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Post by Ozymandias on Mar 16, 2015 11:21:55 GMT
I completely agree on the development angle. Even though early Gwen is quite different from the classic one, there are forces at work within the story, that could explain such a change in behavior, personality evolution even. It may sound corny, but I think the main factor in the character shifting to a softer version, is simply love. In the long term, this wouldn't have worked as an explanation, because it's known that the chemical changes in the brain don't last, but from this point in the story, to ASM #121, not much Marvel Time elapsed. Interesting idea. My very broad estimate of the series timeline puts ASM #121 around winter of their Junior year, about a year and a half into their relationship. That sounds about right, a total time span of slightly over two years, from the character's introduction, to its demise.
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Post by Ozymandias on Mar 22, 2015 9:30:32 GMT
The Amazing Spider-Man #53 (October 1967) On Stan and John’s fifteenth issue the final lingering Ditko subplot is resolved. Peter and Gwen’s romantic tensions have been going since her introduction in #31. First she likes Peter and he ignores her. Then he likes her but she feigns apathy. And in the middle Mary Jane comes along and shakes things up. But after 23 issues of teasing Peter and Gwen finally have their date. Sure they’re chaperoned by Professor Warren but that doesn’t stop Gwen (and the series) from making a big step forward by throwing her arms around Peter, by far the most physical intimacy seen in the series so far. The event reinforces the fact that Gwen is a scientist like Pete. Supermodel good looks and brains? Some would cry Mary Sue but I withhold such judgments, as if anything it’s more believable for Peter to get together with someone with a common interest as opposed to someone who doesn’t really offer anything other than a fun attitude. As Peter’s relationship with Gwen gets a boost his other friendships suffer. Harry is angry with Peter for his unexplained absences (his prior dating of Gwen is considered a possible reason by Peter but Harry doesn’t seem to be concerned about that) while Flash seems to have forgotten all the goodwill he and Peter parted with. Just before "throwing her arms around Peter", we see a new aspect of the character, worried Gwen, which is hardly a coincidence. No, he doesn't, and Harry won't ever show any complains in that department. Flash, on the other hand, tries to play the ex-boyfriend card, but is quickly shut down by Peter, with the simple fact that such a thing never happened, something which had previously been hinted by Harry.
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Post by Ozymandias on Feb 10, 2020 11:38:03 GMT
For the past few months I've been reading all of the MU again. Or should I say for the first time in its entirety? Now that I've finished posting the lost images for the Ditko run (tinypic closed shop), I thought it was a good opportunity to take a look back at his run. Ditko's Gwen was different to Romita's, that was already clear, but I've also noticed that all of his female characters were more alike, compared to one another, than to any non-Ditko Silver Age female character out there in the MU. Kirby was good at the cosmic stuff, but his characters lacked depth and the females, in particular, were just as bad as (if not worse than) Romita's Gwen ever would be. This is something I didn't appreciated when reading Spider-Man seven years ago, because I lacked context. Many of the stories I'm reading now, I had not read since my childhood, others I simply hadn't read at all. Having the chance to compare his work, with everything else that was being published at Marvel in the 60's, I can now say that Ditko was ahead of his time. I don't know about DC, but I doubt they were in better shape than the rest of the Marvel Bullpen. To be honest, other than Kirby's concepts and dynamic style, so far only Colan's pencils and Severin's inks are even worth mentioning. Ditko gave Peter unprecedented background: working life, schoolmates, rogues gallery, family and neighbors. Even the house he lived in was recognizable, unlike the generic living quarters you usually got. Not satisfied with that, he treated the supporting cast with respect, and not just the male characters; Betty Brand was more real than Sue Storm, for example. This probably has to do with him being an Ayn Rand follower. Time and again I've seen the pattern repeated trough the early 60's: boy meets girl and both get immediately hooked. Only circumstance and self-doubt avoid an immediate marriage. With Ditko, this wasn't so: Clea and Strange, Peter and Betty, Peter and Gwen... at best, you can see attraction and dating, not love at first sight and frustrated marriage plans. In the wake of the McCarthyism and with the Comics Code still dominating mainstream comics publication, it couldn't even be insinuated for the characters to have sex outside of marriage. Dating was only allowed for teens and Ben Grimm, because no one would seriously consider the possibility of any of them breaking celibacy. There's a difference between Johnny and Peter tough, the former was just fooling around with Dorrie, but Peter was actually playing the field. This only became clear towards the break-up, but at least we got one with them. For Kirby, Dorrie simply didn't exist, it was Stan's thing from the Torch's Strange Tales adventures, and he had to shoe-horn the end of the relationship in the pages of the FF, by including some thought balloons for Johnny, just as he was about to meet Crystal. There was a quality to Peter's love life, that wasn't there in the non-Ditko Marvel Universe. It was real, unlike the aforementioned case, or the teen X-men, or even Peter's love life at the beginning of the Romita era, when you couldn't tell who was dating who: Peter/Gen, Peter/MJ, Gwen/Harry, Gwen/Flash... In this "surreal" sense, you could even say that Peter dated Liz at some point (like Busiek did, not long ago). For me, there's little doubt that they weren't, just by comparison with his "official" relationship at the time; but seeing how every other teen in the MU was into pretend-dating, his occasional study session with Liz, wasn't that much different. I have no idea what plans Ditko had for Gwen Stacy. Did he intend for a deeper relationship than the one the main character had just been in? Was MJ to be anything more than an inside joke? One thing is clear, by ASM #38, Gwen had the clear lead, with many more panels and character interaction. Not to mention her inner life, which wasn't at all the usual "oh, why can't he see how I long for his attention?", but rather a much more down to earth reaction, as seen in the panels posted in page one of this thread. With Ditko, Gwen couldn't be otherwise, but with Romita, she would be.
