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AICN COMICS ROUNDTABLE REVIEW: THE @$$HOLES LOOK AT SPIDER-MAN One More Day/Brand New Day!!!
Greetings, Faithful Talkbackers, and welcome to another @$$hole Roundtable. I’m the Moderator, the omniscient and lonely voice of reason that haunts the halls here at @$$hole HQ. For the last few weeks the only superhero fandom has been talking about is Spider-Man. In the recent “One More Day” (OMD) storyline, Peter Parker made a deal with the devilish Mephisto to save Aunt May’s life in exchange for his twenty-year marriage to Mary Jane, also reversing such changes as his public unmasking and new spider-totemic powers, in order to relaunch AMAZING SPIDER-MAN (ASM) thrice-monthly in “Brand New Day” (BND). Veteran ASM writer J. Michael Strazynski (JMS) is out and a team of writers including Dan Slott, Zeb Wells, Marc Guggenheim, and Bob Gale are in. The last OMD issue was reviewed by Ambush Bug here, while the @$$holes presented interviews with the new writer and editor of AMAZING SPIDER-MAN, Dan Slott and Steve Wacker, here, and with Marvel EIC and brains behind the ret-con, Joe Quesada, here. Now it’s time to find out what each of the @$$es make of the recent events and the new status quo of Marvel’s most popular superhero.
@$$HOLE Roll Call
Jinxo
Ambush Bug (Bug)
Stones Throw (Stone)
Sleazy G (Sleazy)
Humphrey Lee (Humphrey)
superhero (supes)
Prof. Challenger (Prof)
Rock-Me Amodeo (Rock-Me)
MODERATOR: First things first, guys: what were your thoughts on the ret-con?
Jinxo
Ambush Bug (Bug)
Stones Throw (Stone)
Sleazy G (Sleazy)
Humphrey Lee (Humphrey)
superhero (supes)
Prof. Challenger (Prof)
Rock-Me Amodeo (Rock-Me)
JINXO: Lazy, sloppy and, impressively, hate-able on multiple levels. You can be angry over the history changes, the hero making a deal with the devil, the loss of the marriage...there's a shopping list of reasons to dislike it. That's the beauty of it! You and your friends can all dislike it and get even angrier arguing over which is the right reason to be mad! I dislike it for pretty much every reason you can list.BUG: Marvel is trying to go about this the same way they've handled other big changes that have been unfavorable to the masses. They will just plod along and say it is a big success no matter how loud fandom screams. Know why? Cause a lot of people are still going to buy the book. Sales are what matters here. If everyone is so up in arms about the story, then drop it. That's the only language Marvel speaks. Even if a decision seems to be unpopular, if the sales are ok, they'll think that fandom is all talk, bitch, and moan.
STONE: The only issue of ONE MORE DAY that I bought, the last one, was a pretty effective emotional issue. The problem with it is that the REAL ending to that story would have been for Peter Parker to grow up and say goodbye to Aunt May, starting afresh in his life with Mary Jane. They had him take the easy way out. What was insulting about the ret-con was how obvious and illogical the whole thing was. Really, the way it went down I think I'd have preferred if there had been no explanation.
BUG: No explanation would have left things to be dealt with by someone with a better idea that fits the Spidey Universe. Spidey is a science guy, not a mystic. To suddenly have a deal with the devil story occur in a MAJOR storyline that effects the entire Spidey story is completely out of character. In LORD OF THE RINGS, if a spaceship landed, snatched up Frodo and Sam and dropped them off at the volcano, you'd go "what the fuck?!?" Mephisto is that spaceship here. He just doesn't fit into the overall story. SLEAZY: As much as I hated every single thing JMS did, I'll agree with him on one thing: even magic has to have some sort of internal logic. (MOD NOTE: Sleazy’s referring to a conversation published at Newsarama between JMS & Joe Quesada where JQ explained that magic doesn’t need to be explained in comics. You can find it here.)People forgetting your secret identity doesn't bring the dead to life or get rid of organic webshooters. JQ did it because he wanted to, and refused to come up with a way that made sense. It's got no internal logic and is blatantly out of character. Just because you're not smart enough to tell the story doesn't mean nobody can, and just because you're powerful enough to force a stupid idea on everybody doesn't mean you should.
HUMPHREY: Not that I’m saying I'm against the idea of a single, swinging Spider-Man, but the fact that a franchise character can be so horribly shoved into a creative direction, not because it was the natural progression of where the character should be, but because someone in a position of power simply liked it better that way, is a theme that seems to becoming very apparent when it comes to mainstream, "Big Two" comics and, quite frankly, it scares me.
SUPES: I don’t get it -- restore Spidey's secret identity?? Didn't he just expose himself to the world? Weren't Quesada and Marvel just saying over and over again that it's time for a change in the character? It's time to make him more relevant??? It's like the “Clone Saga” all over again. We've got a bold new idea for Spidey but...we have no idea where we're really going with this and we're gonna drag it out and say it's for the best while really knowing it's a shitty idea and we'll re-boot the whole thing over again so it won't have mattered in the end anyway. That's why I gave up on Marvel in the 90's.PROF: I still don't see why the reboot here was even needed. There was a built-in setup with the Skrull sleeper agents, for a quick explanation why Peter Parker wasn't really Spider-Man. (MOD NOTE: Prof is referring to the upcoming storyline which focuses on a “Secret Invasion” of the Skrulls, shape shifting aliens that used to torment the FF, and may very well have taken the places of certain characters of the Marvel U at certain points in Marvel history.) And there's no reason why Pete and MJ couldn't have gotten a divorce. In fact, a failed marriage is EXACTLY the kind of thing that fits with the classic Lee-era Spider-Man who could only succeed in life as Spider-Man while his life as Peter Parker was always a disaster.
BUG: JQ's whole thing about the difficulty of undoing the Spidey marriage was that if they divorce MJ and Pete, then Spidey would be a divorcee and that was even harder for readers to relate to (because no one in America knows about divorce!?!?!).
HUMPHREY: That's what really seems to bug me about this: you have the superhero character who out of all the big franchise characters is supposed to be the most "relatable", the guy that goes through the same pitfalls we're supposed to see in our lives and overcome like he does. So, when it comes time to finally break off something that apparently the higher ups find a little stifling to storytelling with him, what do they do? They don't deal with it like it tends to happen in real life--that sometimes people just grow apart and can't be together anymore, even though they still deep down love each other. They don't have something like all the recent trauma in Peter's life with his unmasking, constantly being on the run because of the Initiative act, and the shooting of Aunt May cause MJ to finally say she's had enough and can't deal with it anymore... instead we go to a stupid deus ex machina.STONE: A divorce was really the ONLY way for the Peter/MJ marriage to end anyway – Pete’s forever torn between his life as Peter Parker and his secret identity as Spider-Man and it’s imperiling the two of them. They had a believable, dramatic, affecting and very logical way out that would have made perfect sense but chose not to use it.
JINXO: The "everything happened as we saw, only the memories have changed" bit doesn't track either. Physical changes were made to the Marvel Universe. Aunt May was freaking SHOT. Shot so badly even magic and science from beyond the fifth dimension couldn't save her wrinkly arse. So nothing else saves her but giving her amnesia does the trick? Did Harry just forget he was dead too? The idea that history itself was not changed is insane. It was. To try to say it wasn't is just an attempt to placate the fans. Marvel chose to do the fix in this dumb way so they should at least embrace what they put in place. Otherwise it could end up being where the logic behind how this "fix" works is simply variable to how each new writer wants it to work.
SLEAZY: There is no logic. Quesada did what he wanted and the writers are stuck with it. You'd think that with OMD having been in the works for over a year, Quesada would have either come up with fixes to these problems or come up with a better answer, but he didn't. And he sure as hell isn't gonna try and explain since when, exactly, Peter and Mary Jane seemed like the type to cut a deal with the devil. BUG: The writers of this story don't even know the simple rules of a "Deal With The Devil" story. When you make a deal, it never turns out well. It's already been said, but if Pete and MJ did make the deal, May should have been saved, then hit by a falling air conditioner two steps away from the hospital. Didn't anyone learn anything from that awful Nick Cage GHOST RIDER movie? "One More Day" is the only story ever to have a deal with the devil turn out to be a good thing.
ROCK-ME: I hated the reasoning behind OMD - “a married man is a boring man”. It reminds me of the cliché that there are no bad stories, just bad writers – and that is NOT to cast any aspersions on JMS. But okay, it’s a BRAND NEW DAY, right? Wrong. Peter is single and living with Aunt May. It’s nothing we haven’t seen before, and it’s the whole reason Peter got married in the first place: because a single Spidey is a played-out Spidey.
JINXO: I think Joe Q misunderstands what initially made Spider-Man iconic. He thinks that Spidey can't be Spidey unless he's alone and troubled, etc...the core idea that made Spider-Man iconic is the core idea of the Marvel Universe in general: he's a hero who isn’t everything perfect but is a real guy living in the real world who deals with real problems and sometimes gets crapped on and has to deal with it. The lonely, troubled stuff wasn't what made Spider-Man unique but an outgrowth of what really made him special. So part of the reason that Peter grew up and got married is because Stan Lee stuck to that idea of, well, keeping it real. Real people do grow up, learn, change, etc. In "returning Spidey to his roots" Joe Q disrespects the character's actual roots.
BUG: I think one of the tough things about comics is the whole serialized illusion of change thing. Sure, we can look at Spider-Man stories from a traditional standpoint that it should follow some kind of logical path in order to tell a story. Certain things should happen. Resolutions should be made. There should be some consistency to the character and the path he's on and the decisions he makes along that path. In a story, it all makes sense because you have an intro, a hero, a problem, a struggle, a solution, and an ending. But here, with comics, you have a serialized thing going where there really is no END to the story.That can't happen, so while I hate the decisions made, I can understand why they did it. Spidey needs a reboot every now and then to make him timeless. If anything, OMD/BND is a wake up call to comic book readers, slapping them in the face that we are not reading modern mythology as everyone tries to say. In fact, we're watching Charlie Brown go for the football for the umpteenth time and falling flat on his @$$ when Lucy pulls it away at the last minute. Makes following comics for the long term kind of sad and frustrating to me.
PROF: Marvel Comics fans are Charlie Brown and the Marvel editorial staff is Lucy with brass knuckles.
STONE: On one level I’m kind of relieved that Marvel have finally realized there’re limits to how far you can alter serialized characters. I mean, so much shitty stuff has happened since the 90s that the notion of the Marvel universe as one cohesive story doesn’t have a lot of swing left anyway. So if this is a sign that we’re going to stick with more of an archetype and less huge, status-quo changing events and stories inherently based around other stories from thirty years ago…then yeah, I can go along with that. But do I trust Marvel to stick to that? Hell no!
