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
• 
It’s unfortunate that your statement was misinterpreted, but your statement that “fandom needs perspective” is a bit too harsh of a rebuttal. I think based on the glimpse behind the curtain we’ve seen the last few days, an angry reaction is justified. And while I understand your annoyance, I think part of the reason people assumed you hated the story is because most of us hated it, most of us (despite what you might think) loved your run, and therefore assumed that you were “with us.” Bad assumption I know, but in a weird way, flattering to you.
For all those of you still reeling from the OMD/BND controversy like I was, you must go to this site and read the compelling, extensive exposé done by this guy, Thomas Mets:
http://thecomiccrypt.com/viewtopic.php?t=4440
He successfully dissects, provides arguements from both sides, and discusses pros and cons of the new Spidey directions, past, prensent and future. A well-structured must read, he’s been at it since september. I’m not even done entirely reading it yet, but it’s vastly entertaining.
Wow. Looking at the newsarama article, I think it’s clear that Joey Q had absolutely no concern about continuity or how it would be changed. He wanted it to be a certain way, whether or not it made sense within the story, and that was the way it was going to be. After all, “It’s magic, we don’t have to explain it.”
Unlike some, I have no problem with the premise of Peter giving up his marriage to save Aunt May. He would make any sacrifice to save his mother figure from death, especially from a death that he indirectly caused, especially after failing to save Uncle Ben (his father figure) from a death that he indirectly caused. But Mephisto can’t let Peter forget the sacrifice (where is the torture if he doesn’t remember what he lost?), and Aunt May only gets another day or two before she’s killed randomly. If he is going to be the djinn in the story, he should act as such.
I originally blamed JMS for this, but now it sounds like editorial (i.e. Joey Q) is responsible for most of this.
Refresh my memory, why is Mockingbird in hëll?
During Avengers West Coast #100, in a battle with Mephisto, Mockingbird is basically sucked into whatever realm he inhabits (I’m not sure that’s actually Hëll or not).
According to the Dreaded Wikipedia, during the Hellcat mini-series:
“She later returns as a reanimated corpse as part of the Grim Reaper’s plot to destroy the Avengers. She also seen fighting endless battles in a hëll[3], in which she has an opportunity to return to life but turns it down while indicating that she still has a purpose to serve in death.”
>What do you have when you don’t have continuity? You don’t have a story, that’s what.
Worse, you have no reason to care because whatever happens will probably be deemed irrelevant down the line and be changed to something else at editorial whim. And if they don’t care, why should you? And why should you then spend money on it?
“Fandom really needs to get some perspective here.”
Whatever could be wrong with this – It’s straightforward, accurate and (particularly for PAD, who does not quail at harshness when he feels like it) very nearly mild. If a bad storyline is being told about one’s favorite super-hero, gee – don’t buy it, and complain to anyone who wants to listen. In this instance, Mephisto has sorcerously altered reality: Maybe that makes for a bad story, and maybe not. I’m not reading the series, so I don’t know which it will be. There is no reason to think any changes cannot later be restored – by sorcery, a convulsive spasm of reality insisting on its true course, the necessary steps being taken to duplicate all first meetings and impressions, or some other means. Rather than a permanent continuity-change, this may be nothing but the particular storyline of early 2008 – like killing girlfriends, revealing identities, changing the medical prognoses of old characters or “permanently” killing villains.
John Hall, if I understand Quesada’s interview properly, Peter isn’t the aging guy he would be if the marriage had simply unhappened: He’s also been deaged to somewhere in his early twenties. Which makes no sense in terms of the pact or the Marvel timeline but it gets Quesada the Spidey he wanted. And for whatever it’s worth, he said that one of his goals is to re-establish a broad supporting cast for Peter.
I presume the same reasoning lies behind the lack of a poison pill in the deal with Mephisto: Having him bøøbÿ-ŧráp things so Aunt May dies anyway would be more his style, but it’s not what they want, so … Likewise, the assertion that this hasn’t affected any aspect of continuity other than his unmasking being forgotten and the wedding not coming off–if this were a WHAT IF, I’d be laughing at the idea (actually I’ve seen several alternate history stories in which huge,sweeping changes somehow lead to the same world we have now, and I don’t laugh, I curse at the wasted time I spent) but again, that’s the decreee.
Jeffrey, it’s true this can be fixed (I’m sure that’s also part of the appeal of using Mephisto), but that’s the problem: Why bother to follow the stories if Marvel can unmake them on a whim? Sure, it’s easy to say, as DC did post-Crisis, that “None of the stories ever happened! They’re fiction, remember?” but the point of reading a story is to believe in them, that they happened, that the outcome mattered. Which is hard to do.
I believe Mockingbird is in Hëll partly for her murder of the second Western Ghost Rider over his seducing her magically. Though I’m not sure.
