I posted a fairly neutral comment about how OMD wasn’t the direction I would have gone in, and suddenly that comment is making the rounds as some sort of proof that I “hate” (exact words) One More Day. This despite the fact that I specifically mentioned I hadn’t read it and I tend not to make judgments on stories I haven’t read.
So I shall now clarify: All I said is that it’s not the direction I would have gone in. That’s a far cry from saying that I hated it. Let’s remember I’m the person who did a three part storyline that brought back Uncle Ben and was pilloried by any number of fans for it, in some cases sight unseen. So it’s not as if I can claim to have my finger on the pulse of what makes fans happy where Spider-Man is concerned.
Hëll, lots of fans dogpiled on my run on “Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man,” crabbing about everything from a high schooler contemporary to a teen Peter Parker who had an on-line blog to the fact that I “wasted” two issues on a story involving Mexican wrestling, to the entire notion of how dare I write a follow-up to “The Other” (not to be confused with the fans who complained bitterly because they believed that there would be NO follow-up to the Other.) They crabbed about Todd’s artwork. Hëll, they even crabbed about the title of the comic, for God’s sake, claiming that it made it sound like a comic for kids…because, y’know, heaven forbid that kids should find anything about Spider-Man appealing.
Yet suddenly I’m embraced? Held up as the poster boy for being on the side of the same fans who didn’t hesitate to slag just about every aspect of my two years on FNSM, and lauded for my brave stance? Yeah, uh…I don’t think so. As Groucho so immortally said, I don’t care to belong to a club that would have me as a member.
There are complaints because years worth of continuity has suddenly been rendered moot? Okay, well…did you enjoy the stories when you read them? Yes? Good: You got your money’s worth. Can you still pull them out and re-read them? Yes? Good: Then OMD didn’t somehow cause the previous comics to magically vanish from existence. I mean, I *wrote* a number of those stories that, in terms of plot and character development are no longer relevant, and I’m not cracking up over it. I wrote them, they were enjoyed for what they were (or disliked for what they were), and that to my mind is the end of it.
Frankly, I’m kind of annoyed that all of a sudden my fairly neutral statement is being held up as an example of Spidey-writers uniting against some great outrage. I mean, jeez, we’re dealing with a medium in which death itself is simply a temporary set-back, and fans are treating an updating of “Doctor Faustus” as if it’s a crime against humanity.
Fandom really needs to get some perspective here. Perhaps it will lead to great stories and everyone will hail it as a great move after the fact. Perhaps it won’t, in which case it can always be reversed. Personally, I’m actually planning to pick up the new stories to see where it goes (yes, I don’t get them for free; shut up) if for no other reason than that they’re being written by some writers whose work I like. And I say that, not as a Marvel employee, but as a guy no different than the rest of you: A long-time Spider-Man fan.
PAD
• 
“Perhaps it will lead to great stories and everyone will hail it as a great move after the fact.”
Wow. So if it’s a LOUSY STORY, that’s OK if after the fact it was a “great move”?
I understand what you’re saying, but the entire PROBLEM is that it’s a MOVE, and not a STORY. Do you realize that we are talking about the end of the 20 year marraige of Spider-Man and NOBODY seems to have been even slightly MOVED? No “I wept”, no “I hated to see the end”, no ‘it was so tragic”?
Hide behind “perhaps it will lead…”, but the story FAILS MISERABLY. When the Emperor is buck-naked we gotta yell we see his pasty white ášš, not comtemplate the possible future wisdom of his “MOVE”.
I think the Dallas reference is a bit dated and not geek enough. How about a Star Trek Voyager analogy. I remember the episodes like “Year of Hëll” (I think that was the name) were there was finally some real action, suspense, character growth, and what looked to be lasting change. I thought to my self “Wow! this show is finally hitting the mark. This is what I want out of a scifi show.” Then at the end, Surprise! It wasn’t the real voyager! Just a bunch of Jell-O people that thought they were the crew of Voyager! They even melt before they can tell their story to the real Voyager. It was an instant letdown. Even thought the rest of what I watched was still on tape. I could still watch the cool parts of the episode. I still felt let down. It had no barring on what was to come next for crew of Voyager. It’s the same thing with OMD only worse. I didn’t just sit through 45 minutes of a show before the bomb was dropped. I read and enjoyed years of JMS run before being told that it didn’t count toward what happens next.
PAD, please call your retail contacts and friends after the next new arrivals day and see if people are really dumping OMD off their pull list. Even if you don’t share the info with us, it would be good for you to be prepared with that Knowledge. My self and the people that I know out side of Cyber Space have actually dropped the book. We are not the typical fan boys that complain with every change. We are the people that have been enjoying the comics and changes of the Joe Q era of Marvel. I really don’t think that it’s just the Internet gang for this one.
There was also an episode of Deep Space Nine like that. Finally, Miles O’Brien was getting to do something dynamic, and by the episodes end, it was two steps forward, two steps back. Sighs.
“Do you realize that we are talking about the end of the 20 year marraige of Spider-Man and NOBODY seems to have been even slightly MOVED? No “I wept”, no “I hated to see the end”, no ‘it was so tragic”?”
I don’t think it’s possible for anyone to have those feelings no matter how good or bad the story was. Nobody who posts online, anyway. Anyone who is on the net was already posting their opinion of the story before the first page of it was published.
Hey, kids! Lets review some Joe Quesada editorial fiats:
– Smoking is bad.