JINXO: Do I understand the need to keep Spidey from aging into an old guy? Yes. Figuring out how to deal with the situation of keeping him moving forward without him becoming a geezer is a tricky one. What we got, though, was a ham fisted, clumsy story designed less to service the characters than to generate controversy, fan outrage and, by extension, media attention. Because Joe Q loves media attention. BUG: A better writer will come along and fix it all. Slott has pulled this off before and no one really listened. He had a perfect solution for the Spidey Unmasking shown in THE INITIATIVE recently. He also addressed all of the continuity flubs in the Marvel U over the last few years in his final issues of SHE-HULK. It's just that Slott was never a part of JQ's Elite and none of these "fixes" were taken seriously or even read by fans of Bendis, Millar, and JMS. Maybe Slott's stuff will be taken a bit more seriously now. Time will tell.
MODERATOR: So has ONE MORE DAY affected your decision to purchase BRAND NEW DAY?
SUPES: Spider-Man's been a mess for so long with only slight flashes of goodness along the way. Spider-Totem? Nope. Gwen screws Norman Osborne out of sympathy? Uh-uh. Spidey unmasks in front of the world to please his corporate master boss? Yeah, right. So if you think I'm even thinking of buying some horseshit ret-con, even if it is written by Dan Slott, you'd be wrong, bucko. I've started voting against comics with my wallet, thank you very much, and Spider-Man will not get one red cent from me.
BUG: What really interests me is the fact that so many people are pissed. And not just the old timers that JQ and everyone else dismiss all the time; these are new fans that are pissed about the ret-con. They're like "Hey, I bought this Mark Millar issue or this Bendis issue or this JMS issue and now it doesn't exist?!?! What the hell? Those were my stories. I feel like I wasted my money on that book." New fans…meet the old fans. That kind of amuses me, because when this new Marvel Renaissance came along and so much of the past was discarded, old school readers were pissed because hip n' trendy new writers from other mediums or writers who have never seemed to have read a Marvel comic came along and refused to do the homework about a character and just wrote whatever the hell fit their story. And people who had read comics for years were pissed. But the new readers were like "Whatever, old man. We don't give a shit about all of that. We just want good stories." Now the shit is on the bottom of the other shoe and the newbs are feeling what the old schoolers felt back then. Not so fresh of a feeling, huh, kids?PROF: I'm not pissed--just unimpressed with the small-mindedness of the whole thing. It's a dramatically weak mind that can not conceptualize any other way to accomplish the end goal here than to have the Devil do a system restore on Pete's hard drive.
SLEAZY: Actually, this is the first time in years I'm considering buying Spider-Man and voting against those of you voting with your dollars. I can't deny OMD is a steaming stack of horseshit, and JMS only gets to put so much blame on JQ since it's still JMS' words. That said, though: We've got a run starting with two comics writers I greatly enjoy and two TV/movie writers with long track records in comics. We've got world-class artists. We've got no more organic spider-totem nuthin', just a dude with some web-shooters who needs a job and a girlfriend. I'm the mirror image of everybody who's quitting now.
JINXO: Sure, JMS is out of the picture and they have new talented people coming onto the title…with the bad, confusing history. JMS is gone but Joe Q’s still around. You know, the guy who has twice pissed everyone off. Do you really think Joe Q is just going to leave the new teams alone to do their thing? He had a guy writing the book who already was an established Hollywood writer and he didn’t leave him to do his thing. You think he won’t stick his fingers in now? I’m guessing he’ll do it now more than ever, because if this thing all goes to hell (fingers crossed) his ass is on the line. SUPES: Exactly. Who really thinks that everything will remain completely rosy and status-quo in Spidey-land before some other asinine idea is shoved down the writer's throats? Sleazy, if by seeing the mess that's come before BND you think it's worth spending your money on "Brand New" Spidey stories that'll now be good...just remember...Quesada's still in charge here.
BUG: Or maybe the fan backlash will put the big guy in his place and allow the writers to do what they do best. Maybe this'll humble Joey Q a bit. That's what I'm hoping. If I did something and not one person is out there saying it was a good idea, I'd have to be pretty thick not to adjust accordingly. And if that means pulling my thumb out of the Spider-Pie, then so be it.
Mmmm...Spider-Pie.
STONE: I can go along with the theoretical end result of where this places Spider-Man. Could I handle Mephisto's magic getting rid of “Clone Saga”, “The Other”, the unmasking, MJ as a supermodel and all the other crap that Marvel have put the character through recently and leaving a Pete and MJ who were a financially struggling young couple, like they should be? Probably, yeah, but developing the character past where he works best always brings us one step closer to mid-life crisis Spider-Man and complete irrelevance. So as crappy as OMD was, I can get behind a more iconic, single Spider-Man as the end result. But as for Joe Quesada's reasons for it... it's pure ego and hubris.HUMPHREY: Yeah, that's the really ignorant part about it all: not only did it basically come from one man's ego, but it also happened because Marvel obviously drove the character into the fucking ground this past half decade and really had no outs but some sort of cosmic reboot. Who here didn't see the Unmasking turning into a trainwreck from a storytelling standpoint? But it made national news, so apparently it worked! Short term gain at the sacrifice of long term storytelling ability. Good job boys...
BUG: Yeah, Axel Alonso bald-faced lied to Sleazy G on that G4 interview, stating that they had years and years of stories on tap featuring an unmasked Spidey. Years and years...16 months...same difference.
MODERATOR: To those of you who read it, what was your initial reaction to the new stuff? Brand New Day or Brand New Dud?
STONE: I really wanted to enjoy “Brand New Day”. Dan Slott has written some of my favorite stuff at Marvel recently and I’m a lot more okay with the idea of a return to a more iconic Spider-Man than most are. But unfortunately, although there were minor parts I dug, this is a complete dud of a first issue as far as I’m concerned. I almost can’t believe they’d put out the first issue of the big new relaunch without a SINGLE SCENE OF SPIDER-MAN IN COSTUME. The whole thing just felt bizarre to me. A Peter Parker who hangs around with his billionaire best friend and beautiful girls in clubs and has no real responsibilities is obviously hugely relatable, right? None of it felt like an organic Spider-Man story, more like Joe Quesada suddenly saying, okay, we’re gonna have a retro tone for the book now. Pros were the tone of the first few pages, Pete perched on the ledge at the end of the day and Mr. Negative. Cons were the complete lack of a storyline, the awful new take on Harry, the continuing characterization of Peter Parker as a schmuck rather than someone to empathize with, and the utterly bemusing cliffhanger in which J. Jonah Jameson has a heart attack…when he hasn’t even appeared until then! In order to win people over and get them to stick with the thrice-monthly schedule they needed a belter of a first issue. This was about as dull, bland and set-up-y as you can get. Seriously, this is bad news for the relaunch.ROCK-ME: I understand the uncomfortable position that the Spidey Brain-trust was put into, so I don’t want to seem unkind. But it just feels…wrong. They’re doing the right things, giving us the right action, the right social set-ups and tension…its well written, I think. But it just feels like a very funny joke…unfortunately told at a funeral. I guess I’m still grieving the loss of Mary Jane and the marriage. It’s hard for me to get into what they’re doing.
BUG: I don't think the relaunch was necessarily bad--just small. And maybe that's what Spidey needs for a while. Slott tells smaller stories. They are less flashy and more intermeshed with the Marvel Universe's rich history.
STONE: My problem with it wasn’t that it was small. The best Spidey stories are comparatively small, but have big effects and resonance for the character of Peter Parker. This, however, I found completely uninvolving. Seriously, there wasn’t anything there that made me want to come back next week, which is tragic when you consider it. HUMPHREY: Honestly, I've read both “Brand New Day” issues and I do kind of feel at "home" with the cast again. Harry's presence still irks me, especially since there's seemingly no rhyme or reason behind it, but this does have the atmosphere of a Spider-Man I sort of grew up with (though I have to say now, I more remember growing up with the Spider-Man cartoons than the comics themselves). But, here's what I never got about the whole situation, and you'll have to forgive me since I know nothing about the married life in the fucking slightest, but is there some sort of rule that says as soon as you get hitched you have to stop having friends?
SUPES: Nope, just when you have a baby…
HUMPHREY: I mean, as soon as he tied the knot with MJ did characters like Flash and Betty and Felicia all just have to disappear? Apparently Harry is the only friend Pete has ever had, and when he died Pete had to stop occasionally stepping out and having fun like a normal person? This is the kind of stuff that nags at me while I'm still trying to wrap my head around why exactly this whole dissolution of Spidey's matrimonial state needed to occur.
STONE: I think the problems I had with the first issue of BND can probably be attributed to the spectre of editorial involvement. Dan Slott has proven he can write great Spider-Man tales with stuff like SPIDER-MAN/HUMAN TORCH, and when I think of what I disliked about #546 it comes down to way too much time being spent on the dull new supporting cast, Harry back and Peter Parker as a deadbeat living with Aunt May. Maybe if Slott had been given free rein to write the first issue he would have wanted to without being forced to set up future plot threads and establish a new supporting cast I would have been that much more impressed, and maybe once they’ve settled down it’ll feel more natural. But I’ll be hesitant to pick up future issues after the weak debut.
PROF: I don't really blame Slott at all. In fact, I can't really imagine anyone currently writing at Marvel who seems to "get" classic Marvel as well as him. But I have a bad bad feeling that if this reboot tanks in sales like the “Clone Saga” did that Slott will be blamed by corporate rather than the EIC. Which means more bad editorial decisions and less good writing at Marvel.
MODERATOR: What about the thrice monthly schedule? Is this something that’s going to work for Marvel?
STONE: On first thought, the idea of scaling back the character to appeal to kids again doesn’t fit too well with making you spend $9 a month… I find it depressing that we’ve reached the point where kids are now totally excluded from the main adventures of comics’ most popular character.BUG: I don't see the schedule being much of a problem. People are buying COUNTDOWN and it’s utter crap. 52 was pretty damn successful. Why shouldn't it be equally successful for Marvel? It's what led up to this that may be a tough sell to people, not the schedule. 52 had the pretty highly successful INFINITE CRISIS to lead into it. BND had OMD, which alienated a whole lotta people.
HUMPHREY: I don't see why it shouldn't work. Really, the majority of readers that are buying the title now are the same SPIDER-MAN faithful that were already probably buying all three of his titles before they streamlined it down to the three times monthly.
SLEAZY: It seems pretty risky to me. The Superman titles and X-books have tried this before, and it never lasts because it's just too much to ask of a lot of the fans. I think that rolling out a new pricing structure at three times the rate (which this essentially is) at the same time as a hotly disputed change in status quo may be asking for too much from the customer base. Deeply altering the characters, the storylines, AND the cost all at once seems like it runs the risk of being severely overwhelming. It also makes me wonder if anybody at Marvel has studied macroeconomics: customers with a limited budget can only afford to buy so many books a month. If they have to drop two other books a month so they can buy two extra issues of AMAZING SPIDER-MAN, what are the odds that lower-tier Marvel books will take the hit and end up cancelled, when they might have survived otherwise? Am I going to lose IMMORTAL IRON FIST or THE ORDER because of this decision?
