#i still have a shitton of books to read but these are the more batman

[arunneronthird]

hello!! i saw your post about most consistently liking bruce wayne's characterization, and i was wondering if you had any recommendations of good places to start for someone who loves batman but is newer to reading comics?? there's so much out there that it feels a bit daunting!! (i love your art so much by the way!! 💕 hope you're having a great day)

(thank u so much! hope ur having a lovely day too)

okay let me preface this by saying that im also pretty new to batman, and im a heathen and just started reading from batman (1940) #357 cause i just cannot deal with comics from before the 80s and also i really wanted to know who the fuck jason was, also i still have A LOT to read so pls someone ask me this again in like half a year, also i will limit myself to like, straight up batman books

anyway, i DEEPLY recommend u read:

first of all, batman: year one, the story of how bruce became batman, absolutely fundamental and one of the best batman comics ever made, its a thin book but its the necessary introduction to his character

second, i really like jasons run in general, but id read batman: a death in the family, where jason dies, its not necessarily the best written but it basically changed everything batman was forever, its a plot point we are still trying to get over (if ur bored, id continue with the start of tims run where u get to see batman spiraling down and lil tim trying to save a mourning father

now, as some people may know, i am a morrison apologist, and he had a pretty long batman run which starts with batman and son, where he meets damian, bruce isnt there for some of the run, which focuses on dick and damian, but theres a book called batman: the return of bruce wayne where he comes back from being lost in time and that book is literally insane

as for my genuine favorite batman book, snyder (no relation to the fuckface that made the movies) wrote batman vol 1: the court of owls, this book i recommend with my life, one of the best comics ive read PERIOD, it dips into horror and it basically rewrites gotham and its so good i dont have the words

i also recommend batman: the knight, its a really recent book but it tackles what bruce did right before batman: year one and even though and its such a fun, intense reading with incredibly solid characters

finally, i really enjoyed the start of zdarskys run, batman vol 1: failsafe, which just ended and just makes me believe batman has some good runs in him still

note: i dont think u need to read these in order, i put them chronologically but they mostly work as standalone or are easy enough to follow or are morrisons and therefore insane, but i do recommend starting by year one

[stealingyourbones]

Question! I have been getting into DC comics cuz of dpxdc, and I saw your tags on frank Miller on a recent post. One of my irl friends told me to read the dark knight returns and while it was occasionally hard to follow I assumed that was a result of when it was written rather than who wrote it? But I did overall enjoy it.

I guess what I'm asking is why you say frank Miller is a bad writer when it seems like the dark knight returns was so acclaimed?

(I saw the nazi thing too but that's something I can google so while it's news to me it's not my main question)

ok so. A lot of this is my personal opinion and I'm not too equipped to say shit about this because I'm not very political but I'm going to give it my best shot. Put under a cut so folks who don't want to hear about comic ranting can simply scroll past

I’m just gonna write a quick thing for the Nazi stuff, He isn't exactly a Nazi but boy oh boY does he set off many warning flags. Frank Miller is also the writer of the comic 300, if that sounds familiar that's because the movie you're probably thinking of is indeed based off these comics. The Spartan's ideology helped create the baselines of Fascism. Fascism is a pretty leading cause of commentary in Frank Millers work. In Batman: The Dark Knight he is a fascist. In Hard Boiled there's swastikas in the background every so often. (I even went back to reread it just to make sure and yep. they definitely were there) In 300 there's a shitton of Fascism... I could go on but still. His comics are incredibly gorey, have a discussion about a world gone wrong that can only be changed using force and weaponry (the whole Dark Knight "I am a surgeon" monologue for example), and the fact that he has Fascism as the main point of nearly all of the comics he's written... it doesn't sit right with me and it's a consistent pattern.