(Even if the character smoking it has a healing factors which makes health concerns irrelveant.)
– Deals with the devil are good.
(Espically if they retcon bomb a marriage to get a character more play from the field.)
Yep, certainly is a Brand New Day, ain’t it?
I enjoyed your F’N Spider-Man run. Honestly.
“- Smoking is bad.
(Even if the character smoking it has a healing factors which makes health concerns irrelveant.) “
I find that completely reasonable. Humans aren’t logical. They think they are, but they *reeeeeaaaalllly* aren’t. Whether Wolverine has a healing factor or not, he makes smoking look cool. You can’t argue that Wolverine should be allowed to smoke without saying that he looks cool doing it, and that’s an endorsement of smoking.
Now go out and find an actual devil to do a deal with. For every deal you make with an actual devil, I will smoke one billion cigars.
I think it’s because the comics industry is a hostage to collector interests. The 2 big publishers drove almost all other interests away by catering to collectors, and for the most part the only audience they have left are readers who have decades’-long runs of their publications who balk at the prospect of collections getting made irrelevant to continuity.
This is why I think the 2 big publishers should dump their existing readership, and concentrate on storylines that stay in print rather than keep the franchises alive to squeeze dry an aging and dwindling audience. No one wastes their time doing the latter in any other medium when they can do the former. What comic publishers do would be back-assward in any other medium.
Whatever was wrong with OMD, it wasn’t pìššìņg-off collectors. Comics are choking on the collectors. You aren’t going to see a turnaround in the industry without pìššìņg-off most of the current readership of the medium.
Anyone who is on the net was already posting their opinion of the story before the first page of it was published.
Well, Joe Q certainly can’t complain about that, because he has has made his own opinions known and thus, we knew this story was coming.
Everybody has also known from the start that this wasn’t done in the best interest of the character.
Joe Q has only himself to blame.
“All I said is that it’s not the direction I would have gone in”
No, you didn’t Peter. You said “Let’s just say it’s not…” which implies that there is more to it than that. Or that you dilute the emphasis and passion of what you really believe.
“Let’s just say there were artistic differences”
“Let’s just say we had a difference of opinion”
“Let’s just say we won’t go to that restaurant again”
“Let’s just say we’re glad it’s a new year now”
You are careful with your words, and what they imply. You can’t be surprised if people infer what they did.
Goethe’s Faust is often hailed as the literary high-point of an entire language.
As the second movie emphasized, Spider-Man’s origin is founded on the biblical Jonah. But that conflict hasn’t been present in the storyline since the the publication’s first decade. You can’t expect to keep selling the franchise on Jonah, then deny readers an internally-conflicted, uncertain character.
The more the readers complain, the more obvious it seems that JQ needed to do something, and that Faust is better than nothing. Hëll, JMS’s “totem” theme seemed reminiscent of Moore’s “anatomy lesson/parliament of trees” revision of Swamp Thing. God bless the non-incestuous comic book revamps.
Brian Osserman: I remember the episodes like “Year of Hëll” (I think that was the name) were there was finally some real action, suspense, character growth, and what looked to be lasting change. I thought to my self “Wow! this show is finally hitting the mark. This is what I want out of a scifi show.” Then at the end, Surprise! It wasn’t the real voyager! Just a bunch of Jell-O people that thought they were the crew of Voyager!
Luigi Novi: That was Course: Oblivion. Year of Hëll was the two-parter in the fourth season in which everything was reset at the end.
Me, I think the Dallas analogy is pretty much dead-on, and using Star Trek as one is wrong, because in those Trek eps, the entire story was conceived to end the way it did.
In the case of the Dallas season premiere and OMD, it is clear to me that the writers or editors either just wrote themselves into a corner that they couldn’t get out of, or which some higher up simply didn’t like aesthetically, and took the easy way out.
PAD said:
“There are complaints because years worth of continuity has suddenly been rendered moot? Okay, well…did you enjoy the stories when you read them? Yes? Good: You got your money’s worth. Can you still pull them out and re-read them? Yes? Good: Then OMD didn’t somehow cause the previous comics to magically vanish from existence.”
Except that Marvel, very intentionally, used “continuity” as a selling point when they published those old comics. Fans didn’t buy Amazing Spider-Man Annual #21 because they thought, “Gee, this will be an entertaining and enjoyable story”, they bought it because they thought, “Wow, this is a major hallmark in the life of my favorite character, and I really shouldn’t miss it if I want to understand what’s going on in future issues of the title.” ‘Civil War’ made headlines, literally, with the statement, “Peter Parker is being unmasked as Spider-Man.” People who ordinarily didn’t buy comics went in to buy copies of this “historic” event. Now that their money is in Marvel’s pocket, it turns out it’s kind of hard to have to deal with that, so they’re undoing it. That is what makes fans angry. They might not be able to articulate it, but what angers us is the idea that when continuity sells comics and transfers money from our pockets to Marvel’s pockets, it’s absolutely vital, important, serious stuff. When it’s inconvenient for writers and editors to deal with, we’re whining fanboys who care too much about a silly comic book. We recognize that fundamental dishonesty and disrespect to us as an audience, and it makes us mad. It’s not about continuity, it’s about taking our money on an implicit promise that these stories are important to the future of the character, then reneging on that promise.
PAD also said:
“Fandom really needs to get some perspective here. Perhaps it will lead to great stories and everyone will hail it as a great move after the fact. Perhaps it won’t, in which case it can always be reversed.”
