Women don’t get a lot of love in comicbooks unless they have powers and dress up in a tight-fitting revealing costume. If they possess neither, their duties most often include the need to be rescued constantly or in a worst-case scenario end up dead to cause mental agony and pain to the hero (check up what happened to Green Lantern Kyle Rayner’s girlfriend to see what I mean).
Yet when done right, they succeed in being pivotal and important characters on their own terms. Hence, the women in the world of Spider-Man are just as vital as the titular hero. Ol’ Web Head has quite the list of ladies: Black Cat/Felicia Hardy, Betty Brant and Carlie Cooper, to name a few. But none have been more popular than Gwen Stacy and Mary Jane Watson.
Comparatively, Mary Jane Watson has been in the spotlight more than Gwen Stacy, thanks to the prominence given to her in adaptations.
Sam Raimi’s trilogy always focused on MJ (do you mind if I call Mary Jane Watson “MJ”? It saves time typing) while Gwen Stacy, played by Bryce Dallas Howard, was more-or-less shoehorned in a minor capacity in Spider-Man 3 (2007).
Lately, though, Gwen Stacy has been enjoying an upsurge in popularity thanks to Emma Stone’s performances in the rebooted films. Not only did Stone imbue Gwen with some serious lovable charm and smarts but her active involvement in helping costumed boyfriend with pesky villains helped make her one of the films’ best components instead of functioning as an obligatory ‘damsel-in-distress’. Revolutionary, right?
Except Mary Jane had been doing the same for years in the comics.
There is a lot of love for Sam Raimi’s work over the reboot. I love those films, too. The first two, at any rate. But for the mere sake of nostalgia, I will not deny that the trilogy wasn’t without its faults and the biggest complaint I had was with the depiction of Mary Jane Watson. I do not blame Kirsten Dunst— after all, actors and actresses have to simply make the best with the scripts given to them. But I hated the way the character was portrayed. Not that it’s much better across other media— the Spider-Man PlayStation game, for instance, committed the same cardinal ‘damsel-in-distress’ sin. Instead of the cool, fun girl from the comics, we got a soap-operatic, whiny excuse of a MJ. Such a travesty! What many people may not realise is in the source material, MJ was always a downright bad-ass, again and again and again and Peter has admitted many times that she was one of the strongest women he knew. From the time she was with Peter, she was a massively important centre in the comics. Which is why I want to tear my hair over after in The Superior Spider-Man #31 last month, she made it clear that she was done with Peter (then again, nothing is permanent in comics, so fingers crossed). Thanks a lot for One More Day, Marvel, that’s the outcome of such a stupid editorial decision. Dweebs.
So without further ado, let me present five instances throughout the history of Spider-Man, in no particular order, in which Mary Jane Watson demonstrated that she was completely amazing and at times, a real bad ass.
1) The time she attacked a Spider-Slayer in Pittsburgh with a baseball bat to save Peter
Events in The Amazing Spider-Man issues #290-292 turned out to be game-changers for Spider-Man lore to come. At the end of #290, Peter proposed to MJ (the second time he’d done so) only to be turned down again. In the next two issues, MJ leaves for Pittsburgh to take care of family matters but later calls Peter and asks him to come and help her. Peter flies out to join her, unaware that Alistair Smythe is tracking him with his Spider-Slayer. Long story short: Spider-Man and Smythe engage in battle which Smythe nearly won if MJ hadn’t grabbed a baseball bat from a nearby kid and hit the Spider-Slayer!
Sounds like a dumb move, right? Except it was all a ploy to buy Peter the few crucial seconds he needed to recover… although his response to seeing Smythe almost kill MJ was to tear the Spider-Slayer to pieces and threaten Smythe with the same treatment if he tried to harm anyone again. Seriously— that bit of courage requires serious cojones to pull off without being paralysed with fear.