Now, onto the bad writing. I must firstly preface that these are my own opinions and that I didn't grow up reading Frank Miller's work. I think he was a good writer but isn't one anymore. His writing did incredible things for DC and you can see his influence in Batman even today. Works I've read and enjoyed of his are: Daredevil, Batman Year One, and Dark Knight. Nowadays you'll see many folks like myself talk about how Frank Miller has fallen off the deep end. A vast majority of Frank Miller's comics have reoccurring themes: politics, fascism, extreme violence, and so so much weaponry. Politics is in every comic book. There is no unpolitical comic, there ARE comics that are batshit wild with their politics and that's what I'm talking about. I'll get back to this later. He wrote many good comics, ones that first come to mind are Daredevil , Wolverine, Batman: Dark Knight, Batman: Year One, Sin City, Ronin, and 300. All of these comics are still credited by folks as amazing comics and hell, I recommend folks to read them go and check them out. Then 9/11 happened. That along with rampant alcoholism. Those reoccurring themes I mentioned? They become exponentially more blatant in his works. Especially on the political angle. You can see the difference between his works from pre and post 9/11. If you read Dark Knight and Dark Knight 2 back to back. It's night and day. He even made a comic during the post 9/11 panic called Holy Terror. The comic's title was originally pitched as Holy Terror, Batman! with the Gotham hero himself as the main character but it swiftly denied by DC, denied being published by DC, and changed to what it is now. The basic plot of this comic: A Vigilante named The Fixer fights Al-Qaeda after attacking Empire City. He doesn't even mention the word Al-Qaeda until 80 pages into a 150 page comic. The comic is some INCREDIBLY blatant post 9/11 propaganda that's ridiculously Islamophobic and anti-muslim. That isn't even my opinion, Frank Miller has said that's what this comic was. It is scattered with a ridiculous amount of hate speech written by a hate fueled man in 2007. Now onto comics that you'd more likely read. All Star Batman and Robin (2005). Oh boy. Let's compare shall we? Batman Dark Knight Returns (1986)

All Star Batman & Robin, The Boy Wonder #1 (2005)

mind you this is as Dick is being driven to GCPD for questioning RIGHT AFTER HIS PARENTS DIED. He gets kidnapped by Bruce out of the police car. Not calmed in his arms after the murder and brought to the manor. Kidnapped. All Star Batman & Robin, The Boy Wonder #2 (2005)

( a brief intermission of this sickass pose of a shirtless Alfred Pennyworth comforting Vicky Vale)

now back to the kidnapping:

[Skipping Bruce getting chased by the GCPD, Jumping the Batmobile ONTOP of a GCPD car, and laughing and talking to his car all the while Dick is absolutely terrified. They then use boosters that propel the Batmobile into the sky.]

Smashcut to #4 where they actually enter the Batcave.

I don't even think I need to explain myself. This is Spider-Man: One More Day levels of mischaracterization. Like seriously. Bruce kidnapping Dick after his parents were killed? Calling him a retard and hitting him during the aftermath (we can go on about how in 2005, the r slur was used commonly but this was just out of pocket), Leaving him in the cold batcave and told to eat rats? Frank Miller used to write some incredible works. Nowadays his writing is as decent as Rob Liefeld's art.

[catbountry]

It's been a year since the premiere of Trigun: Stampede. The series, despite the fears of the fans of the '98 anime, actually turned out really good; Yasuhiro Nightow is a big superhero comics nerd, and wanted to have this new anime adaption be an adaption similar to the adaptions of the MCU, back when those movies were consistently enjoyable, and I daresay a bunch of the people watched Trigun probably were either already anime fans, or they were nomad fans who may have been really into the MCU at one point.

I have a lot of thoughts on an American perspective on Vash the Stampede as a character, with a lot of comparisons to American comic book superheroes. And while Trigun wasn't my first anime, I was hooked on it, as someone who grew up around Batman and Spawn's 90's popularity. During my first Otakon in 2001, I must have seen a dozen Vash's and Wolfwoods. I remember the year there was a Wolfwood cosplayer whose Punisher gun was shaped like the Star of David instead of a cross, making him a rabbi. That shit was amazing. The larger point is that I've loved this character for more than half of my entire time being alive, and I haven't seen a lot of discussion of Trigun viewed from a more political lens, and why it resonates so much with Americans (or at least me, who is an American) in particular

Buckle up, kids, this is gonna be long and rambly.

There was a period of time where I watched nearly every single new MCU movie in the theater. It was exciting seeing adaptions of comic books that would have probably never gotten a movie before the success of The Avengers. And I don't think it's a mistake that the most comic book-y of the movies are usually the best; Guardians of the Galaxy and its sequel remain as probably my favorite MCU movies. Nightow was working directly with the studio making a new Trigun anime and reportedly got the crew to watch a bunch of Marvel movies to set the tone for the anime as an adaption; it's why Vash got a completely new redesign that freaked all us old fans the fuck out. Though it appears that once again, Trigun tried and failed to get that massive Japanese audience that most successful anime have. But boy, oh boy, do us westerners fucking love Trigun, especially us Americans. Nightow's love of superhero comics bled into Trigun, and it just so happened that he was incredibly influenced by Spawn, Hellboy and Batman as much as he was influenced by Akira Toriyama and mechanical art. McFarlane Toys released a Vash figure that is McFarlane'd the fuck up. Nightow loves all superhero comics but especially the Blade trilogy.

