Recently in Spider-Man Category

Most comic books these days are a fast read, but it seemed like I read Civil War #5 in less than 5 minutes. I think it's the worst issue yet. It's dumb and worst of all, it's boring. Didn't we hear all kinds of hype that the later issues would blow away Civil War #2? And the logical continuity errors, even within recent history, are one big clusterfuck. I'll try to say this without spoiling too much...

1. Spider-Man versus Iron Man. Have both of them forgotten about Mary Jane and Aunt May? I didn't think they made it out of the building yet. If S.H.I.E.L.D. can track Spider-Man into a sewer, surely they could follow these two ladies on the street and get some leverage on Peter. And it's been said many times already, but why would Peter be dumb enough to wear the red costume that Tony made, probably with a GPS tracker built inside?

2. Iron Man and Maria Hill (Director of S.H.I.E.L.D.). Maria Hill overrides Tony in his attempt to reason with Peter. Would Tony Stark really take orders from this bitch? He's used to running his own fucking international corporation, for god's sake. It's like Bill Gates saying "Yes Mam" to Condoleeza Rice.

3. Thunderbolts versus Spider-Man. What a colossal let-down! The cover shows Bullseye, Venom, Green Goblin and other villains pounding the shit out of Peter. Wow, now that could be a pretty good fight, eh? WARNING! THIS COVER SCENE IS NOT FOUND INSIDE CIVIL WAR #5! Instead you get two minor villains on the Thunderbolt team. Daredevil could take these guys out when he has the flu. Why does Peter flail around like a n00b?

4. Daredevil and Iron Man. They don't have a clue he's Daniel Rand. Why is Tony Stark is so fucking dumb in this series? The whole freakin' world knows that Daredevil is Matt Murdock. Even if the public has been mislead, the superheroes know beyond a doubt. You're telling me that Tony Stark doesn't take off the mask to verify Daredevil's identity?

There are only two things I enjoyed about this issue: Steve McNiven's artwork and Frank Castle's appearance. Other than that, it's a bunch of crap. Nuff said.

Technorati : Civil War, Marvel Comics

You've been asked the question. We all have, whenever we were dumb enough to admit that we are comic book collectors. Who is your favorite superhero? Sometimes that depends on my mood. If I feel angry it's the Hulk, if I'm kinda isolated it's the Silver Surfer, or if I'm gonna perform a charitable act, it might be Superman. It's hard for me to choose just one, but if I had to, in my heart of hearts, I'd pick Spider-Man.

I got bitten by Spidey one day in 1970. My family had moved to Anchorage, Alaska, because my Daddy worked for Exxon and had to work there during the construction of the pipeline. Durin' the winter it was colder than heck, darker than hell, and there was plenty of time to read comics. I had seen Spidey on TV in those early cartoons, but never read his comics until I walked into a quick-mart and found Marvel Tales #29 sittin' on the rack. This "Double-Feature Special" was one heck of a deal: two Spidey stories (reprinted from Amazing Spider-Man 39-40) plus a Dr. Strange story for twenty-five cents! The cover looked suspicious to me; I never believed that Spider-Man would be unmasked before a villain. Up till this point I was a Superman/Batman devotee. This here Marvel Tales cover had to be like one of those gimmicky DC covers, right?

Hoo-boy, was I wrong. This two-part Spider-Man tale was the greatest super-hero story that I had ever read! Even though it was my first introduction to the Green Goblin and Norman Osborne, I had no trouble followin' the plot. I couldn't get over how methodically the Green Goblin had taken out Spidey: first, by blunting his Spider-Sense during a robbery. Second, followin' him around New York City and discoverin' his secret identity was Peter Parker. And third, attackin' him in front of his own house in Queens, with frail Aunt May just a few yards away behind a fog-enshrouded window. This kind of deal just didn't happen in DC Comics! Lex Luthor with his smart-ass brain didn't ever cotton to Clark Kent's identity and the Joker never tracked down Batman to Wayne Manor. (Maybe they did once or twice, but they were dumb enough to be fooled later.)

