Overlooked Characters from Comics

[T-U-R-T-L-E POWA!]

Scrooge McDuck and Usagi Yojimbo. Both of those should be MUCH more popular than they are.

[MsMarvelDuckie]

Originally Posted by MikeandRaph87

I have to admit I never cared much for them and felt The Rapier should have been Cloak to make it more personal and make Silvermanw rhat more devious.
http://www.supermegamonkey.net/chron...lar_s_93.shtml

What about Eddie Brock/ Venom. It has been since 2004 that the true Venom has been a tive against Spider-Man if not at least an anti-hero. Bring him back, Marvel.

I know its not a character, but the Peter/ Mary Jane marriage is only lookes at for a temporary $ spike.

Rapier is not one I'm familiar with, but I actually have the first appearance issue of C&D, as well as their original mini series. I really liked them, and they've had a few other good stories back in the day, but have sadly fallen out of use. Same goes for Silvermane, now that you mention it. Or any of the Smythes, too. Or anyone named Fisk who isn't Kingpin.

I'll second that about the Pete/M-J marriage. They totally dropped the ball on that one when Joephisto killed it. The UN-marriage one of the FEW things I wish they'd ret-con out of existence!

[MikeandRaph87]

Originally Posted by MsMarvelDuckie

Rapier is not one I'm familiar with, but I actually have the first appearance issue of C&D, as well as their original mini series. I really liked them, and they've had a few other good stories back in the day, but have sadly fallen out of use. Same goes for Silvermane, now that you mention it. Or any of the Smythes, too. Or anyone named Fisk who isn't Kingpin.

I'll second that about the Pete/M-J marriage. They totally dropped the ball on that one when Joephisto killed it. The UN-marriage one of the FEW things I wish they'd ret-con out of existence!

Rapier was Silvermane's best friend in the Maggia(mob). They rose up together and promised to stick by each other only if you want to be the man you have to remove even a friend which is what Silvermane did. So his ex-buddy returned years later as The Rapier. I think he appeared in a villains bar some time later and got killed. Such a waste of potential. I believe Silvermane would want to stick it to him and use him as a ginea pig for his experiments so what better than to force Rapier to be one?

I don't think Silvermane has appeared since an issue in The Gauntlet storyline from around late 2009.

I just got Spectacular Spider-Man vol. 4 in the Essential series that covers the Silvermane vs Cloak & Dagger saga. I just could not get into it form what I read.

[MsMarvelDuckie]

Ah. Well, I've never been as interested in Silvermane as some of the other Maggia characters, mainly Fisk, but I remember him being a fairly important character in the S-M TAS cartoon. Personally, I'd love to see more of The Enforcers. Always loved those guys. Hammerhead, too.

To really appreciate Cloak and Dagger, though, you have to go back to their early appearances, and understand their backstory. I've collected a lot of the Essential ASM books, mostly the early issues, and have pretty much everything from 2001 to around 2007-ish for AS-M, SS-M, and FNS-M. FNS-M, is one of my favorites, partly because I absolutely adore Peter David's writing.

Everything after the AS-M arc OMIT however, I consider non-canon, because that arc was basically the final nail in the Peter/M-J coffin. It was the first and ONLY comic story that literally made me want to tear it up and ask for my money back. That's how out of character it was, and how much it pissed me off. It felt like a slap in the face to all the M-J fans who had HOPED that her separate "chat" with Mephisto might leave a loophole for them to get back together. It was probably the single arc that made me basically stop reading Spidey, and even if I hadn't been so broke at the time and so far from a comic store that I couldn't buy them anyway, I wouldn't have picked it back up without a REALLY good incentive. I'd probably still be loathe to do so after all the stuff that's gone on in the last few years.

The one GOOD thing that came out of OMD/BND was Mr. Negative and the "new" Brock/Anti-Venom. I really liked that development for him. Especially since Scorpion had taken Venom's place on Osborne's "Avengers" team. Now THERE was a joke if ever there was one- after reading nearly every issue centering on the Secret Invasion, I STILL have NO idea HOW the government could have handed the reins to SHIELD to that homicidal nutjob! And actually give him full authority to do basically whatever the heck he wanted. That's insane.

[Leo656]

The thing about the Spider-Man/MJ marriage is that the Editors were trying to sh*tcan it since 1993 or so. "End the marriage" was pretty much the entire point of starting the Clone Saga, and by the end was one of the many things they'd flipped on, but it doesn't change the fact that they only thought it up as an easy way to dissolve the marriage, thus everything that happened since then grew out of that initial motivation.