Just look at this and imagine being 13 years old and seeing this on a screen for the first time with the instrumental hard rock opening.

Also, I wouldn't actually get around to reading Spawn until I was an adult, but you know what? It's pretty good. The writing is definitely weaker than the art, but holy shit, that art goes hard and I still think that shit's cool as fuck.

As stated before, around the early 2000's Trigun was considered peak anime, though it's been more overlooked in recent years in favor of Cowboy Bebop, an anime that has aged gracefully by comparison. But while Bebop has that sort of timeless cool and level of quality that drew the attention of filmmakers like the Wachoski sisters, Trigun has that very specific kind of adolescent sense of coolness that comic book fans get, especially back in the 90's before this sort of thing would be smothered to death by MCU's Joss Whedoning of superheroes. Spawn, Hellboy and Batman are still cool. And Trigun also has a shitton of guns, obviously, given that Vash being an incredibly OP gunslinger in a world where everybody has guns.

And America loves guns.

I think the contrast of Vash's pacifism while still wielding a gun is extremely interesting because it's not something you see very much (I bet if I watched more westerns, I'd have a better idea if this is a trope in them at all). Batman does not use guns and doesn't kill people, which is why there's still discourse around Tim Burton's Batman films to this day still; I don't think Kevin Smith has budged on this. Other more morally grey superheroes will use guns (by this definition I'm counting The Punisher even if he doesn't have any superpowers, unless you count severe PTSD as a superpower). And a lot of them had huge surges in popularity in the 90's around the time Nightow was making Trigun. Vash posed like Batman or Spider-Man looking brooding (like the gif above) happens a lot in the earlier issues even though that's not really his character.

Several years ago, there was an attempt by a conservative thinktank to discredit a bunch of Hollywood actors saying that gun violence in America is a serious issue and contrasted their statements scenes of them shooting guns in movies, but if we're being real here, gunplay in movies can be really fucking cool. Again I invoke The Matrix, or movies by Robert Rodriguez and John Woo. Look at video games, and compare the decline in violent crime that's been happening here since the 70's and 80's, as culture warriors bemoan movies and video games for becoming more violent. Remember when Wayne LaPierre, vice president of the NRA, brought up fucking Splatterhouse as a reason why Sandy Hook happened? Do you know what Splatterhouse looks like?

It looks like this.

You know how these guys constantly say the only way to counter a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun? Usually, the inference is that if the "good guy" with a gun shoots, he's shooting to kill. Deadpool and the Punisher would shoot to kill. But Vash is constantly trying to avoid it. And I remember as a teenager finding that really cool? And the manga and anime don't shy away from how impractical Vash's pacifism is. It's a bit more realistic than Steven Universe's ending, but also Steven Universe was made for children.

I know Avatar: The Last Airbender is often invoked when criticizing Steven Universe's philosophy, but I haven't really seen Vash's similar philosophy criticized in the same way, and I think a lot of that has to do with the presence of Wolfwood, who is the "I think we're gonna have to kill this guy" guy. I'm honestly surprised I haven't seen art of this yet. I may have to get on that. I already drew Vash horrified at the Trolley Problem.

Vash is a character designed with maximum coolness in mind, but also an overpowered being who is capable of killing millions, and in the anime, he somehow destroys July City without killing anyone directly, but the destruction of the city led to a bunch of people dying. He's so deeply committed to not wanting to kill anyone that he's probably killed more people than he would have if he just shot Knives. The best Batman stories acknowledge that Batman's refusal to kill Joker has similarly results in the deaths of people Batman could have prevented if he killed one guy, and this could also apply to Vash's relationship with his brother Knives, who was kind of destined to be a mass murderer with a name like that, let's be real.

Online, we tend to joke about bringing out the guillotines, or justify not feeling an sympathy for billionaires who die in a sub trying to view the Titanic. But if you were given a gun and a real human person begging for their life, what would you actually do? Do you honestly think that you would be the ethical Death Note user?

Vash has guns but he chooses not to kill people; he prefers to not even use them unless he has to, instead opting to run away and look cool doing it somehow.