And this, right here, is the fundamental problem with Marvel as a publisher today, and why it has lost readers with decades of gimmicks, stunts, and other “events” that make its fans cynical and jaded. “Buy ‘One More Day’–it’s the story that changes Spider-Man’s life forever! Unless it turns out that we don’t like the way it turns out, in which case we’re retconning that sucker out of continuity at the first opportunity. Of course, by then, we’ve already got your money…”
If Marvel really didn’t care about continuity, fans wouldn’t be so upset.
I like how no matter what you say, there are 50 comments shouting ‘hear hear’ irregardless of the fact that the two
I thought the lines implied snarkiness. But thas jus mee. And the net.
It seems like nobody liked ‘One More Day’, but Marvel is banking on ‘Brand New Day’ to justify it. Which it very well may, but I’m just kind of suprised that there’s apparently, and I didn’t notice this, love and marriage are unrelatable.
John, the basis of your criticism, and all the criticism I’ve seen, seems to be that the continuity has been made independent of your comic book collection. And that criticism isn’t wrong, but what has that got to do with the challenge of continuing the storyline on a monthly schedule?
Flagging continuities seem to revamp either by alienating their dwindling readership (a la the Claremont/Cockrum/Byrne X-Men or Alan Moore Swamp Thing) or rebooting to past glory (a la Byrne’s FF). If the title isn’t selling, what choice do they have other than alternating the revamp-methods until they find a new vein they can tap dry?
I think comic publishing should be like conventional book publishing in that conventional publishers don’t resort to arbitrarily dominating store shelves in hopes of an industry turnaround. The comic industry has evolved into something no one would choose to lead comic publishing to if they could snap their fingers and make it into something that resembles a profitable industry. But if you can count on dwindling sales by maintaining the status quo, how does getting rid of the status quo not make more sense?
Maybe the whole OMD storyline was meant as a metaphor for the strip itself. The Spider-Man comic is on life-support (the movies), and the only alternative to allowing it to die was a ridiculous solution. From a larger perspective, the sensible thing ultimately may be to let superhero comics as we know them die.
Oh, yes, you are correct; all those stories are still in my collection. Perhaps I shall simply re-read them and save the money and time I would have spent on new comics, and well, if I avoid new comics and I happen to no longer follow your work sir, well, that would seem to be a logical consequence of following your advice.
Thank you very much and good day to you,
Michael
After much whining and complaining on my part, I sat down and actually read the story and… it wasn’t that bad. Not great, but not bad, either. From the way the story was presented, to my reading at least, they seem to have left open the possibility that Mary Jane remembers the marriage, which I think offers at least a connection to the “old” way, and could provide interesting stories down the road. Or I’m just reading into it what I want to.
Either way, I think this story and new direction would have been better served without all the hype that’s surrounded it. So many people are so deadset against it that it’s not going to get a fair shake no matter how good it is.
Kevin said:
“It’s funny, every time I see OMD, I read it as OMG.”
—–
And I see the new series as Spider-Man: BTK.
I agree with PAD that it is disturbing to be drawn into an argument one has been careful to avoid. It’s true that readers can infer whatever they want from “Let’s just say it’s not the direction I would have gone in” but this says nothing other than what it says – I would have done something else. PAD says enough risible things – Let’s not see an argument where there is nothing.
As for the changes in continuity, I don’t read the titles, so they don’t affect me as much as some, but I agree that making one’s entire collection and memory non-canonical can be expected to alienate the current fans. Mr. Quesada’s statements appear foolish and insensitive. On the other hand, Quesada is far more of a showman than a serious writer, so perhaps the whole thing is hype. Maybe the real story is not that continuity is being discarded, but rather that writers will be able to write in a different continuity for a while. It may even be that the progression toward restoration of reality/continuity is the real story. How many times have Marvel, DC and others written “What if no one had ever heard of Superman/Captain America/Professor X/whomever?” DC has done it many times – “‘Hey, stranger, why are you wearing that blue leotard?’ ‘Why…I’m Superman. I’ve lived here for years!’ ‘Yeah, right. I’m just going to call Captain Sawyer, and she can take care of this.'” It’s happened many times, but the continuity has been restored. “Crisis on Infinite Earths” came closest to eliminating the previous continuity: It looked pretty completely done, but the recent introduction of “Hyper-Time” really limits the change to “Well, yes, that thing did happen, but…uh…it wasn’t here that it happened. It happened somewhere else, and THAT’s the explanation for (current writer)’s mistake in issue 508 – He was writing about what happened – really happened – in reality 46L.”
I personally hated the last four pages of OMD because even without the continuity problems and my confusion now as to Spidey’s status with the New Avengers and Civil War in general, I simply think there were better/less convoluted ways to handle the step backwards in powers and the ending of the marriage/love. I also see no advantage whatsoever in bringing Harry back and Mephisto’s trick of “everyone will forget the secret ID now” is a bit too close to the Spectre doing that for Wally West for me (especially when the Initiative issues already started planting the seeds of people beginning to doubt that Peter was ever Spidey). I am hoping that six months to a year from now Spidey will reboot this alternate timeline and get things mostly back to normal and I’m glad they at least left a window open for that since we don’t know what MJ bargained.