While I didn't get the full impact of the Green Goblin being revealed as Norman Osborne (because I didn't wait for 3-4 years to find out), I did get hooked into the soap opera. Norman was a short-tempered workaholic with no time for his teenaged son, Harry. When Peter Parker finally goads Osborne into fightin' him one last time, man to man, the Green Goblin gets an electro-chemical charge that erases his memory. Norman suddenly has no idea that he is a villain, but even better than that, he realizes he's been a total dumbass to his son Harry! Ain't that what most neglected boys want, just a bit of love and attention from their Daddies? I couldn't believe it when Sam Raimi didn't use this ending in the first Spider-Man movie, but that was one of many blunders regardin' his version of the Goblin.

This story is what made me a Spider-Man fan (and a Marvelite) for life. I got a subscription to Amazing Spider-Man because I kept waitin' for the day that tickin' time bomb would explode, the day Norman would become the Green Goblin again! Nuff said.

Technorati : Spider-Man

I refrained from commenting on last week's Civil War #2 and the big news event about Spider-Man unmasking. If you read Amazing Spider-Man 532, you would have seen it coming two weeks in advance: an entire issue laying out Peter Parker's justification to unmask. No matter how great it is that Aunt May and Mary Jane encourage him to reveal his identity, it's still pretty dumb. Peter can't rationally say, well, they are living in Avengers Tower now, they'll be safe. They've already been attacked living there (by Morlun during The Other) and I can't imagine they'll have Sentinels for bodyguards out on the street. And didn't Peter take notes on what happened to his buddy Matt Murdock? Whatever, this event fulfilled Joe Quesada's goal to get people talking about Marvel Comics. Civil War is a megahit on the stands, selling in excess of 300,000 copies. Joe Q's Fridays at Newsarama have stoked the fire with talk about how boring Peter's marriage is to Mary Jane, which leads us to believe she could die. I seriously doubt it, but it's good for Quesada to make us think so.

Something's bothered me about this decision--something even worse than making Tony Stark into a Machiavellian creep. I couldn't put it into words myself, but Jeff Lester wrote it down beautifully over on the Savage Critic:

If you ask me, what makes Spider-Man work in the first place is how Stan and team approached the whole Pete/Spidey duality. Unlike the relatively binary set-up of secret identities for superheroes (usually hero is lauded, secret identity is dumped on--the Superman/Clark Kent blueprint) which makes them such satisfyingly simple ego-fantasies, Stan made that duality more complex: the happier Peter Parker would be in his personal life, the more fucked up things would get for Spidey, and vice-versa.

Seriously. Check out the first hundred or so issues of Amazing Spider-Man. What makes the title work isn't that Peter is a miserable bastard, or that Spidey is a shat-upon superhero, it's that the two rarely happened at the same time. As Pete gets a girlfriend and a life, Spider-Man becomes a hounded superhero (and when Pete was more miserable in high school, Spider-Man actually had a stronger public following). Part of that--the miserable super-hero--is what we think of as "Spider-Man," but it's really that distance that's so archetypal, because it taps into the universal frustation about how the distance between one's fantasy life and one's real life always stays constant.

Over on Newsarama, I read many interesting fan responses:

That's gonna be hard to fix when they undo it in five years.

Mary Jane dies. Marriage ended by death. Mary Jane comes back from the dead. Ta-da, the single status quo is restored by her death while we also get MJ back---without ever using divorce as a plot device.

They can't get a divorce. Mary Jane can't die. So what do you do to put the genie back in the bottle? You kill Peter Parker!

Scarlet witch will turn everything back to normal next summer in HoM2...

Who knows which of these things will be true? For comic-book fans, we're so jaded that we can anticipate lots of different outcomes. Non comic book fans may be drawn in temporarily, just like they were with the Death of Superman. Marvel still has Ultimate Spider-Man where Peter will stay a geeky out of luck kid forever. And we still have those first 100 issues of Spider-Man, which are looking more and more like sheer genius. Nuff said.