HUMPHREY: I don't really expect "blockbuster" sales on it to continue down the road, but I don't see any reason for it not to keep selling consistently as long as they keep up with it. In my opinion I think they'd have been better off just sticking with a biweekly schedule because to me three times a month just seems kind of weird, y'know? Why ramp something up for three weeks straight and then BAM! week off to kill some momentum?PROF: Just another example of Marvel doing what DC did years earlier. Marvel always seems to be like Burger King copying McDonalds’ actions years after the fact. Anybody remember the "Big King" (read: Big Mac)? DC did this with the Superman titles many years ago and it worked for awhile but eventually burned everyone out and DC cut them back. Short-term thinking is the hallmark of the business decisions of the JQ era at Marvel.
HUMPHREY: I just wish this would have been an opportunity for one of the companies to come out and say "Y'know, maybe we do overexpose our product a bit too much. Here you go, one Spidey title that will streamline everything and come out at a somewhat better than normal pace. Enjoy." But going for the third issue a month seems excessive. The thing that really kills storytelling ability with a character is not the 20 or 30 or even 40 years of continuity they might have: it's having a character that not only is carrying three or four of his own regular titles a month, he’s showing up in a team book regularly, and mini-series, and whatever big event book is going on and its tie-ins, and then multiplying all THAT over 20 to 40 some odd years. At this point I see characters like Batman and Superman and Spidey in a given year more often than my parents and five siblings combined. Maybe if Spidey didn't show up in a dozen books a month, someone would still have something pertinent to say about the wall-crawling bastard...
SLEAZY: This is a really good point. Spider-Man, Wolverine and a couple of other Marvel characters are massively overexposed. Focusing on putting out a better quality Spider-product on a lesser schedule would be a far better choice. Twice a month would be more affordable, more accessible, and buy them more time to tell quality stories. They're obviously trying to come up with something to compete with DC's weekly books, but I don't know that a single character's regular title is the best place to do that.MODERATOR: Final thoughts, then – is the new status quo a good thing or a bad thing? Do you see it and the thrice-monthly schedule sticking? And will you be sticking around with it?
PROF: I have a strong feeling that this new direction is going to be a "you can't go home again" failure. You gotta move forward, and this is a huge step backward under the guise of moving forward.
HUMPHREY: What I think is the heart of the situation for me is that I could possibly see the desire to hop back to having Harry and the crew around if ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN didn't exist. Right there we already have a book that can still showcase the old crew! I like what I'm seeing from Slott and ASM is entertaining me, but I've still got a bad taste in my mouth from the OMD debacle, and quite frankly, there's just too many other great books and characters out there to be trying with that cash of mine.
JINXO: Unless the reboot results in an unbelievably spectacular drops in sales, I think they'll stick with it. While I and many others are dropping the book, I don't know if it will be THAT large a sales decline. The three times a month thing? I give it two years and then they'll revert to multiple Spidey titles that each come out monthly. Right now, Spider-Man in any form reminds me of OMD and gets me really annoyed. Been reading the various Spidey titles for over a decade, but...maybe this is just a good chance to break away, save some money. Or maybe try some different books.
PROF: I don’t think the ret-con’s either good or bad. I just think it's just unoriginal and lacks a creative spark. If the goal of this whole reboot was to gain new readers (i.e., paying customers) then they haven't succeeded with me. Nothing I've read or heard inspires me to start dropping cash on Spider-Man comics again. So, no.STONE: I'll probably pick up the first issue of the next team after Dan Slott and Steve McNiven, and I do expect this relaunch to improve once editorial take their fingers off it a bit more, but really, what does it say when we sit through a huge ret-con that pisses off almost everyone but has the goal of enabling great stories, and none of us could muster up more than a “like” of the book? The only way this scheme could work is if you can’t wait to read the next issue, and they didn't achieve that.
SLEAZY: Basically, I disagree with everything leading up to #546. But it's now much closer to the kind of book I want to read, and it's the first time I've liked the creators involved in years, so yeah--I'm going to give it a chance. I'll stick around for at least a few story arcs and see where it goes. Their work is cut out for them, though.
BUG: I'll probably be sticking around too. Like Sleazy, I feel Spidey is being written by writers I actually like for the first time in a long time. Slott's Spidey is funny. Slott has an appreciation for Marvel history and I appreciate that appreciation. Zeb Wells has proven to be another one of my favorite writers that actually gets what it takes to write Marvel comics. If Fred Van Lente and Jeff Parker were rounding out the writing chores with Wells and Slott, this would be the perfect Spidey writing team. The other two guys on tap, though, have yet to prove themselves to me, but if I don't like their stuff, I just wait a month and that changes too.
ROCK-ME: I know this may garner me some guffaws, but I will be sticking around. It would be a disservice to Slott and co. if I didn't at least see what they will make the book when they get rolling. It's like the last lap in a four-man relay. Slott takes the baton and sees he's already in last place and the world seemingly set against him. But what if he beats the odds and pulls out a winner? Despite my intense dislike of the cosmic annulment, I owe Slott that much based on his prior work.BUG: One last thing: Although people are up in arms about OMD/BND, I think taking a gander at “The Clone Saga” could give us all a little bit of perspective. Demogoblin, Ben Reilly, Spidercide, Kaine, Scrier, Judas Traveller… All of it was swept under the rug pretty quickly and ignored once the new direction happened. “The Clone Saga” was unpopular, fans were extremely vocal about it, and it all faded away. Maybe that’ll happen here.
I found this interesting tidbit from Wikipedia regarding a rejected editorial decision regarding a clean up of wince-inducing "The Clone Saga" plot twist that Ben Reilly was actually the real Peter Parker and that the Parker we all had been following for the last few years had been a clone:
"The decision to replace Peter with Ben as the regular, true Spider-Man met with a massive outcry from many readers and was also unpopular with many of the creative staff of the day. The decision was soon taken to undo this and restore Peter as the true Spider-Man. However, this proved a difficult decision to implement and many schemes were devised, including one proposal to reveal the entire confusion as having been spawned by the demon Mephisto as part of a struggle with Judas Traveller and Scrier. This was rejected as being widely out of Spider-Man's league. " Mephisto? Out of Spidey's league? Hmmm... Methinks those editors, although they may have okayed the "Clone Saga", may have actually known Spidey better than the guys in charge today.
And with that feeling of smug satisfaction, the @$$holes disappeared back to their ditch beside the New Jersey turnpike. But don’t let the Roundtable end there! If you made it through all that chatter with your sanity and typing skills intact, why not continue the discussion below? Heck, I’m sure a few who didn’t get through this roundtable will too.
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Does anybody think the value of comics are worth the prices charged anymore? Life long fan of the medium, but fed up with the constant price increases. 60 cents when I was growing up, now $2.99? $3.99? Is it ever going to end?
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I'm really hoping that this isn't over yet. I really can't see Peter making a deal with Mephisto and not having it turn around and bite him in the ass. This is also a very convienent backdoor out of this mess. Mephisto turns Pete's life into hell again, Doc Strange helps Pete out of the fire and the deal is undone. You don't have to restore everything...I kinda prefer the homemade web shooters, always have. But you could restore a little of the "Classic" Spidey without all the magic jibberish. Just a thought.
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Then buying BND is the complete wrong thing to do. It rewards and fuels Quesada's bloated ego, and by buying BND you are asking for more of the same that you got with OMD from Marvel. Anyone who disliked or hated OMD should stay away from BND like it was the fucking plague, otherwise don't bitch about it - because buying BND is a seal of approval for OMD.
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You guys should talk about movie related comics like the fantastic comic line Bluewater is putting out! They are making comicsequels to Ray Harryhausen movies like Sinbad, Earth vs. Flying Saucers, Clash of the Titans and It Came From Beneath The Sea!
Here is a link to their forum for all titles:
http://www.mainstaystudio.com/Bluewater/forum/phpBB2/index.php
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I have been a fan of Spidey for 20+ years. I haven't really bought or read the comics since high school, but I always followed along through the internet, played the games, watch the movies, etc. But One More Day has just left me with a feeling of distaste for the character that I never thought I'd have. Speaking of the Clone Saga, there's a site with a really interesting write up that gives a lot of insite into this, including that comment about Mephisto, which was the first thing I thought about when I read about OMD. http://tinyurl.com/29rq8b
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. . . and the last best era was Michelenie's work and the cohesiveness of the story arcs. What's f'd up a lot of this is the multiple stories in multiple books that break the character into too many separate bits that never seem to relate well and just sell extra Spidey books. JQ was never a good choice for Marvel and his decisions as always are more corporate driven as a public company than anything else. In short the creativity in this series is flatter than an IHOP pancake and JMS's add-ons didn't do more to help than to further distort the story line. As these characters get older the canon will get lost in the mix of needing to keep the character fresh enough to garner new readers. It's unfortunate that back when I started the amount I pay nowadays for book would've bought the whole store. How can you expect a kid to buy a couple of books nowadays with the prices? Its still us adults buying the four dollar book and you'd think that would help them in their story decisions as to who's really "reading" it. Time for my mush.
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I'm sure some have, but I can't remember any at the moment...
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remember that? Sheesh.
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You hit the nail on the head folks. Thank you profusely.
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I hadn't read Spider-Man in over a decade, I got bored with it. I thought the unmasking in Civil War was a cool idea to take the character into uncharted territory so I was back to reading it. I liked it, it wasn't Earth shattering but I liked it. Now with OMD/BND the whole concept of what got me back into Spider_Man in the first place was erased, fuck. Oh well, once again I'm done with Spider-Man, that didn't take long.
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Seriously the most grating, annoying character in comics. I can't wait till she finally dies for good.
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I have read spidey for years and althoguh i have to say i liked spidey fighting with ol' ben reilly the whole clone thing was pretty crappy. This though to me is worse. Should have let ol May die and show a darker side of pete which could have lead to a divorce if they two of them had to split up as it would seem by those in charge.
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I pretty much stopped reading comics because of it. I don't know how the industry can get new readers. How can kids afford it? I hate to admit, but bit torrents is what got me back into reading comics. I wouldn't be surprised if I get some hate for that, but I can tell you that there are lots of people doing it. If I could still get a comic for a buck they'd still be getting my money.
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Things get more expensive over decades? Really?
Seriously, it's a different industry then in the 80s. Better printing, more expensive paper.... blah blah blah ... comics are more expensive now. So is gas. And movie tickets. The more money they put in the more they need to charge to get it back out. -
http://tinyurl.com/33rrov
Good collection of what's been going on so far. Do yourself a favor and pick it up. -
At three a month, it'll be about 18 months to #600, where JQ will suddenly come down with a severe case of Clue and we'll see the BND stuff all un-magicked away. I'll agree with the others that suggested MJ's whisper to Mephisto just before the Cosmic Re-Write was **FOR HER TO REMEMBER**; this provides JQ's Alter-Ego with the emotional pain he thrives on, and gives them the needed 'out' to revert it all when the sales tank.
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Has Marvel even considered ALL the continuity issues OMD/BND are gonna cause??
What happens to characters like the Avengers..Venom..Kraven
..Black Cat..& Ben Reilly??
Should we look forward to Clone Saga:Reloaded??
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once again, marvel has shown that their comics are a complete waste of money.
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and I've never looked back. I keep up with what's going on, thanks to the internet. It just doesn't feel like I'm missing much these days.
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Piss me off!
