(Though it’s up against some pretty stiff competition.)
Okay! This was in a comic called X-Statix Presents Dead Girl, issue 3. As far as I can gather the premise is, villains are coming back from the dead so assorted heroes, including the titular Dead Girl and Dr Strange, go visit the afterlife to stop them. Death is, as everyone knows, a VERY fluid concept in the Marvelverse.
I guess that’s the in-universe explanation for “If your character sells enough comics they’ll probably come back from the dead.”
And Harry is like, ur, the elevator guy… of Hell? This may not be a bad thing though cos lots of heroes end up there? I think?
Oh and also Gwen?! She’s in the background of the third panel.
So Harry and Gwen, best friends, each involved in the death/downfall of the other, are in the same room/elevator/dimension/whatever in this comic and THEY DON’T SPEAK. Sonofabitch. Hey! Howsabout you read this instead.
The other odd thing about this surprise Harry Osborn appearance is that this comic was released in 2006, long after Harry’s intital “death” in 1993. (of course his death was retconned in 2007, making it so he never died at all, so what’s he doing in an afterlife? COMICS.) He was never one of the most famous Marvel characters, even taking the Raimi films into account, so I guess another Harry Osborn fan was writing this particular story and decided to give our boy a cameo. Good on ya mate.
Since today is Spider-Man day I decided to watch Spider-Man 3 for the first time in years, along with two spiders who came in to watch their hero.
Spider-Man 3 is VERY uneven, you can see all over the place where rewrites were hastily done. I would kill for a version of this film that was actually how Sam Raimi intended it, but it’s probably not coming. (despite my occasional pleas on social media)
I still like it though! I still really like it, because I love all the characters and always will.
Some thoughts! Bearing in mind the last time I saw the movie all the way through must’ve been at least five years ago. If you wanna read thoughts from the past (most of which are still my present thoughts) on this DUMB BEWILDERING BEAUTIFUL CHEESEFEST, check out the tag marked “raimispidey”!
-Rosemary Harris/Aunt May is the beating heart of this movie. She puts in such a good performance and god I hate how underrated May is in more recent Spidermovies. Why did you make a Spider-Man movie where Iron Man is more important than Aunt May and Uncle Ben put together, Disney. Why.
-Speaking of things Disney fucked up, Peter is poor in this movie, which is what Spider-Man is supposed to be. He doesn’t have immediate access to fancy tech, he lives in a crappy apartment, he can’t afford nice things. I hate the MCU’s thing where all the heroes have to be flashy and rich, gaaaah. It feels like such a betrayal of Spider-Man’s importance.
(I’ll shut up about the MCU Spideys now. My apologies.)
-Peter at the beginning of this movie is so obsessed with himself he’s basically this meme come to life:
-I like all the little subtler things this movie did to highlight Peter’s descent into darkness. One of the police reports Peter ignores in favour of pursuing Sandman is something about “an elderly man in the middle of the road” which is the same way Uncle Ben died…
-Mary Jane is a jealous, resentful, petty, overemotional mess of a human being and I LOVE HER SO MUCH.
-Harry Osborn is still one of my favourite fictional characters ever (Go read The Child Within or the Son of the Goblin collection) and oh MAN I wish he wasn’t played by James Franco, since James Franco is a massive creep and all. Sigh.
-I appreciate that this movie doesn’t actually retcon Peter being partly responsible for Uncle Ben’s death. If Peter hadn’t let Dennis Carradine escape Carradine wouldn’t have surprised Flint Marko and the gun wouldn’t have gone off. It still all leads back to him.
-Of course, if Marko hadn’t had to steal money in order to save his daughter’s life he wouldn’t have been there in the first place, so the biggest villain in all this is really the American healthcare system. (I’m not joking, I’m really not.)
-Peter cries A LOT in this movie, and I approve. Honestly he’s the first action-movie hero I can remember actually crying.
-How have I not mentioned Ursula yet? I love her and her five minutes of screentime. She is the most MINOR of minor characters but she is a MAIN CHARACTER IN MY HEART (and fanfiction)
-I also love her dad, I remember in Spider-Man 2 he seemed like kind of a seedy douche and I wrote him so in fanfics but in this one he’s just a nice wacky dude.
-You know when the cops are hunting Sandman in the sand truck? When that one cop thinks he’s found him he raises his shovel right up to strike and if he’d actually hit human-Sandman he would have probably killed him instantly. When I first saw this movie back in 2007 I remember thinking, “Wait that can’t be right, a cop wouldn’t aim to just casually kill someone like that.” Well. Sigh.