He really, really doesn't want to kill people. He doesn't become numb to people dying. It hurts him every single time he watches someone get killed. In reality, most of us that aren't sociopaths would be distressed at the thought of killing someone. The only reason armies in real life work is that they become inoculated to the idea of violence and dehumanize the enemy. Vash is no soldier. He is idealistic, he is empathetic, and he sees every human being as a person worthy of life. Batman refuses to use guns, as that's how his parents were killed in front of him. Vash has to use guns in order to protect people from getting killed. He has the ethics of Superman but the tools of a comic book antihero. He's the logical conclusion of an shonen anime protagonist in a world that chews up anyone with that kind of optimism and hope and spits them out. And yet... he still keeps going. He remains committed. He's still cheery, goofy, lovable Vash.

Batman used to kill people, in the earliest comics. With the Comics Code Authority, no superheroes could kill people. In the 80's, comics were getting darker and edgier, taken more seriously. While Alan Moore's Watchmen delved into the moral complexities in a world with superheroes that was similar to ours, Frank Miller was keeping Batman consistent, even as Gotham got darker and uglier.

Batman is a vigilante. The police can be helpful or they can fuck up everything, depending on what's needed for the story. In Batman Year One, there's a scene where Batman crashes a party attended by the elites of Gotham, politicians and mobsters mingling.

Seeing this during the Bush presidency blew my mind. I don't want to get into just how perfectly the members of his administration seemed to resemble a rogue's gallery of sorts with the shared goals of making a lot of money and bombing the shit out of Iraq and Afghanistan. I was extremely anti-war even before the 2000 election as a very opinionated 14 year-old watching, Jon Stewart on The Daily Show and feeling relieved that a grown-up was able to see through all the bullshit; it helps when the guy who's against the war and killing people is funny. I remember writing in my diary at 12 years old after Columbine happened that I wanted to take all of the guns and melt them down in a pot, similarly to that scene in Superman IV where he throws the entire world's nuclear arsenal into the sun. But also that same year I would fall in love with The Matrix... and not long after that, Trigun.

Again, we come back to the idea of someone using a gun, a weapon designed to kill people, and using it in pursuit of the exact opposite. That resonated with me. I myself was very idealistic, and the political climate of my teenage years seemed to do almost everything to stamp that out of me. Things feel just as fraught two decades later, but in slightly different ways. Pacifism is looked down upon, as indicated by the backlash to the ending of Steven Universe, and how one crazy lady called Rebecca Sugar, a Jewish person, a Nazi for writing it that way. But for Steven, things worked out. For Vash? Well, he still has hope somehow, despite everything. I think the fact that he strives to protect human life, even when someone is a complete monster, is admirable in that it cuts to the very basic desire to not see people hurt. But we're also selfish, and scared, and sometimes it's hard to conceive of a solution to a problem that doesn't involve violence. Seeing dead bodies on TV or the internet upsets us, but we're often paralyzed by feeling like we can't do anything, and even if we tried, we'd likely perish in the attempt. We desire revenge, punishment for those who transgress by inflicting violence, and we can rationalize using it against the right targets. Vash the Stampede would have a fucking breakdown dealing with the state-backed violence that's been a part of geopolitics pretty much as long as there have been states and geopolitics. Vash would try and solve the bombings of Gaza with an impassioned plea for both sides to stop fighting before he would somehow wind up making things worse and it would eat away at him inside, no matter how brave a face he puts on as he tries to find some kind of hope in a hopeless situation. And... you know what? I kind of wish more people would be like that. Maybe if there were enough people like that, these sorts of things wouldn't happen in the first place. I wish more people could look at human suffering and feel compelled to try and stop it, not discriminating against one side or the other, trying to understand why people are doing what they do. Seeing anti-war protestors in Tel Aviv brings back memories of protests against the start of the War on Terror, and how hated America was internationally during those years, even when most Americans approved of the war. Michael Moore was booed at the Oscars for condemning George W. Bush and the War on Terror. It's terrifying that those in power want us killing each other and have conditioned us to support it. I want so badly for human beings to come together to just stop the violence, but it feels impossible, like we're destined for failure, like we might somehow make things worse or become worse versions of ourselves full of hatred and ugliness. But we should want to try, even if it's hard or unprofitable or we have no idea how to even do it. Somebody actually dedicating themselves to trying to fight our violent impulses out of love is appealing, and if they're more powerful than use, and can do more... well, I want the biblically accurate angel with every mental illness willing to martyr himself over and over again. But it is more fun when he's Bugs Bunny about it.