“Like it or not, fans invest emotionally in characters and stories. Good stories move people and imprint themselves on us. Sure, people can throw whatever snarky comments they want on boards — and everyone knows how too many board-dwellers love to kick folks when they are down — but its that emotional investment, sustained over time, that makes comic books so special and the fans so, well, fanatical.
I guess I’ll own that. “
I agree whole heartedly with you. Im a fan myself. I guess you took my thoughts a little too personally but I wasnt being snarky. I wanted to address the reality that I experiance when a character goes through a change that inevitably, some fan doesnt like, and I get told that the creator “sucks” because the fan didnt like the story. Well…I dont happen to think a creator sucks because I didnt like the tale. I just look at it as a different idea.
Im not trying to devalue how you feel about a story. I love stories that touch so deeply it makes you laugh or cry while reading a comic.
And I certainly did not mean to kick you while you were down. I wouldn’t do that. Im just voicing an opinion.
Another opinion I realize is that no matter what a creator does, not everyone is going to like. That’s fine too. I guess I’m looking for a different, less-volitile approach to the fans general thought process other than; “You suck”.
“Parts of 20 years of work undone in the span of a few pages. Yeah, people have a right to be pìššëd about this kind of change.”
No. That’s an expectation on the comic book community that is frivolous in thought. Comic creators don’t tend to be ticked off about what comes after thier run, just that they had a good run. That the story was heard and loved. I get that. What I also get, is that to expect a creator to continuously research and have to keep EVERY little word or nuance that a character has had in over 30 decades worth of work, is ludicrous.
Actually, the only type of comic that can deliver the kind of continuity you desire is a creator owned independant book. Or books that are creator owned like “Sin City”.
To expect the conglomeration of workers and freelancers at Marvel to uphold your ideals is a bit much. If you’ve been reading comics by either of the top two companies for an amount of time over, say, 5 years, you understand how they work.
I’m not saying that the big two are right in thier treatment of the characters. I think it sucks. I do, however, know that they are not about to change.
First, a sick thought: What if Peter gives up his marriage, goes back in time (along with the rest of the frickin’ Marvel universe), sees his now-healthy Aunt May — and she walks outside and gets killed by a bus? Anyone who’s read science fiction (or FAUST) knows that deals with the Devil never turn out as one had hoped. (If they did, the Devil — being evil — wouldn’t make them.)
Second, many MANY comments ago I suggested the reset was a bit like DALLAS years ago where they brought back the deceased Bobby Ewing by saying that the past season had been a dream, and that fans felt more ripped off from having their enjoyed storylines turned imaginary (dreamlike, I suppose) and out of continuity. Someone suggested that my example was dated, so here’s another one:
It’s the final episode of LOST. After many plot twists and struggles, the survivors are on the verge of learning everything. They’ve beaten the Others, they have a way off the Island, but first they are about to enter the room where all the answers lie. They burst through the door…
And Charlie wakes up! Yes, the entire show had been in Charlie’s head when he O.D.ed, and all the show’s elements were part of his crash or hospital stay: The Island is from when he fell into the ocean, Jack is his doctor, Sawyer is a patient who always beats Kate at cards when she visits, Hurley is a patient in for a stomach stapling because he can’t seem to lose weight (and the infamous Numbers were mentioned on tv as the winning #s for the MegaJackpot), etc. So it was all in his head, there were (in the show’s continuity) no Others or conflicts or adventures.
Who here will be fine, taking pleasure in the fact that the old episodes may have been deemed imaginary but can be enjoyed as much as before?
I think it’d cause a bigger outcry than the SOPRANOS ending. And it’s because fans don’t want their continuity screwed around with.
I should’ve posted this earlier, but here’s a good idea on how OMD could have been fixed. You know what, I like it so much that I’ll link to it AND copy it in here.
http://mightygodking.com/index.php/2007/11/30/geez-do-i-gotta-fix-everything/
To all those complaining about the šhìŧŧÿ “Mephisto makes Peter give up his marriage to save Aunt May with devil-magic” storyline currently going on in Amazing Spider-Man – look, this one is so easy to fix it’s almost redundant to mention it, and by “fix” I don’t mean just retconning it away, but instead making it work on a larger scale.
Ready? Because it’s really easy.
The sniper’s bullet would have missed Aunt May if Mephisto hadn’t altered its course just so.
There. That is all you need. The problem with this story thus far is twofold:
1.) Splitting up Peter and MJ is dumb;
2.) Having Mephisto make this deal is dumber.
Now, #1 is easily dealt with because in a couple of years they’ll reunite, just watch. But #2? That’s why you need the twist I just mentioned. Because, instead of just opportunistically marching into the plot and saying “moo hoo ha ha, I am evil and will force you to make a cruel O. Henry sort of decision, Peter Parker,” Mephisto is now driving the action.