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Post by dav on Feb 11, 2020 2:19:38 GMT
For the past few months I've been reading all of the MU again. Or should I say for the first time in its entirety? Now that I've finished posting the lost images for the Ditko run (tinypic closed shop), I thought it was a good opportunity to take a look back at his run. Ditko's Gwen was different to Romita's, that was already clear, but I've also noticed that all of his female characters were more alike, compared to one another, than to any non-Ditko Silver Age female character out there in the MU. Kirby was good at the cosmic stuff, but his characters lacked depth and the females, in particular, were just as bad as (if not worse than) Romita's Gwen ever would be. This is something I didn't appreciated when reading Spider-Man seven years ago, because I lacked context. Many of the stories I'm reading now, I had not read since my childhood, others I simply hadn't read at all. Having the chance to compare his work, with everything else that was being published at Marvel in the 60's, I can now say that Ditko was ahead of his time. I don't know about DC, but I doubt they were in better shape than the rest of the Marvel Bullpen. To be honest, other than Kirby's concepts and dynamic style, so far only Colan's pencils and Severin's inks are even worth mentioning. Ditko gave Peter unprecedented background: working life, schoolmates, rogues gallery, family and neighbors. Even the house he lived in was recognizable, unlike the generic living quarters you usually got. Not satisfied with that, he treated the supporting cast with respect, and not just the male characters; Betty Brand was more real than Sue Storm, for example. This probably has to do with him being an Ayn Rand follower. Time and again I've seen the pattern repeated trough the early 60's: boy meets girl and both get immediately hooked. Only circumstance and self-doubt avoid an immediate marriage. With Ditko, this wasn't so: Clea and Strange, Peter and Betty, Peter and Gwen... at best, you can see attraction and dating, not love at first sight and frustrated marriage plans. In the wake of the McCarthyism and with the Comics Code still dominating mainstream comics publication, it couldn't even be insinuated for the characters to have sex outside of marriage. Dating was only allowed for teens and Ben Grimm, because no one would seriously consider the possibility of any of them breaking celibacy. There's a difference between Johnny and Peter tough, the former was just fooling around with Dorrie, but Peter was actually playing the field. This only became clear towards the break-up, but at least we got one with them. For Kirby, Dorrie simply didn't exist, it was Stan's thing from the Torch's Strange Tales adventures, and he had to shoe-horn the end of the relationship in the pages of the FF, by including some thought balloons for Johnny, just as he was about to meet Crystal. There was a quality to Peter's love life, that wasn't there in the non-Ditko Marvel Universe. It was real, unlike the aforementioned case, or the teen X-men, or even Peter's love life at the beginning of the Romita era, when you couldn't tell who was dating who: Peter/Gen, Peter/MJ, Gwen/Harry, Gwen/Flash... In this "surreal" sense, you could even say that Peter dated Liz at some point (like Busiek did, not long ago). For me, there's little doubt that they weren't, just by comparison with his "official" relationship at the time; but seeing how every other teen in the MU was into pretend-dating, his occasional study session with Liz, wasn't that much different. I have no idea what plans Ditko had for Gwen Stacy. Did he intend for a deeper relationship than the one the main character had just been in? Was MJ to be anything more than an inside joke? One thing is clear, by ASM #38, Gwen had the clear lead, with many more panels and character interaction. Not to mention her inner life, which wasn't at all the usual "oh, why can't he see how I long for his attention?", but rather a much more down to earth reaction, as seen in the panels posted in page one of this thread. With Ditko, Gwen couldn't be otherwise, but with Romita, she would be. We can only speculate on what Ditko's plans were. In fact, HE probably didn't know himself! The comics back then were written on a month to month basis. There were SOME long term story ideas, but in a lot of cases the direction of the stories are based on sales and reader feedback. My guess is that Gwen and MJ were supposed to be like a Betty and Veronica triangle with Peter, a premise that worked very well in Archie comics. It was going to be Gwen V MJ and let the readers decide. From what I can see of Ditko's interpretation of MJ, considering the way she was dressed in the few