[thebusylilbee]

in my country i don't think it's a big thing to read mangas or comics. it has like three layers of emotion less than any audiovisual, AND it's not very accessible to anyone, anyways. for example NANA, it's been translated to literally three of the country's languages (which is a big thing) but if you want to buy the manga you either have to live in a big city or do so online. i personally prefer ano hana's manga (as an example), but the music and pacing of the anime is just sooo good. same happens with nana, bc the music (for me) is a huge part of its identity. it shaped me when i was younger, and it literally gave me whiplash and a thousand other emotions now that i'm rewatching haha but idk! i guess it's still badly seen to read manga

Oooh my god I completely forgot that mangas are not like totally normal and everywhere in every country lmao !! okay yeah that explains it now that I think about it, I remember reading that France is the second biggest manga market after Japan so here they're really just part of the basics like they're sold even in isolated supermarkets in the countryside and we have a shitton of choice in big book stores and libraries. They're literally easier to find than Batman or Spider man comics, and generally take as much if not more space in stores than franco-belgium comics themselves. So yeah okay I understand better why people don't just go pick up mangas to read, I guess the majority first discovers animes online

[acosmic]

reading/watching/listening, 2021 [pinned]:

books (favourites asterisked):

*Zeroville - Steve Erickson

*The Day of the Locust - Nathanael West

*The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson

The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison

The Case Against Satan - Ray Russel

Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art - Scott McCloud

The Shining - Stephen King [ugh]

Batman: The Dark Knight Returns - Frank Miller

*Surfacing - Margaret Atwood

The Love of the Last Tycoon - F. Scott Fitzgerald

Murder Mysteries - Neil Gaiman, P. Craig Russell

The Book of Illusions - Paul Auster

Sandman: Season of Mists - Neil Gaiman

Devil in a Blue Dress - Walter Mosley

*House of Leaves - Mark Z. Danielewski

Come Closer - Sara Gran

*The Drowning Girl - Caitlin R. Kiernan [killer, haven’t finished it]

*Whipping Girl - Julia Serano

Darryl - Jackie Ess

*Laziness Does Not Exist - Devon Price

An Unauthorized Fan Treatise - Lauren James (internet novel available here - for now)

honourable mention/large chunks of poetry but not full books: William Carlos Williams, H.D.

movies:

A Place in the Sun (1951) [hate it]

Barton Fink (1991)

Adaptation (2002)

Nosferatu (1922)

The Maltese Falcon (1941)

Sunset Boulevard (1950)

something by neil breen (roommate is evil)

short films: Illusions (1983), Emak Bakia (1926)

unfinished: The Watermelon Woman (1996), Paterson (2016) [horrible]

secondary sources re: assigned literature:

Batman: “The Dark Knight Errant: Power and Authority in Frank Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns” - Christopher Bundrick (Riddle Me This, Batman! : Essays on the Universe of the Dark Knight, McFarland, 2011); “Additionality and Cohesion in Transfictional Worlds” - Roberta Pearson, (The Velvet Light Trap, U of Texas, 2017)

House of Leaves: “What’s Beneath the Floorboards: Three Competing Metavoices in the Footnotes of Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves.” - Michael Hemmingson (Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 2011); “House of Leaves: Reading the Networked Novel” - Jessica Pressman, (Studies in American Fiction, 2006)

The Day of the Locust: “Artists in Hollywood: Thomas Hart Benton and Nathanael West Picture America’s Dream Dump” - Erika Doss (The Space Between, 2011); “Productive Desires: Materialist Psychoanalysis and the Hollywood Dream Factory in Nathanael West’s The Day of the Locust” - Todd Hoffman (Literature, Interpretation, Theory, 2018) [interesting but objectionable]; "The Paintings in the Day of the Locust" - Jeffrey Meyers (Anq, 2009)

Nietzsche [secondary source for Layton assignment, read originals later]: “Apollo and Dionysos in Dialectic” and bits of “The Tragic Moment” - Paul Raimond Daniels (Nietzsche and “The Birth of Tragedy,” Routledge, 2014).