As a matter of fact, maybe Mephisto’s plan wouldn’t just be to get Peter to make the deal. I mean, come on, the endgame can’t just be “make Peter suffer,” because the Green Goblin does that all the time and you’d think Mephisto would be playing for higher stakes, right? He is, after all, the Debbil.
Indeed – if it were me writing, I’d say that Mephisto wants Peter to sacrifice his marriage so that Peter suffers – and then finds out about what Mephisto did. Easy enough to have Dr. Strange notice it at some point. And come on, we’ve all seen Spidey lose his šhìŧ when somebody targets his loved ones before, right? (Come to think, isn’t that what he just did?) And Peter is, unfortunately in this case, brave and prone to rash decisions at these moments.
Say, like, maybe he enters Hëll – literally – to make things right. (Because he reads it somewhere in a magic book that of course Mephisto didn’t make sure he’d find.)
And maybe that’s what Mephisto wanted all along – because he can’t get Spidey’s soul while Spidey’s on Earth, it’s pure and untouchable, but if Spidey goes into Mephisto’s realm, he’s fair game. (Why yes, I did read Triumph and Torment, why do you ask?) Getting a shot at a pure soul like that suddenly justifies all the work Mephisto put into this – not just Spidey’s soul itself, but all the knockoff effects (imagine the despair in the hearts of all the Marvel heroes if Spidey has to rot in hëll for all eternity; maybe one or two would even mount an ill-advised rescue attempt! Or even more, if Mephisto decided to, shall we say, subtly encourage things).
Just imagine a run of issues where Spidey goes through the nine levels of Hëll. It could be horrific, to be sure, but done properly it could also become literal translation of the metaphysical anguish that encapsulates Spider-Man’s life: the ultimate iteration, if you will, of suffer-worse-worst-triumph-momentary burst of sheer happiness-repeat that is more or less the entire history of Spidey comics.
And there’s so much more you could do with it. Mary Jane-slash-Jackpot charging into Hëll after him halfway through when she finds out the truth of what happens. Somebody finally calling in that boon Loki owes Spider-Man from about five years ago. And yes, I can already tell you how it ends: with Peter and MJ, bruised and beaten, staring up as Mephisto swells to a thousand feet high or more to confront the equally giant attacker who, at the last moment, has come to save people he loves, and who can take Mephisto on, even in Hëll –
– but I’m not giving that away yet. Who knows, maybe I’ll get to write it.
(I believe the appropriate answer to that is “shyyyeeeah.”)
“I should’ve posted this earlier, but here’s a good idea on how OMD could have been fixed.”
Except it’s not an idea on how to fix OMD. It’s just an overly elaborate declaration that this guy wishes they’d never done OMD.
I dont agree that the marraige is no longer relevant (and I know by that Peter means in “present context”), that would be like saying Peter being bitten by a spider, then a practical NUKE going off (Spider-Man: Chapter One) was still canon whilst Peter just remembers it as a slight pain in the hand
Brand New Day is just another failed rebranding. I think if Dan treated it more like She-Hulk, full of irony and fourth-wall breaking, it could have an “All-Star Batman” appeal to it. Suffice to say, this Peter Parker so far in the story is a lifeless, directionless loser…and there’s no charm in that. The Peter I know triumphed over his social problems, and MJ, despite several attempts at running away, returned to stand by him and conquered her own problems. They both had the power to do it, and the responsibility to look after each other
That is real life. Not Arhcie, not Spawn, REAL-LIFE. With coustumes and powers (and all Peter does is climb up walls and has a sixth sense)
Marvel isnt telling stories about Spider-Man anymore, and havent for some time. They are telling storylines about SUPERMAN, SPAWN, and other CHARICTURES of who they want Spidey to reflect
Rivethed, you have a point in general about continuity but not in this case: This isn’t someone forgetting a minor detail (“Spidey said Flash was the second person to use the Vulture’s suit–how could he forget Blackie Drago?”) but wilfully rewriting it.
James Lynch, while I agree with you, I know several people who LOVE that kind of twist: When Buffy did the insane asylum episode, several online friends predicted the final episode would be us discovering Buffy really was insane and the whole series had been a hallucination and wouldn’t that be AWESOME? And I’ve heard the same said about lost.
A different thought: Wouldn’t Peter and MJ being forced to divorce cause them more pain? To be told to breakup and that Aunt May would live as long as they stayed apart? Instead of remembering in some small part of their mind to have a reminder every friggin’ day? Constantly? Certainly for MJ because even if she could understand Peter’s choice, the choice would have to bite. And wouldn’t it sure as hëll screw up any dating they tried to do later.
Of course, that wouldn’t have resulted in the Brand New Day setup Quesada wanted, so it’s irrelevant, but I thought I’d throw it out.
“Fandom really needs to get some perspective here.”