Seems more like a problem with Marvel Editorial in general, as far as being out of touch with what their readers actually want to read about, than anything with any specific storyline or writer. Marvel as an entity has never wanted Spider-Man and MJ married because they feel it makes it hard for the audience to relate to him. It's a dumb argument, but one the DC editors use about Lois & Clark all the time, also. In both cases, readers overwhelmingly indicate a preference FOR the characters to be married, but Editorial always insists otherwise, and hey, they run a billion-dollar company so they obviously know better than the people who pay to read the stuff, right?

So the question is: If Marvel Editorial fundamentally hates the idea of Peter and MJ being married, and hundreds of writers and editors over the last 25 years have followed the company line to some degree - lots of the writers, if cornered, will admit they agree with the mandate, because they're too lazy to work the marriage into the stories, so they prefer single Peter because he's easier to write - how much hope is there for it to ever actually work, even if they do undo it? It seems to me like it would be done very spitefully, then undone again at the earliest opportunity, like if the books didn't suddenly sell a ton more, they'd kill MJ off completely and say "See? The books didn't sell, people don't like them married, and now she's dead so get over it."

It's just hard to hold out hope when the people in charge openly hate an idea, even if it's been established. Same thing happened to Lois & Clark; once word leaked out around 2000 that the DC editors thought the marriage made things "boring", everyone saw the writing on the wall. It took ten years and a complete company relaunch to get there, but everyone knew they would undo it as soon as they had a chance. When they couldn't erase it, they first spent a few years making Lois SO unlikeable you'd end up wishing they'd end it, and then after that just stopped using her very much. By the time of the New 52 and "They were never married" happened, the marriage was such an afterthought and had been so poorly handled it almost seemed like nobody cared anymore.

I'unno. I feel like these characters deserve SOME happiness and stability, so I'm all for them being married and stuff, but it just seems like the people in charge really, really hate the idea and always have, so it makes me wonder why people hold out any hope.

[MsMarvelDuckie]

I agree with you to a point, Leo, but in the case of Peter, the writer working on the book from 2000 on until the end of One More Day (when it ended) actually WANTED to keep the marriage going. He had two different endings for the arc (according to some in-house rumors) and one of them actually had Peter refuse Mephisto's deal. Joe Quesada nixed it, and JMS subsequently walked off the book. He went over to Thor instead. He was THAT pissed about being forced to axe the marriage. So were most of the fans- some of whom followed him over to Thor shortly after Brand New Day proved to be little more than a fanboy-wanking personal head-canon with Quesada's fingerprints all over it. It was a two-decade step BACKWARD for the book, that only made Peter look like the biggest tool in the MU for taking the deal, and turned him into a 30-yr-old man-child who was back to having the SAME old personal and financial issues he had while struggling through college ten years earlier. In other words, he became insufferably incompetent at life, relationships, and financial responsibility while fighting third-rate new "villains" like Paper Doll, Screwball, and Freak Show.

[Leo656]

But see, you kind of proved my point at the same time. ONE of the writers didn't want to do it, but he's overruled by editors, other, lazier writers, and a decades-long mandate from up top that "stable" Spider-Man is "boring" Spider-Man. So whatever his intentions, there's nothing he nor anyone could have done. If it wasn't him, in that story, it would have been 6 months later, in another story, by another writer. But they were going to sh*tcan the marriage one day no matter what anyone else said about it because they don't want to sell Married Spider-Man and it's their company. So even if they hadn't done it then, they would have done it eventually, and even if they bring it back, they're already on-record as not wanting it, so they'd undoubtedly reverse-course just as quickly as soon as they could.

It's like over at DC, how they're finally throwing a tiny little bone to fans of Lois & Clark, far too late to do any good, and it's not going to change the status quo of the "real" main books anyway. It's funny, because when you read any interview with Dan Jurgens about the New 52, you can tell how carefully he's choosing his words, trying to keep his job, despite HATING everything he's asked to do to sell the entire disaster. If it was up to him, the Superman books would be doing fine. But he's One Guy, and just because he's The Greatest Superman Writer Ever doesn't mean he can do anything when he's handcuffed by the editors and their bad ideas.

So yeah, same thing. It all comes from what editorial wants, and neither company is doing a good job listening to anyone except the movie tie-in people, the last decade or so.