secondary sources not explicitly related to specific assigned literature:

film [assigned]: “The Whiteness of Film Noir” - E. Lott (American Literary History, 1997); “Reading Hollywood” - Jonathan Veitch (Salmagundi, 2000); “The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectatorship” - bell hooks (Black Looks: Race and Representation). did a lot of skimming of articles and didn’t finish or thoroughly read many of them! probably missing some. rip.

misc: “The Concept as Ghost: Conceptualization of the Uncanny in Late-Twentieth-Century Theory” - Anneleen Maschelein (Mosaic [Winnipeg], 2002)

refreshing concepts [not assigned]: chapters 3/“Narrative” and “16/Genre” in The Craft of Criticism: Critical Media Studies in Practice (Routledge, 2018)

short stories, poems:

Fritz Leiber - Smoke Ghost

Ray Bradbury - There Will Come Soft Rains

T. S. Eliot - The Waste Land

Irving Layton - The Birth of Tragedy; The Fertile Muck

Margaret Atwood - It is Dangerous To Read Newspapers

Leonard Cohen - The Only Tourist in Havana Turns His Thoughts Homewards; A Kite is a Victim

AJM Smith - The Lonely Land

Jillian Weise - Ashley Shew Just Invented The Word Cryborg

Isabel Fall - Helicopter Story

June Martin - I sexually identify as the “I sexually identify as an attack helicopter” controversy

rest TBA

essays/articles [very, very incomplete]:

A. H. Reaume - Brain fog

Michael Hobbes - Everything you know about obesity is wrong

Charlotte Hyde - We already have a name for that: why “zoom” fatigue is nothing new.

Gretchen Felker-Martin - “I wish there was a world for us”: on the choice to consume small art; What’s the harm in reading?; 

Katie J.M. Baker - The road to terfdom: Mumsnet and the fostering of anti-trans radicalization

Alex V. Green - The Pride flag has a representation problem

Jamie Mackay - The whitewashing of Rome: Colonialism is built on the rubble of a false idea of ancient Rome

Jules Gill-Peterson - A microdose of liberation

David Davis - XVII, Part 3: On genital preference

Marquisele Mercedes - The unbearable whiteness and fatphobia of “anti-diet” dieticians

Sophie Lewis - Collective turn-off

Daniel M. Lavery - Art criticism in a world where museums let you lick the art

re: helicopter story - How Twitter can ruin a life (Emily VanDerWerff); G F-M piece above; Clarkesworld removes Isabel Fall’s story (Mike Glyer); That Twitter thread [on criticism] (Lee Mandelo); The talented victim is not the point (Conor Friedersdorf);

miscellanea:

smaller stuff by more knowledgeable trans than i

a shitton of student presentations, small papers (pretty good), and slides with audio (terrible)

yewchube: corsetry-related videos by costumers, furniture repairs/restoration, recipes/cooking, friend catchup

note: silly formatting meant to aid reading. very, very incomplete. if you want to read any of the books/articles lmk there’s a 90% chance of me still having the file saved.

[mrsspidermanmaryjanewatsonparker]

One decade on MOST people are still sore about this Rich.

 Dan Slott is being overly presumptuous because how the Hell can he predict the future like this? This is seriously like someone in 2002 saying believe all you want but you will never see a revival of the Clone Saga characters and concepts because of how dedicated editorial have been to bury them. Except we did because the people in power changed.

 He is also disingenuous because not every editorial since the marriage worked hard to undo it.

  The Jim Salicrup regime did not work hard to undo it at all.

 Danny Fingeroth’s regime wasn’t truly working hard to undo it at all and if you were to take the most consistent writers of the Spider titles under his regime into account (David Michelinie, JM DeMatteis, Howard Mackie, Terry Kavanagh, Tom DeFalco) only one of them, Kavanagh (one of the worst Spider-Man writers ever) was outright against Spider-Man being married. Michelinie came around to the idea eventually and Mackie at worst had a take it or leave it attitude but tried to get rid of it when editorially mandated to do so not by the spider office but by the EIC himself. Everyone else under Fingeroth’s regime was PRO-marriage.

 In the Budiansky regime that was the same story. MOST writers were pro-marriage but higher ups wanted it undone.

 It was always the higher ups who wanted it gone but rarely the actual editorial regimes composing the Spider-Man group.

 It is particularly bullshit considering the first regime in power after the marriage was DeFalco as EIC and he defienitly didn’t want the marriage gone.

