The Four Color Media Monitor

A writer at ComicBook tells about the history of one of the shoddiest projects at Marvel, the Trouble miniseries, written by Mark Millar and previously mentioned here, towards the end of the time Bill Jemas was their CEO, but Joe Quesada still the EIC. The columnist flubs, however, with the following:

Marvel in the early ’00s was an exciting place. The publisher had come out of the ’90s, got fresh leadership in the form of new Editor-In-Chief Joe Quesada and Vice-President Bill Jemas, and started putting out fantastic comics. The two of them brought in loads of new talent and did their best to repair the damage to the line that the ’90s had done. They started with the Ultimate Universe and went from there, redefining Marvel’s biggest franchises for the 21st century. There was an energy that was palpable to readers and Marvel did their best to push the envelope in their superhero line. New stars were made, with names like Mark Millar and Brian Michael Bendis taking the top spots in the company. They were allowed to take Marvel comics in all kinds of new direction, and Millar had an idea to bring back the old romance comics, with a Marvel Universe twist.

Unfortunately, that's the problem. The whole story had to be told within the framework of the 616 universe, not outside of it. As for the Ultimate line, didn't that see an alternate take on Hank Pym and Janet VanDyne, wherein the spousal abuse variation from 1981 was regurgitated in a sickening example of cheap shock value? IIRC, didn't the Ultimate take on X-Men feature Wolverine abandoning Cyclops in a deep valley for the sake of taking advantage of Jean Grey? And while developing romance comics is great on the surface, the idea Millar had in mind at the time - making it look like part of 616 canon - unfortunately wasn't. More on that here:

Trouble was meant to be a raunchy teen sex comedy, set in a 1960s-coded past. Readers were introduced to May, Ben, Richard, and Mary, familiar characters to anyone who has read the Spider-Man comics. That’s right, Trouble was a sex comedy starring Spider-Man’s parents, aunt, and uncle. Aunt May has always been a part of nearly every piece of Spider-Man media, but it’s not like there were a lot of fans out there clamoring to see her past. Romance comics hadn’t been extant since DC brought superheroes back with 1956’s Showcase #4, so fans were genuinely baffled by Trouble. Well, until it came out. Once readers realized that it was about Spider-Man’s parents, things got weird and led to a moment that is such a misinterpretation of Spider-Man that it’s not even funny — it was revealed that Peter was May’s son with Richard Parker, her having cheated on Ben.

It’s almost impossible to understand why Marvel thought that this was a good idea. Now, obviously, they wanted to make the relationship between May and Peter into something else — that May was actually Peter’s mother, and that’s why she loved him so much. But this takes something very special — May and Ben take in a child they loved by choice — and made it a piece of parental responsibility. May gave Peter to Mary in the book because she didn’t feel right about the whole thing; this is yet another terrible read on May’s character and actually makes her look worse as a character.

Spider-Man is meant to have a life of tragedy, but Trouble found ways to take that into a kind of stupid place. It’s an example of wanting to push the envelope without thinking about what bedrock they were going to destroy. Marvel was having a lot of success by going in directions that no one had saw before. Trouble was an example of courting controversy in order to test out a new Spider-Man idea, but it’s a Spider-Man idea that is completely wrong-headed and foolish. It’s fine to change things, but going too far is definitely a thing. Trouble didn’t follow that rule at all.

But neither did Sins Past, written mainly as it was by J. Michael Straczynski around that time in Spider-Man proper. So what's the point? Why did Quesada think that was a good idea? That too should be a query raised by the columnist, but alas, he's so stuck in a bizarre delusion of his own about the early 2000s, he can't consider that he's also taking the whole notion Spidey's life is almost nothing but tragedy way too far. That's exactly what led to the idea Peter should all but be a pauper, and can't be married to an aspiring model and actress at all. Which, as Spidey experts know, resulted in Peter and Mary Jane getting their marriage dissolved by Mephisto. That may not be as offensive as what occurred in DC's Identity Crisis, but yes, Sins Past and One More Day were very appalling and tasteless nevertheless, and as recent procedure at Marvel makes clear, they refuse to reverse the damage.

There’s a lot of great Marvel from the ’00s, a lot of groundbreaking work that did a great job of adding something new to old franchises and making them fresh. However, Trouble is one of the first, well, troubling examples of Marvel’s obsession with Spider-Man’s past. It was Marvel trying to do something dumb with Spider-Man’s past years before One More Day. Trouble was a book that never needed to happen and after it did, it was quickly brushed under the carpet. It was an exercise in futility, and it’s still a perplexing choice over two decades later.

While Trouble certainly lived up - or down - to its name, I don't understand why the columnist seems to believe the 2000s had such great productions, considering how Scarlet Witch was subjected full force to a villification that did not need to happen, and it took nearly a decade until they were finally willing to reverse that, yet the whole Wanda-as-madwoman premise was put to use in the Marvel movie and TV franchise, and all the SJWs who complained about sexism in entertainment never took issue with that, if at all. Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver were supposed to be reformed crooks who became figures one could admire, even as they still had their character flaws, and in WandaVision and Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, she's reduced to a basket case.

The Trouble miniseries didn't have to happen. But neither did Avengers: Disassembled, Sins Past, Civil War and One More Day. There's also some very bad Iron Man storylines that took place at the time, along with Thor, X-Men and Fantastic Four stories, and the repetitive company wide crossovers that got to the point of occurring more than once a year were also uncalled for. Why doesn't that occur to the columnist? Alas, if he can't take issue with those kind of terrible directions, then his alleged criticism of Trouble is unconvincing.

But could a story about Aunt May's childhood have ever been developed? Well, if talented creators were given the right assignment under the right circumstances, chances are they could tell a tasteful story about hers and Uncle Ben's childhoods that Marvel fans could consider worth the effort when it comes to establishing histories for fictional characters. Under awful editors and publishers like Quesada, Jemas, Alonso and even Cebulski, however, this is simply not possible.

Labels: Avengers, bad editors, dreadful writers, golden calf of villainy, history, marvel comics, misogyny and racism, msm propaganda, Spider-Man, women of marvel