All-New Venom is continuing the symbiote saga that has played a rather large role in Marvel over the last few years and has taken things in a shocking direction. All-New Venom #5 drops a major reveal on readers, one that shows just how out of touch with the audience that Marvel is. This reveal actually leaked the day before, revealing that Mary Jane Watson is the new Venom. All-New Venom was based around that central mystery, with four candidates set forward. However, Mary Jane was never one of those characters, making this a huge shock to the system. While it’s not the worst direction that All-New Venom could have gone, it’s still a mystifying decision by Marvel editorial.
Mary Jane Watson is one of the most important supporting Marvel characters in the publisher’s history. She’s best known as Peter Parker’s longest relationship, leading to a marriage that was very popular with readers but not so popular with the Marvel editors. Since the infamous story known as “One More Day”, Marvel has done their best to marginalize Mary Jane in Spider-Man’s life, all while trying to give her a new role. The Venom reveal is yet another example of Marvel misunderstanding why people like Mary Jane so much. So is this whole plotline a mistake?
“One More Day” stripped Mary Jane of her marriage to Peter Parker, and since then, Marvel has often shown a lack of any kind of planning with the character. The problem with ending Peter’s marriage to MJ is that suddenly, a major character in the history of the Marvel Universe, one who grew more important as Spider-Man became an Avenger, no longer has purpose, even though she still has loads of fans. Marvel, in their infinite wisdom, wanted to string along the readers who thought that Mary Jane and Peter would get back together, so they weren’t going to completely kick her to the curb. Mary Jane still played a part in Spider-Man’s life – a cynical ploy to keep readers on the hook. Some creators have done things with Mary Jane that nobody liked, changing her character from Peter’s biggest supporter to a mean and sometimes petty ex. It seemed like things were going to get better for Peter and Mary Jane during Nick Spencer’s run on The Amazing Spider-Man, but Marvel destroyed that with the just-ended Zeb Wells run on the book, which married Mary Jane to a villain’s son from another universe – the infamous Paul.
Marvel has doubled down on Paul and Mary Jane, and then did something that was mystifying with Mary Jane — made her into a superhero. Mary Jane became Jackpot, using a machine created by Paul that used the glyph magic he learned in his own universe to create a dial that gave Mary Jane one superpower at a time. People wanted to see Mary Jane as a superhero for a long time — as revealed in the success of Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows — but they wanted to see her as a superhero with Spider-Man, not having Paul as her Alfred.
Marvel doesn’t ever do anything with Mary Jane in the way that readers want — readers want a married Mary Jane, but they marry her to Paul instead of Peter, for example — and this Venom reveal is yet another example of this. Readers would freak out if Mary Jane became Venom if she was with Peter Parker romantically. Mary Jane’s Venom with Paul? No one wants it because no one wants Mary Jane and Paul, in the first place.
Here’s the thing — there is a reason to make Mary Jane Venom right now, and it’s almost certainly the way that All-New Venom is going to go. Mary Jane and Paul have custody of Dylan Brock, the son of old Venom host Eddie Brock. Most people expected Dylan to come back as Venom, so Marvel decided to do one of their patented mystery box stories with it instead. Making Mary Jane Venom fits into this story: the symbiote probably came to her to help protect Dylan, which is why she is Venom – but at some point soon, the symbiote will almost certainly go to Dylan. Mary Jane is just a layover for the symbiote, and that’s not the best idea, honestly.
Mary Jane is a character that fans are going to be unhappy about until they get what they want from her. Making her Venom isn’t going to change that; Venom is popular, but that popularity isn’t going to shift to Mary Jane. People are going to belittle this decision — say in articles written by major comic book websites. Marvel almost certainly feels that all publicity is good publicity, but this isn’t that at all. It’s just another Hail Mary (Jane) pass that is going to remind readers that this would be a good idea… if she was still with Spider-Man. As it stands, this Mary Jane/Venom arc will put butts in seats for an issue or two, and then people will likely stop caring.
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All-New Venom is continuing the symbiote saga that has played a rather large role in Marvel over the last few years and has taken things in a shocking direction. All-New Venom #5 drops a major reveal on readers, one that shows just how out of touch with the audience that Marvel is. This reveal actually Read More