[T-U-R-T-L-E POWA!]

Originally Posted by Leo656

The thing about the Spider-Man/MJ marriage is that the Editors were trying to sh*tcan it since 1993 or so. "End the marriage" was pretty much the entire point of starting the Clone Saga, and by the end was one of the many things they'd flipped on, but it doesn't change the fact that they only thought it up as an easy way to dissolve the marriage, thus everything that happened since then grew out of that initial motivation.

Seems more like a problem with Marvel Editorial in general, as far as being out of touch with what their readers actually want to read about, than anything with any specific storyline or writer. Marvel as an entity has never wanted Spider-Man and MJ married because they feel it makes it hard for the audience to relate to him. It's a dumb argument, but one the DC editors use about Lois & Clark all the time, also. In both cases, readers overwhelmingly indicate a preference FOR the characters to be married, but Editorial always insists otherwise, and hey, they run a billion-dollar company so they obviously know better than the people who pay to read the stuff, right?

So the question is: If Marvel Editorial fundamentally hates the idea of Peter and MJ being married, and hundreds of writers and editors over the last 25 years have followed the company line to some degree - lots of the writers, if cornered, will admit they agree with the mandate, because they're too lazy to work the marriage into the stories, so they prefer single Peter because he's easier to write - how much hope is there for it to ever actually work, even if they do undo it? It seems to me like it would be done very spitefully, then undone again at the earliest opportunity, like if the books didn't suddenly sell a ton more, they'd kill MJ off completely and say "See? The books didn't sell, people don't like them married, and now she's dead so get over it."

It's just hard to hold out hope when the people in charge openly hate an idea, even if it's been established. Same thing happened to Lois & Clark; once word leaked out around 2000 that the DC editors thought the marriage made things "boring", everyone saw the writing on the wall. It took ten years and a complete company relaunch to get there, but everyone knew they would undo it as soon as they had a chance. When they couldn't erase it, they first spent a few years making Lois SO unlikeable you'd end up wishing they'd end it, and then after that just stopped using her very much. By the time of the New 52 and "They were never married" happened, the marriage was such an afterthought and had been so poorly handled it almost seemed like nobody cared anymore.

I'unno. I feel like these characters deserve SOME happiness and stability, so I'm all for them being married and stuff, but it just seems like the people in charge really, really hate the idea and always have, so it makes me wonder why people hold out any hope.

Joey Q hates married superheroes. JMS has flat out said that Joey forced all that crap on him. I had been a Spidey fan my whole life but One More Day was the end for me. Joey Q remains high on my list of all time most evil super villains. The only redeemable quality he has is that he can write Daredevil pretty good.

[Leo656]

I can meet them halfway and agree that Peter and MJ being married and having a kid while he was still actively being Spider-Man would have been out of character and irresponsible on his part, and they were right to dial that back.

Same reason Batman having a biological son who's also Robin doesn't make any sense; Bruce became Batman out of a very specific kind of tragedy, and his Robins have always been chosen because they shared that tragedy, but if Bruce Wayne had a son, of his own blood, the desire to spare them of that tragedy would be so great, THAT would be one of the few things that could make him quit being Batman. If he were suddenly put in that position, the most likely outcome is he would hand the Batman mantle to Dick, and Bruce would retire to raise his biological son in a lifestyle of semi-normalcy. He would certainly never slap a mask and a cape on them and send them after murderous psychotics, especially AFTER what happened to Jason, who wasn't even really his kid. Bottom line, Bruce would never put himself or his biological son in a position where either of them would be killed by a villain, because his entire motivation for being Batman is "I want to make sure other people don't have what happened to me, happen to them," and it was different with Dick and the others because no matter what anyone says, it IS different when you're adopted, and secondly, they had already suffered that tragedy so Bruce making them Robin was like a form of therapy. Having his biological son don the tights and operate as his sidekick changes the entire motivation into thrill-seeking, and that's highly questionable. Damien shouldn't exist. F*cking Morrison and his "Everything is canon, even if it doesn't make sense!" garbage. "Son of the Demon" was an ElseWorlds for a reason, you jerk!

So while I don't see the big problem with super-heroes being married, and wish editors would lay off, I do agree that having them married with KIDS means they should retire from being super-heroes completely as it's completely irresponsible on the part of the characters to have them attempt to raise children while living the super-hero lifestyle. So while Peter and MJ's marriage didn't need to be wiped out, sending their baby off to Parts Unknown was both wise and necessary, once they decided Peter was really Peter after all. When Ben was Peter and Peter was a clone, and he and MJ were going to retire to Oregon and raise the baby, that was fine. When the editors decided Peter was Peter, that baby was a needless complication and it was smart that they sh*tcanned that angle.