Maybe it’s Marvel publishing that needs to get some perspective. Marvel fans…at least, ones that go back more than 10 years or so…expect some level of adherance to continuity. Resets are something DC does, because for so long they didn’t pay any attention or care for continuity within their published universe, and the Crisis and related events were efforts to bring continuity. Which of course requires additional resets. Marvel built it’s name on telling stories more grounded in reality, where dead meant dead more often than it did in DC’s world.
The past 10 years, Marvel’s moved away from that, and caused a growing disallusionment within their older customers. We keep hearing about how comics aren’t bringing in enough new readers…if that’s true, then Marvel does need to get some perspective. Not that a reset can’t be accepted by the readers, but that if it’s going to happen, it needs to happen in a well-told story. One that makes sense. I’ve seen countless stories over the past 3 years where Marvel characters do things merely for the sake of the story. No care for staying true to their character as established by Marvel, no care for working to tell a story that’s consistant with past stories. Just telling stories for the sake of telling a story.
DC’s always done this. It make the first Crisis a publishing necessity. Then it lead to the Elseworlds label. Somewhere along the way, Marvel started doing this in their mainstream books.
I haven’t finished a Marvel mini-series in close to a decade. The only Marvel books I buy are titles acquired from Dabel Brothers. While I’ve already past my limit for accepting the stories Marvel is trying to sell, it remains to be seen whether OMD represents the final straw for a critical mass of customers or not. There’s a large vocal outcry against the way this story was told, but if it’s not accompanied by action…dropping Marvel books…nothing will really change.
Just read a post by JMS in which he says he raised several objections to Quesada’s claim this doesn’t alter continuity (“Either Harry’s been alive all these years or he was just raised from the dead.”) and was told repeatedly “It’s magic. Mephisto fixed that too.”
I think, as some have suggested, that mephisto fans should be the ones pìššëd. Is Mephisto so hard up these days that he needs to make deals just so he can hear souls in pain? What, he doesn’t have enough souls in his realm to listen to? What kind of deal is that where he wipes out the unmasking and Aunt May’s verge of death in exchange for Peter and Mary Jane feeling Melancholy once in a while? What kind of deal is that? Hey Mephy, maybe you should have thrown in Uncle Ben to sweeten the pot or season tickets to the Mets? Seriously, has he lost his touch or what? I remember when even had his own limted series, which come to think of it, did occur around the same time as the marriage…hmm. Anyways, Mephisto must be hard up if this deal was in anyway appealing to him. No wonder Franklin Richards wipes the floor with him.
As an aside, it’s nice to see the positive tone of this discussion/debate. When politics are discussed here, the posts often and quickly degenerte into massive generalizations, personal insults, and often cries of being picked on. The discussion here has been long, passionate, and full of contrasting and disagreeing voiewpoints — but folks have remained civil and polite to each other. It’s very good to see that debate doesn’t have to be mean spirited.
Assuming you guys have not already linked and/or read these, there is a nice discussion of the pros and cons of different types of retcons (along with the author’s feelings about “One More Day” and unrestrained retcons in general) at: http://www.websnark.com/archives/2008/01/retconning_just_1.html
J. Michael Stracynski also explains his talks with Quesada and his feelings about OMD at: http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=141756
Both are excellent reads.
I don’t have Part 4 of OMD yet (couldn’t get to the store last Friday and it sold out–I’ll get mine on the reorder), but I haven’t bothered avoiding spoilers because we all knew Joe Q wanted the marriage gone.
Here’s the thing: My biggest problem with the idea is that it’s lazy. It’s just lazy. Spider-Man’s married. He’s been married for ten years. You don’t want him to be married.
Too dámņ bad. That’s the character you’ve got to work with at this point in history. You work with a 30ish, married Peter Parker who’s a schoolteacher and sometimes supplements his income by taking news photos. That’s who Spider-Man is. When you work on a character with a long history, you deal with who the character has become over the course of that history, you don’t hit the Reset button to make him the character he was when you were twelve.
I really liked Augie DeBlieck’s imagining, over at CBR, of a Joe Q speech at Wizard World 2009, in which he says, essentially, “We got rid of the marriage and made Spidey a lonely loser, and it sucked. Now the marriage is back. Enjoy.”
My husband was curious when I told him that I feel being “Dallas-ed” about what just happened in the Spider-Man universe and when I explained to him what I meant, he completely agreed. He added, well… Dallas didn`t survive much longer after the infamous shower scene with Bobby and the reason is, the audience is not stupid and people don`t want to be treated as such.
I don`t want Spider-Man to end and I don`t think there is any danger of that. But I hope that sales figures will fall deep enough in order to give TPB reason to undo the damage they did, as much as that is possible.
I’m tickled by the strawman that’s floating around that fans are being irrational because they expect perfect continuity. Hardly anyone beside obsessive nitpickers expect all the details of the past to have a stranglehold on the stories of the present, but that’s extremely different from wiping out a substantial portion of the past.
