An Introduction to the Wedding of Spider-Man
The wedding of Peter Parker & Mary Jane Watson in 1987’s Amazing Spider-Man Annual #21 was billed as an historical transmedia extravaganza. Whether it deserves the hype is subject to debate, but it’s undebatably a fascinating moment for Marvel’s most popular superhero. 1/8
The comic book version of the wedding plot was written by David Michelinie with pencils by John Romita Jr., Alex Saviuk, and Paul Ryan, with iconic Silver/Bronze Age Spider-Man artist John Romita Sr. providing the cover for the Annual where the wedding actually occurs. 3/8
Besides synergy with the newspaper strip, the wedding was tied to a promotion with the NY Mets involving a live staging of the nuptials at Shea Stadium in front of a 50,000-person crowd. Stan Lee presided over the ceremony, which was widely covered in the press. 4/8
The wedding also synergized with the world of high fashion. Mary Jane Watson’s wedding dress was created by famed designer Willi Smith. Tragically, Smith passed away from AIDS-related complications shortly after completing the design. But his involvement was widely reported and hyped by Marvel. 5/8
Besides the wedding’s interesting synergies, it’s an illustrative distillation of the genre-bending that’s always been part of superhero comics, and was especially exploited by the Marvel comics universe in the early 1960s. The superhero genre’s debt to the romance genre remains underexplored. 6/8
The wedding of Peter and MJ also offers an opportunity to discuss the evolving roles of non-superheroic female love interests in superhero comics. The agency of these characters has waxed and waned in relation to the state of gender politics within the broader culture. 7/8
The involvement of two generations of John Romitas also invites consideration of the evolving styles of mainstream superhero comics from the Silver Age to the 1980s, sometimes called the Modern Age. We’ll discuss both Romitas’ contributions to the look & legacy of Spidey’s world. Stay tuned! 8/8