wwprice1
asked:
What do you think is the difference between Hank slapping Jan and Peter slapping Mary Jane during the Clone Saga? In Hank's case, it gets drudged back up consistently, while in Peter's case, it was only mentioned once or twice immediately after it happened and never after that point. The cases are pretty similar--Hank was suffering a nervous breakdown and Peter probably had some kind of psychotic break from learning he was(n't) the clone. Is it just because Spidey is more popular?
I think it’s a matter of context.
Hank’s story is explicitly about him striking Jan. There are other components to it, but it’s that act that finishes him as an Avenger, more than any staged attack on the team. Whereas Spidey striking MJ was incidental–it was something that happened on the fly in the context of a larger situation, and the story wasn’t really about that at all.
More crucially, Spider-Man at that point had been in dozens of strong, memorable stories. Whereas Hank, for all his long tenure as a super hero, really hadn’t. So that story became his defining moment in a way that it didn’t and couldn’t for Spider-Man. And that’s why it stuck to him–it was the first thing anybody brought up when his name got mentioned in any context.