 And again it presumes that

 a)      Those higher ups were right which they weren’t and

b)      That EVERY higher up in the future will defeinitly want the same thing when there is no proof of that. Alonso for instance is apparently more lenient over the marriage in some shape of form than Quesada. Editorials change and generations cycle in and out. There is no evidence to suggest 100% every editorial will want the same thing.

 I mean he talks about it like Marvel is this never changing entity unto itself which has decided there should be no spider marriage when again ‘Marvel’ is made up of people with jobs and positions which change. Only Ike Pearlmutter is in it for life and I don’t think he honestly gives a shit about if Spider-Man is married or not so long as he can make action figures.

 Like he talks about not having a good grasp of the business but literally it is pretty much as far as we know Alonso, Quesada and Brevoort who are against the marriage. MOST marvel creators do not seem to be at all. When those guys eventually leave who knows what will happen.

 I mean he talks about branding but putting aside how that’s proven to be utter bullshit given how brandingwise Sam Wilson’s mere existence as Cap fucks that arguement up as far as Cap is concerned or Flash as Venom fucked that up as far as branding was concerned for Venom, for many years and even now what is happening in the mainstream universe Spider-Man has been out of order with the branding.

 If branding really was the big thing at play here why the fuck HASN’T Spider-Man been regressed back into being a teenager or a teen version of Peter Parker become an ongoing series? Why was he married throughout the 90s and most of the 2000s when that was also at odds with the branding?

 I don’t think Slott himself understands the branding or corporate structure at all.

 Like sure there are people above the EIC, like Brevoort and Quesada. Again, there is no guarantee that they would remain in power forever at all.

 As for the argument about every 8 year old who’s grown up with Post-OMD Spider-Man, putting aside how they are in the minority and less and less fans are coming to the series every year (hence sales are lower now than 10 years ago) the argument holds no water when you consider this.

 Every Spider-Man fan from 1962-1987 grew up with an unmarried Spider-Man fan.

 Like think about it. Most of those guys eventually WANTED Spider-Man to get married, more than this even if they were indifferent to it they were mostly okay with him getting married when it happened because it was additive character development. Same with him leaving high school.

 Most fans were not bemoaning it and similarly most fans of post-marriage Spider-Man were not bemoaning OMD merely BECAUSE they grew up on the marriage.

 It all revolved around the character development. They accepted and liked the marriage because it was developmental for the hero. They disliked OMD both because of HOW it was being done and why it was being done and how it threw out and damaged the character.

  Given how Spider-Man getting married again would be less of a fuck you and undoing of the post-OMD stuff and more of a forward momentum additive step for Spider-Man I do not see why the Post-OMD fans would be inherently inclined to never want to have Spider-Man get married again, especially when most of them clearly also like Mary Jane and Spider-Man being in a relationship.Essentially like the pre-marriage fans they’d probably get fed up with the doomed to fail strings of relationships which do not matter as much as his relationship with MJ (which thanks to Marvel unlimited, trades, info books and pop culture osmosis they are probably going to have become aware of because MOST fans do re-read the older runs) and probably will want to give him something more permanent too.

 Also a lot of Post-OMD fans who’re okay with the status quo would probably be similarly okay witht he marriage’ returning. Most people don’t like Spider-Man purely or mainly upon the basis of what his relationship status on facebook would be.

  Then you got OTHER characters to consider.

 Editorials hated the Super marriage too. Its back..

 Editorials were against Green Arrow and Black Canary’s relationship. Its back.

 If you go by branding and pop culture osmosis it’d make a shitton more sense for Nightwing to not exist and for Dick to have forever remained Robin as opposed to Damien who is a far less known character to the public. Even then people in the public are hardly going to just shrug off the idea of Robin being Batman’s actual son.

 Iceman’s sexuality, the ages of the original X-Men, the list goes on and on about branding vs what is in the books themselves and how there is a double standard at play as far as the Spider marriage is concenred.

 Oh and btw, SUPERMAN and BATMAN both have kids. THAT is even more of a out of lockstep branding thing than Spider-Man being married. It is far from the most egregious example of dissonant brand snergy

 I mean Disney clear don’t give a shit about the content of the comic books and have not for a long time. I am not even believing of the idea that Marvel Entertainment on the whole is. I think it is basically Quesda, Brevoort and a few other guys who are not in the job for life. I mean he talks about the Senior Vice Presidents and CCO and all that and again...those are just people who will roll out of power someday whilst marriage friendsly people will likely replace them given how much younger they are than those men. And again I don’t believe anyone at Disney itself gives a shit if Spider-Man is married in the comics considering they do not care that he is married in the newspaper strips, in an AU comic book or that Venom and Doc Ock for the longest time have never resembled their typically branded counterparts. I mean Brock not being Venom has stuck for over a decade too and he was around for less time than the marriage. But look at how that’s reversing gears too. Shit Jean Grey came back and other reversals in continuity have happened throughout the decades too.

