my comments seem despictive, i’m just writing how I think these men see the characters, rather than how i see them)

Like, Gwen will forever be seen in her extreme fans’ mind as utterly perfect in every sense. Not only is she beautiful and kind, but she’s also super smart and can kick butt. The fans have sorta molded the original Gwen (the sweet, “too good for this sinful earth” girlfriend) with her different adaptations, like Emma Stone’s brilliant scientist and Spider Gwen’s kick-butt drummer, and turned her into this sorta perfect female character that male nerds can all drool over: she can kick butt bc females characters who don’t fight are a disgrace, but at the same time she can be their perfect little waifu who waits hand and foot for them at home with whom they can eat and joke and snark with. This idealized version of Gwen that the fanboys have created in their minds has pretty much all the traits that Nice Guys typically like in girls: Manic Pixie Dream Girls, Action Girls, but can also be good at the home when the time comes (Notice how Gwen, despite all her different personality changes in adaptations, is always romantically linked to Peter? Like she’s forever faithful to him, and you never see her with other love interests?) Male nerds want independent female characters, but not that independent. The female character can fight and be badass, and even single, but if she’s one to date different guys and just not settle with Generic Male Lead, then she’s an evil slut who deserves the scorn of the Earth. So relating to the Maddona / Whore dichotomy, Gwen would be the Madonna: she’s blonde, pure, often alluded as a virgin, utterly devoted to just one guy, and often is overly described without much sexuality. Men idealize her, less for the person she actually is and more what the men expect out of her.

Then there’s Mary Jane, which is where i feel comes a lot of the nerd rage. Setting aside the whole “grrr damsels in distress MAKE ME BLANGRY NO WOMAN EVER SHOULD RECIEVE HELP!” discourse (which again is a fallacy- MJ in the comics wasn’t that much of a damsel as people paint her as, and even so, I feel this attitude really doesn’t help, since it sends out the message that women who are in trapped positions or abused are “useless” for not rescuing themselves), I feel MJ also makes some men insecure because she’s “too” beautiful. Like out of their league, for the schlobby nerds that they are, bc they know deep inside they can’t attract women with their looks and attitude…But instead of correcting themselves, they blame it all on the women “GRR I’M SUCH A NICE GUY WHY DON’T THOSE SLUTS EVER GO OUT WITH ME / MARY JANE IS SUCH A SLUT FOR NOT GOING OUT WITH PETER WHO’S SUCH A NICE GUY AND DOES EVERYTHING FOR HER”. (so yeah, MJ Haters are basically MRAs. Go figure) I figure they dislike MJ for that, because she’s a beautiful and she’s dating a nerd and they’re angry that they can’t have a beautiful model as their waifus (which makes you think, if anything they’d hate PETER for being the nerd stealing their idealized waifu instead of her, but oh well). There’s also Mary Jane’s attitude and casual way of life, which i feel doesn’t sit well with many men. I think her carefree joker attitude may not be to many men’s like, considering some men always like the idea of “the man” being the one with the jokes, and the little woman just giggling and going along to what her man says. A woman wearing the pants in a relationship? Heaven forbid! (However they do like that Emma Stone’s Gwen was snarky, an element that belonged to MJ more in the comics than it did to Gwen, hmmm…).

And there’s the thing of sexuality, much like how it’s related to Gwen. Whereas Gwen is always presented mostly being Peter-sexual, at least in the comics and other adaptations, Mary Jane has been shown to have a carefree life. Like she never cheated on Peter, but if he started being an ass, she’d go and leave him, she wasn’t one to take his bullcrap. And when they weren’t together, she was also going on dates with other guys, and she had fun with it. Men REALLY dislike this aspect of women, claiming how it’s “sluttish” to have dated more than your childhood sweet heart, or to not have married your high school crush, yet they have no problem when Peter does the same fucking thing when he’s single (Felicia, Carlie, Cindy?). Some people have this idea that after high school/college you can’t fall in love ever again, or you can’t love more than one person in your life (this isn’t even just a men thing, i’ve seen women think this and devalue other women for it and it saddens me), and i feel that’s emotionally stunted manchildren who have been feed to believe life occurs like a disney movie or other kid’s media talking. It’s really toxic to have this idea and you’re basically screwing yourself if you think you won’t ever have another girlfriend after Sally ditched you at the prom when you were seventeen. I dunno, as someone who’s had more than one partner in my life and has fallen in love often with different people, I dislike the idea  that i’m somehow “less” of a woman just because i didn’t marry my first boyfriend after finishing high school. 

So MJ in this category would fit well with the Whore description: she’s too hot for nerds’ sake and the fact  that she also likes the bachelor life is a big no-no to these people.

Or to be slightly more charitable it was more like in the silver age Gwen was the ‘good girl’ and MJ was the ‘bad girl’ whilst MJ took the latter role in the 1980s when Felicia showed up.