Technorati : Civil War, Spider-Man
Del.icio.us : Civil War, Spider-Man
Ice Rocket : Civil War, Spider-Man

It seems like I've been haranguing the Spider-Man titles longer than Arianna Huffington's been ragging on George Bush. I think it's well deserved. Heck, even Mike Wieringo flubbed Spidey's new spikes on Fanboy Radio the other week. If I were Peter David, I'd be a madman by now. He gets a plum Spider-Man assignment-launching a brand new title-but his first four issues are smack dab in The Other crossover. But David's made of sterner stuff than me. He's waited patiently, and the result is this great one-issue story called "Web Log". I think it's really one of the best Spider-Man stories that he's ever done, and it ranks up there with "The Kid Who Collected Spider-Man".

It's told from the point of view of Vanna, a girl who vents her frustrations on a blog that no one reads. (Ouch! That's really hitting close to home.) Vanna attended the same high school as Peter Parker and has a number of accidental encounters with Spider-Man throughout the years. There's a great little flashback to the Looter, from that classic story by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko. Vanna is convinced that Spider-Man is stalking her, and takes steps to protect herself. You'll be surprised how this story ends, but it makes me think that Peter David has long-term plans. Weiringo's artwork is always beautiful and he's perfectly suited to this story. Pick up Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man #5 if you want to read a classic Spidey story. This is how it should be done, Marvel. Nuff said.

Technorati : Spider-Man
Del.icio.us : Spider-Man
Ice Rocket : Spider-Man

I just saw this Spider-Man 3 teaser poster at the Comics Continuum. It's not a black and white photograph, so is it Topher or Tobe? Click to enlarge and let me know...

I'm betting on Topher, as Venom. Or maybe Peter wearing the black symbiote costume before it goes to Topher. Topher as Peter Parker's opposite number is genious casting.

I'm done pissing and moaning about The Other storyline, Peter Parker's bone-spikes, or that crazy new costume. You fanboys are buying this in record numbers, so I'm just too old and inflexible. Amazing Spider-Man 529 is a bit better than the previous issues, and it ties into Civil War. Peter gets the new costume from Stark and it enables him to fly. Which I don't get at all--do spiders fly? Oh well, they don't shoot you in their eye with their webs, so maybe I'm inconsistent. I'll just have you young ones know that Spider-Man flew before. That picture above was from ASM 328. During the story arc in ASM 326-329, Peter inherited the power cosmic of Captain Universe, which enabled him to defeat Count Nefaria, Magneto, and the Incredible Hulk! Yeah, it was weird then, it's weird now.

I'll tell you what is even weirder: Tony Stark talking out of that eagle in Peter and Mary Jane's bedroom. I'd run for the hills if that happened to me. Want to bet there isn't a camera in there, despite what Stark said? I'd move out ASAP. We've been watching Tony Stark getting more closely involved in Peter's life for the past year, and now we see what this has been building toward. Is it me, or is Tony Stark really different here than in his own mag? Nuff said.

I can't tell you how much I hate this fucking new Spider-Man costume...

Mostly, I hate it just because the whole Other yarn sucks. I don't like the whole Spider-mythos taking over Peter Parker's origin. I think those stingers that burst out of Peter's wrists are a lame attempt at making him more like Wolverine. Wasn't Spider-Man pretty cool already? What was wrong with Peter Parker that needed fixing? If you want to do something dramatic, mess around with his personal life. Kill Mary Jane or have her divorce Peter. Revitalize Spider-Man's classic rogues gallery. Make Spider-Man a vigilante wanted by the cops. OK, I am probably complaining because I'm an old bastard who doesn't like change. But look at what happened in the past when other classic characters were changed...

