#maximum cloneage

[retrokid616]

so i guess fears for ben are dying

and imsicurites maybe more clones

[that90ssmshow]

Remember SPIDERCIDE?

Anyone....anyone?

[traincat]

hi! i've seen you rec gwen/mj fics, and was wondering if you had any good comic recs for a newbie to the ship, or communities/other resources/manifestos, or blogs to follow! thanks :)

I do have comic recs! In general I think it’s pretty easy to read for Gwen because, well, she’s only present for a relatively small slice of the Spider-Man pie, so to speak. I have Gwen-specific recs here. For GwenMJ shippiness in particular, I’d single out the following:

Amazing Spider-Man #47 and #48. In ASM #47, Gwen makes sure Mary Jane is invited to Flash’s going away party, noting that it’s sure to be “really swinging” with her there. In ASM #48, Gwen switches up her hairstyle; Harry notes that it looks more like Mary Jane’s and Gwen blushes.

ASM #49 sees Gwen and Mary Jane’s catchphrase: “Chase the blues away with Gwen and MJ.” (And it’s good proof that they were definitely hanging out with each other sans the boys.) There’s cute petnames in it, too. There’s a lot of interactions around this point that have been interpreted broadly throughout the years as Gwen and Mary Jane being competitive with each other over Peter’s attention, but to be honest I think that that reading is a choice and not the only one on the table -- their cattiness towards each other lacks the hostile edge that Betty and Liz’s held during the Ditko/Lee run. If anything, Gwen and Mary Jane seem to be having a lot of fun bantering with each other. They do more flirty verbal sparring in ASM #51, #53, #59, #82. ASM #83 contains the iconic scene where Mary Jane and Gwen turn kissing Flash goodbye in front of their boyfriends into a competition:

In ASM #87, MJ comforts Gwen when Peter fails to show up for her birthday party. Spectacular Spider-Man Magazine #1 & #2 are gorgeous side stories that feature a lot of Gwen and MJ. And then, of course, famously, in ASM #122, Mary Jane confronts Peter after Gwen’s death, saying she’s real shook up about it. The recent Marvel Comics #1000 anthology offers a retrospective on this from Mary Jane’s point of view from original writer Gerry Conway, where MJ recollects how Gwen was the only one who really saw her back then -- and that it wasn’t Peter she stayed for that night. 

Spider-Man: Blue is a miniseries that offers an alternative version of Peter’s early college days and Mary Jane’s introduction into the group. In my opinion it plays a little harder into the idea of Gwen and Mary Jane seriously competing for Peter’s affection than the original canon does, but it’s a good time, and features MJ calling Gwen gorgeous. 

Amazing Spider-Man #365′s D Story, I Remember Gwen, has Mary Jane recall a time when she picked Gwen’s happiness over her own.

And then we get into Clone Saga territory. If you’re reading for GwenMJ specifically, this may be hit or miss for you -- there’s a period wherein one of Gwen’s numerous clones crashes into Peter and Mary Jane’s life at a tense moment. It’s somewhat unevenly written, with Clone Gwen going from saying how happy she is that Peter and MJ are together in one issue to insisting that Peter (who was at that point suspected of being a clone himself) could only be understood by another clone in the next. But it’s got some good moments. Spectacular Spider-Man #227 has Clone Gwen tell MJ that the original Gwen always thought of MJ as her best friend before they embrace and in Maximum Cloneage (look I didn’t name it), it’s MJ who saves Clone Gwen from falling like her predecessor.

This last one for 616 is not so much a rec so much as me waving my hand in the air like “this exists and we all have to deal with it” but for the sake of completion -- there ARE good GwenMJ moments in Sins Past (Amazing Spider-Man #509-514), a story that retcons a whole bunch of stuff from before Gwen’s death to offer up a turn of events wherein Gwen gave birth to twins fathered by Norman Osborn who, after aging super fast due to the goblin serum in their blood, have shown up to assassinate Peter. Look, I don’t think it should be canon. The actual writer doesn’t think it should be canon. It’s a strange little piece of canon nearly everyone hates, save for the people who like to use it to villify Gwen for “cheating” on Peter -- but it’s there and it is, if not a good story, then one with interesting character beats, at least, that casts Mary Jane as someone who keeps the secrets of people she loves -- this referring to Gwen, and not solely to Peter. 

I also recommend for alternative universe GwenMJ content Ultimate Spider-Man (I can’t pull issue numbers for 1610 as easily as I can for 616, sorry) and Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane, which are both high school takes on the Spider-Man mythos. For a very different take on the Spider-Man mythos, the Spider-Gwen universe (Earth-65; Spider-Gwen and its following series Ghost Spider) feature a Gwen who was bitten by the spider and a Mary Jane who leads the band Gwen plays the drums in. I’m not personally in love with either the worldbuilding for this series or its take on either Gwen or MJ, but it’s a fun AU continuity with extremely fast-paced, colorful action and some good GwenMJ content.

(Spider-Gwen #25)

For communities, I’m not really that great at recommendations -- I feel like tumblr and twitter as fandom hubs make the organization of resources somewhat difficult. @majiinatc does great Spider-Man edits, with a ton focusing on the women of Spider-Man, and spideyfive on twitter supports the GwenMJ agenda and is just generally hilarious. I wish there was a ship manifesto I could recommend; fandom needs to bring those back in a big way. But I hope that helps a little! 

[dangerstxrlet]

( MAXIMUM CLONEAGE )

[bootlegmilhouse]

Having a long standing Marvel SI is fucking disastrous.

I’m looking at Spiderman figurines to try to decide what I want to own having a a relatively good time.

Then boom Scarlet Spider figure spotted and suddenly I’m telling my fiancée about the disaster of Maximum Cloneage/ Clone Saga and how botched the twist was again.

[revolutionaryjackelving]

Spider-Man Community: Interview with David Walton Part Two

Part 2 of my #SpiderMan Community Interview with @BenReilly149. We do a deep dive into Clone Saga and how it defined Spider-Man titles by anticipating everything that came later. Ben Reilly crawled so Miles Morales could web swing,

(Continued From Part One) David Walton followed comics from the 1980s all the way to the present. In addition to his great insight on Spider-Man, his personal experience is tied to first-hand observations on the reading experience of several key moments over the franchise history, and documents many key changes. Part 2 deals with Spider-Man’s publication history to the present, including a deep…