That said, I am in agreement with you that while this is annoying and may make me drop the Spidey books (I will reserve final judgment on that until after the new stories come out), it is not something to proclaim as ruining comic books nor am I suddenly concerned that the books I own from the last decade or so will suddenly vanish from existence. They’re still good stories and if someone says “Do you have a tear-jerking Spider-Man comic I could read?” I will still pass them, among other things, the death of Harry Osborn even if it’s no longer “canon” (whatever that means anymore). I just did a column talking about how people can’t look at movie adaptations as ruining their comics because the fact is even if a movie shows Batman weilding handguns and sporting heat-vision, your comics where Batman DOESN’T do that still exist in your boxes and can be read at any time. it seems silly to gripe over “oh my god, this issue of mine is now fan-fic or an alternate timeline that can’t be considered as worthwhile!”
Marvel screwed up with the Clone Saga and hit the reset button later. It’ll happen again eventually with this I’m guessing. The REAL issue is: When is SPIDER-MAN 2099 coming out in trades?! 😀
hahahaha, this is genius: someone posted a on newsarama a form letter to send to conservative talk show hosts complaining about Spider-Man’s deal with the devil:
http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=141584
Rush Limbaugh gets the e-mail and goes off about “The War On Spider-Man And Morality”. That would rule!!
and well, if I avoid new comics and I happen to no longer follow your work sir, well, that would seem to be a logical consequence of following your advice.
Well, no. Not really, since I’m not writing any Spider-Man books at the moment. On the other hand it makes sense if you’re engaging in the time-honored maneuver of trying to get back at me because I’ve said something that you didn’t want to hear. Then it’s logical.
PAD
Luigi Novi, you said everything I was going to say about why continuity matters, much better than I could.
I don’t think this was well done at all. I can see why Harry might be alive (since he wouldn’t have died rescuing Mary Jane) and maybe even sane again, but by what possible logic would this deal with Mephisto have de-aged Peter (as Quesada says it did?).
The answer: This is basically a crisis-style reboot (at least of the past couple of decades) but fudged with “magic” so that they won’t have to worry about any complications in other books (Quesada said in an interview that the problem with JMS’ original ending is that there would have to be a general revamp of Marvel continuity afterwards. Which is also why Mephisto didn’t apparently have any bøøbÿ-ŧrápš in the deal (but yeah, Peter should have backed off on the assumption there would be).
I must admit, I did like Mephisto’s line that” Idon’t want your soul, you super-heroes just stand around in hëll feeling noble about saving someone, no matter how I torment you.”
As other people have semi-alluded to, I think one of the main problems here is that Joe Quesada just can’t keep his big mouth shut.
He didn’t NEED to tell us of his dis-like for the marriage. And beyond that, he rammed it down our throats how much he disliked the marriage time and time again. In my opinion, all that did was fan the flames and help us to dislike this story even more (for those of us that do not like it.)
I think that if Joe had A) kept his mouth shut and B)didn’t make it so obvious that this was forced into the story, A great deal more people would accept this more easily.
Instead, there was a buildup of animosity even before the story was published, and an explosion when there was.
If this was all kept quiet, and it seemingly flowed from a natural story progression, I think the outpouring of anger would be much much less. I’m not saying people wouldnt still be upset or pìššëd…But I think it was just handled very very poorly.
In some ways, this parallels all the Crisis-undoing we’ve had over at DC, where most of the changes Byrne made have been undone in favor of a more Silver Age feel to things (ditto stuff like Wonder Woman being Silver Age again, Superman being in the JLA from early on, etc.). Quesada’s turning back the clock to the days when he was reading Spider-Man as a fan: Peter single, living with Aunt May, Harry alive (and he said they considered resurrecting Gwen too). In fairness, I don’t know if that’s his chain of thought, or even his unconscious chain of thought, but it makes me more skeptical about his claim this is all about satisfying the young fans.
It’s the story Marvel is telling now, but it doesn’t have to be the one it tells forever. When the owners feel the EIC has made a decision bad for their interests, either the EIC will have a change of heart or Marvel will have a change of EIC. Beyond the current storyline being offensive to many readers, I don’t think it has more permanence than any other storyline. Now they say X didn’t happen, but Y did. When they feel otherwise, Y will not have happened, but X (or something similar to X, or maybe Z) will have happened, and we will all be encouraged to forget that Y foolishness the old EIC pushed.
@ Luigi Novi:
As far as I am aware, this “making the rounds” refers to a post on the Comicboards Spider-Man Board, where the poster AJ made a post referring to PAD’s OMD post on this board which had an unintentionally misleading header. Unfortunately the archives are offline, so I can’t get you or me a link, but IIRC it went something like “Peter David comments on OMD – bet Sacasa hates it too”. In the actual body of the post however AJ merely stated that Peter David had expressed reservations about OMD Part 4. Not that long after, Peter David made a visit to the SMB and set things straight in a post very much like the one this thread of comments is attached to. AJ immediately apologised for the the misunderstanding and overinterpreting Peter’s comments and so PAD’s position on OMD was cleared up in a very short while, as far as those participating at the SMB were concerned. It may well be, of course, that AJ’s original post had been referenced in other forums before this happened.
