Mary Jane's Boyfriend Paul (The Amazing Spider-Man)

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About

Paul Rabin is Mary Jane Watson's boyfriend in volume six of The Amazing Spider-Man comics, first appearing in the premiere issue of the series, released on April 27th, 2022. Throughout the series, he is depicted living happily with Mary Jane and his two kids. Paul became the subject of criticism in the Spider-Man fandom following his debut, with many Spider-Man fans disliking the abrupt introduction of the character after Mary Jane and Peter Parker were together for many issues prior and wanted to see Mary with Peter rather than Paul, inspiring numerous memes mocking him online.

Origin

On April 27th, 2022, a reboot of The Amazing Spider-Man comics, written by Zeb Wells and John Romita, was released. In the first issue, a character named Paul is introduced (shown below). Paul is Mary Jane Watson's boyfriend, who has moved on from Peter Parker and lives with Paul and their two adopted children, Romy and Owen, who they saved from a creature called the Scribble Man. The two met in a dimension where time moves differently than on Earth after Paul was sent there while researching "cheat codes" for reality.^[1]^[2]

Spread

Upon his introduction, Paul became widely criticized in the Spider-Man fandom, with many readers wanting to see Peter Parker with Mary Jane rather than Paul. Fans also felt the quality of the comics had dropped in general and disliked the sudden introduction of the character as MJ's boyfriend, after she had been dating Parker for numerous issues prior to this.^[8]

This backlash resulted in criticism and memes about people hating Paul on sites like the /r/Spiderman subreddit and on Twitter. For example, on August 10th, 2022, a Redditor posted a panel from an issue of The Amazing Spider-Man featuring Paul to /r/spiderman,^[3] writing, "We get it Marvel, Paul is a thing. You don’t need to keep sidetracking the plot to remind us…," garnering over 2,400 upvotes in nine months. On February 25th, 2023, a Redditor posted a meme about hating Paul to /r/spiderman,^[4] garnering over 2,100 upvotes in three months (shown below).

On March 31st, 2023, SportsKeeda^[5] published an article about the hatred for Paul. On May 5th, 2023, Redditor TheCreature27 posted a drawing of Spider-Man punching Paul in the face to /r/spiderman,^[6] writing, "I drew a picture of Peter wrecking Paul's shit #epic," garnering over 4,800 upvotes in a month (shown below). On May 31st, a Redditor then posted to /r/OutOfTheLoop^[7] asking about the hatred of the character.