It’s like a bad time travel story and worse the writers are probably going to assume that everything that happened before in the old timeline still happened except that MJ wasn’t involved and Harry didn’t die. Doesn’t that implicitly say that MJ was a wholly unnecessary character?
Yes, it’ll probably all change back but it’ll only change back because fans are mad like they are now. If they had ‘perspective’ then there wouldn’t be any push for change.
As for the idea that well, the old stories still exist on some meta level is rather disappointing to hear from an author. The thing about comics is that they’re a living, evolving universe. In reading fiction, you’re supposed to pretend that it’s real. Some may think it’s silly to be outraged if a story turns out to be a dream because the story didn’t exist in the first place but I think that misses the point. If the characters don’t exist even in their own self-contained world it changes how you feel about reading past stories.
Would I feel the same about the ending of Romeo and Juliet if it turns out to be a feverish dream? Or if I know it’s just going to end with a deal with the devil erasing everything that happened before?
What popped into my head last night was one more reason why this is wrong.
MJ is part of the family now.
I will grudgingly concede that Quesada has a point when he talks about how the buildup to the marriage was rushed and it was unrealistic to have Peter and Mary Jane to go from being just friends to being madly in love to getting married in three issues times or whatever.
But it happened, and it’s been the status quo for such a long time that MJ is, again, part of the family instead of just another character.
She isn’t like Harry, or Gwen, or Liz, or Flash. When she took her marriage vows, she became part of Peter’s family. That familial bond only strengthened the longer the two of them stayed together.
So I think that this is one reason why it is unacceptable to so many of us. This isn’t just a breakup of two characters who were romantically involved, but it is taking somebody who was a member of the Parker clan who shared a special connection with Peter and turning her into just another friend. That’s no good. It wouldn’t be any more acceptable to remove all memories of Aunt May and Peter being related–connected–and to cause him to just think of her as “that old woman” and her to think of him as “that nice young man.”
Even if the two of them got divorced instead, they would share a residual bond because of their memories of being together, of connecting. With the magic retcon, they don’t even have that.
Maybe the marriage was wrong, but two wrongs don’t make a right, and OMD is very wrong.
I’ve been wrasslin’ with the arguments in my head since the issue came out, and I’m still clawing at my brain. See, I’m not completely against the idea… provided good stories can be told. I welcome the return of the mechanical webshooters, as those were always nifty.
What I object to, however, is the crummy patch job this does on reality. “It’s magic” doesn’t work for me. Not when they’ve shoved the genie back into the box regarding his secret identity. Now they’re claiming that no one knows it? No one at all? And they just forgot? Did all the media, pictures, videos, etc etc etc just vanish? The world knows Spider-Man unmasked, but then they forgot… but how many people out there can now go “I knew who Spider-Man was… and I -forgot-? WTF? I’d better investigate this!” Iron Man, Reed Richards, Wolverine, Dr. Strange. Daredevil, Norman Osborn, J. Jonah Jameson, Human Torch, and so on… all people who you’d think would have a stake in wondering what happened. Because Mephisto, we’re told, didn’t have time to read 600 comics and pick and choose these things, he just handwaved and made everyone forget.
Apparently, he also rebuilt the house in Forest Hills, wiped out everything that came about as a result of Aunt May being shot, raised the dead, altered the timeline to bring new people into the social picture. We’re told that Peter and MJ’s -relationship- happened… just not their -marriage-. That they were together until recently, when something happened. So what is it? Did Mephisto surgically excise the fact and knowledge of the marriage out of reality, or did he change the past and create a new timeline of events? What’s still relevant now? That time spent living in Avengers Tower? Spider-Man’s membership in the New Avengers? All the stuff that happened to Peter and MJ solely because they were married?
To cut a long list of examples short, it’s just a massively awkward, ill-concieved, poorly-executed kludge. Marvel utterly FAILED by not IMMEDIATELY having something ship that would step back and look at the big picture and tell us what’s still relevant and what’s not. Let’s face it. In one breath, Joe Quesada tells us that it doesn’t matter about the immense negative reactions seen online, because the online commentators are a small fraction of the reading audience, and in the next, he’s giving interviews and offering clarifications online. The average reader, whether they’ve been reading for one year, five, ten, or twenty, is going to be confused as well, without the benefit of these interviews and explanations. So where’s the SPIDER-MAN: BRAND NEW DAY #1 that sits us all down and tells us how everything fits together?
I can enjoy the stories just fine, but as a long-time reader, it bothers me that I don’t know how things are supposed to work. If the webshooters are back, did the events where Peter got organic webshooters never happen? Are his other new powers gone? Did Mephisto change the past so it never happened, or just wipe them out in the here and now? If Harry Osborn is alive, did Mephisto change the past, or bring back the dead? If the Forest Hills house is back…
I’m not going to insist on perfect continuity. Just, y’know, explanations on how we got from point A to point B in an acceptably logical manner. “It’s magic” only goes so far. Either we had a total time travel reality rewrite, a la “Age of Apocalypse” or we had a reality overlay, a la “House of M.” To use elements of both is sloppy and confusing.
