Popverse's top stories

• Dispatch ending explained: How to get the Hero, Antihero, and Everyman endings
• Watch now: Watch Marvel's Fantastic Four movie reunion with Ioan Gruffudd & Michael Chiklis from NYCC 2025
• Why Captain America quit: The political crisis that reshaped Marvel’s most iconic patriotic symbol

All week long: Revisit the highlights and lowlights of 1987 with Popverse's Made in 87 week.

In 1987, Marvel decided that it was time for Spider-Man and Mary Jane Watson to get married.

The problem was Spider-Man was currently dating the Black Cat. In fact, not only was he dating Felicia Hardy, but the two had been living together since November 1986. This made things pretty inconvenient for Marvel when they began planning their Spider-Wedding.

The story of the Spider-Man marriage has been told in greater detail in other articles and retrospectives over the years. If you need a short recap, the idea came from a convention panel with Spider-Man co-creator Stan Lee and Marvel’s then-editor-in-chief Jim Shooter. Stan asked the crowd if the couple should be married, and the reply was enthusiastic. And so, Marvel Comics planned to wed the couple, coordinating the wedding so it would happen in the comics at the same time as the Stan Lee-penned newspaper strip.

The story has been told many times, but one part that’s usually left out is Peter’s romantic situation with the Black Cat.

In Spectacular Spider-Man #123, an emotionally vulnerable Peter agreed to get back together with Felicia. The Black Cat’s apartment had been destroyed, so she moved into Peter’s apartment. However, the whole thing was a setup, with Felicia working with a villain known as the Foreigner to frame Spider-Man for murder.

This was all happening while the Spider-Man titles were preparing for the wedding, which led to some weird chronological overlap. Amazing Spider-Man #289 ends with Peter and Felicia getting ready to have an intimate moment, and the next issue has Peter proposing to Mary Jane with no mention of Felicia. If you were only reading Amazing and not Spectacular, this would’ve been a confusing experience.

(To this day, I see comments from people doing chronological Amazing Spider-Man read-throughs who are confused about Felicia’s presence before the proposal)

Spectacular Spider-Man #128-129 wrap up the Black Cat storyline with Spidey discovering Felicia’s alliance with the Foreigner. Their living situation and romance ends on bad terms, and Felicia takes off to Europe (but not before writing Peter a spicy letter). These issues of Spectacular were published at the same time as Amazing Spider-Man was dealing with Peter’s proposal. As a result, issues of Spectacular featuring Peter and Felicia as a couple had house ads promoting the upcoming Spider-Man marriage.

In 1987, the iconic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon debuted - and all our lives were changed. Watch this reunion of the original voice actors:

“What I didn’t fully understand at the time was how fast Stan wanted the wedding to happen,” former Amazing Spider-Man editor Jim Salicrup tells Back Issue in 2007. “I was hoping we’d have at least a year or so to build up to it, but I was wrong. I should’ve known—Stan is the most impatient guy in the world so if he was asking, it was because it was going to be his next storyline. When Jim told me roughly when Stan was planning for it to happen, I nearly had a heart attack. We had to pull stories we were already planning and try to get to the wedding as fast as possible.”

While Salicrup doesn’t directly mention Felicia, you could read in between the lines and interpret “pull stories we were already planning” as “get Felicia out of Peter’s apartment so Mary Jane could move in.”

Many Marvel retrospectives on the wedding and the leadup ignore the Felicia situation. For example, Marvel Saga #22 recapped the events leading up to Peter and Mary Jane’s marriage but leave out Peter’s final tryst with Felicia. Marvel Age #54 promotes the Spider-Man comics leading up to the wedding but omits the Black Cat arc.

In fairness, I could see why mentioning Spider-Man’s ex-girlfriend on the eve of his wedding might be awkward and why Marvel would avoid it. The awkward timing can be attributed to Marvel’s desire to coordinate the wedding with Stan Lee’s newspaper strip. Wedding planning can be complicated, and every ceremony has its challenges. In Spider-Man’s case, it meant quickly and discreetly removing an ex-girlfriend.

Get your wide-shoulder blouses and your Members-Only jackets, and go back in time with Popverse's Made in 87. Highlights include:

• Marvel Comics killed the X-Men in 1987 to reset the franchise - but it didn’t stick
• The Full House cast addresses some of the series’ biggest continuity errors
• How Spider-Man’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon was saved by a fired Marvel boss — and Ronald McDonald
• How NBC panicked after Diane left Cheers — and why Kirstie Alley’s casting sparked a quiet battle inside the hit show
• How Bart Simpson was quietly toned down from being "so mean" before The Simpsons' first episode, as revealed by his long-time voice actor Nancy Cartwright
• The 1987 Justice League reboot that made superheroes weird, hilarious, and unexpectedly human
• How The Golden Girls became a staple at gay bars in the 80s