A comic book in 1980 costed 50 cents. The inflation adjusted equivalent in 2006 would be $1.34! They’re killing the business with their prices. I think they want to kill the pamphlet business to promote bound-collections. -
...and while I hate how they got there, I love where they are. I like the cliffhangers, the bad guys that have ties to Peter's 'real' life, and running out of web fluid. I keep thinking that a time-travel story would have been so much more effective as a ret-con: Something like Pete getting plopped back a few years to just after the Secret Wars, with full knowledge of everything that's going to happen (symbiote, clone wars, etc.), and decides to go on the offensive to prevent things from happening. "With great knowledge comes great responsibility."
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I spend waaaay too much on comics. I'm interested in checking out some titles without having to drop the ones I really like (Booster Gold, Ultimate SpiderMan, Daredevil) Where does someone like me turn to? And don't give me Marvel digital.
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I spend waaaay too much on comics. I'm interested in checking out some titles without having to drop the ones I really like (Booster Gold, Ultimate SpiderMan, Daredevil) Where does someone like me turn to? And don't give me Marvel digital.
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Oops!
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If youre going to suggest comic readers hit Marvel in the wallet to show disapproval of the Spidey retcon, how bout you refusing to give it space as well? Is it because you are getting comped comics?
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Seriously.
Not all fans will or have continued to buy Spider-Man after OMD. I tried the first issue of BND, but was too disgusted to continue. I simply dumped it, after having collected every issue over the past 21 years.
There's absolutely no respect for the characters, the continuity, or the value of the property. The writing is a shame.
Save your Spider-bucks for better books. Both Ultimate and Spider-Girl have been telling solid, entertaining stories month after month for many years now - 8 for Ultimate and nearly 11 for Spider-Girl.
Although Spider-Girl takes place in an alternate present/future, it respects continuity much more than any Spidey book in the past several years. It's also a helluva lot of fun - being written by classic 80s writer and former EIC Tom Defalco (the nicest guy in person, btw.)The book maintains that old school 80s flavor while still feeling modern. Lots of familiar villains such as Carnage & Hobgoblin; Also, some of the classic baddies' grown kids. Peter and MJ are happily married here. May (SG) has a new baby brother. Her supporting cast include her classmates, Harry Osborne's crazy son Normie, Kaine, the Fantastic Five, the next wave of Avengers, and tons of other fun characters.
Great read. Going on its 117th issue now (actually numbered @ #17 due to a title change from adjectiveless to "Amazing".)
Give it a try. If you love old school Spidey antics and a superhero book where the heroes are actually.... *gasp*.... heroic... then you owe it to yourself to try this book at least once. If for no other reason than to protest the crazy editorial shit from OMD/BND. Here's a book that actually cares about and respects characters.
As far as Ultimate Spider-Man goes, if you're not already reading this then there's no convincing you. It is simply Bendis' best non-Powers work ever. Again, like Spider-Girl, a teen Spidey with all of the angst and woes that goes with it. Unlike Spider-Girl, this one is certainly more flavored in the now instead of 80s/early 90s. A bit wordy at times, but nearly each issue is an instant classic.
Why by 3 crappy BND books a month when you can just buy Spider-Girl and Ultimate Spider-Man? You'll save $3 and have a lot more fun. -
Maybe it's because I've never had the greatest luck in relationships or maybe it's because I'm recently married, but I can't relate to this new status quo. Marriages are hard, relationships are hard, so I can understand writing those stories can be hard too. But those are the stories I can relate to now. A bachelor Spidey still living at home with the parents (or equivalent)?? Not so much. The Spiderman I knew (or thought I knew) wouldn't be able to live without the love of his life. He knows it's that love that makes him stronger, that anything is possible as long as you have it. If Aunt May were conscious during the "deal with the devil" she would have slapped Peter upside the head and said "What are you thinking? I've lived a good life. And a large part of the good life was with your Uncle Ben who I loved with all my heart. If he were still alive he would be ashamed of you. It's time to grow up Peter. It's time to let go and move on. There are those out there who look up to you Peter, who look up to your courage. Your courage to face impossible odds armed with nothing more that the conviction that beats in your heart. To inspire the generations to come, you have to grow up Peter. You have to let me go. Honor Ben's memory. Honor the love that Ben and I had for each other, and let me go. I'm proud of you Peter. And I'm proud the whole world knows that my nephew is Spiderman."
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The difference between Marvel Comics and DC has always been that the former was built on flawed and human characters and the latter was about concepts. Marvel was character and personality driven. DC came up with original and unique ideas that are now standard superhero motifs. DC had icons you could do anything version of. From dark to light and back and different people in the identities. Marvel always had more human characters that stayed true to when they were first created. Now Marvel is nothing but concepts. Stupid, READER INSULTING concepts that fuck up everything that made the characters great to begin with.
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I was reviewing then. The group decision was to ignore it, which we thought was kind of funny and a stronger statement than blasting it. But if you're reviewing, you're writing about what's going on in the medium, not with a book or a character or a writer/artist or a company, and CIVIL WAR was big among the fans. Something had to be said.The difference was that at least SOME people liked CIVIL WAR. I have yet to see anyone not named Quesada who actually likes this decision (re-read the AICN interview with Slott. He's professional but...). The @$$holes would get blasted, and probably not being covering the medium well, if they ignored Oh My Drivel or Brand Name Day.
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As far as a typical week goes, I get all my comics shipped directly (from Marvel, DC or Image) to my house on TUESDAY. None of that Wednesday stuff for me. Additionally, my contract with AICN specifies that I get either truffles or Skittles along with a six-pack of Mountain Dew. Well, except for the third Tuesday of every month, when Marvel or DC (they alternate) send me chocolates from either Belgium or Germany.Personally, I think they both get them from Luxemburg and just change the return address, but that's probably me being paranoid.
I don't know what deals the other man-holes have worked out, but I feel I ought to have some compensation for all this writing besides just my combined Marvel/DC/AICN paycheck. -
Does the 44 represent your IQ? Of course things are going to be more expensive than they were in the 80s, We all know this, right....wait, how much was a personal computer in 1980? Thousands of dollars? You missed the point entirely. Yeah, it's better paper, better colors, but 500% price increase better? Hell no! You totally missed the point, fuck-tard. The value isn't what it was. Do you understand that? Dumb ass. Oh yeah, OMD and BND totally raped continuity in the marvel universe.
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... He allowed it to become DC's "Kingdom Come."
You can't tell the good guys from the bad anymore. When murderous bad guys like Venom, Bullseye, and the Green Goblin make up the majority of a government sanctioned "hero" team then you known there's a problem.
I blame it on Quesada. Totally. There's a difference between being flawed and being depraved. The heroes no longer have a sense of honor, justice, or humanity.
I'm not suggesting that Quesada impose his morality on the book. However, it'd be nice to be able to tell the black hats from the white hats every now and then.
Quesada should have been exercising a lot more editorial control. You don't sacrifice characterization for the sake of drama. That's exactly what DC has been doing - particularly with Frank Miller's All Star Batman and the bloodbath that was Infinite Crisis.
Maybe I'm getting old, but I have such fond memories of characters being more out of costume than in (even the X-Men), having personal lives, talking like regular people, and facing evil that was believably 3D, but still a world apart from normalcy and sanity.
For that, nothing will ever beat the Byrne/Claremont X-Men, the Simonson Fantastic Four, the Stern/Perez Avengers, PAD's Hulk, and the DeFalco or Stern Spider-Man runs.
Marvel's closest in recent years have been Morrison's New X-Men or Slott's She-Hulk - both of which made the characters feel fun and flawed without ever being all all "Chuck Austenized" and parodies of themselves.
Quesada may have saved Marvel, but he doomed the properties. The moment he allowed the writers and group editors to write superhero characters instead of people with superpowers... he screwed the pooch. -
Retconning the 2008 Peter Parker into the 1978 version isn't making the black/white division clear. Its poor sad JoeQ going through a mid-life crisis and trying to relive his childhood.
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None of us get comped Marvel comics. We're covering it because of the sheer amount of interest in the whole thing, among fans and the @$$es. Just look at any of the recent Spider-focused talkbacks. Marvel have just radically altered the last twenty years of its most popular character. That's a pretty big deal. We write about comics here and that includes stuff we might not like. Opinions in the Roundtable ran the gamut from refusing to buy BND to actually liking it a fair amount, so I don't think anyone can accuse the @$$holes of sucking up to Marvel.
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...smack.The thing is, no one wants to admit how bad comic book sales truly are. Even "big" sales are relative these days and deserve the quote marks. Modern Marvel and guys like Quesada have accepted and to a large degree embraced a strictly limited market.I can't help here. I stopped buying new comics about two years ago, so Spidey is just fine with me because it's Ditko/Romita/Kane/Andru/Lee/Conway and Wein.I would urge all of you, including my friends on the review panel, to not stick with Spidey. Truly drop it. Let the sales shrink to zero. What do you think would happen then? Would Marvel cancel a book that has been around almost 50 years, the flagship of their line and the basis of a successful movie franchise, or would they fire a well meaning editor in chief who, in my opinion, truly doesn't understand his own company, fans or characters?But then, kicking the addiction is hard.I'm Buzz M. I'm a comic book fan.Hi, Buzz.It's been two years and three months since my last first run issue...
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It's a fair question, Felix. No, we really don't get comped, of course. If we are occasionally asked to review upcoming comics (usually by the writer), we might get an actually comic, or a PDF, or just a link, and it's all good. Especially when it comes to creator-owned properties, where every marketing dollar is precious, I wouldn't ask for a physical copy of anything unless they really wanted to show it off.Bottom line is that we do this for the love of the genre, pure and simple. We want to cover it fairly (out of respect for the genre AND the reader)and to do that, we cover the things we like and don't like.I see Buzz already answered this better than I did, but I might as well post.
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So far, in three issues of BND, there's NOTHING I haven't read before back in the late 1970s or early 1908s. It's pretty lame. The writing is fine-- It's the DIRECTION that sucks. The whole setting has been rearranged. All the developments and changes made in the past decade feel like they've just been forgotten.
And the return to the silver-age style sucks too. I'm talking about thought bubbles all over the place, amazing coincidental relationships between characters, and the tendency of the characters to narrate themselves. The blatant exposition is enough to make one choke.
Spider-Man has gone from being a respected member of the Superhero community to being "that menace, Spider-Man" again. I never missed the "menace" period. I was digging the idea that the Marvel Universe liked Spider-Man as much as I did, for once.
Now, nobody knows his identity. Not Wolverine. Not the Human Torch. Not Daredevil (but everybody still knows who Daredevil is, apparently). He's gone back to being the luckless, uninteresting loser who is more concerned about protecting his secret identity than catching the bad guys.
Mind you, I'm not paying to read this anymore. I've read the last five issues in the store (I worked at a bookstore until they closed it this week) and I will be popping into other bookstores to read a few more issues before turning away entirely-- And I've been reading Spider-Man since the late 1970s. I've read almost every back issue, too. So for me to give it up means dropping something that has been part of my reading habit for about 30 years.