However, some of the other people at the SMB then aroused Peter David’s ire because they felt he was being a bit harsh on fans in general for characterizing all of them by questionable and outrageous statements of a few. Peter David replied he just forgot to add “some” before fans etc. I was another offender because I found it hard to believe that there really fans out there who were treating OMD as a crime against humanity. No, PAD replied, that was an exact quote. I pointed out that “fans are treating an updating of “Doctor Faustus” as if it’s a crime against humanity” could only have been a quote if it was said about these fans by someone else, in which case it was an interpretation (of what they actually said). I also suggested that maybe if some people had called OMD “a crime against humanity” it could well have been a case of dramatic hyperbole. [I am now wondering if it might not also have been used ironically, because it does seem that in the OMD debate way too many people have disengaged their irony and sarcasm detectors]. But PAD was having none of that, saying that that kind of minuscule parsing of words was what gave comic fans, or some comic fans, a bad name. I backed down, wrote a placating reply and since that did not satisfy another poster, wrote another one post saying it was my fault for thinking PAD had meant his comments as an attack on fans in general, even if his phrasing was unclear. But then some idiot whose name I did not recall seeing on the board before made an asinine and tasteless post (opening a different thread) suggesting the nickname “al-Quesada” for Joe Quesada for his “terrorism against fans”. Peter David triumphantly seized on this, asking if after this outrage, comparing the EiC of Marvel with a terrorist organization that had killed thousands, anyone still wanted to argue that he was exaggerating about the reaction of fandom. I am unable to give the exact quote, but it was understood by everyone responding as a clear attempt to characterize all fans by this isolated and outrageous example, and one response suggested that Peter would not like it if he as a comics creator was held responsible for what John Byrne said. (The offending poster was, needless to say, hooted down and also by the evidence of things immediately banned by the moderators). And an example of a guy who in all likelihood was a troll out to provoke outrage (although one other poster suggested that maybe it was an unfunny attempt to lampoon what some of the people who hated OMD had said about Quesada). As for me, Peter David’s post reminded me of the way how in the run-up to the Iraq war all war opponents were lumped together with a handful of isolated extremists and crackpots in order to discredit the entire peace movement. So naturally I (a fan of Peter David’s writing since the 1980s) was very disappointed in him.
Two more points: The nickname “al-Quesada” is tasteless and inappropriate, but this kind of thing is hardly unique to comic fans. Speaking personally I find it obscene that in the US there is such a low threshold for using the word “nazi” (member of a political movement responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of people, including hundreds of thousands of Americans) as a label for people one dislikes, especially in compounds like “feminazi”, “anti-smoking nazi”, even “soup nazi”. These words (and Osama/Obama jokes) are used with less of a social sanction than “al-Quesada” got here among comic fans.
Obviously I can’t write about this as if I had not taken part in those SMB debates, but I tried to stay as factual as possible. Once the archives go online again, you should be able to check the relevant threads out at
http://www.comicboards.com/smb/
I may not return here as I’ll be trying to cut down on participation in OMD-related debates…
Posted by: Fraser at January 2, 2008 02:34 PM
I must admit, I did like Mephisto’s line that” Idon’t want your soul, you super-heroes just stand around in hëll feeling noble about saving someone, no matter how I torment you.”
Who is THIS imposter? He certainly sounds much different from the character who spent years lusting (for my lack of thinking of a better word) after the soul of Norrin Radd.
Incidentally, how many super-heroes are in Mephisto’s realm and when did they get there?
Sounds to me like someone decided to toss out any sense in favor of a cheap but clever “soundbite”.
That is disappointing, Menshevik.
Btw Luigi Novi, you are now my hero. Congratulations. 🙂
Comic book companies have been making choices about characters for a really long time. (Jean Grey? Black costume? Robin dying? ANY of this ring a bell?) For better or worse, these characters have stuff happen to them. If they didn’t who’d read the books? And, if this proves anything, anything that’s done in a book, can be undone.
Thank you to Fraser, Menshevik and Rob Brown. 🙂
Alan Kistler: I personally hated the last four pages of OMD because even without the continuity problems and my confusion now as to Spidey’s status with the New Avengers and Civil War in general…
Luigi Novi: Exactly. I’ve been enjoying New Avengers for several issues now, because I like the idea of them being fugitives, but still trying to be crime-fighting adventurers. But now, I gotta wonder: What’s gonna happen in the next issue? Is Spidey suddenly gonna vanish with no explanation? Is this going to happen every time a story touches upon something that occurred to Spidey between The Amazing Spider-Man Annual #21 and The Amazing Spider-Man #545?
Unfortunately for you, PAD, it is easy to read into what you’re saying with your original comment. At this point, the impression most are going to draw from comments by anybody who isn’t lock step with Joe Q over OMD is that they disapprove of the story on some level or another.
Luigi Novi –
What’s gonna happen in the next issue?
According to Joe Q in an ongoing interview on Comic Book Resources:
“All the books count, all the stories count — except in the minds of the people within the Marvel U, Peter and MJ were a couple, not a married couple.”
Yet, somehow, JMS’ idea of going back another 10 years and wiping more stuff out would have been sooooooooooo much more damaging than what Joe Q decided upon.
Go figure.
But, to me, here’s the real kicker of the interview so far:
“However, how would a parent feel when they had to explain to their kid that Spider-Man just got divorced from his wife?”
I’m sorry, but this is the biggest pile of @#$% I’ve ever read or heard from Joe Q.
Does he think we’re dumb? Mindless zombies who will agree with anything he says? Or is his ego just that dámņ large that it gets in the way of any common sense?
Spidey can’t get divorced or have kids out of wedlock, but he can make a deal with the devil that wipes out his marriage and all the memories of it?
Before that, he comments on how Spidey can’t have kids out of wedlock (thus the reason Gwen’s twins are not Parker’s), and how bad that would look as well.