I have a lot of thoughts, and they’re getting unwieldy. I’ll keep reading Spider-Man to see how they handle this, but I really don’t like the way in which it all went down. Even for comic books, it strangled disbelief and leaves too many gaping chest woun- I mean, questions.
So in conclusion, the sooner that Marvel explains these things, the better.
Layla Miller.
I picked up my comics at my local comics shop last night. I told the clerk I needed to amend my pull list. I was dropping Amazing Spider-Man. He said I was hardly the the only one. People have been dropping Spider-Man since One More Day started. He said they used to order about 80 issues but their down to about 30 now.
I don’t know how widespread this trend is but that is a 62.5% decrease in orders at my shop.
That should be “THEY’RE down to about 30 now.”
Apparently I’m better at math than grammar.
Been thinking about this for a day or so, and also lurking around a few fora(if that’s the correct spelling) and I realized something. On the internet, most people won’t allow themselves to see “fairly neutral” as, well, fairly neutral. There HAS to be a deeper meaning, EVERYTHING has to be a confrontation or THE BAD GUYS WIN!! The BAD GUYS, being, of course, anyone that disagrees with you. ANY comment, EVERY comment, is the deepest darkest representation of the typist’s soul.
Or, at least that’s the way some people seem to treat it. When I saw the post that said it wasn’t the way PAD would’ve handled it, I said, “Huh, not the way I’d’ve done it either, but that might be why I do unmade screenplays and not work for Marvel.” Or, something equally self-deprecating. Guess what, friends? If PAD had written the story, IT’D BE DIFFERENT! Better? Worse? Who knows? Just DIFFERENT. Heck, I could give PAD anything I’ve written(and brother, is there a lot of it) and tell him to rewrite ANY of it, and you know what? IT’D BE DIFFERENT! (For one thing, the jokes would probably make more than three people on this planet laugh…) And even the worst things that happen in a comic book, TV series, movie, comic strip, serial novel, or really bad joke eventually get made all right.
Sometimes, take people at their word. Don’t analyze every micron of every letter of every word if the message is simple.
Paul Balze: Spider-Man’s married. He’s been married for ten years.
Luigi Novi: This is a Marvel time reference, right? Where has this been established, just out of curiosity? (I assumed you weren’t talking about real time, since they’ve been married in real time for 20 years.)
In Marvel time, they’ve probably been married about 3-7 years. Franklin Richards was 4 1/2 when they got married, he’s somewhere around 10 now (give or take a couple of years, and assuming that his kidnapping to another dimension and subsequent return left him with no net gain in age), so we’ll split the difference and call it a five-year marriage. (Part of the problem is that Marvel’s “aged” a lot of characters off-panel during Quesada’s run as EIC; Kitty Pryde went from about sixteen or seventeen in the 90s to her early to mid twenties now, with no real timeframe for it. Ditto with Franklin, who spent ages at four or five, then jumped to ten or eleven within the last few years. Admittedly, character aging and timeframes are tricky to deal with, so I don’t blame any specific writer, but it does seem to be a relatively recent trend to assume these characters must be older, because they’ve been around for so long, instead of assuming that they don’t age much during and between stories.)
Which has some relevance, I suppose…the characters have aged a lot more during Quesada’s tenure as EIC, so it’s not entirely surprising that he’s trying to reverse that trend.
“On the internet, most people won’t allow themselves to see “fairly neutral” as, well, fairly neutral. “
That’s a large part of the nature of the internet. People who don’t have a strong opinion about something won’t even bother finding a message board in the first place. So when they go to the message boards looking for people to agree with them, they always find that agreement whether it’s really there or not.
Actually, when I said the Parkers had been married for ten years, I was thinking real time. I guess it’s Superman and Lois Lane who were married in 1996, though, isn’t it? Since I wasn’t a regular reader of Amazing until JMS started writing it, the dates of earlier events don’t spring readily to mind for me…as a matter of fact, the first Spider-Man title I took the trouble to order was Tangled Web, and I initially ordered that because Garth Ennis and John McCrea did the first story arc.
OMD had me up to a point, then it “jumped the shark” and pulled a Scooby Doo ( cue ret-con sfx) ending.
Harry what? hummina wha? Not so much the plot, but the execution therein. It would have been more interesting had Peter retained his memories and been placed in that situation- how does he -older Peter-deal with the people in his past now that he’s “wayback” Peter.
Nobody seems to have picked up on it the first time, so …
Layla Miller.
Think about it.
What about Layla Miller?
I just wanted to say thanks for your run on FNSM. It was the most fun main-U Spidey book I’ve read, and seeing you work with Todd Nauck again really just made my week every time. I wish you could continue. You always take things perhaps foisted upon you by crossovers and editorial directions and make them work for the story you want to tell. That’s cool.