The perfect example is Blue Superman. After some lame accident, Superman's Kryptonian powers were altered. He became a blue lighting bolt, zipping around the skies and shooting electrical beams to zap his enemies. The change affected all the Superman titles, as well as the JLA, for a few months. Grant Morrison was told after the fact that Superman had become blue when a JLA issue had to be hastily changed. I remember during this event, Alex Toth wrote an editorial for the Comics Buyers Guide where he berated DC for letting this happen to a classic figure. Toth wondered if Disney would Mickey Mouse to be so radically altered from his classic look.

Then we had this god awful version of Batman with the 500th issue of his series. OK, it wasn't Bruce Wayne wearing this stupid outfit--it was Azrael. We still had to put up with it for a year until Bruce Wayne recovered from a broken back. A whole year! I think it looks hideous, especially that utility belt around his thigh. It looks like an S&M garter belt.

Just to show you that DC tried to revamp the Big Three, here is Wonder Woman's alternative costume. Now this did make sense in the story, because Diana had given up the Wonder Woman title to Artemis and needed something new to wear. This little number, with the biker-style shorts, bra, and short blue jacket, is pretty sexy. Especially when she fought the Cheetah--the jacket was ripped to shreds and Diana fought almost topless in the bra. Meoooww! Bolland drew great covers with it (you can see some of them in my Bolland cover gallery), but alas, Diana returned to the classic look after issue 100. I'd like to think that Diana still wears this outfit when she's not on the job, like maybe when she goes to the gym or the supermarket. But I digress...

Let's get back to the current villains over at Mighty Marvel. We can't blame Joe Quesada for everything, this shit has been going on forever. They learned about what a big sales impact costume changes made with the first appearance of the black costume in Amazing Spider-Man 252. Coinciding with the first Secret Wars mini-series, in a way this was Marvel's version of One Year Later. The heroes had spent a year on another planet and returned to Earth with all kinds of changes. Peter Parker had found the alien symbiote that bonded itself to his skin and became the black costume. There was plenty of outrage at the time. Yes, it was designed to sell toys. Yes, it was always going to be temporary. But I goddamn loved it. It was simple, elegant, and somehow just made Peter feel more spider-like--without giving him six arms or stingers. Yeah, I'm inconsistent. If Marvel had brought this costume back during the Other then I'd jump for joy. The black costume is cool, Iron Spidey isn't. Bite me.

When Spider-Man's sales shot up, then Marvel tried the same trick with other heroes. Captain America did one of his periodic I-can't-take-it-anymore things with the government and resigned. (Thinking back on it, how can he resign if he doesn't really get paid?) Instead of becoming the Nomad (like he did when he quit before), he gives up his old costume, and puts this black number on. He calls himself The Captain, just to make a point that he no longer represents the USA. But I still see plenty of patriotic colors here, Steve! A man named John Walker became the new Captain America and dispatched America's enemies with brutality. When Rodgers became Captain America again, Walker put on the black uniform to become USAgent. And just so you are totally confused, none of this at all relates to The Captain that will be appearing in Warren Ellis' Nextwave.

Daredevil's red pajamas were considered too gaudy for a period of time. Or maybe they just thought that a man running around in red looked really gay (not that there's anything wrong with that). His costume was redesigned with this black and red body armor that made him look like a butch badass. Frank Miller made a short comment about this in one publication, saying that it was a shame, because he thought the Wally Wood designed costume was wonderful. It only lasted for a year or so. Thank goodness, or else we never would have seen Ben Affleck make that red outfit look cool! Yeah, right. At one time, Marvel did a house ad showing the heroes with new looks: Spider-Man, The Captain, Daredevil, Iron Man, and Thor. Each time they repeated the experiment, the results were the same: sales would take off like a rocket. First appearances of the new costumes were in high demand at comic shops. Then after a year, sales would dive down and the characters would revert back to their classic uniforms.

I'm sure Iron Spidey will repeat the history. It's going to sell a lot of toys, statues, and variant covers for Marvel. Judging from what I see on message boards, kids and teenagers love Iron Spidey, while the older folks hate it. I just feel sorry for Mary Jane. How could you make love to Peter and not be worried about a stinger erupting from his body? Grounds for a divorce, I would say. Nuff said.

