Paper Pervertery And Other Stories
Looking at that Amazing Spider-Man cover I put up yesterday reminded me that, once upon a time, I used to have a crush on John Romita’s version of Mary Jane Watson. To be fair, Stan’s dialogue had a lot to do with it; while it was constantly stilted, unrealistic and embarrassingly obviously the work of an old man trying to be “hep,” there was still something charming about it, and I maintain that anyone who didn’t at least slightly fall for the character after her seminal introduction must need their head examined.
But thinking about my crush on Mary Jane reminded me of my other comic book crushes; the way that the teenage me had a thing for Rogue from the X-Men – The inner angst! The accent! – and the pre-teenage me was enamored by Veronica from the Archie comics, previewing ill-fated relationships with rich, emotionally cold, heiresses to come. Falling for fictional characters was a regular thing of my youth, my hormones leaking out all over the place and finding new directions to go in.
As I got older, the rarer my comic fancies got (and the more they resembled real people in my life; I still believe that one of the reasons I think Peanuts’ Peppermint Patty is so awesome is because she reminds me of a particular person I once knew), and today, I can’t even remember the last character I had an out-and-out crush on (Maybe Rose Walker from Sandman?). On the one hand, that’s kind of good, I guess – Grown men probably shouldn’t dream about dates with four color figures that don’t exist, after all – but on the other, it feels more than a little sad.
That said, Romita’s Mary Jane really knew how to shake the stuff her creators had given her, didn’t she?
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