This sucks. FUCK Joe Q. for screwing with my favorite Marvel book and character. Now I've no choice but to start looking at other companies for character development and continued story progression. -
There was a comic strip in HEAVY METAL in the early '80s:Panel 1: Publishing office. An inky guy approaches someone who is obviously Bill Gaines in the 1940s:"Gee, Bill, our superheroes aren't selling as well as their superheroes.""Well, since we have nothing to lose, let's try something different. How about gory horror and crime comics?Panel 2: Publishing office. 1950s. A young Stan Lee approaches his boss."Gee, Marty, our horror and crime comics aren't selling as well as their's.""Well, since we have nothing to lose, let's try something different. How about publishing giant monster, romance and western comics."Panel 3:Publishing office. 1960s. Jack Kirby approaches Stan Lee."Gee, Stan, our giant monsters, romances and westerns aren't selling as well as their's.""Well, since we have nothing to lose, let's try something different. How about heroes with problems?"Panel 4: Same office. Inky guy approaches a long haired Roy Thomas, who appears to be holding a hash pipe."Gee, Roy, our heroes with problems aren't selling as well as their's.""Well, since we have nothing to lose, let's try something different. How about kung fu, blaxploitation, horror and sword and sorcery comics?"Panel 5: One robot approaches another."Our comics are not selling as well as their's.""No problem. Raise the prices!"
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Groundhog Day.Here's how the deal with Mephisto should work:Every day, Pete causes Aunt May's death. He meets Mary Jane but she doesn't like him. And he wakes up the next day, remembering what has happened, unable to change anything.
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Does this mean Captain America is still alive?
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=)
I've been buying comics for about 26 years now. Here's what I'm seeing, regarding comic prices.
1) Poor per-book sales. You can't necessarily blame this on quality. The fact is, there are more comic titles than ever. In the 80s, there were 4 X-Men books - Uncanny, X-Factor, New Mutants, and Classic (a reprint mag). Today, there anywhere from 9-12 monthly X-titles. What we're probably seeing is the same number of books being sold, but spread across more titles. You've also got to blame sales woes on title focus. Creative teams shift too often, preventing people from getting too hooked on any one title. Directions shift every 20 minutes thanks to an event driven market. That makes 90% of all comics newbie UNfriendly.
2) Prices can also be chalked up to rising paper costs. Plain and simple. Its not getting cheaper.
3) Super star talent. All of these TV and movie writers coming to comic. All of these high profile exclusive contracts. They don't pay for themselves. Gotta pass the cost on to somebody.
4)Advanced technology. Computer inking is prettier, but it is also more time consuming in some ways. That's affecting the bottom line, for sure. The same goes for whenever you have a book that uses any sort of digital effect in it.
5) Delays. Delays. Delays. Any time you delay a book, you risk losing readers. When you've got a book like the Ultimates, which ships many months apart then you've got a problem. If you've got a book like Spider-Man/Black Cat, which is delayed by over a year between issues... You've got a bigger problem and you're f-ing the bottom line even harder.
6) "I'll wait for the trade." Sad f-ing commentary and an even sadder catch-22. You can't sell the trade unless the sales of the floppy warrant a collection. You can't sell the floppy if people keep on waiting for the trade instead. Of course prices are going to be high if people don't support the montlies, but choose to buy the collections instead.
Prices are high. That's true. They're uncommonly high with regards to basic inflation, imho. However you can see why the situation is the way it is based on current and past trends. -
...we already know what editorial thinks. So, when Sleazy says, "...just a dude with some web-shooters who needs a job and a girlfriend.", we already know that's not going to happen. We know that the editorial staff doesn't want to have Peter "tied down" with a romantic relationship so ANY storyline that has anything to do with Peter's romantic life is worthless. He's not going to get back with MJ. He's not going to have a girlfriend. He's not going to be anything but a brooding 30-something living with his elderly aunt. This also takes away any of the "people I love are in danger" storylines. What does Spidey have to lose if he's not close to anyone? Why would the reader invest themselves in Peter getting close to anyone when we know that nothing will come of it?
I never understood the idea that Peter and MJ marrying stifled the character or the storylines. I know I've been hearing for years how much JQ (and supposedly other writers) hated it and felt boxed in somehow by it, but I just don't see it. I think, as someone else said, it's all a setup and Mephisto is going to come back in a year or two and torment Peter and MJ with the decision they made and they'll somehow bring it all back to right where we just were and maybe THIS time Peter will make the right decision and let Aunt May go. -
... are books which cost more than the standard $3, yet offer little in the way of value added content.
"Angel: After the Fall" - Great book. $3.99 great? Not so sure, especially when the Dark Horse published Buffy is $1 cheaper and as enjoyable - though in a different way.
"Giant Sized Blah Blah Blah" - $4.99 for a book that's 22 pages of new material and 22 pages of reprinted material that could be found in the $0.25 bin? Nah.
Don't even get me started on the books that are 50% advertising. Isn't that shit supposed to be helping to defer the costs? We've got more ads then ever, but the prices of the books keep on going up.
Sick.
Watch. Marvel & DC are priming us for $3.99 monthlies and we don't even know it. So many "special" issues like this coming out that by the time we realize that it became the norm for all books it'll be too late. -
... so then "Quesada" would mean "maker/producer/merchant of cheese"? Yeah... sounds about right!
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...if Aunt May turns out to be a Skrull. Seriously.
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...Giuseppe Formaggio!
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... makes me realize why I quit reading comics cold turkey back in 2003. Started peeking around again last year, but blew $30 on the hardcover where Spidey got killed, his corpse eaten by spiders, then reformed in a coccoon and ended up with spikes that shot out of his arms. That one, plus Superman having a new origin every 6 months and Jor El coming back wearing a beard and wearing overalls killed my comics reading forever, I think. Too bad.
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No one cares dude.
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I hate paying $2.99 for a comic book, but if you look at the prices increase and the time frames in which they happened, I would say $2.99 is right about where they should be. As a matter of fact, I am grateful that they aren't already $3.50, or worse yet, $3.99.
I would be fine if they cut back their paper quality to drop the price back to $2.50, though. Not saying they need to go newsprint, but there has to be an inbetween. Or they could also run a couple more ad pages? I know there are already way too many ads in a comic, but ads are better than paying more, in my opinion. -
I have been following the web-head on and off (off in the 90's) since about 1982 and this is all just another Clone Saga to me. Spidey has almost become as ridiculous as most of the Religions in the world. Marvel has turned him in to such an iconic messiah of the universe that they can't seem to let him and the rest of the universe evolve. If Stan and the rest of the boys treated their stories the way JQ and the Marvel staff have been running things all these years, then Wolverine wouldn't have a healing factor and Spidey never would have Married MJ in the first place and Cap would never have been found in that block of ice...(Don't even get me started on killing Cap) All of this bluster is me being super angry after I finally got comfortable getting back under my Spider-blanket, and they f*ck'd it up again. Why couldn't they just let May die? WHY WON"T YOU DIE! Let Pete grow up just a little. Let's hear some new emotions running threw his Spider-brain and for those of you who are of a pious nature, how bout letting May be reunited with Ben in the afterlife, huh? I'm sure he'd be happy to get a little nooky from his wife after all these years. —sigh ASM was about a chromosome away from being the hottest title in Marvel and they just didn't have the balls to go through with it.
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I went ahead and dropped all regular universe books that even had a hint of spider man. New Avengers, Amazing, etc. Sorry but the One More Day stench is way too strong. Like really really old cheese.
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Everyone loves multiple covers.
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MJ made the deal with the devil. It was her decision to go through with it. Mark my words: Shes a Skrull, one of the new Skrulls, and they can control magic. They made Scarlett Witch zap away all the mutants... The made it so Strange can't see them. They're fucking with magic!!!!
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A writing device employed by the Greeks. When they wrote themselves into a corner they would have an actor portraying a god get lowered onto the stage to fix everything and make it all better. That’s just sloppy writing and a bit of a let down. UNLESS this is a “New Coke” scenario and they have the real story resolution waiting in the wings. We shall see.
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"Like really really old cheese." And when you say "cheese"... we say "Quesada"!
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MJ asked him to turn her into a super hero if they agreed to make the deal. That's very obvious. I thinkthey will get back together way down the road and something with Mephisto will happen.
I kind of like BND but like most people I detest how they got there. I like Peter and MJ being married. So many stories to have there but they never delved into that. Anyone who is married knows damn well there is never a dull moment. A divorse would have been cool too. I could live with that. Kill Aunt May. In ASM 400 I thought they made a respectable farewell to her. Now she is too cliche. I also hope some new and cool villains come about. Instead of bringing dead ones back from the grave, how about some new ones. Who was the last cool new Spidey villain created? Was it Venom? What do you think? -
I have heard that in the paper industry today it would not matter, but I have never heard anyone attempt to quantify that. Hey, if all the money is going to creators, more power to them. If people want the high quality paper and production, they can buy the trades later.
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In the roundtable, I said, "You know, the guy who has twice pissed everyone off," in terms of him not staying hands off of the story for ASM in the past or in the future. Just to be clear, I was talking about Gwen's twins the children of Norman O's being his idea (JMS intended them to be Peter's) and his taking over and reshaping the end of OMD. Those two things are a couple of the largest fan flash points for Spidey fans and those were more Joey Cheese than JMS.
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The 'Clone' saga was the end of my comic collecting days. I can't even express in words how insulting that storyline was to my intelligence. The rationale behind it was just completely insane. I almost felt like I was reading an issue of "What the...", except I wasn't laughing. I left Spidey at that moment and, within a year, I was finished with comics altogether. And from what I've heard from friends who still read them, I haven't missed anything.
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Appreciate you both taking the time to clear that up for me. I had to ask.
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cheers.
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I know alot of people who have dropped Spider-Man due to this latest clusterfuck, myself and most of you included, but I'm wondering -- have the sales dropped enough that Marvel and Joey Quesadilla will be forced to own up and right their many wrongs? I'm assuming the sales must've gone down since I only know one guy out of 10 in my closest circle who doesn't mind the utter stupidity. But, then again, most of those 10 were more into indies then superhero stuff. So, I'm curious -- do any of the a$$holes have access to the numbers?
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These days, I like reading about the comic makers and the industry far more than I like reading the actual comics. I mean, no one has yet retconned Stan Lee's life so that Jack Kirby's still alive and they're best friends...Comic sales have always ebbed and flowed wildly. The industry has almost died out a dozen times, starting with the Wertham/Kefeauver hearings and most recently in the 1990s.Unfortunately, the medium we love is really a niche thing now. It's been ghettoized into comic shops and because of that, rather than diversifying the material it has skewered older (although not necessarily more mature; that's not really a new thing. In the '50s, when Timely/Atlas/Marvel cancelled all male superheroes like CAPTAIN AMERICA, THE HUMAN TORCH and THE SUB-MARINER, their only superhero title that sold relatively well was the Blonde Phantom. Gee, I wonder why?). Let's put it this way, once you've become a parent, even if you were the biggest hipster doofus in the world, you'll understand that you don't want your eight year old reading some nihilistic pseudo-macho crap meant to pump up the self images of 15-20 year olds. And since the stuff is slow moving, stiff and pretentious anyway, the 8 year old would rather play video games anyway.I maintain that comic book fandom is close to either an addiction or being in a cult. You want to stop reading Spidey, but getting the addict/True Believer en mass to do it is hard task.We know that to the non-fan, Marvel means movies. Spider-Man, X-Men, Ghost Rider. If the movies are marginal or crummy (Hulk, Punisher, Fantastic Four, Daredevil, Elektra) it doesn't really register.To make a difference in the comics, sales would have to drop to near zero. Mind you, we're dealing with comic book fans, the most wrong headedly loyal, dedicated, optimistic, overly involved of the fanboy breed.Even the smart comic book fans. "Well, I'll give it chance..." or "I'll buy the trade, even though that means the product is still selling."The hopeful thing about the fans in this OMD/BND thang, to me, is that even the ones that didn't like the marriage and really want to see a single, college age Parker, really seem to despise the plotline. So who knows?