Of course this is a skewing of history because was 100% NOT what you’d stereotypically regard as ‘the girl next door type’ when she debuted. She sort of evolved into that…unfortunately. When Mj debuted it was more like they were both Veronica’s (within a Betty/Veronica dynamic) but to different degrees.

What then happened though was that Gwen got deified after her death and as a result of that (and her ‘personality problems’ before her death) she evolved into what some people have called Spider-Man’s Sainted Virgin Princess Martyr. That is to say her death and the tragic end to her and Peter’s love story so defined who she was that everything else about her got forgotten and subsumed into that, reducing her to a blank slate beyond her death and the fact that Peter loved her.

As a result I think a lot of fans (I suspect mostly male ones but female ones too though probably for different reasons) subconsciously filled in the gaps of her personality and her relationship with Peter by projecting their personal pictures of perfection onto her.

To one fan Gwen was the most wonderful and ideal girlfriend ever because she was caring, attentive and just Disney Princess levels of wholesome and good.

To another fan though Gwen was fiery, super intelligent and like kinky and stuff.

Gwen is such a formidable love interest within fandom because she’s totally flexible within so many people’s minds because everyone just makes her whatever they want her to be. And it’s usually their standard of perfection. So of course love interests like MJ and Felicia cannot compete because they have actual flaws and definitions to their characters.

I once saw a brilliant video and another good comment that summed this up.

Think of just one MJ quote then think of just one Gwen quote from the silver age. Gwen’s harder to come up with something but EVERYONE knows one for MJ.

The video I saw basically said the ‘advantage’ of Gwen as a character was that she was underdeveloped and therefore flexible so you could have all these malleable versions of her like Stone’s take or Spider-Gwen. That’s harder with MJ because she’s more defined.

Me though? I say exempting folks from Gallifrey if your character is so poorly defined that they can be anything then in reality they are nothing.

I will say this though I think its a little unfair to say it’s problematic to have Gwen romantically linked with Peter in all her adaptations because after all Lois is always romantically linked with Superman too and Catwoman is always romantically linked with Batman. Like…it’s kind of a fail adaptation if you don’t at some point get to that aspect of the characters; it doesn’t have to be the starting point or be all and end all but you kinda have to do it, kind of like you gotta turn Eddie Brock into Venom if you introduce him. At the same time though I do take the point that Gwen is never with other men in other media although this is not true of the Spec Spidey cartoon where (like in the comics) she dated Harry.

I don’t really get the ‘MJ is a slut for mistreating Peter’ thing though from fans. I mean she’s been attracted to him since day 1 and has had a Job like patience. She only didn’t immediately like him in the Raimi movies…and then after their chat over the fence she clearly began developing feelings for him.

P.S. I am one of those fans who frankly post-OMD hate either of them hooking up with anyone else. Cindy was rapey as Hell and him and Felicia in BND was like unethical on so many levels

P.P.S. Previously divorced CCO of Marvel Joe Quesada is more messed up than you know.

His first Spidey story? The Drug Trilogy. What happens in that story?

Peter and Gwen are pining for one another across the Atlantic ocean whilst MJ is ignoring Peter’s feelings by flirting with him in front of her boyfriend Harry, this saddens him to the point where he takes drugs and when she dumps him for calling her ‘his girl’ he overdoses. Then at the end Gwen relizes she was wrong to try and pressure Peter into marriage, flies back to NYC and she and Peter joyously reunite. Next issue opens with them arm in arm and lovey dovey, Peter trying to earn money to support them and the possible implication of sex between the two.

THAT is Quesada’s first exposure to Spider-Man.

Then across nearly 2 years of stories Gwen and Peter as practically engaged was brought up over and over again whilst Mj being a ‘shameless flirt’ who didn’t care about Harry was too.

Then Gwen died…and died specifically so Mj could hook up with Peter.

And I do not think Quesada ever forgave and forgat the sinking of his ship.

Cut to when he is around 18 years old and Spidey is marrying MJ. But when he was reading Spidey it was SUPPOSED to be PeterxGwen 4eva, not Peterxthat witch who drove poor wittle Harry into drug addiction!

Cut again to 2010 when Quesada is giving a salty interview and points out how in the wedding annual Peter was thinking of Gwen the night before his wedding and low key implies MJ slept with another guy the night before getting married.

Also in 2010 the clear implication that MJ was the reason Spider-Man made a deal with Satan, MJ makes the ‘bitchy’ ultimatum that Peter has to quit being a superhero to marry her, MJ gets assaulted by the guy who prevented Spidey getting to his wedding and who is a rather hefty man of Latinex/Hispanic descent (which is definitely not an author avatar for Quesada) and is generally written as a hypocritical selfish idiot.

Joe Quesada has NEVER been against Spider-Man being married.

He’s been against Spider-Man being married to anyone who ISN’T Gwen and especially Mary Jane.

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