-Harry’s death scene is legit very sad. The music and the fact he dies just as the sun comes up, oh man my heart. It’s also taken pretty much directly from the comic:
(the kid is Harry’s kid, who has yet to make it into a movie)
-Gwen is so sweet and nice in this film. (She was much more bad-tempered in the comics, which no-one ever remembers.) She even apologises to MJ for something that wasn’t remotely her fault! Hey if you wanna see Raimiverse MJ and Gwen interact more you oughta read this fic I wrote.
In celebration of today’s occasion here’s five of my favourite dads who are not real, in no particular order:
Harry Osborn
If you’ve only ever seen the Spider-Man movies you may not know that Harry Osborn is a Dad, but he very much is. He has two sons, Normie and Stanley. Normie is named after Norman (Harry doesn’t seem to have ever gotten a chance to rethink that, oh well) and Stanley is… possibly named after Stan Lee? Who knows. Stanley is also never drawn as mixed race even though his mother is black, sigh.
Yeah you can probably tell I don’t really do comics anymore but I love Harry in almost all his forms and he deserves more recognition of the fact that he managed to be a pretty good dad when his own childhood was abusive as hell.
Rory Williams
Rory is more on this list for what was, sigh, his eventually almost completely untapped Dad Potential. We knew he’d be a good dad. Amy knew he’d be a good dad. Then he BECOMES a dad and nothing. He gets one scene with a baby and barely gets more than a couple scenes with his magic time-travel now-adult daughter. It’s so terribly unfair, why? God season six of Doctor Who was a MESS.
Thankfully the showrunners did at least release one canon story of Rory being a dad, this from the Doctor Who Lockdown project. Arthur Darvill came back and everything. That’s something. But gah.
Jean Valjean
I shall ignore the BBC’s Les Mis adaptation, as you should, and focus instead on the JVJ/Cosette relationship as portrayed in the book and musical. It is probably not exactly HEALTHY but it is good. It is also of course very, very Miserable.
“And remember, the truth that once was spoken, to love another person is to see the face of God…”
Simon Petrikov
EVERY DAY I FEEL SORRY FOR SIMON PETRIKOV! He had SO MUCH bad stuff happen to him, not least the actual apocalypse, and yet he was still a good adoptive father to Marceline for as long as he was able. Please watch Adventure Time if you want to see one of the most tragic character arcs to ever exist in cartoon form.
(There are many people who think that Simon’s condition is a metaphor for Alzhemier’s or dementia and I’m among them. Sadly the real thing can’t be taken away the way it was in the show. :( )
Yondu Udonta
Ah, Yondu. Forever my problematic fave. He is not remotely deserving of a World’s Best Dad mug but hey, he knew that, and he did his best to apologize to Peter before the end, and basically just oh my god his death scene I can’t even now I just dissolve into a puddle of tears.
(There is so much meta about Yondu and his arc all over this blog, if you’re interested in that sort of thing.)
Bonus round! All the Star Wars dads. I can’t really choose between them because since Star Wars is basically a story about fatherhood they all have their roles to play. So a little shout-out to Anakin (the other problematic fave), Han Solo, Bail Organa, Qui-Gon Jinn (read Jedi Apprentice ok?), Jango Fett, Galen Erso, Lando Calrissian, Owen Lars, and so many more I forgot.
Miles Morales will swing on to the Playstation 5 in Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales a new adventure from Insomniac Games. The game is the follow up to the best-selling and award-winning Marvel’s Spider-Man which came out for the Playstation 4. Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales will be released during the holidays in 2020. Check out the […]
All the creatives and stars of Avengers: Endgame joined in a massive social media campaign asking everyone to be decent human beings and #DontSpoilTheEndgame…for two weeks until Marvel Studios used MASSIVE spoilers for Endgame in their trailer for Spider-Man: Far From Home. It was clear they were seeking to use all the emotions flowing in the wake of Endgame to motivate advanced ticket sales for Far From Home. Marvel Studios was very direct about how Spider-Man: Far From Home served as the epilogue to Avengers: Endgame. I enjoyed the film but was – and remain – frustrated by a plot point with seriously troubling implications.
Note, this has spoilers for both Avengers: Endgame and Spider-Man: Far From Home (obvs.).
Before I begin the analysis I want to reiterate that I really did enjoy Spider-Man: Far From Home. It was light and fun, with all the sweet and goofy moments you expect when the MCU’s on point. I felt it was the perfect come down after the heavy emotional hit of Avengers: Endgame. Also, I’ve ALWAYS loved the Americans-travelling-in-Europe trope for setting up comedic hijinks and the high-school-Europe-trip subset is particularly entertaining. With this great cast and all that awkward (in a good way) chemistry, this film had everything I was looking for after Endgame.