Married super-heroes, fine, married with kids, that's stretching things too far.

[MsMarvelDuckie]

Originally Posted by Leo656

But see, you kind of proved my point at the same time. ONE of the writers didn't want to do it, but he's overruled by editors, other, lazier writers, and a decades-long mandate from up top that "stable" Spider-Man is "boring" Spider-Man. So whatever his intentions, there's nothing he nor anyone could have done. If it wasn't him, in that story, it would have been 6 months later, in another story, by another writer. But they were going to sh*tcan the marriage one day no matter what anyone else said about it because they don't want to sell Married Spider-Man and it's their company. So even if they hadn't done it then, they would have done it eventually, and even if they bring it back, they're already on-record as not wanting it, so they'd undoubtedly reverse-course just as quickly as soon as they could.

It's like over at DC, how they're finally throwing a tiny little bone to fans of Lois & Clark, far too late to do any good, and it's not going to change the status quo of the "real" main books anyway. It's funny, because when you read any interview with Dan Jurgens about the New 52, you can tell how carefully he's choosing his words, trying to keep his job, despite HATING everything he's asked to do to sell the entire disaster. If it was up to him, the Superman books would be doing fine. But he's One Guy, and just because he's The Greatest Superman Writer Ever doesn't mean he can do anything when he's handcuffed by the editors and their bad ideas.

So yeah, same thing. It all comes from what editorial wants, and neither company is doing a good job listening to anyone except the movie tie-in people, the last decade or so.

Funny thing though, is that he was the ONLY writer on AS-M and would have continued on the book if not for Quesada's mandate- which came from HIM ALONE. Since he was, y'know, the EIC at the time. At no time did anyone else (including Bendis and others who had clout) ever claim to want an un-married Spidey. Prior to that decision, JMS's run had been one of the most popular in the entire history of the book- because he made a married Spidey WORK! He made it interesting for over half a decade, and fans LOVED it. He single-handedly fixed the on-again, off-again separation that had gone on for several years post-Clone Saga, and had them actually happy and made M-J an active and most importantly a VITAL part of Peter's life. It was ALL on Joe. But since HE had the final editorial say, his will won out, and one of their best writers walked off their flagship book. And the fans left in DROVES because of it. The sales on AS-M fell farther than they had been in decades, and it never fully recovered from that blow. Because ONE man had a hard-on for single Peter.

Originally Posted by T-U-R-T-L-E POWA!

Joey Q hates married superheroes. JMS has flat out said that Joey forced all that crap on him. I had been a Spidey fan my whole life but One More Day was the end for me. Joey Q remains high on my list of all time most evil super villains. The only redeemable quality he has is that he can write Daredevil pretty good.

Yup. All this and then some. But, yes, he IS good with Daredevil. But he hates HIM having a stable relationship, too. How many girlfriends has he killed off, again? And I hope you don't mind I put that statement in bold? I was an active member on Marvel's boards at the time, and the news was ALL OVER the place about JMS's feelings on that one. I felt bad for him, because he really LOVED doing Spidey, but couldn't stand having his hands tied as a writer. And I don't blame him.

[MsMarvelDuckie]

Originally Posted by Leo656

I can meet them halfway and agree that Peter and MJ being married and having a kid while he was still actively being Spider-Man would have been out of character and irresponsible on his part, and they were right to dial that back.

Same reason Batman having a biological son who's also Robin doesn't make any sense; Bruce became Batman out of a very specific kind of tragedy, and his Robins have always been chosen because they shared that tragedy, but if Bruce Wayne had a son, of his own blood, the desire to spare them of that tragedy would be so great, THAT would be one of the few things that could make him quit being Batman. If he were suddenly put in that position, the most likely outcome is he would hand the Batman mantle to Dick, and Bruce would retire to raise his biological son in a lifestyle of semi-normalcy. He would certainly never slap a mask and a cape on them and send them after murderous psychotics, especially AFTER what happened to Jason, who wasn't even really his kid. Bottom line, Bruce would never put himself or his biological son in a position where either of them would be killed by a villain, because his entire motivation for being Batman is "I want to make sure other people don't have what happened to me, happen to them," and it was different with Dick and the others because no matter what anyone says, it IS different when you're adopted, and secondly, they had already suffered that tragedy so Bruce making them Robin was like a form of therapy. Having his biological son don the tights and operate as his sidekick changes the entire motivation into thrill-seeking, and that's highly questionable. Damien shouldn't exist. F*cking Morrison and his "Everything is canon, even if it doesn't make sense!" garbage. "Son of the Demon" was an ElseWorlds for a reason, you jerk!

