I’m thinking about David Fiore’s proposal for a essay, “One Damned Thing After Another: Death’s Refrain and Narrative Stasis in Amazing Spider-Man.” Now, to paraphrase David’s argument, in Spider-Man, when Peter Parker’s and Gwen Stacey’s relationship is in danger of progressing to the point that it unbalances the narrative stasis of the text, writer Gerry Conway killed Gwen—and later resurrected her “to provide the readers (who had been too shocked by her death to say goodbye to the character the first time) a chance to mourn her properly, and then allowing her to walk out of the pages of the series forever… intensifying the “logic of loss” at its’ [sic] core a thousand-fold.”
It occurs to me that Grant Morrison’s New X-Men has some kind of inverse (or something) relationship with this idea. Well, this part of the Spider-Man narrative and the X-Men narrative previous to Morrison really aren’t comparable… The death of Gwen Stacy “purifies the “Spider-Man concept” of its’ narrative excrescences.” There’s nothing “pure” about the X-Men narrative! All these relationships and characterizations were set up decades ago—the somewhat troubled marriage of Scott and Jean, Scott’s mopy lack of personality, Jean’s Phoenix-inspired sometime arrogance and aloofness, the Jean-Logan-Scott triangle. I don’t know if the Jean-Scott-Emma triangle is old or if it was introduced by Morrison, but certainly the sexualized tension between Emma and Jean goes all the way back to the X-Men: Dark Phoenix Saga. But anyway all this stuff was set up and then just allowed to stay around, stagnate, become incestuous and absurdly horribly complicated. Then Morrison comes along and explodes the living fuck out of it all. But rather than returning the characters to some previous state of narrative purity (N.B. at this point I’m just bullshitting, because I have no idea what Morrison is actually going to end up doing with these characters in New X-Men: Planet X and New X-Men: Here Comes Tomorrow), he allows them to finally leap out of their ancient deep ruts and run off into a brand new narrative.
I don’t know what I’m talking about, just thinking out loud.
(Hmm. David, have you considered Gwen Stacey’s death as a version of the world-healing myth, repairing and cleansing a broken world and returning to a primal state of purity?)
David Fiore says:
I like what you’re saying about Morrison’s X-Men (which I’m definitely going to read straight through as soon as I get some money).
On the Gwen-death front: I tossed off a reply to your comment on my blog that speaks to this point as well… In my reading, Gwen’s death might have served the “world-purifying” function you describe, if she had been allowed to stay dead. But she came back, and that makes all the difference. The fact that a Gwen Stacy clone is wandering around in Peter Parker’s world throughout the late-seventies and eighties, while he’s courting the Black Cat, and then marrying MJ, is just awesome, it plays up the necessary impurity of life. The present is always contaminated (in a good way, I think) by the past–by the things we can change… It’s a necessary, and chastening, idea in the midst of all of these potentially unlimited super-heroics. I’m sure it’s obvious by now that I think the onward and upward, “gotta-grow up sometime”, “everything’s a learning experience”, teleological view of life is actually inferior to the “narrative stasis” I explore in Marvel comics, and I’m sure a lot of people would disagree with my point of view, but I think Amazing Spider-Man, at least, supports my thesis, at least to some degree. The fascinating thing about Peter & MJ’s marriage is that it triggered an immediate return of the Gwen Stacy clone, and a sad attempt (Spectacular Spider-Man Annual #8–believe me, it’s trite) by her original creator to eliminate her from the story, in order to clear the way for a new stage. But it didn’t take! (at least, it doesn’t seem like it–my contact with the series has been sporadic since 1991, but I know that there have been more clone appearances, and more stories where Peter lays his grief about Gwen’s death to rest–and there probably always will be!)
Dave
— 28 January 2004 at 7:18 am (Permalink)
David Fiore says:
I just looked at my comment Steven, and I realized I destroyed it with a typo!
When I said that “the present is always contaminated by the past”–I meant to write that we are chastened by the memory of the things we CAN’T change…
Sorry!
Dave
— 28 January 2004 at 7:21 am (Permalink)
Dibble says:
Then Morrison comes along and explodes the living fuck out of it all. But rather than returning the characters to some previous state of narrative purity (N.B. at this point I’m just bullshitting, because I have no idea what Morrison is actually going to end up doing with these characters in Planet X and Here Comes Tomorrow), he allows them to finally leap out of their ancient deep ruts and run off into a brand new narrative.
Within the context of Morrison’s run (including the parts you haven’t read yet) you’re absolutely right. If only Morrison was sticking around for another forty issues to cement the changes! But with Morrison gone at the end of Here Comes Tomorrow, and with Claremont (!) taking over one of the flagship X-titles, it’s all too likely that the original status quo will reassert itself with dissappointing speed.
— 28 January 2004 at 8:14 pm (Permalink)
Steven says:
You’re probably right about the inevitable return to status quo. After all, Claremont created the old status quo that Morrison is exploding. That doesn’t bother me much, though, because the end of Morrison’s run is almost certainly the end of the X-Men for me. Many of my favorite stories end like I imagine New X-Men will end, with the characters arriving not at a moment of resolution and conclusion but a moment of crisis, the resolution of the crises in the preceding story creating new crises so that the characters find themselves at the beginning of a new story with limitless possibilties. I think I prefer to leave the X-Men wondering where their newfound freedom of narrative will lead them than to actually learn what Grant Morrison or Chris Claremont or anybody else thinks it will lead them.
— 28 January 2004 at 8:55 pm (Permalink)
Steven says:
David: OK, so the Gwen Stacy clone is probably still wandering around the Marvel Universe? Oh, that’s even more fun. I’d gotten the impression that the clone wasn’t around anymore.
— 28 January 2004 at 9:00 pm (Permalink)