Technorati : DC Comics, Marvel Comics, Spider-Man
Del.icio.us : DC Comics, Marvel Comics, Spider-Man
Ice Rocket : DC Comics, Marvel Comics, Spider-Man

Spoilers ahead for Spider-Man The Other Chapter 6-8. The toughest thing to do with ongoing comic book serials is build suspense around the titular character. We can't really ever expect Superman or Spider-Man to die; usually it's the supporting characters that can be placed in jeopardy. Spider-Man: The Other is designed to break that formula, but it also breaks all the conventions surrounding Peter Parker's origin. When J. Michael Straczynski first took over Amazing Spider-Man, he introduced the concept that Peter wasn't really a scientifically based hero, but that he had some connection to mythological Spider-Gods. I remember when we first heard about this on Warren Ellis' Delphi message board; Ellis thought this was hilarious. I never cared for this idea. As corny as it was, I liked the whole radioactive spider thing. Straczynski's reinvention smacked of Alan Moore's "The Anatomy Lesson" wherein Swamp Thing was recast as a plant elemental instead of a swamp monster. Why did I buy Moore's hypothesis more than JMS? Somehow it all fit reasonably into Swamp Thing's history, of which there were only 40-odd issues at the time, counting volumes 1 and 2. I can't quite put my finger on why Moore can do it and JMS cannot, except to say that I prefer Moore's writing and pacing.

Chapter 6-8 of The Other have been so awful that I think Marvel has finally Jumped the Shark with Spider-Man. Peter Parker, dying of some mysterious disease, gets into a fight with Morlun (another Spider-God mythological character). After taunting him for several issues, Morlun has a big showdown with Peter in Amazing Spider-Man 526, but this isn't any ordinary slugfest, it's a fight to the death. Morlun plucks Peter's eyeball from his skull in a Tarentino rip-off (from Kill Bill Vol. 2). And then Morlun proceeds to beat Peter over and over again with his bare hands, leaving him looking like road kill. Whoa! Is Rick Veitch suddenly drawing Marvel Comics? I can't believe this level of violence is in mainstream comics now. Peter is taken to a hospital, where we get some soap opera wailing from Mary Jane. Morlun reappears, attacks MJ. Peter rises up out of bed, morphs into a giant Spider-Thing and kills Morlun. Then he dies. No heartbeat, he's gone. How will they get out of this one? Even though I thought it was crap, I had to find out (which no doubt makes Marvel happy).

Marvel Knights 21 has the answer: Peter's dead but he's getting better! After another round of soap-opera wailing from Mary Jane, Aunt May, and the Avengers, we discover that something broke out of the room where Peter's corpse was stored. His body is ripped down the middle. Something burst out from inside and scurried away into New York City. Then we get a clumsy JMS lesson about a spider that can "die one time" and use his old body as a cocoon to rejuvenate. This is also reminiscent of how Swamp Thing first regenerated his own body in the Anatomy Lesson. Except this seems cheaper. By saying "one time only" they are making a promise that it will never happen again. Push the button, reset everything, nothing has really changed, except that Peter is a Spider-Thing, which is kinda yucky. I feel sorry for Mary Jane. Who wants to be married to a human spider? Maybe when they are lovemaking one night, Peter will accidentally poison her.

Why did I like the Anatomy Lesson better? Maybe it's because Moore's hypothesis fit perfectly into Swamp Thing's history without contradicting too much. Maybe it was because I had the sense this was permanent change and it would lead to more exciting events. With The Other, I'm having visions of Fonzie water-skiing now. Why is this crap selling so well? Is it the multiple cover frenzy? I honestly think the Clone saga with Ben Reilly was better. Nuff said.

Technorati : J. Michael Straczynski, Marvel Comics, Spider-Man
Del.icio.us : J. Michael Straczynski, Marvel Comics, Spider-Man
Ice Rocket : J. Michael Straczynski, Marvel Comics, Spider-Man