Givin' Up That Mary Jane

We scoffed at the rumors about the new ending to Watchmen. We scoffed at the news of Heath Ledger as Joker. We comic book fans/moviegoers might be the scoffingest fandom in all of geekery, becoming that stock character that we loathe most in science fiction, the arbitrary skeptic (well sure, aliens and ghosts and time travel I can believe exist, but cuddle parties?). Perhaps all the picture books with men in tight pants shooting lasers all pew pew from their eyeballs has exhausted our imagination. Or that some websites' layouts are programmed in such a way that merely looking upon them causes a chemical reaction in our brains that's similar to being neuralyzed, and every time we go on IMDB or IHeartChaos we lose a little more of the memories necessary to maintain the jaded disillusionment that would prevent us from paying to see the very same movies we hexed and cursed on our blogs. I'm not willing to rule this out as a possibility. Joe Lieberman just declared war on Yemen . As far as reality is concerned, all bets are off.



A day or two ago, the rumor that Mary Jane was being written out (see also: killed) in Spider-Man 4 was the hottest Spider-Man 4 news on the internet. Today, it is being dismissed by every blogger this side of the Phantom Zone as impossible. Because the relationship between Mary Jane and Peter Parker is so fundamental to the story you can't have Spider-Man without her. It seems that everyone wised up and realized that not everyone can be the first to know something, so instead everyone aims to be the first to say that its stupid. They throw words like "unsourced" and "rumor" around, as if only ironically unaware that internet news is practically built around unsourced information and rumors, but there is nothing ironic about it. It is 100% poppin' fresh ignorance, the kind that keeps Bart Stupak awake at night wondering if sex with a woman is supposed to feel so empty and meaningless. The stone cold fact of the matter is that never in comic book media history has our notion of what's true or faithful to the source material ever kept some Mickey Mouse director or studio executive from making a bad thing worse. I expected a little more from fans of a movie franchise that cast Topher "70's Joe Schmoe" Grace as Spider-Man's ONLY DECENT VILLAIN.

Ultimately killing off Mary Jane to make more room for Gwen Stacy and Black Cat makes about as much sense as every other dumb plotline they've given us over the years, including but not limited to having Sandman be Uncle Ben's murderer, Harry's butler telling him the truth about his father's death AFTER he took a grenade to the face, and about ninety percent of the scenes with Tobey Macguire where he's not Tarzanning through NYC or being thrown through brick walls. I will always vote for "Spider-Man being throw threw a wall" even if the other option is "oxygen".

Personally, I could take or leave Mary Jane in the next film. Her importance to the Spider Man mythos aside, her only purpose in the films is to give Tobey Macguire something to look sad about, and if Anne Hathaway is cast as Black Cat like the internet says she will, then trust me, her acting will give Tobey plenty of reason to be sad.

It may behoove us in the future to have a more open mind about the imagination of the Marvel Money Machine. Ruling things out as "stupidly impossible" only serves to generate more media buzz when said thing is revealed to be legit. And I wouldn't put it past Joe Quesadilla & Co to consider negative reactions as "reader interest" and just run with every bad idea we said they wouldn't/couldn't/shouldn't. Because if Marvel Apes has taught as anything, it's that comic book fans can be depended on to buy pretty much whatever we are told to, even if we hate it. While it seems to the naked eye to defeat the purpose of blogging, we might benefit from playing a little closer to the vest with our opinions. If not because comic companies may be reading our blogs and monitoring our reactions, then because if you're wrong than people will be able to google your comments and know exactly the date and time you were the biggest jackass in comic book blogging.

And there can be only one. Me. Everybody gotta have a dream.