Peter and MJ: The Webbing Issue
When Mary wasn't merry, nor yet married.
When Mary Jane waltzed back into Peter’s life and apartment (Amazing Spider-Man #242-243), she took in the sight of Peter’s lipstick-stained face like it was a great joke.
She’d shed most of her groovetastic dialect from earlier appearances—a necessary concession to a decade where young women now talked more like Valley girls than hippies. But otherwise, she seemed little changed. Good ol’ MJ was back, it seemed, and still not afraid of anything except commitment.
Some fifteen issues later, she barged into Peter’s apartment again after hearing sounds of a struggle, and this time her thirteen-word reaction was no joke at all:
“I just can’t cope with the fact that Peter Parker is secretly Spider-Man” (#257).
In unmasking Peter, she unmasked herself. She hadn’t just figured it out, she’d known for ages. We later learned how—as a teen visiting her Aunt Anna, she’d seen him in costume, crawling out of the Parker home (first in Amazing-Spider Man: Parallel Lives, reworked in Untold Tales of Spider-Man #16, below).
Although this announcement meshed with her party-girl front and avoidance of serious matters, it recontextualized every appearance she’d ever had: even in her most carefree moments, she’d been sitting on that secret. But after she disclosed it, she looked less carefree than careworn. She seemed to forget her shampoo and conditioner for a while, and her default expression became pained and mournful. Even her smile looked a little worn down.
Not just because, er, an old friend was risking his life, but because of a hard look at her own years of fleeing responsibility, another part of her story begun before she and Peter had met (#259).
Peter had spent his life chasing responsibility, sometimes to extremes. After they had a heart-to-heart, MJ shifted from saying she “couldn’t cope” with Peter’s secret to saying she found it “hard to cope” (#259, below). Maybe they could balance each other out?
As friends, of course! What were you thinking? Jeez, get your mind out of the gutter—
Yeah, that didn’t last (Spider Man vs. Wolverine).
To the creators’ credit, they recognized that Mary Jane had to work out her own issues before she could upgrade all the way to “Yes, I can cope” with Peter’s secret. The result was one of the best MJ stories ever, in which she had a reckoning with her family—she reconnected with her sister Gayle and Gayle’s two kids, and she cut ties with her awful, crooked father (Amazing Spider-Man #292).
Peter, for his part, made the tough choice to be there for her even when there was a supervillain on the loose. It was the first time he’d prioritized her over the duties of his costumed identity (#291)—
—and if he’d followed that precedent in their married life, that life might’ve been different, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
Mary Jane’s family drama was a deeper backstory than superhero-comic supporting characters had tended to get up to this point. It wouldn’t explode into the canon from there—the Spider-comics tend to feature Gayle about once per decade. But it clarified some key issues for MJ.
She was tired of running, ready to stand beside loved ones who cared for her. She admitted the feelings that made her vulnerable, and she felt freer after the admission. She smiled and wore her hair the way she used to: her mourning period was over. She was ready to say yes (#292).
And as soon as she did, reality shifted.
Tomorrow: The wedding issue.