Editing Marvel Comics (section)

====The Many Loves of Spidey====
Since Spider-Man's core appeal is "unlucky everydude tries and usually fails to successfully juggle real life and crime fighting", of course he's got to have a lovelife as part of that. There's actually been a lot of different ladies who have dated or at least flirted with Peter Parker over the decades, but as far as casuals are concerned, there are only three girls who really matter: Gwen Stacey, Felicia Hardy, and Mary Jane Watson.

*'''Gwen Stacey''' was the very first love interest introduced in the series, and most widely remembered for the fact that her death at the hands of Spidey's archenemy the Green Goblin issued in the Bronze Age of Comics. In fact, she's not really remembered for much else! This is because she was introduced at a time when Steve Ditko was writing and, well, Ditko was a hardcore Objectionist, so those early stories about her tended to really, really ''suck'' in so far as portraying her and Peter having any sort of relationship. She did get better after Ditko left and new writers took over, but frankly she never really was handled all that well, and is mostly remembered for being the first and being the one who got killed.
*'''Mary Jane Watson''' was the second girl introduced as Peter's potential love interest, and in fact showed up for the first time whilst Peter was technically dating Gwen Stacey. Her exotic charm, sassy personality and the fact she had much more presentation as somebody with a life outside of being just "Peter's Girlfriend", which was ironically part of an attempt to keep her ''from'' overshadowing Gwen, led to fans vastly preferring her. Once Gwen died, Mary Jane became the defacto love interest, which ultimately was cemented when they got married and even nearly had a kid together. Unfortunately, that was disastrously ended in the much-hated "One More Day" storyline.
*'''Felicia Hardy/Black Cat''' was the third major love interest in Peter's life, and was essentially the "80s bad girl" counterpart to Mary Jane. A wealthy and beautiful heiress turned jewel thief, Felicia was always depicted as the more shallow of the two girls compared to Mary Jane. In particular, being an adrenaline junkie who shunned Peter's guilt-laden moral trappings, she was vastly more interested in the side of him that was Spider-Man - a man of action, confidence and death-defying stunts - than in the insecure, guilt-riddled and somewhat unhinged "Parker side" underneath.

To give you an idea of just how much Mary Jane and Felicia came to overshadow Gwen Stacey; in the 1990s Spider-Man cartoon, widely considered the best Spidey animated adaptation, they dropped Gwen Stacey entirely. Instead, Felicia was presented as Peter's first love, a Veronica-esque rich girl that Peter constantly tried to date, but never could get her to take him seriously - she even absorbed Gwen's role of being Peter's excuse for putting off meeting Mary Jane until Aunt May finally sprung her on him and he learned she was actually a hot redhead.