More than half the marriages in this country end in divorce. I don’t even want to guess at the figures about the number of children born out of wedlock. Yet, these are somehow worse topics than making deals with devils.
What a complete and total crock of @#$%.
I fervently wished a British military officer had walked in and called a halt to the whole stupid thing on the grounds that it had got too silly. Didn’t it occur to these two dimwits [Peter/MJ] that there was a third person involved? Oh, wait, yes it did. “What if it’s her time to go?” MJ asks, or something to that effect. Yet neither of them even pauses to wonder “What would May have to say about this?” I’m betting the farm she’d be horrified. But who cares, right? After all Peter’s got this misplaced guilt he has to get rid of, so …
Just as well the FNSM title ceased to be because I’d have hated to stop reading a PAD title, but this unforgiveable mess (which I’m glad to see he’s not all that happy with) has decided me to drop Spidey titles from my to read list. Yes, things change in real life, too. But not this idiotic way.
JMS’ wordless story showing how, even though they were now separated, Peter and MJ just couldn’t stop thinking about each other was a powerful statement of their underlying love for one another and one of the all-time best comics I’ve ever enjoyed. OMD makes it all to have been a pathetic joke because, well, we can’t have that, can we? So let’s all pretend it never happened and go on from there. Feh.
How can anyone not love that book? Peter Parker makes a deal with the devil to end his marriage and save his aunt. LMAO 🙂
Peter Parker MADE A DEAL WITH THE DEVIL. He did it to “save” a women who has been on death’s doorstep since the moment we met her :). Man, Uncle Ben is soooooo pìššëd at Peter right now.
Speaking of Uncle Ben, I’m sure Mephisto would have willing to toss him in if Peter was willing to part with his memories of Gwen Stacy.
PAD: good clarification.
These days I’ve read a lot of comments about OMD. A lot of them state their worry about what will happen with the stories that have already been told. Hace they happened? Do they have the same value as they did one month ago? I think that is not what really matters. I reckon that OMD has hurt a lot Peter Parker as a fiction character, but not because what it has done to the past stories, but for it will be done to the future stories. The editorial has purposedly erased what they didn’t like about the character, so it’s right to think that that kind of things won’t be happening in the future. So Peter Parker won’t be marrying ever more. And Peter Parker won’t be telling his aunt who he really is. Harry Osborn won’t die again.
I think this certainly limits the possibilities and the character. Marvel has stated that Peter is a full-grown teenager, and that they pretend to keep him that way forever. I don’t think it’s a good idea to limit that much Peter’s potencial. And I don’t know if I will fancy reading many more of that “soap-opera” stories knowing that they will lead to nowhere.
And, form a personal point of view, I’ve always thought that there are characters that you like and characters that you love. Those that I’ve come to love have always been those who evolve as their storie goes. I like Superman, and Batman, and Captain America very much, but I LOVE characters like Wally West (whose realtionship with their children gets to my heart; thanks Waid for it), Jack Knight-Starman, Gaiman’s Morpheus, PAD’s Linda Danvers and… Spider-man. The sorrow I feel about Spider-man after OMD is that I know that maybe I will like the character, I will find his new stories very cool, but I think i will not be able to love him anymore because I know he will be frozen in the new old status that the editors want him in.
And that’s whay I don’t like OMD.
(You can’t imagine how tough for me it is to write the hyphen of Spider-man. In Spain, he is known as Spiderman, without it, and remembering to write it is a real pain in the… ehem!)
What’s really ridiculous is that if they wanted to save lives, Peter and Mary Jane should have sacrificed their marriage to erase the supreme court 2000 election decision instead.
>> Posted by The StarWolf at January 3, 2008 03:45 AM
I fervently wished a British military officer had walked in and called a halt to the whole stupid thing on the grounds that it had got too silly. Didn’t it occur to these two dimwits [Peter/MJ] that there was a third person involved? Oh, wait, yes it did. “What if it’s her time to go?” MJ asks, or something to that effect. Yet neither of them even pauses to wonder “What would May have to say about this?” I’m betting the farm she’d be horrified. But who cares, right? After all Peter’s got this misplaced guilt he has to get rid of, so …
I know, I was thinking, you’re talking to the devil and not once do you consider the possibility that “wait, will this keep Aunt May out of heaven? What if she’s like–‘I see Ben, dang! Now I have to sew up Peter’s socks for the next fifty years.'”
Peter,
As the former FNSM writer were you ever a part of the brainstorming to “fix” the Spidey-marriage? Any development backstory you could share? Did you joke that Peter should make a deal with the devil and everyone jumped on it as a great idea a la the Wolverine/losing his adamantium thing?
Over at CBR, they have a big OMD interview with Mr. Q. In it he implies that the end result was always a Peter/MJ reset but JMS had a different mechanism in mind to achieve it. Some people have mentioned that Loki was set up to owe Peter a favor earlier in his run and that perhaps Loki would have been a more logical choice as a deus ex machina. Considering JMS is also writing THOR, the most likely place for Loki to show up next, it would seem that he would be an ideal character to use.
I haven’t read the final issue of OMD, but I was impressed with the introduction of the alternate path Peters of part 3. I think my biggest complaint is that this change has been telegraphed by Mr. Q for years. Where’s the twist? I had sort of the same feeling about the Winter Soldier/Bucky thing. If everyone is hinting that he’s really Bucky and the dramatic conclusion is “Yes. He’s Bucky.”, it ain’t so surprising.