But the central plot point on which the film turns illustrates a troubling direction/mindset for the MCU. It also makes absolutely no sense within the narrative of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
The film opens with the world mourning the death of Tony Stark and the other Avengers who fell in the battle with Thanos and his Black Order. Thankfully the tone isn’t heavy and school’s out for summer! Peter Parker (Tom Holland), Ned Leeds (Jacob Batalon), MJ (Zendaya), Betty Brant (Angourie Rice), Flash Thompson (Tony Revolori), and some of their classmates are off to Europe for a science trip under the supervision of Mr. Harrington (Martin Starr) and Mr. Dell (J.B. Smoove). Things don’t go as planned and soon giant Elementals are threatening the world as Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and Maria Hill (Cobie Smoulders) are trying to pull Spider-Man into battle alongside the mysterious inter-dimensional traveler Quentin Beck/Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal).
But the question on which everything pivots is – Who is the next Iron Man? Who will follow in Tony Stark’s footsteps?
It is a question asked both in-universe and amongst MCU fans. With this first generation of the Marvel Cinematic Universe concluded, what will the next generation look like? What shape will it take? Who will form the core as the original Avengers – specifically Tony Stark’s Iron Man, Steve Roger’s Captain America, and the always criminally-underrated Natasha Romanoff’s Black Widow – did? The answer the film offers, both in-universe and to fans, is Spider-Man. And everything about this is a problem.
[Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019)] At 10:20, Peter closes his suit case with the initials “BFP,” evidently having belonged to his Uncle Ben, Benjamin Franklin Parker. Touch here for the full post on Little Movie Moments tumblr
This is the only reference to Uncle Ben in two whole MCU Spider-Mans, and man does that bug me.
(I feel like I’d happily erase all the multitudes of Iron Man movies if it meant later I didn’t have to see Tony bloody Stark take on every other important role in the MCU.)
Apparently the next Spider-Man film in the MCU will definitely have “Home” in the title, which I guess is not surprising, and now I’m wondering if they’ll use “No Place Like Home” after all. (It’s a popular fan title.) So if they go full-on Wizard of Oz, they could introduce Norman Osborn – OZborn – in a very thematically appropriate way, casting him as the false Wizard in the story. A figure of apparent good, living in a beautiful green city, before the curtain falls away.
And if so I will be FURIOUS, because I used that idea in a fanfic ten years ago.
By The Geek Twins. I love the little illustrations here, but I think what I’m most interested in is the Spider-Man stuff. So the MCU can’t currently use the Green Goblin then? That’s… maybe a bit of a relief.
(I love the MCU, I honestly do, but I still don’t want them to ever use Harry. There’s way, way too high of a risk of them fucking him up. Just look at The Amazing Spider-Man 2! Or… don’t. Please don’t.)
Today has been a really, REALLY rough day for me. The worst one since the lockdown began. I think I’m just gonna share as much positive stuff as possible this evening. I love this Spider-Man and whoever’s behind him.
To celebrate the occasion, here’s some of my favourite ladies from fiction!
Row 1: Amy Pond (Doctor Who), Sephy Hadley (Noughts and Crosses), Gamora (Guardians of the Galaxy/MCU), Rose Tico (Star Wars), Elsa (Frozen/Disney), Melissa Chartres (The Last Man on Earth)
Row 2: Eowyn (The Lord of the Rings/Middle Earth), Quinn Ergon (Final Space), The Thirteenth Doctor (Doctor Who), Princess Bubblegum (Adventure Time), Jane Foster (Thor/MCU), Amy Santiago (Brooklyn 99)
Row 3: Brook Soso (Orange is the New Black), Nebula (Guardians of the Galaxy/MCU), Erica Dundee (The Last Man on Earth), Kitty Winter (Sherlock Holmes), Rose Tyler (Doctor Who), Briony Tallis (Atonement)
Row 4: Meredith Quill (Guardians of the Galaxy/MCU), Missandei (Game of Thrones), Rey (Star Wars), Donna Noble (Doctor Who), Carol Pilbasian (The Last Man on Earth), Esmeralda (The Hunchback of Notre Dame/Disney)
Row 5: Sansa Stark (Game of Thrones), Ash Graven (Final Space), Tiana (The Princess and the Frog/Disney), Sophia Burset (Orange is the New Black), Misty (Pokemon), Clara Oswald (Doctor Who)
Row 6: Bill Potts (Doctor Who), Mary Brown (Paddington), Mako Mori (Pacific Rim), Gwen Stacy (Spider-Man), Jackie Tyler (Doctor Who), Ursula Ditkovich (Spider-Man)
Row 7: Yaz Khan (Doctor Who), Mary Jane Watson (Spider-Man), Marceline (Adventure Time), Michelle (10 Cloverfield Lane,), Natasha Romanoff (Black Widow/MCU), Mantis (Guardians of the Galaxy (MCU)