So while I don't see the big problem with super-heroes being married, and wish editors would lay off, I do agree that having them married with KIDS means they should retire from being super-heroes completely as it's completely irresponsible on the part of the characters to have them attempt to raise children while living the super-hero lifestyle. So while Peter and MJ's marriage didn't need to be wiped out, sending their baby off to Parts Unknown was both wise and necessary, once they decided Peter was really Peter after all. When Ben was Peter and Peter was a clone, and he and MJ were going to retire to Oregon and raise the baby, that was fine. When the editors decided Peter was Peter, that baby was a needless complication and it was smart that they sh*tcanned that angle.

Married super-heroes, fine, married with kids, that's stretching things too far.

Dude, that's what the MU2 was for. Spider-Girl WAS with a retired Peter. (Albeit he was forced into it YEARS before she ever donned the mantle, when he lost a leg to a fight with the Green Goblin.) But even there, it was STILL a good, interesting book, and Peter still had plenty of importance in it. He still donned the mask a time or three to help out Mayday. And it was popular! And FUN! One of the few non-main-line books I read regularly, even over such fare as Ultimate Spidey, Ultimate Avengers, etc....

[Leo656]

There's an ElseWorlds solution for everything, but it hardly fixes the larger problems insofar as the main books and their canon.

[T-U-R-T-L-E POWA!]

Originally Posted by Leo656

There's an ElseWorlds solution for everything, but it hardly fixes the larger problems insofar as the main books and their canon.

I just always felt like they should make them get a divorce if they hated the idea of them being married. It's like Joey Q walks in and says "Hey I hate married heroes but I can't see any way for him to not be married. OH I KNOW! How about he basically makes a deal with the devil???" Just dumb on so many levels.

[MsMarvelDuckie]

Exactly! They had ALREADY been separated for the better part of five years before JMS came onto the book. All Joe would have had to do was make it permanent with a piece of paper. Simple and makes sense- but no, he let them get back together, be happy and sort out their issues, and THEN throw his own personal wrench into the works via a deal with the devil!

And Leo, MU2 isn't really an elseworlds though, it's the second-biggest and most developed Marvel universe. Basically it's their version of Earth 2. (With "Earth Prime" being the 616 world.) The only real difference is the time-line is a bit further along. Most of the heroes are the same, with the same backgrounds and relationships, but older. And many of them have kids in it, who take over for them. You're thinking more of the "What If" line.

[Leo656]

It's the same thing as the Kingdom Come cheat. "It's the world you know, just a few years from now." Except it isn't. The mainstream universe, in either case, will never "evolve" into those universes, for a million reasons, they just occasionally tease that they will through little winks and references here and there. But they'll forever be a separate story and never actually be the Official Canon of the mainstream. Thus, "ElseWorlds".

"ElseWorlds" and "What-If" are exactly the same thing under a different trademarked name, nothing more. It's just that "ElseWorlds" had a tendency to be more about alternate origin stories and "What-If" had a little more of a broader focus. But they're the exact same thing, some of them even had their own entire "universe" built up for themselves, like Byrne's "Superman/Batman: Generations" line or Frank Miller's "Dark Knight-verse". They're all still "What-If" stories under a different name (the Dark Knight books of course being, "What If Batman were being written by a complete f*cking lunatic?" ).

So yeah, a really fleshed-out ElseWorlds story is still just an ElseWorlds story, because it's not the main canon and can never BE the main canon. I do think it says a lot that many fans prefer the alternate universe stories that DC and Marvel are putting out in recent years over the stories taking place in mainstream continuity, though.

[MsMarvelDuckie]

I'll grant you they do split off in some ways, but in the larger sense, they are essentially the closest parallel. The biggest difference being the timeline speed and the kids who either haven't been born yet in the 616, or were born and "died". Mayday Parker being the most obvious. But almost all the details of the heroes themselves are the same, usually only with one major change like Peter's leg injury causing him to hang up the webs. In fact, they even make mention of some of the big events from the main continuity at least up to Civil War. It's basically evolved over time right along with the 616 world, so that they've grown together and often intersect. Call it an elseworld or whatever you want, it's STILL the equivilant to an MU2.0. Or MU "lite" if you will. The What Ifs are completely different things.