That said, I think that One More Day was pretty horrible and I am not looking forward to the new direction at all. I was really only reading FNSM regularly anyway, so I’m just going back to Ultimate Spidey. 616 Spidey no longer interests me. (I liked the marriage a lot…As pathetic as this sounds, it was a nice glimmer of hope to hold onto. Now…it’s gone.)
Anyway, glad you aren’t letting yourself be used by us upset fans. You gotta stick to your own principles, not be tossed around by others.
Looking forward to more of your She-Hulk and Fallen Angel, and always keeping my fingers crossed for a comeback of Young Justice!
Hi everyone,
my english is pretty bad so I will do it quick.
Like many of you I don’t like OMD.
Recently they put online one draw from JRJr where Marvel say not even Daredevil knows Spidey is Peter Parker.
I would like to know Mr David… so, what about your old arc on the Death of Jean DeWolff where Spidey and DD team-up and DD cries a “Peter” to Spider-man ?
Mephisto erased that story too, by magic ?
Or Jean is back from the dead just like Harry ?
I very much doubt that Jean is back. But I suppose it’s possible.
PAD
OK …
Layla Miller knows stuff.
In fact, she knew about the screwed up universe in the House of M scenario.
Isn’t it convenient that she’s not in the ‘here and now’ when Spidey’s life is altered?
Any bets that she knows something’s wrong again and can be used as a back door to set things back the way they’re supposed to be?
It might be a bit of schadenfreude, but I do sort of enjoy how no one is really happy how things played out.
Quesada is unhappy because they had to delay issues to ham-fistedly re-write and add art to the last issue and a half to line things up with Brand New Day.
JMS is unhappy because the story ends with a completely illogical magic reset instead of his slightly logical magical can of worms.
The fans are unhappy because the story reads like a ham-fisted, completely illogical magic reset.
Hey, kids! Comics!
http://www.comicbookresources.com/news/newsitem.cgi?id=12664
http://www.comicbookresources.com/news/newsitem.cgi?id=12673
http://www.comicbookresources.com/news/newsitem.cgi?id=12681
http://www.comicbookresources.com/news/newsitem.cgi?id=12688
http://www.comicbookresources.com/news/newsitem.cgi?id=12694
The links are for Quesada;s 5 part interview @ comic resources. My understanding is that ALL the stories happened. It’s the MEMORY of Peter & MJ being married and the unmasking that are “forgotten” by everyone.
Joe V.
The plug for ASM#600 in June 2009 is the biggest clue this is a two and half year swerve
Luigi Novi on 01/01/08 9:24PM did indeed state eloquently and succinctly why continuity (the overarching kind, not the minutiae kind) is important.
Someone else stated on the other thread that while they could rant about the situation, they just don’t care anymore.
I’m almost there. Spider-Man has been my favorite for as long as I can remember. I’ve been reading his stories since 1978 and collecting them since 1985. I wore out several pairs of Spidey underroos. I’ve spent years and thousands of dollars acquiring a near-complete run of ASM (only 12 issues away!). I care deeply about the character.
Good stories are only a good start. Good stories are so much more satisfying when they are part of a finely-woven tapestry of character development and consistent progress that allows the reader to truly suspend that disbelief that becomes so much harder to ignore the older we get. Stories like OMD (and the atrocious “Sins Past” raping of Gwen’s character) lead me to question the money, time and emotion I have dedicated to both this character and comic books in general over the last 30 years.
Perhaps this is, at last, the final straw. I left Spidey when the Clone Saga hit, but came back after a couple of years. I’m leaving Spidey again now. Maybe this time I’ll decide to save myself the time, money and inevitable anguish that will accompany a future return. I’m just tired of it.
1The basic concept of continuity is a staple to the average comic book produced on a monthly basis. I pick up comics because of favorite writers (I’ve hunted your’s down, Mr. David, since the arc you did on Spidey in the 80s), sometimes favorite artists, and rarely because of the character(s).
I can bend to some screw ups in continuity. I can understand new writers/editors wanting to go in a new direction, even when it’s a bad decision. What I cannot abide is sloppiness, or cheesiness in my reading.
Making MJ the one who makes the deal with the devil keeps Pete clean. Erasing their marriage instead of a divorce or killing off MJ keeps Pete clean. I’ve stayed with Spidey for decades through clones, erased baby of Pete and MJ (yet not in the Spider-girl comic, weirdly enough), power changes, spider totems and more mostly because of the character involved and how I can relate to him. To some degree the writers/editors have always made some sort of attempt to provide continuity/believability (except for vanishing/erased/forgotten baby). But this is beyond my acceptability.
A decade or so the powers that be in Marvel went a different way with Incredible Hulk, losing a writer I thought had made the Hulk better than ever yet always steeped in the history and continuity that came before him. I stopped buying the Hulk immediately.