The StarWolf –
Yet neither of them even pauses to wonder “What would May have to say about this?” I’m betting the farm she’d be horrified.
I posed the same question yesterday on the Newsarama boards.
Yet, has bothered to respond one way or the other about it. Apparently Aunt May being the comics equivalent of Terry Schiavo just isn’t that important.
Posted by: Craig J. Ries at January 3, 2008 12:57 AM
I’m sorry, but this is the biggest pile of @#$% I’ve ever read or heard from Joe Q.
Does he think we’re dumb? Mindless zombies who will agree with anything he says? Or is his ego just that dámņ large that it gets in the way of any common sense?
Spidey can’t get divorced or have kids out of wedlock, but he can make a deal with the devil that wipes out his marriage and all the memories of it?
Don’t even be sorry, Craig. What you’re saying is really valid.
Even if you forget about deals with a guy who we’re calling the devil (because he’s got almost everything in common with the devil after all, and you could say he is *a* devil, although there are others like Satannish), one of Spidey’s enemies can blast his own head off with a shotgun (Kraven, of course), another one can develop more than one personality as the result of being molested as a child (Vermin), another can one pull Spidey’s eye out of its socket and eat it (Morlun), etc.
Despite those things and many, many more, JQ is suddenly going to say that Spider-Man books are suitable for all ages, and for that reason divorce is off the table? (Not that I would’ve liked a divorce, mind you, but still…) But suicide, sexual abuse of children, and cannibalism are more acceptable for young, impressionable eyes? Yes, that IS stupid.
Posted by: The StarWolf at January 3, 2008 03:45 AM
I fervently wished a British military officer had walked in and called a halt to the whole stupid thing on the grounds that it had got too silly.
Bwahaha! Python ftw! 😀
but this unforgiveable mess (which I’m glad to see he’s not all that happy with)
I don’t know whether he dislikes the decision to break up the marriage more, or the shitstorm of protest that has resulted. Both are JQ’s fault, however. The guy’s been in the business long enough to know what the fallout was gonna be.
Here is the sad thing. According to this guy, they probably will sell more comics than before after this. They’re going to sell more comics than before just because they are putting out three issues of ASM per month instead of one, and ASM sells well just because of the book’s title.
I won’t put it past Quesada to produce three times the amount of a historically successful product as he did before, and then make a public statement to the effect of “See? We’re selling more copies of Amazing Spider-Man than ever! That proves that readers like a single Peter Parker better than a married one.”
That kind of arrogance, btw, is what moves people to give him names like “al-Quesada”, never mind whether it’s too much or in bad taste. If you’re still bothering to read these comments, PAD, I know this guy’s your boss and I know you worked with him on X-Factor, but by treating us like this he is bringing it on himself and I have no sympathy for him. I’m sorry.
Posted by: Craig J. Ries at January 3, 2008 12:57 AM
I’m sorry, but this is the biggest pile of @#$% I’ve ever read or heard from Joe Q.
Does he think we’re dumb? Mindless zombies who will agree with anything he says? Or is his ego just that dámņ large that it gets in the way of any common sense?
Spidey can’t get divorced or have kids out of wedlock, but he can make a deal with the devil that wipes out his marriage and all the memories of it?
Don’t even be sorry, Craig. What you’re saying is really valid.
Even if you forget about deals with a guy who we’re calling the devil (because he’s got almost everything in common with the devil after all, and you could say he is *a* devil, although there are others like Satannish), one of Spidey’s enemies can blast his own head off with a shotgun (Kraven, of course), another one can develop more than one personality as the result of being molested as a child (Vermin), another can one pull Spidey’s eye out of its socket and eat it (Morlun), etc.
Despite those things and many, many more, JQ is suddenly going to say that Spider-Man books are suitable for all ages, and for that reason divorce is off the table? (Not that I would’ve liked a divorce, mind you, but still…) But suicide, sexual abuse of children, and cannibalism are more acceptable for young, impressionable eyes? Yes, that IS stupid.
Posted by: The StarWolf at January 3, 2008 03:45 AM
I fervently wished a British military officer had walked in and called a halt to the whole stupid thing on the grounds that it had got too silly.
Bwahaha! Python ftw! 😀
but this unforgiveable mess (which I’m glad to see he’s not all that happy with)
I don’t know whether he dislikes the decision to break up the marriage more, or the shitstorm of protest that has resulted. Both are JQ’s fault, however. The guy’s been in the business long enough to know what the fallout was gonna be.
Here is the sad thing. I’ve read one person speculate that they probably will sell more comics than before after this. (Have a look here: http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showpost.php?p=1400103&postcount=93 ) They’re going to sell more comics than before just because they are putting out three issues of ASM per month instead of one, and ASM sells well just because of the book’s title.
I won’t put it past Quesada to produce three times the amount of a historically successful product as he did before, and then make a public statement to the effect of “See? We’re selling more copies of Amazing Spider-Man than ever! That proves that readers like a single Peter Parker better than a married one.”
That kind of arrogance, btw, is what moves people to give him names like “al-Quesada”, never mind whether it’s too much or in bad taste. I’m not going to call him that because it’s stupid, but I can totally understand why somebody would be angry enough to do so.
If you’re still bothering to read these comments, PAD, I know this guy’s your boss and I know you worked with him on X-Factor, but by treating us like this he is bringing it on himself and I have no sympathy for him. I’m sorry.
clatterboot, the third part of the CBR mechanism is up and it explains what JMS wanted to do differently. He wanted to go farther back in time with the retcon and change a lot more stuff.