[ZariusTwo]

Which is ironic, because Spider-Girl started life as an issue of "What If..."

But yeah, Spider-Girl evolved into more than a possible future, but a living breathing extension of Peter Parker's life and, eventually, a vital part of the mythology, as Dan Slott made Mayday's brother Benjy a crucial part of the Spider-Verse event. He was the "Scion", who had to be kept alive in order for any other Spider-Men and Women across reality to be born. Sounds cools right? Well the only drawback to having the marriage still mean something in a roundabout manner is that they had to kill off MC2 Peter in order to get to this point (DeFalco got his revenge in a later issue by hinting the Mayday of the Spider-Verse event wasn't the one he had written all this time, but an alternative double with a similar history. Slott was furious)

At the time, MC2 was a big deal when it started, Marvel were almost bankrupt at the time and were sort of setting up that universe to be a brand that could hopefully prove possibly successful enough to adapt as the definitive futures, same as they had tried with the 2099 line a few years back in the mid-90s. Like with 2099 though, the sole successful character of the brand ended up being a web-swinger.

Up until at least 2010, the Quesada regime spent the last few years catering a bit to marriage fans trying to win them back, but still not give them what they wanted out of the main book. Quesada advised fans to start picking Mayday's book up, but fans didn't care much for a perceived "What If..." (despite the fact MC2 had the same classic Marvel history backing it up at the time) and the sales just weren't there to sustain it. You also had "The Real Clone Saga", a revision of the Clone Saga which concluded with everyone living happily ever after, but again, sales were'nt big for it, so there was no ongoing comic made to continue events from it (which had been the intention according to Tom DeFalco)

These days, the marriage is still kicking about in the daily newspaper strip, which is supervised by Stan Lee, but that's never going to be the solution for a lot of fans given how excruciatingly decompressed and silly/cheesy it is (I love the thing though) and it's likely going to go as soon as Stan passes away.

It should be noted that, canonically, Peter actually spent two years as Spidey while Mayday as an infant, and there were a couple of stories written by DeFalco set during that time period where the marriage didn't suffer for it at all. MJ was fine with Peter being a committed hero and a dad.

[Leo656]

People with kids shouldn't be jumping off rooftops and getting shot at by super-villains. That's one thing I actually agree with the 90s-era Spider-Man editors on. It's entirely unjustifiable, and if you really think about it, it's not actually very likely that Peter, like Bruce Wayne or anyone else who lost a parental figure at a young age, would actually behave that way. When a huge part of your heroic motivation is, "I lost someone close to me when I was too young to emotionally cope properly," it's completely implausible that you'd ever risk putting your own family through that.

The rest I can't comment on because I'm hardly an expert on any Spider-Man more recent than "Maximum Carnage", and even then, it's been years. Although I did spend the last couple weeks slowly going over "The Life Of Reilly", the 35-part article about the Clone Saga put together by the Spider-Man editors who worked on it. Boy, am I glad I wasn't reading it at the time. Sounds ghastly. Although I recommend the article if anyone hasn't seen it.

[CylonsKlingonsDaleksOhMy]

Originally Posted by Leo656

People with kids shouldn't be jumping off rooftops and getting shot at by super-villains. That's one thing I actually agree with the 90s-era Spider-Man editors on. It's entirely unjustifiable, and if you really think about it, it's not actually very likely that Peter, like Bruce Wayne or anyone else who lost a parental figure at a young age, would actually behave that way. When a huge part of your heroic motivation is, "I lost someone close to me when I was too young to emotionally cope properly," it's completely implausible that you'd ever risk putting your own family through that.

The rest I can't comment on because I'm hardly an expert on any Spider-Man more recent than "Maximum Carnage", and even then, it's been years. Although I did spend the last couple weeks slowly going over "The Life Of Reilly", the 35-part article about the Clone Saga put together by the Spider-Man editors who worked on it. Boy, am I glad I wasn't reading it at the time. Sounds ghastly. Although I recommend the article if anyone hasn't seen it.

Link to article, please? I'd be quite curious to know the creative minds and intents behind that whole debacle.

[Ninjinister]

Monkey King was built up as being important in Fear Itself, but after his one-shot he was only seen briefly again in 2014.