Just how stupid is Quesada?

I was glad to see, in the recent thread "Spidey's Marriage: Yea or
Nay?", that almost everybody supports Spidey's marriage, unlike Joe
Quesada. Let's pick Quesada's case further apart. Here's a post from a
Newsarama user (calling himself "ThatTalkingGuy") that Quesada made a
big deal out of agreeing with:

"What made the Marvel Universe was a bunch of cool, new heroes that
had flaws and spoke to people. Spider-Man's flaw wasn't that he was
married to a supermodel. And Reed and Sue can get married because Reed
and Sue were together since the beginning. They were always a couple,
adding a ring doesn't change anything because they are the same. And
the kids don't grow. Nor should they ever.

"Peter Parker never was a family man. It perverts the character to
make him so. Peter Parker being young and having girl trouble, school
problems, work problems, and feeling guilty about the death of his
father figure and constantly lying and not being there for his mother
figure is relatable. Peter Parker being old, married, with money
problems and whining about his luck is pathetic. And Peter Parker being
old, married, and content is boring.

"And I think it is kind of funny people are complaining about the
status quo. The marriage is the very DEFINITION of the status quo. You
can't get rid of the damn thing. It just sits there, adding literally
NOTHING to the stories. If anyone can tell me ONE good story that
requires Peter and MJ to be married instead of living together or
engaged, go ahead. If you can tell me that Spider-Man would have
survived if he had married Betty Brant in the early issues of
Spider-Man, go ahead"

(end quote)

Personally, the stupidity (and poor knowledge of Spidey's character)
displayed here amazes me:

* Reed and Sue's kids should never grow? There should never be
development; no continuity? A fictional universe cannot continue to
function without development. Reducing the characters to iconic toy
templates undermines both the universe and the point of the characters.

* It PERVERTS Peter Parker's character to portray him as a family man??
Peter's character is MOST SHARPLY DEFINED by his relations to what's
left of his family! Did the guy who wrote the above ever hear of Uncle
Ben? Powers and responsibility? Okay, so "family man" may refer to a
guy's desire to start his own family. Peter is a decent, everyman type
of person, personality-wise. Friendly, likable, funny, reasonably
handsome, did his high school and college dating - settling down with a
steady girlfriend/wife is in every way the logical step for his
character to take. The guy grows. But Quesada doesn't want growth, and
that makes him pretty much the anti-christ of the comics industry in my
book.

* Peter having money problems is pathetic?! Peter has always had money
problems! It was one of the reasons every college-age reader could
relate to him right from the beginning in Amazing Fantasy #15. It
showed a realistic private life that everybody who wasn't born with a
silver spoon in their mouth could relate to. It's one of the reasons
for the character's success and general appeal. And it created room for
growth: Things could onty get better for him. And they have. That's
development.

And as for "If anyone can tell me ONE good story that requires Peter
and MJ to be married instead of living together or engaged, go ahead."

Peter Parker Annual #7. Honeymoon story. Requires marriage. Was a good
and very enjoyable read.

"If you can tell me that Spider-Man would have survived if he had
married Betty Brant in the early issues of Spider-Man, go ahead"

He was 15! It didn't fit into the character's development at the time.
It does now.

Not that I'm even close to being happy with Marvel's current idea of
"development". They don't have much of it. They seem to be ignoring old
continuity left and right, and acting both as if they don't care about
continuity *and* as if it's their big selling point (mega-crossovers).
That just does not compute. And too many character have stopped
developing. This is idiotic. Let the characters evolve! If you want a
young, unbridled Spider-Man, let Peter pass on the mantle to some young
gun, and change his status quo into something else. If it's done right,
and in continuity, readers will love it. Unless you only want to do
marketable toys and produce profitable cartoons and movies, your
guiding principle should always be story and characters first. And the
nature of those beasts, esp. in combination, is development. Not
merchandising. But Marvel is moving more and more towards an unchanging
status quo for their characters, simplifying them, taking away their
past and their future, narrowly defining them as one single
easy-to-deal-with and easy-to-sell thing, each with their iconic
arch-enemy, etc. That Is Complete Crap. It is a betrayal of every good
Marvel story of the past. It is a villainous shirking of the
responsibility that came with being the shepherd of the company and the
characters. And it's tearing down everything that was good about
Marvel.

Current Marvel's ideas of good stories is to tear away the very premise
for future storylines. They change the basics so that the stories and
the basic concepts of the characters can no longer work, not
thinking/caring about what's going to come after. The Hulk has been
sent into space because he's too dangerous. When he inevitably returns,
what will they do with him then, if that logic stands? Kill him? Of
course not. So, what? Daredevil has now had a dull-as-dishwater
years-long talking heads storyline (and no, I certainly haven't bought
it, but sampled some issues here and there) about having to deny that
he is Daredevil, focusing on his being forced to LIE, LIE, LIE to
protect his superhero persona. That's not what superheroes are about.
And with all the media attention, how will Matt Murdock ever return to
a normal life without the DD "stigma" (whether or not his ID get
publicly known)? Superheroes are masked in order to symbolize that they
could be anybody, including the reader. Quesada and Bendis, lacking any
proper ideas, focus on a happenstance side-aspect of the superhero, and
turn it into a huuuge storyline of complete nonsense and bull***.

Yeah, I sound bitter, and as regards these particular things, I am. But
I'm not some retired nostalgia-nut (I'm 34) who's stopped being hip to
the times. I am a positive, optimistic person who absolutely hates
spewing this kind of negativity. But I'm obligated to do so, because,
quite simply, I am a fan of STORIES THAT WORK. And current Marvel is a
disaster.

- Tue

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