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The first fucking page is Peter Parker making out with some chick in a god damn nightclub. The FIRST FUCKING PAGE! He then goes into the incredibly boring and teen movie of the day cliche back story to this little escapade, all while coming off as frantic as Quentin Tarantino after three aderol. It was absolutely pathetic, and once again, say it with me now, completely out of character for Peter Parker.
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Jan 25, 2008 5:41:10 PM CST
Comics2film sez Marvel Studios has signed deal with WGA
by brandloyalist
PS - Iron Man trailer w/ Cloverfeld really rocked
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I feel sorry for kids who want to collect and read comics. Guess they have to wait till after high school. Oh well, I gotta drive down to the comic book specialty store and purchase my pre-ordered $80.00 Power Girl figure.
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If it doesn't work they can always have Spidey take back his choice and make it like it never happened. It is a comic book, of course I stopped reading Spider-man for years after the awful clone saga for pulling similarly idiotic storylines.
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Wednesdays are Heaven for this old man.
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Great post as always Buzz, and think you hit the nail on the head with that. Its like a compulsion. The weird thing being that I had more or less given up on superhero comics in the 90s, and only read the more literate indies, and then, after the Spider-Man and XMen movies came out I dived right back in. At times it does feel like an addiction -- like I was on the wagon, but then some trigger sets me falling off again.
You know what though, I still think comics are a brilliant medium open to all kinds of coolness. Even if there is tons of crap, theres still some great stuff that I honestly love. I'm especially really excited about the Green Lantern titles, Nova, Annihilation: Conquest, The Order, Iron Fist, Legion of Superheroes, and even Action Comics has been really cool lately. I'm not ready to give up yet.
And I think one of the really big reasons why readership is down across the board, in addition to the fact that comics are really a niche market, is that people don't read much anymore period. Even mass market paperback are down as the process of de-evolution continues and people seem eager to become post-literate by thwacking away on various handheld entertainment devices. Its a sad state for comics, but even more depressing, I think its a sad state for the written word itself. -
The written word is expensive. I look forward to a format like i-tunes for comics. Fifty-cent downloads would be great.
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He's all footloose and fancy free now! Lookin' to partay! Woo! Hey, I know, maybe Peter and Harry and Flash can all go on a backpacking trip across Europe! I hear theres this hostel in Slovakia where the girls are H-O-T and they're crazy for any foreigner. In addition, I have it on good authority from this creepy Swedish guy who eats with his hands that you can pay to do anything there... ANYTHING...
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Amazon sells it. Not sure what its called, but its like an ebook that you can download books to for a fee (I think its like $9.99 a download; even for new releases in hardcover only). Hey, at least its reading. I'm not against new technology, in fact I love technology, it just bothers me that people don't read anymore.
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Yet.
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Yeah, if they want kids to come back to comics they need to find a way to lower prices anc make them more readily available. If I was a kid growing up today I would never get into comics. Not because I'm too caught up in video games or any crap idea like that but for practical reasons. When I was a kid the nearest comic shop was a half hour drive away. Not too bad but for a kid who can't drive it might as well be on the moon. Maybe I could get the folks to drive me over once in awhile but that's a pain. And how would I ever get hooked in the first place? Why would I ever visit that shop unless I already was a reader.
If they could put out some cheaper versions of the big comics, get them back in the drug stores and such, that would help a lot. Video games be damned the kids would come. We had games when I was a kid. Not nearly as sophisticated but hwe had 'em and we loved 'em. And screw the internet. As a kid I also always wanted an excuse to get out of the house and go do something. Again, with just a bike that meant I could only drive to the uptown of my podunk town. Comics were maybe the one cool thing within easy reach I could go out for on my own and get on my own.
So put out a cheaper copy of some comics on lower level paper, get it into the small town stores, give those kid's with no transport an excuse to leave the house and feel a little independent, you might get some new readers. -
ok... this is gonna be a long one.
as a kid, I used to love spidey comics. see, growing up in croatia, there wasn't really a way to read the current issues of any marvel/dc comics, but instead there were local magazines that printed various super-hero stories from the 70s and the 80s.
i.e. you could buy this 200 or so pages book that came out every month, and it would have spider-man/batman/superman/and so on stories that had no continuity to those that were printed the month before. and, truth be told, back then there WAS NO continuity: peter lived with his aunt, superman had wacky adventures with jimmy olsen getting a random super power every month and lois lane being completely fucking clueless on to the fact that clark is superman. and that was ok. it wouldn't matter if you missed an issue or two.
but, as I grew up a bit, I realized that kind of basic storytelling bores the shit out of me: good guys always win, and there is no possibility for any kind of change to the core status quo. so, I gave up on superheroes and moved forward to stuff like dylan dog and nathan never.
as I was starting high school, I happened to walk in a store that sells foreign press (I was buying an issue of national geographic for my uncle). as I was waiting for girl that worked there to get off the fucking phone and bill me for NG, something caught my attention. there was this cover of a comic book, that featured a guy in a spiderman-like costume, fighting some robot thingies. the cover did say "spider-man", but the costume was scarlet with some sweatshirt thing on it.
it was enough to make me curios about it, so I bought the comic.
I came home, read it in a heartbeat. then I started going trough every panel searching for every single detail that would give me a clue to what the fuck was going on here (this was a bit before the internet was a big thing, and you could wiki up "ben reilly" and get all the info), but that made it more fun, cause now I was trying to get my hands on all of the spider books that came out in last couple of years, and let to this situation. and no, I wasn't feeling cheated because this guy wasn't peter (although, back then, peter was still around), I didn't feel that all those stories I read as a kid didn't matter any more.
what I did feel was excitement, because this was something new. and not just the fact that there are now two spider-guys. it was the fact that peter is married, that MJ is pregnant, kaine, aunt may being dead, that ben has his own supporting characters, all of it!
and I loved it.
loved it so much that, after subscribing to all of spidey books, I started ordering and X-stuff as well. and soon, most of the marvel universe.
I was hooked to superhero comics again.
then came peter parker, spider-man #75.
ben reilly died because people considered that he isn't true spider-man, and that all the years of them reading stories with peter do not matter if ben remains the original peter parker. as for me, it was the other way around, but ok. de gustibus and all that.
I wasn't mad about them killing ben. not even because they made peter original once again. what made me so damn upset is the fact that they pretended that past 4 or so years didn't even happened. I kept waiting for some mention of ben, his villains, his friends, or at least PETER'S FRAKKIN DAUGHTER!
but no... in the comic that came out after PP:SM 75, there is sort of sadness over what happened yesterday, there are 3 pannels of peter and mj standing outside watching into the sky. and in the very next issue they are back living with MJ's aunt, going back to college. AS IF NOTHING HAS HAPPENED. I continued buying spidey books for another year or so, but when they brought back aunt may (and thus eliminated every trace of evidence that the clone saga ever happened, I gave up).
when the whole totem thing started, I tried jumping back on, and although it kinda sucked, I stayed on. civil war, unmasking, may shot, back in black (worst. movie. tie-in. gimmick. ever.).
and then... RESET.
so I came to a conclusion: if I want to read the stories they are doing today (harry alive, peter single living with may, etc.), I'll dig up and dust off those old magazines I collected as a kid. much cheaper then buying ams three times a month, and much better written as well. -
I've been to three comic shops here in Maryland this week, and they've all got stacks of part 4 of OMD and all three parts of BND. They're just sitting on the shelves. Spidey's always been an above average seller at each shop; I can't help but wonder if this is going on all over the country. Are griping fans finally putting their money where their mouths are? Could be...
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It's Manga, sure, but they're buyin' it. Or maybe they're just reading it while sitting right in the middle of the damn aisle at Borders. What the hell is wrong with you, fatty? This ain't a library!
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It's been almost a year since I last picked up a Marvel comic book, mostly to save the cash and not pay $4 a book. I quit while the spidey books were good, and glad I did because if I picked up OMD or BND I would ask for my money back, and sue marvel for emotional damages. 20-years of Spidey history down the drain to keep Aunt "always on the verge of death" May alive? WTF! I've read spidey from the very beginning, and May bugged the crap out of me then, and she's annoying as hell now. AMS #400 was a great read, but all of a sudden she came back and the excuse was "an actress who had Aunt Mays DNA implanted into her". I think that ranks as high on the WTF meter as the events of OMD. How could no-one but mephisto figure out how to save May? Didn't Mr. fantasic save Curt connors son from a bullet wound in "Feral" (Sensational vol. 2 #23-27)? Could Iron Man give her a suit of armor since that worked so well on his heart?
Also How does Peter not being married to Mary Jane bring back Harry? He had a great death too, but Joe Q had to rape that storyline. What's the deal with Venom? Does anyone else in the Marvel U know Spideys identity? It's going to take the next 20-years for Marvel to explain everything up to before BND.
I admit having Spideys identity public was strange, but it took the books in a new direction. Less then a year later, it never happened! I give it one year, and Marvel will spin it again with the following: A) It was another Actress with May's DNA, B) May is a Skrull c) It's all a dream.
The guys at DC need to teach the Marvel boys how to go a Retcon right. -
While I'm not crazy about the means taken to get there, BND has been great so far. Of course, because of the changes of OMD, a lot of fans are crying "out of character" at every single action Peter takes now. Because a girl gives him an unprompted kiss in a nightclub it's "not Peter Parker"! (what is he supposed to do in this situation - push her away and say "eww!"? He's not "making out with her", he's on the recieving end of a surprise kiss.) And on the other hand, you have fans bitching that they've "seen it all before" and that "I can just read my old back issues!" Well, sure - after forty or so years of Spidey stories, completely new and different might be a tall order. Then again, when something new does come along - the spider-totem storyline, Sins Past - these storylines are usually greeted with uproar for going too far away from the Spider-Man that fans want to see. Ultimately, I think Joe Q. made the right move to just pull the trigger on these changes and do the book the way he thinks it should be done. Based on the quality of the issues so far (each BND issue has improved on the last), I think time will bear out his decision.
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It stayed pretty much the same for 25 years with minor changs and then they decided to make radical changes for big "events" and headlines and sales. But they forgot that eventually no one would give a shit, which is the way it is now with me and most everyone else.
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Send the final copy of "One More Day" to New York, and label it "My Last Issue".