2) The time Mary Jane turned her horrible father in to law enforcement to bail her sister out
While Spider-Slayer in Pittsburgh took central attention in #291-292, the reason MJ was in that town was a family conflict. Her father, Phillip, had convinced MJ’s sister, Gayle, to steal a rare manuscript for him to sell on the black market. Gayle got caught and Phillip wanted MJ to find the paper and bring to him. She ended up aiding her father, much to Peter’s uneasiness despite promising to support her decision no matter what. After the battle, MJ hands in the script, only for her father to get arrested for the crime. The move took even Peter by surprise. In the end, Gayle was released and reunited with her children and estranged sister. The real happy ending, though, is all this made MJ change her mind about Peter’s proposal and she agreed to marry him. And the rest, as they say, is history.
3) Escaping the devious clutches of her obsessed landlord and admirer entirely through her own efforts and saving Spider-Man from death… again!
David Michelinie’s and Todd McFarlane’s run on the series as writer and artist respectively yielded two beautiful outcomes: the introduction of fan-favourite anti-hero/villain Venom and the dark disturbing storyline in which Mary Jane is kidnapped by her obsessive admirer and landlord, Jonathan Caesar. The event is notable for being downright unsettling in that the antagonist succeeded in hitting Peter where it hurt most and he wasn’t even a major villain! Pushed to the brink of despair, Spider-Man resorts to beating up every criminal he comes across in New York in his frantic need for information. Caesar hires two criminals, Styx and Stone, to kill him and by #309, it all boils down to a hair-raising climax in which Spider-Man is nearly killed in Central Park and saved at the last second by none other than MJ.
Wait, but wasn’t she imprisoned until then?
Certainly. Until the sight of Styx (the guy can kill anything just by touching it!) prompts her into action. MJ initially tries to dispatch Caesar by applying a lamp socket to a puddle of water he is standing in. When that doesn’t work, she simply smashes the lamp in his face… and succeeds in electrocuting the goons instead. MJ immediately tracks her husband down and shoots Styx as he’s about to destroy Peter.
Bottom line: in the direst circumstances, MJ triumphantly overcame them and not only prevailed but saved Peter as well— all without powers, too. Damsel in distress? Pah! More like Heroine of the Hour!
4) Evading capture by the Green Goblin during the events of ‘Goblin Nation’
In the final story arc of The Superior Spider-Man, Norman Osborn had emerged from the shadows he’d been hiding in all the time and unleashed his army on New York. Part of his plan to destroy Spider-Man (and Otto Octavius, consequently) was to kidnap the people the webslinger cared about. One such target included Mary Jane.
Big mistake. When the Goblin’s minions (literally kids in Goblin outfits) crashed her apartment, MJ didn’t sit around screaming. Nope! She got out Peter’s old webshooters and webbed those mini-Goblins to the wall and with her boyfriend, collected Aunt May and Jameson Sr and took them to safety! The moment she deals with the little Goblins is simply spectacular! No chance the next screen incarnation of Mary Jane would do something like this, is there? Also, there’s a possibility that Green Goblin realised he may have bitten off more than he could chew when concerning Ms Watson.
5) Everything about One More Day
Writing about this actually hurts because I was forced to read One More Day to better acquaint myself with the events. Reading it made me physically nauseous. The story essentially wiped out Peter’s and MJ’s marriage in a few pages with such ease and little effort that it is nothing more than the WORST possible way to indirectly reboot a series, retcon history and function as a deus ex machina! I abhor book burnings of any sort, but I wouldn’t hesitate throwing this to such a pile!
So why does this make MJ such a strong person? Simple. She agreed to go through with the whole thing.
Despite how overall crappy this is, the moments before which Memphisto (Marvel’s version of the Devil) realigns time end up being some of the most gut-punching scenes drawn and written. As a Spider-Man fan, reading those sections felt as if a part of me did die. It honestly hurt and it is little wonder that the Spider-Man community was pissed off. Ultimately, through MJ’s visibly difficult yet selfless decision, she enabled the world to forget Spider-Man’s identity and prevent Aunt May from ever getting shot. But the price paid was simply too much and even though it has been seven years gone, the injustice and the pain of it all still rankles.
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And there you have it! Do you know of any other moments that made Mary Jane Watson memorable? If so, leave them in the comments below!
The Snarky Quill 