 He speaks about Ben Reilly too. He tries to say the situations are different but they really are not. Multiple people wanted him back including higher ups (which i am not convinced of at all, I don’t think Quesada wanted Ben back or gave a shit) and that still happened. Basically Slott said enough people and the people in charge wanted it, which means obviously people inclined towards it rolled into power. Literally there is no reason that couldn’t happen with the marriage. The powers that be could retire, die or change their minds, there is an overwhelming preference for the marriage within the fandom and most writers and artists and who is to say the way branding is considered as far as the marriage is concerned won’t change.

 I mean the idea is really ridiculous when you think about it. People who don’t like the marriage will always be there and will never be replaced by people who do or are at least open to the idea. And at the same time whether Spider-Man is wearing a wedding ring (cos he could still to all other intents and purposes be married and in a relationship with MJ) in one particular comic book series is utterly pivitol to the sales of all other Spider-Man merchandise? 

 C’mon.

 Even if you look at it the other way around f the comic sales being affected by the other stuff that also is clearly not true and Marvel clearly do not care about it.

 Basically Slott is talking shit because he’s presumed everyone in power up to and beyond the EIC level will never change their minds and also will remain in power forever.

All this is especially poignant when you consider how truly off to the side and irrelvent the comic books are compared to everything else. The adaptations are more prized and important than the comics so branding considerations are really kind of asinine if you are to lump them all in together.

 And then You have his comments about Spider-Man being a high schooler being in line with the original intention of the creators.

 Maybe, maybe, maybe that is true of Ditko but it sure as fuck isn’t the intention of Stan Lee. Even in Ditko era letters pages Stan was making comments about how Spider-Man wasn’t married yet. Fans wanted Spider-Man to age and develop and go to college which Stan eventually instituted.

 Then it was in Wolfman’s run where he graduated from college and in Roger Stern’s run in that Spider-Man exited full time education altogether.

 If Spider-Man’s point was about being young you’d think either of these writers or editorial regimes would have prevented that, let alone Stan Lee outright aging Spider-Man out of college. Hell in ASM #39 he stated that Peter was 19 years old so he’d obviously ages not just since he got his powers but since he even began attending college. And Stan was working towards Peter getting married someday. He did that in the newspaper strips and has in other short stories or comments expressed a preference for Spider-Man to eventually get married, even referencing the fact that MJ used to be pregnant.

 He also noticeably had many of his other characters age and develop over time. for instance Reed and Sue didn’t remain dating or engaged forever. Ben Grimm got over his grumpy stages. Johnny storm went to college. Reed and Sue had a kid. The X-Men graduated.

 Few if any of Stan’s teen characters remained teens or at least in the same context they were created in. The entire MU was bult with continuity and character development in mind so the idea that Spider-Man was intended to be about youth as far as Stan was concerned is idiotic.

 This isn’t getting into how accounts from Stan have outright stated that Spider-Man was about being an ordinary guy as his core concept not about being young or how Tom DeFalco, EIC of marvel, long time Spider-Man writer, author of the most definitive Spider-Man guidebook of all time and someone who had been reading Spider-Man since literally Amazing Fantasy #15 has outright stated Spider-Man isn’t about youth...along with other creators like Peter David, J.M. DeMatteis, etc.

 Combine this statement with Slott’s assertion about Peter being emotionally 15 years old and suddenly so much makes sense about his take on Spider-Man.

 Again, this man should never have been allowed near the character.

  P.S. Even Steve Wacker admitted that the marriage probably would come back someday.

 P.P.S. Slott admits Spidey could get the win over Mephisto. This basically proves that even he knows Spider-Man’s been on a colossal losing streak ever since that story contrary to what he and Quesada have said about it in the past.

 P.P.P.S. I find it questionable that Slott doesn’t actually go into details to elaborate on why it’d be so impossible for the marriage to return. He says there are VPs to consiuder and stuff but leaves it at that.

P.P.P.P.S. Rich should know better than to take Slott’s word as gospel