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With Harry as Lex Luthor and Carlie Cooper as Chloe.
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Pissed off I get. I've never had a distaste for an individual in the entertainment realm that I now have for Joe Q. In fact Quesada makes Brett Ratner look like Orson Welles. Fuck Quesada.
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Coming from someone who enjoyed the Clone Saga (though I didn't follow it closely, only near the end) and loved Scarlet Spider and Demogoblin (who wasn't even a clone saga character), it should say something that I'm just baffled by the catastrophuck of One More Day. I look forward to the title finding its legs and being as realistic and dramatic and good as it pretended to be over the last 16 months, though. I also didn't hate the Gwen Stacy or The Other storylines either, and am sad to see Spidey de-powered.
And Harry? Maybe he's not back from the dead necessarily. Maybe he's the dark side of Mephisto's deal. Harry can die again and Mephisto can enjoy the suffering of Peter ... Harry could be an even more menacing Green Goblin with powers enhanced by Mephisto, or hell ... Harry could just be Norman Osborn given youth from Mephisto in order to bring more suffering unto Spidey. And what would be better is if Norman remembered everything. There are places to go but god DAMN did they do this all in a piss-poor fashion. -
it was easily the most interesting spiderman story i've read in years, great writing, great visuals and big enough to get a bullet on MSN.com.
Quesada 1
@ssholes 0 -
Joe Cheese must have gotten my issues of OMD thanks to the United States Postal Service.
Worst comic storyline - EVER!
But again, bitching only does so much. People need to stop buying ASM and tell your local comic book store to cut back on their orders.
That's the only thing Marvel will understand.
www.fanboyspodcast.com -
that I do still feel the bitter taste of the goings-on in One More Day. I feel that BND offers a light-hearted fun Spidey that we haven't seen since the early 80's and that is a welcome blast of nostalgia no doubt. I almost wish this were like a 3rd universe Spidey though....so we get our Ultimate Spidey which gives us high school SPidey (which is really something we never saw since classic Spidey went ahead into college years pretty fast and let's face it 60's high school and 21st century high school are 2 different things), 606 Spidey with marriage intact, and then this BND Spidey to give us the fun, light-hearted not so heavy 75% of the time Spidey that we all know from yester-year but placed in a 21st century context. That's my two cents....but I am really liking this BND stuff. It's great. I just can't say I want it to last.
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C'mon, I'm the first one to say Spider Man In Name Only? You guys are getting slow.
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everymonth i could afford the majority of titles. then they started getting greedy, multiple issues with flashy embossed covers, price hikes left right and center.
you know the annoying things? as i was growing up and learning from my mistakes, i felt that these characters were stuck in the same old time loops, doing exactly the same thing, they theyr were doing previously. you need continuity. you need rules, casue each writer simply takes in t a new direction without having a concern for the past issues. pointless. glad i gave these up years ago. although i really should sell up all my comics asap! -
and character aging is simple. It made sense back in the day when the characters were only a decade or two old, but now, all they need to do is let them age for about ten years, then reset their ages, keeping all the best continuity -- loosely, and adaptable -- and chucking out what everyone universally hated. Then background stuff can be updated (corded phones, become cordless, then cell/mobile, then ???). They did this with Cap. Instead of being revived in the 1960's, it happens in the vague "now." But they kept the good continuity of Cap being a WWII vet.
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Seriously, it's been a long time since any of the Marvel books have seemed to care what the others are doing. I remember a big outcry when Magneto took over New York in Grant Morrison's X-Men and people were asking, "would the rest of the Marvel U. notice this?" Good point. So I feel like the situation has been there for a while now where either the editors of various books do whatever they want with little regard to the larger Universe, or Quesada comes in with a huge edict that totally fucks with a couple decades worth of continuity, character development, etc. It's one or the other, and you know what they have in common? Sales. Marvel, like most comics companies, are desperate to stay relevant, desperate to remain profitable in a time when comics are becoming increasingly obsolete and a "niche" medium. Therefore, Quesada thinks his shit smells like roses because his editorial decisions have made some headlines for Marvel in the last year or two-- Spidey unmasking and Cap getting capped. But how many extra books did Marvel sell because of that? These "events" were not comparable to The Death of Superman, where literally MILLIONS of non-comic readers went out and got a copy of Superman #75. Part of the difference is probably because whereas 15 years ago, you could buy a copy of Superman for a buck while you were picking up your morning paper at the newsstand. Now, if some random guy watches CNN, saw that Captain America got killed and was actually inspired enough to buy his first comic in ten years because of that, he would have to track down his local comic shop in the Yellow Pages (which often might even mean he'd have to drive to another town), and shell out at least $2.99 to spend ten minutes "reliving his childhood." Bottom line, the market is too different now for these kind of newsmaking stunts to pull new readers in. OMD/BND is the same thing-- pissing off long-term readers, which now make up the vast majority of the readership, by rendering a couple decades worth of continuity irrelevant. Quesada's shot himself in the foot one too many times. I never thought I'd see the day when I was largely a DC man, but I've dropped all the Marvel books I used to read except Daredevil and She-Hulk, and it's largely due to this kind of arrogant fucking with the continuity.
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I mean, you guys are writers. Haven't you ever written yourself into a corner and had to do something radical to get out of it? Anyway, it's over, why so serious? You're comic fans. Just sit back and enjoy your Spider-Man.
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that's so true. No matter how many stunts Marvel will pull, it's not going to pull in the same amount of readers as there were in the 90s. You have to stay true to the long time fans in order for them to get their kids into it. Marvel's hubris just makes it easier for me to drop the books & spend most of my money on 360 & PS3 games.
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I keep hearing snooty fanboys going on and on about the merits of niche writer Dan Slott. Dan Slott this. Dan Slott that. Well, if Dan Slott is supposed to be resuscitating Spiderman through "Brand New Day," then why does Previews show Bob Gale writing the title 3 months from now? Is the Previews wrong? Was it intentionally misleading? What's the deal with the Slott vs. Gale thing?
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And it's printed 3x a month now? I guess that is for the faithful that will buy and for those that drop the title because of this shit will balance out. It's a good move on Marvel to keep the money looking like it's making money.
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Jan 26, 2008 11:17:22 AM CST
SOMEONE GIVE THE EXTRA $1 THEY'RE CHARGING FOR SPIDEY & GET JOE
by jericho1368
If Parker is a lovable loser, perpetually broke and living with his creepy crusty Old (Aunt) Maid, there ARE NO romantic escapades for him. NEWSFLASH FOR ALL YOU MARRIED GUYS WHO DROOL OVER LIVING THE WILD AND CRAZY SINGLE LIFE: GIRLS DON'T DATE LOSERS, ESPECIALLY ONES WHO ARE PERPETUALLY BROKE. WHY? BECAUSE THEY'RE BROKE & CAN'T AFFORD A DATE. To the others who say Spidey should not age like Charlie Brown and Magilla Gorilla? Charles Schultz created CB as a character forever stuck in an ageless limbo. Stan Lee created a character who grows and evolves: Stan wrote him in high school, then college and the reason for marrying Parker was because it was the next logical step for a character created to grow. People are NOT perpetual losers forever. Humans grow up and yes, some who were HS losers even get the girl -- then marry her. It's cool because its in house pussy. If you want to read about a broke loser who can't get laid, by all means. I'd rather read about the loser who grew up, got the girl and in spite of his perpetual bad luck, still has his in house deep dishin' every night. Now THAT's COOL.
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Believe it, 'cos that's what this is. End of the line for Mr. Parker. Lazy, Bobby Ewing-style ret-conning has killed Marvel's golden goose.
Well, that and a really shit third movie... -
...is completely secure. No franchise this durable and popular is going anywhere. We have yet to see how BND will be recieved sales-wise (I'm guessing it'll do well, despite the fanboy bitching) and the third Spider-Man movie was the biggest film of last year (again, despite fanboy bitching). Yeah, a top ten comic and the biggest movie of the year - high time to throw in the towel on Spidey!
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I will never understand the economy. I hear about poverty. I hear about child obesity. I hear about people spending less. I hear people buying the newest, most expensive cell phones. GM is laying off people, but there is a waiting list for the Corvette z06s. WTF?
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changed the outcome of the Clone Saga.
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I think Joe Q and the rest at marvel have figured out that the ultimate Universe is kicking the original's ass and now they are scrambling to come up with something new. Here's the newsflash: It Ain't working!
Caps dead and Bucky is taking over, maybe but it's not the origanal. DC broke Batmans back and killed off superman, but they had the brains to bring both back. Iron Man is supposed to be a superspy taking over for Fury, but guess who's coming bak this summer. In the x-men, they disbanded the teams after Xavier was killed by Bishop (is Xavier really dead, or is in coma, like they've done a million times before?) The latest casualty is Spider-man. They can't replace him (God why did they bring back the Scarlet Spider(s)?????), or kill him off, so they screw with his life. Royally!
Marvel needs to stop competing with itself with the great stuff going on the Ultimate universe, and get back to basics. If they need a reboot of the classics, do it to every book. -
You are not DC Comics.......
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...is not bad writing. Logic can apply in fiction, even fantasy. I don't consider Peter being married as anybody having written into a corner, but hey...howzabout a divorce? And Marvel's never shy about killin' anybody off these days. Gwen died, why not MJ?It happened, so sit back and enjoy? What if you don't enjoy bad writing?
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Those of you who attended Comic Con may have noticed a 6'2" handsome young buck wearing a homemade T-shirt that one year said AVI ARAD IS BLOWING IT! and another year read I CAN BEAT UP ULTIMATE SPIDEY!....look for me this year with my IT'S MAGIC, WE DON'T HAVE TO EXPLAIN IT t-shirt.
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Having Peter married isn't being written into a corner. All of the new mythology stuff might not be to everybody's liking but, again, not sure that qualifies either.
But lets say it is. Let's say Spider-Man was just painted into a corner. First off, getting a character into a position where you have no out? That's bad writing. The best writing is getting a character into a situation with no out, where the reader is just going, "Well this guy's just f***ed!" and then actually getting them out of the predicament in a way that is impressive, has some panache.
So why would folks be mad? You have a character that is only painted into the corner in the mind of one guy (Joey Cheese). The characters is stuck in this imagined corner with multiple ways he could be gotten out of it. But no, the powers that be are baffled as to a solution to the point where instead of getting the character out of it in an entertaining cool way - which was totally possible - they do a craptastic inelegant fix that even they don't seem to like and can only cover by saying, "Yeah that sucked. Sorry sorry sorry. Keep reading though and it will suck less." There's no excuse. This wasn't a "there's no other way!" situation. -
in an otherwise pretty good round table is that other than one reviewer who is saying he will vote with his wallet(i dotn remember which and im too lazy to check) the rest of the @$$hole crew is pretty much going to continue buying the products for one reason or another. someone said they enjoy the writers and i heard theyre going to give it a few story arcs. it all boils down to marvel STILL making money off these retarded decision its making lately which means theyll continue to do it. if youre really that addicted that you cant put the books down for a year to 'vote with your wallet' then at least donwload it so the message that gets sent to marvel isnt 'mission accomplished' sales success. theyre right in saying that all fanboys do is bitch and moan and this is a perfect example of this.all i heard was a lot of complaints(albeit well phrased) but other than the one reviewer who is voting with his wallet everyone else is lining up with their 9 dollars per month in hand. so yeah a lot of bitching and moaning with no follow through. this reminds me of an abusive relationship where the woman SWEARS she will leave the husband who beats her if he does it one more time but 'hes a good man when hes not angry so im going to give him just one more chance' extreme example maybe but thats the vibe i got when i heard the roundtable pretty much agree how much this sucks but most will continue to show monetary support 'for a few story arcs at least'.
