The Four Color Media Monitor: Taking the wrong direction on marriage

The Pottsville Republican & Herald talks about how Marvel has dealt with marriage, and feels that they're taking the wrong approach now. They overlook a telling detail, however:

I know it’s only a comic book, but I hate the trend of breaking up marriages to make a character “cool” again. Apparently Spidey has to be single for people to relate to him.

But what message does that give young readers? Yes, people get divorced in real life. Marriages don’t work out for a variety of reasons.

But that’s all the more reason for a superhero to stay married.

Granted, Spider-Man and MJ didn’t get a divorce. In a deal with Mephisto (not the devil, but close enough), they traded their marriage to save the life of Spidey’s Aunt May. So it was more a heroic sacrifice than a divorce.

But really, that can only be done in fiction, and it nonetheless threw out 20 years of a solid relationship. Spider-Man has been married to MJ since 1987.

The writer seems to overlook the fact that the way Aunt May's life was saved (or was it?) was in a way that she herself would not have approved of: making a deal with even a quasi-devil, but certainly an evil entity. What message does that send to young readers? That's not exactly what I would call heroic at any rate.

And it’s not the first time Marvel has done it.

In X-Men, Cyclops was more or less cheating on his wife, Jean Grey.

The writers killed her off before they could resolve the issue — if they were even going to.

In Mighty Avengers, Giant Man and Wasp (who, sadly, I can’t tell if they are divorced yet or not) are also seeing other people.

Regarding Cyclops' unfaithfulness to Jean, I hated that, because from what I can tell, it was meant to belittle her. And that she was killed off again (for now) only makes it worse. As for Hank Pym and Janet VanDyne, I guess Bendis decided to ruin a good attempt to fix the damage done to their relationship back in the early 80s yet again, didn't he? Sigh.

Labels: marvel comics, misogyny and racism, Spider-Man, women of marvel