The Four Color Media Monitor

Two years ago, Fempop wrote about why complaints against Mary Jane Watson's career as a model are petty and obscure the more vital concerns like whether stories are enjoyable:

“What next, a man being bitten by a radioactive spider and getting some sort of spider-powers? Or dressing up in a costume to fight crime? Or fighting crime in the form of a huge guy dressed like a rhino, or an old guy dressed like a vulture, or an electric guy dressed like a lightning bolt?”

Can we retire this argument once and for all? First off, Mary Jane Watson being a supermodel is not integral to her character. If it’s that troublesome, you could ‘course-correct’ it to her being a struggling actress (AS HAS BEEN DONE), or a Sears catalog model, or a Suicide Girl, or a realtor… whatever (although making her look like Shailene Woodley is a bit much). It’s not part and parcel of her character the way Lois Lane being a reporter is; though the parallels between Peter ‘acting out’ as Spider-Man and Mary Jane having a career as an actress are fun.

Yeah, and it's regrettable how some people keep piling on and on about "realism", and find it impossible to enjoy surrealism and escapism, all in books where a guy gets powers from a radioactive spider instead of dying from poisoning. Those who clamored for Mary Jane to be dumped from the book just because of a career that could always be changed to a different one fail to come to terms with how superhero and sci-fi comics are inherently unrealistic, or that the key to realism is in how the characters interact, not what their jobs are.

I should hope most of those anti-Mary Jane Watson campaigners from outside the company now feel remorse at how they pushed Marvel's editorial to do what we've had to cope with for 8 years now. Some do, I'm sure. But there's still others out there who don't, and if not, their alleged readership was inexplicable.

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