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You Cogs are missed!I was a little surprised that many of the crew said they'd continue to read (and therefore buy) Spider-Man.
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a little bit of a tangent, but I'm intrigued by tonagan's (rhetorical?) question above..
what status quo changes have 'stuck' in comics? Some off the top of my head:
-original Robin becomes Nightwing
(also, second robin dies -- sure he comes back recently, but not as robin)
-Superman and Lois get married
-Daredevil's secret identity out (so far so good)
-Reed and Sue married with kids (or did they undo this one? I hadn't followed recently)
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really a tangent.. but one thing that I've always found odd is how I tend to breeze through reading a comic these days.. 10 minutes maybe tops. When I first started reading them (in high school in the late 80s) I'd take 20-30 minutes easy, It wasn't because of poor reading skills.
Partly I blame the story decompression.. but it seems to me that panel composition and art are so fundamentally different today than 25 years ago. Sure the art seems "cooler" in some ways.. but it most of the time doesn't tell the story in a way that makes you want to scour each pic for details of what's happening..
I guess what I'm trying to say is, I would have no problem spending $3 on a comic that took 30-40 minutes to read.. that's like half a movie after all.. but for 10 minutes it's just not right. -
I'd like to hear if anyone spoke to their local comic shop about how Spider-Man sales have been?
I went to mine today and the shelves were a little over-populated with Spider-Man. WHY? The owners said, "My regular customers aren't buying it and alot of the "pull" boxes cancelled as well." Good work to the fanboys who put their money where their mouth is. I hope this is happening in other places besides here in MI. -
a definite drop off. I think it might drop even more starting the next arc without McNiven drawing it.
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Anymore? All the ones around me closed. I buy cheap on line like a year later when they're like 40 cents.
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to the one I go too. It's a great place to meet the fellow geeks & bullshit for half an hour about current state of our favorite & not so favorite comics.
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us cogs keep in touch almost continiously but we strayed from the boards for a while for various reasons. in my case i just became a father and that with work and everything else going on limited my online time. im trying to get back into reading comics and posting when i can and its disheartening to see that things are pretty much as they were before in the world of marvel and dc. good to see your still in here posting.
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Sincerest congratulations on fatherhood. Best advice I can give: have fun.
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Has anyone ever looked at Spider-Man like Dick Tracy??? How may people can identify with Dick Tracy these days? Spidey was created in the late 60's-early 70's? Honestly, how relevant is the character of Peter Parker today? Furthermore, Marvel is a publicly traded company. They have to answer to shareholder. Everyone likes to shit on Joe Q(good artist, waaaaaay shitty writer), but you can't deny that he's made Marvel more profitable than the other EiC's.
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excellent advice too!
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There are so many good comics out there right now... why buying the ones you already know will change in the future again (creative teams and so on). Check out the creator owned stuff like image is putting out for example. The Walking Dead come to mind and also the books from Bluewater I mentioned before.
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made Marvel more profitable by making the universe much more event based and in turn generated buzz & sales. But with OMD & BND I have never seen the amount of people truly repulsed & disheartened. While some people are enjoying the new direction most of the fans at my local LCS gave up Spidey. Taking 20 yrs out of canon is too much for them.
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Anyone who thinks this "Bold New Direction!" will last is just deluding themselves. Joey Q will be gone one day and someone else will banish this crap to the hell from which it was spawned. 2 years tops.
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the cogling was mentioned in this TB...he is very super.
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Speaking of new comics...you folks should check out Atomic Robo. I think he and Spidey would be pals. Check him out: www.red5comics.com/atomicrobo
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i was going to say so myself but im so biased it wouldnt count
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Brought to an end the absolute worst season of Dallas ever. Or are there people out there who were really loving Dak Rambo?
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I don't think Spidey was out of character making the deal. Oh, yes, the whole nature of the deal was retarded but Pete has always been a self-sacrificial sort. That's teh whole point of Spider-Man, with great power comes great responsibility. To who? To everyone but himself. He sacrificed his happiness in his marriage to save his aunt.
But yeah, the story sucked. There is no way to logically break Pete and MJ up. Divorce? Well they already split up and got back together. MJ has dealt with tons of bullshit before now, why would being on the run be such a problem at this point?
Fact is you cannot split the characters up at this point, short of killing MJ (and they tried that too!). I should point out that MJ does whisper something to Mephisto before the big magic retcon. That, right there, will be Marvel's way out of this goddawful mess. What did she whisper and will it have an affect on reversing the deal? To the first part, I don't know, and to the second part, YES! Of course. And all shall be as it should. Happy fans shall have their mechanical webshooting Spidey back, happily married, fighting Harry Osbourn again while Aunt May putters around not knowing who Spider-Man is anymore than anyone else.
Give it a couple of years, but I guarantee this shit gets reversed. Marvel was under pressure to get Spidey single again and back to the silver age stuff for the old fans who preferred it. Then there are the guys like me who've only ever known Spidey as the married man and soon they'll cave to us cause that's what a shameless whoring money grubbing business does. -
Here's how old a fan I am. My first issue of ASM was # 148, the next to last issue of the original clone saga. I was in elementary school. The villains, Jackal and Tarantula, read like cooler, tougher, smarter, crazier versions of the villains in the old BATMAN TV show. Peter Parker's life seemed, to a kid, what an adult drunk's life must be like: you stagger around, kind of banged up.I think if you're an old enough Marvel fan, you remember when their realism was at least semi-realistic. Yeah, they might have cloned girlfriends, clone versions of yourself, biology professors dressed like laughing hyeneas, etc. but it followed its' own internal logic.I think the only old man who wanted this is Joe Quesada. Nothing personal. I don't care for the personal attacks made on Mr. Quesada, or the REAL MATURE making fun of his name, but ... what I've seen of BND reads like the fantasies of a guy about to be divorced for the first time.I don't remember the comedian who said it, but the joke was, a guy getting married for the first time thinks:"I'm gonna get laid ALL the time." And a guy getting divorced for the first time thinks: "I'm gonna get laid ALL the time."Sure, MJ has been through a lot with Pete, but she could have finally reached the breaking point. Or he could have.Here's a simple divorce scenario: Pete is not thinking straight after Aunt May is murdered. He THINKS that if he isn't married to MJ, that she'll be safe. He either files or acts like such a jerk that she's forced to file.But I think we can safely say that this Marvel regime has never had any interest in pleasing the long time fans.
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...not Joe. Their creations and stories are the ones being adapted, turned into toys, etc. Spidey, FF, X-Men, Iron Man. You can add Frank Miller's work on Daredevil with Lee's, but pretty much the original class. Stan even had a hand in creating Ghost Rider. Sure, we've had Punisher and Elektra movies, but they weren't so hot, and even they owed a lot to Miller. The Punisher, created by Gerry Conway and Ross Andru, was named by Stan Lee.Any link between the movies and the stories in the Quesada tenure can usually be traced back to elements from the Stan Lee & "Friends" era.
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Reading Amazing Spider-Man since I was 9. (Only 18 now, but still...) The point is, this is the only comic I've been getting, nay subscribing to, my whole life. My aunt gave a subscription for my birthday, and I kept it going for one long ass time. Not anyomre. I sent the form in to transfer my subscription to Daredevil. I am through with Spidey. I really hate to say it, but Brand New Day just isn't good enough. It all feels really phony. It's like I'm watching a bad epsiode of That 70's Show or picking up a weak Mike Alldred-esque comic. I don't have that much money, and not only is Spidey not good enough anymore, but that thing is puttin off some really bad vibes... I know I've been saying that a lot, but this was real. The final straw. I'm done, and boy does it feel good. No more sticking with it for one or two more issues before things will inevitably pick up. Thank you, Joe Quesada, for freeing me from my buying bonds.
And it's nice to see Darth Kal-El. Congratulations on the child. It seems weird to say congratulations. This is a flesh and blood, real live person we're talking about. Congratulations makes it sound like a trophy. But I guess congrats will have to do until they make a better word. -
has many cog-fathers...he is rather spoiled i must say.
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i wrote this long post on how buzz is right on and marvel and spidey and blah blah and joe q and more blah blah blah.swear to gods it was in depth! and the fucking site blanked me out for some reason. fuck it.i can still say a few things:lou thanks for the congrats;he is most def living and breathing and amazing. im going to send u his halloween pic on you myspace so look for it.justin you couldnt be more right!i guess its why the mansion has all that stored up kryptonite
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am i old as fuck?!! you-"My first issue of ASM was # 148, the next to last issue of the original clone saga. I was in elementary school."please tell me im missing something- i remember the clone saga happening when i was like 15 or 16 but for sure in high school. was there one before that? I know u said 'original clone saga' but i dont think ive ever heard of it. btw im 30.u might be older than me(u sound like it but in a good way)
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The original Clone Saga took place in the mid-1970s when Gerry Conway was writer and Ross Andru was artist. A suspicious supporting character at the time, Pete and Gwen's biology professor, Miles Warren, turned out to secretly have a thing for Gwen Stacey. When she died, he blamed Spider-Man and using lab samples donated by each member of his honors class, set out to clone her. His assistant caught him. Warren murdered his assistant, concocted some supervillain weaponry and a Jackal costume, went insane, hit the gym (not in that order) and was out to get Spidey. Hating Parker, because Gwen loved him, Warren also studied his lab samples and discovered radioactive Spider blood. In secret, he created Spider Clone. After plaguing Spidey for a couple of years, he eventually dumped a cloned Gwen on Pete's doorstep in an effort to drive him insane. The cloned Gwen lead Spidey into a trap set by the Jackal and his hired super-goon the Tarantula. Eventually, Spidey ended up battling his own clone. Warren regained his sanity in time to smother a bomb he'd set and apparently died as much as you can in a comic book. Until he was brought back in PP: THE SPECTATULAR SPIDER-MAN. In the next issue, #150, Pete worried that he might be the clone but when he came close to dying in a battle, he thought of MJ, not Gwen. Realizing that the clone would have only been exposed to Gwen and the Jackal's obsession with Gwen, Pete knew he was the real deal.I didn't read the other Clone saga, which probably wasn't as bad as everyone said. Why do I think so? Because everyone said it, and when everyone says something, they're usually wrong.
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that was a pretty good breakdown and actually sounds pretty damn interesting. im going to try to find a torrent of that. see u on the new board
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I jumped on at Civil War. Laughed at all you older readers while I enjoyed my pie. Now the fuckers have changed everything. Holy shit, it's bad. And stupid. It's a total waste of development. I just don't get it. I'm ending ASM.
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