panels that he drew, MJ would have been the "Betty" to Gwen's "Veronica," whereas Romita made MJ more like Veronica and Gwen more like Betty. We had a baseline for Gwen at this point, the popular high school beauty queen. Romita made MJ the hip, vivacious party girl, but Ditko might have written MJ as the quiet, smoky, confident, strong and mysterious type. From here, comes the character development. I can't say if Gwen was predisposed to be Peter's true love by the creators or if it was what the readers wanted. If it was up in the air, and the readers liked MJ better, the creators would have started writing her to be more like Peter. Maybe Gwen would have become more ambitious and had less time for Peter, or maybe her popular girl image would have been developed and she would have been more compatible with Flash. Romita's MJ would have been developed the way she was AFTER Gwen's death making her more compatible with Peter, and the hypothetical Ditko MJ would have been very street smart, but have a heart of gold and be a great friend and confidant to Peter and wait patiently until Peter comes to HER. I'm guessing, based on what I've gleaned regarding this topic, that Gwen was probably predisposed, by Stan, to be Peter's true love, but how Ditko would have gotten her there is a different story, and what kind of character would Ditko have developed her to be is another.
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Post by Ozymandias on Feb 11, 2020 6:52:22 GMT
The problem with all this is that, unlike Stan, he didn't give interviews when he was alive, so we have nothing but his work and his life to make guesses on.
I remember that scene during Ditko's era, when up to three girls met at Peter's house. Later, he wrote two of them out of the book and introduced Gwen. Would he have played with Gwen and MJ, in a similar way to what we saw when Romita took over? I doubt it, their interactions would've been in the lines of what we saw in that scene. He wasn't one for stereotypes and he did plan ahead, unlike his coworkers. You can check all the planning he poure4d into the GG and Norman, in the Amazing Spider-man from the Beginning thread.
In any case, I'm glad he didn't get a chance to take his shot at it, because I liked her just as she turned out to be. Even though it was the result of month to month improvisation (or maybe because of it?).
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Post by dav on Feb 11, 2020 18:28:02 GMT
The problem with all this is that, unlike Stan, he didn't give interviews when he was alive, so we have nothing but his work and his life to make guesses on. I remember that scene during Ditko's era, when up to three girls met at Peter's house. Later, he wrote two of them out of the book and introduced Gwen. Would he have played with Gwen and MJ, in a similar way to what we saw when Romita took over? I doubt it, their interactions would've been in the lines of what we saw in that scene. He wasn't one for stereotypes and he did plan ahead, unlike his coworkers. You can check all the planning he poure4d into the GG and Norman, in the Amazing Spider-man from the Beginning thread. In any case, I'm glad he didn't get a chance to take his shot at it, because I liked her just as she turned out to be. Even though it was the result of month to month improvisation (or maybe because of it?). Yeah, it was pretty serendipitous that Romita took over when he did. His romance comic background suited what was developing in the stories from that point forward. He drew women in a more glamorous and contemporary way, and he could draw emotions into the characters faces very well. As for GG, yeah, Ditko didn't want his identity to be revealed as soon as it was, and considering all the amnesia/remembering crap that went on with GG, I think Ditko's way would have been better, whatever it was going to be.
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Post by Ozymandias on Feb 11, 2020 19:36:54 GMT
I'm sure it would've been better, too, but Lee needed a win from the get go, after Ditko departed, so he started with that reveal and continued with MJ's, the shameless leech.
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Post by dav on Jul 12, 2020 0:42:20 GMT
I'm sure it would've been better, too, but Lee needed a win from the get go, after Ditko departed, so he started with that reveal and continued with MJ's, the shameless leech. Yep, from a sales standpoint, having Spidey's identity exposed to an arch enemy was a big deal, and eclipsed the change in artist. If there WAS a sales slump this story brought it back up. MJ's reveal was inevitable, but it would have been interesting to find out what Ditko's take would have been. I guess we'll never know...
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