The fact Quesada said he gave serious thought to resurrecting Gwen really threw me: Other than the initial shock value, what could she bring to the storyline that any other blonde love interest couldn’t? Nothing I can see that’s worth raising her from the dead.
As to Mephisto, I know Mockingbird is currently in his section of Hëll, as was Hellcat for a while. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of any others, but I believe there are some.
“If I could remove one word from the english language, it would be continuity. It’s done more to harm comic books than anything…”
Snipped to avoid de-railing.
My toddler son is potty training. In order to encourage him to sit on the potty long enough to learn how to go #2, I’ve taken to telling him stories. He’s very fond of the Three Little Pigs.
Imagine telling that story, expect when you come to pig house #2, instead of the Big Bad Wolf showing up to huff and puff and blow the house down, you get the Rabid Dog, and he’s armed with a bulldozer. What happened to the BBW from House #1? What happened to his MO of Huffing and Puffing? Well, who cares, because the story of the Rabid Dog and the bolldozer is well told and exciting in it’s own right.
What do you have when you don’t have continuity? You don’t have a story, that’s what. You have a tale that people are not interested in following because it lacks the basic structure that is required for the audience to remain interested. It shows a discipline of the tale-teller that says that they care about the yarn they’re weaving, and at least informs the audience that there’s a good chance that there’s a payoff at the end of the tale worth sticking around for. These are fiction, fantasy stories, but it’s imperative to maintain an honesty regarding structure and past events. Otherwise, the audience lacks anything concrete to hold onto, and you run the great risk that their attention will fail.
Imagine reading The Lord of the Rings, and in book 4, Frodo dies. Only to appear again in book 5, with no explanation as to him dieing. Maybe you’d finish the book, but if that event were unresovled, chances are you’d never read Tolkien again, because he hasn’t demonstrated that he’s a good writer that maintains continuity in his stories.
Marvel is the house that pretty much brought continuity to comics. They imbedded references to past issues, even to issues of other books. Continuity matters because Marvel made it matter. They made it a selling point. Their shared universe was attractive for the very existence of continuity.
From what I see, Marvel is trying to Secret Wars every book. Not content to have the once or twice a year crossover event, they are now trying to make every book have an event every year, and make it last all year long. They’re trying to capture those sales by making every issue part of an event…and you have to get every part in order to get the full story. It’s a model that the comic consumer has proven works…but at the level Marvel is attempting, can the market bear that? When every book becomes the latest IT book, will those boosted sales continue? Or to paraphrase the Incredibles, when every issue is Super, won’t that mean that none of them actually are?
My first time posting on anything anywhere. That provides some sense of the intensity of my reaction to the OMD direction for Spider-Man.
Let’s set a few things aside first.
I think the world of JMS. Even when I think his story premise is fatally flawed or wrong-headed (e.g., the Gwen’s kids story), I can count on him to have a credible sequence of events and dialogue that sounds like intelligent people thinking about what they’re doing. No difference here.
I think the JQ administration has been a net positive for Marvel. Talented creators doing good, original work. Not everywhere but still.
My problem is that the tone of Spider-Man has been severely altered. The original Peter Parker through the first couple hundred issues was a high school or college age youth with all the possibilities of a life barely begun, colored by the problems and challenges of a realistic life situation (a sick aunt, opinion leaders who turned everything positive he did into a negative, and the one bad decision that had irreversible bad consequences). Getting rid of Mary Jane does not take him back to that youth. What we now have is a Peter Parker well past college who has yet to find a career niche that comes close to using his extraordinary gifts (and I mean his scientific knowledge, not his super-powers). He is now an aging bachelor who has never really enjoyed dating and a chronically depressed, glass-half-empty man without anyone close enough to him to help him through those periods. And according to Mephisto (who is SO reliable), he and Mary Jane will both have a subconscious awareness of the loss of their relationship that will sour an already sour personality even more.
By my count, this is the third major Marvel attempt to eliminate Peter’s social support network. First, we send him off with his entire network of friends and family in favor of a clone who is a blank slate. Massive outrage and that is undone. Second, we kill off his wife (but not really) and after a year of moping, that is undone. And now this. Stan Lee has come in for a lot of criticism for marrying off Peter for sentimental motives, but his take on the character and the character’s arc is looking better and better to me all the time.
So if we want a relatable Peter Parker with the original spirit and inspiration or some defensible alternative, here are our choices: (1) The Spider-Man comic strip, for all its lack of action pieces and emotional depth. (2) Spider-Girl, even though Peter is not the focus. (3) Ultimate Spider-Man, though Bendis has that Peter so beaten into the ground that it overshadows any possibilities of youth. (4) The Spider-Man movies, though they have dropped Mary Jane’s condition to sad and doomed. (5) The old comics, which are still wonderful but a little less so because you know they are not leading anywhere good. (6) The Marvel Universe Spider-Man, if and when saner heads prevail and not only undo this latest mess but also stop trying to replace it with a better designed lunge in the same wrong direction.
Further proof this was a bad story from the start – check out CBR and Newsarama for the back and forth between Joe and JMS about the ending, the whole thing just seems like a clusterbomb.
Fraser wrote: “As to Mephisto, I know Mockingbird is currently in his section of Hëll, as was Hellcat for a while. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of any others, but I believe there are some.”
Refresh my memory, why is Mockingbird in hëll?