I’m one of the most egregious offenders in prattling on about context and “remember when”.

Some folks lie it and some don’t. Before I became an AICN writer, I would always come her because I knew the @$$holes had a reverence for the industry instead of just churning out reviews to get free books like other site.

Love it or hate it, always know our reviews come from the heart and the sincere hope that we can make the industry better as a whole.

Enough earth shaking, let's find some story stability somewhere other than the indies.

I really hate the whole 60s/70s feel of the new ASM books-- I have a few boxes full of those old issues, and if I want to re-experience that kind of storytelling and that "luckless loser bachelor" period of Pete's life, I'll dig those out. I was rather fond of the Peter Parker who acted like a grown man instead of like a college freshman or high school student. I liked Pete having the respect of the other heroes AS PETER PARKER and not just as Spider-Man. I liked Harry better dead, too.

I simply despise what they've done to Spider-Man. They've dumbed it down when it didn't need it.

At the very least, they could bring the Black Cat in and have her hook up with Pete again-- I mean, the only reason she backed off in the end was because Pete was married (and even then she tried to steal him away!) and with him being single, I just can't understand why she'd not still be in love with Spider-Man. There was nothing in his past now to make her leave him.

SO MANY stories have been screwed up by this retcon, and "people just don't remember, but it did really happen" isn't good enough. It doesn't patch the holes.

Well, I was the one who made that comment and I still stand by it. And it's for the reason that Bug summed up perfectly. When Marvel and DC do these bullshit story arcs TODAY, there's no longer anything actually EPIC about them anymore. They're just stroke-off comics for the creators who THINK they’re telling a ground-breaking story...they THINK they've come up with something new...but the REAL truth is all of this shit is just regurgitated stuff that real creative visionaries like Lee & Kirby (as well as Ditko, Romita, Colan and Trimpe) or a Roy Thomas & John Buscema or Neal Adams touched upon back in the true heyday of Marvel. So what's the REAL difference between then and now?

Simple: Back then creators knew how to tell a story in a concise manner that made each issue FEEL like you were actually getting something. You didn't get to the end of a comic and say "THAT'S IT?" like you do so often today. And back then comic stories were just as long as they are now...the creators had to meet the same monthly deadlines as creators of today have to meet (hell, I’d argue that they met their deadlines BETTER)...and best of all the books only cost a fucking quarter!

The sense of giving fans a REAL story has just been lost more and more over the years -- and in part, I’d also blame that on the fact that today you have corporate operations that have lesser EDITORS working behind the scenes than they used to employ. In the aftermath of the Image explosion -- and the creative power struggle that subsequently emerged between "the talent" and the actual staffs at the companies (and who would get more of a say in things) -- these days the creators are the loonies completely running the asylum. The only problem is, that’s often to the detriment of the books themselves. So-called "hot creators" come onboard and doe whatever they want...no editor has the power to hold them in check...then then do whatever damage they want, all the while thinking "Hey, this is the shit I always wanted to see the FF doing. Fuck it if it's in character or not!"...and then they just leave. And what do they care at that point? It’s not THEIR character they’ve now screwed up.

Now it just seems like it’s all about Joe Quesada or Dan Didio as the head honchos telling their minions what to do. But back in the day you had strong Editors who had a strong love for the medium themselves, and in turn they actually INFLUENCED the books to a far greater degree. But these days everything is just a corporate mandate...yet another "stunt" to pump up the bottom line...and as IndustryKiller rightly pointed out, you get bullshit things like CIVIL WAR that don’t come out of the books in a natural way that you can actually BELIEVE in as a fan. Instead it’s just more pimping for instant sales and money, and the staff at the companies just nod their heads to keep their jobs.

On the other hand, a lot of this blame should be placed on Hollywood, and the fact that so many of today's creators aren't actually COMIC BOOK lovers -- they're wannabe filmmakers who think that in today's media marketplace that comics can be their stepping stone TO the movies. Which is why (back in my original post) I noted THAT’S why we get stuck with far too many books that I call storyboard comics. That's where the writer or artist thinks it is cool to show a character sitting for an entire fucking page, and all that happens is the artwork gets repeated over and over, where the only thing that moves is the person’s eyes. Because hey, you know that's soooo hip and fucking "cinematic", right? The best example of this – which really made me laugh for being so horrendous -- was when Bendis did ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #1 and it opens with Peter eating in a food court and some French fries fly back and forth in front of him. In the end, it took like 3 pages to show that Flash and some others were picking on Peter...

...When back in the day Lee & Ditko would have had just have ONE PANEL where you'd see Flash dumping a tray of food on Peter's head, all the while laughing his head off, as he strolls by with Gwen on his arm. BOOM -- just like that, the point gets made and you move on. You get it -- Flash is a jerk. Yet somehow today, for a reason I can’t fathom, I somehow needTHREE FUCKING PAGES of French Fries flying back and forth to make the exact same point. Somehow I need 3 fucking issues to retell me the origin of SPIDER-MAN, yet somehow Stan Lee & Steve Ditko managed to do it in 20 pages AND DO IT BETTER AND MORE EMOTIONALLY COMPELLING.

So yeah, I just wish Marvel -- and I’m looking at you too, DC with bullshit storylines like 52 or COUNTDOWN -- would go back to producing solid comics again. Enough already with the obvious money pimping stunts and crossovers, which don’t even end when you say they will. It's just a lead in to ANOTHER money pimping stunt. I can't even buy fucking graphic novel compilations anymore that are actually complete, THAT'S how bad it's gotten! So in the end, Imp said it best in his review for TANGENT: "I find it amusing that Dan DiDio was so hell-bent on bringing back the Silver Age DC Universe of the 1960’s and ‘70s, and yet so few DC comics nowadays embrace the joys of simple Silver Age STORYTELLING."

Final Crisis will be very telling for fans and publishers alike.

The best thing I’ve seen come out of the “event” books is it forces all of the editors at Marvel and DC into one meeting room on a consistent basis.

I’ve used this example a lot, because it so damn fitting. During the Morrison run of X-Men there was one week when magneto tore the GW Bridge to all hell. That same week, over in the pages of Spidey, he’s swinging across the fucking bridge like nothing ever happened.

Am I being too critical in my request for cross-continuity? I don’t think so. There’s a reason we refer the worlds comics encompass as Universes. Each character could be directly, no I’m sorry, should be, influenced by the events in other books.

It’s all about marketing. Once a particular demographic group passes the threshold on the bell curve from the far left (or right) and starts to center on the norm of standard deviation is when they start to permeate more places.

Twenty years ago, NorthStar was the only gay character and Marvel could get away with this because comic readers are traditionally on the fringe. How many gay characters in television did you see at that time? Not a lot, or they were portrayed as caricatures of what middle America thought gay people were supposed to be.

Shows like “queer eye” made more people tolerant turning the gay culture from frightening to fabulous.

I’m OK with it and don’t really consider it lazy storytelling. There are more gay people around today (or I should say more open about their sexuality), so it makes sense that comics would reflect this societal shift.

Now did they cater to stereotypes by making it Colossus, perhaps….that all depends upon your perception of men with good physiques being primarily gay. Not being a big follower of the body building circuit, I couldn’t say.

I truly liked how Coleite tied Colossus’ strength to the drug. It gives a new dimension to what has always been a back drop of a character. I’m also OK with the big guy getting the limelight in this context.

Besides, I hear Millar is actually from South Bakersfield, CA and only faked the accent to get chicks. That failed, but someone offered him a job writing comic books.

I don't have time for this.

That's why I stick to jam on a single slice, folded over.