For some reason it’s a whole lot harder for me to do that with Spidey… but I am.
Thanks for the place to rant.
I don’t know if this has been said, so I’m gonna say it.
Good stories could come out of this. REALLY good stories. Not just after the fact, but DEALING with this. Like maybe The Watcher meets up with Q who meets up with the Beyonder who show the webhead that there is a different path his life could’ve gone and he’s gotta fight through. What’s been reset once can be reset again. You know, eventually.
I just read ASM #546. It turns out that the unmasking in Civil War did take place, but no one remembers who he turned out to be.
This has got to be the dumbest, stupidest wrinkle in this whole mess yet. They couldn’t just have Mephisto erase the unmasking? They had to leave it in, but not let anyone remember who it was? That’s just plain fûçkìņg stupid.
And what about Mary Jane? That same page says, “Absolutely no one knows that Peter Parker is Spider-Man, not Daredevil, not the Avengers, not anyone.” This makes no sense. Daredevil has known forever. Mary Jane knew from shortly after Peter became Spidey, when she witnessed him jumping out of his bedroom window one night as Spidey. Puma and Wolverine know for the same reason Daredevil did. How is it that Mephisto erased these things (when he never indicated he would), but not the unmasking? It just plain makes no sense! Won’t Professor X, or Dr. Strange, or hëll, EVERYONE, realize that something is seriously wrong if they can all remember that he unmasked, but can’t remember who it is? Won’t they realize that their memories have been messsed with? And what happens when they go to look up the unmasking in the papers? What will they find? All the relevant pages missing? Who’s gøddámņ retarded idea was this????
Sean Good stories could come out of this. REALLY good stories.
Luigi Novi: Good stories could follow this. But I can’t see how they’ll come out of it. The only good one that could come out of it would be a reversal of it, and only if they could execute it in such a way that made OMD seem like it was always planned to be undone eventually because there was some reason for it.
I went to the comicbook shop today, and the owner seemed to love the story. I don’t actually read Spider-Man, but the whole idea of Brand New/One More Day leaves a bad taste in my mouth. There are better ways than magic to do away with every little problem (I now came to realize that House of M wasn’t as unique and interesting as I once thought it to be, since the future of all Marvel comics will rely in magic resolving everything), and I think the excuses Marvel gave to JMS (which he then relayed in in some interview) are just lazy writing. I have never given into the popular trend of bashing Marvel or the editors before, because I think they’re doing a great job, but this story is making me understand just why people hate them so much.
On a funny note, when I was at the shop today, there was an old What If about What If Peter and MJ never got married on display right next to the latest issue of Spidey.
Luigi Novi sez:
“I just read ASM #546. It turns out that the unmasking in Civil War did take place, but no one remembers who he turned out to be.
This has got to be the dumbest, stupidest wrinkle in this whole mess yet. They couldn’t just have Mephisto erase the unmasking? They had to leave it in, but not let anyone remember who it was? That’s just plain fûçkìņg stupid.
And what about Mary Jane? That same page says, “Absolutely no one knows that Peter Parker is Spider-Man, not Daredevil, not the Avengers, not anyone.” This makes no sense. Daredevil has known forever. Mary Jane knew from shortly after Peter became Spidey, when she witnessed him jumping out of his bedroom window one night as Spidey. Puma and Wolverine know for the same reason Daredevil did. How is it that Mephisto erased these things (when he never indicated he would), but not the unmasking? It just plain makes no sense! Won’t Professor X, or Dr. Strange, or hëll, EVERYONE, realize that something is seriously wrong if they can all remember that he unmasked, but can’t remember who it is? Won’t they realize that their memories have been messsed with? And what happens when they go to look up the unmasking in the papers? What will they find? All the relevant pages missing? Who’s gøddámņ retarded idea was this????”
Whoa! Luigi, you were always the rational one. still, to tell you the truth, If this “gd” idea is Joe Quesada’s then it is exactly the kind of thinking that Bob Harras (who and let me be frank was in my opinion the actual writer for the spider-titles during the [laughs derisively] relaunch after the v.2 #1’s of each book because there is no way repeat no way in all the levels of Hëll that Ralf Macchio would have let Howard Mackie write like that [I shoud also note that the issues of Amazing Volume 2 that Byrne wrote were Byrne’s on Harras’s “advice”) said when in the Life of Reilly column devoted to the clone saga,when told that Aunt May’s return from the ersatz dead would contradict a line that Harras requested in the Osborn Journal one shot (that came out shorly after the clone saga ended to explain why Norman had his fingers in so many Clone Pies… mmm Cloned Pies) that Osborn was not involved in everything and so commented that it was a “pity he was not responsible for [May’s] death.” Harras replied to the effect of “And he didn’t because May wasn’t really dead.”
Actually when thinking about this, I kind of find it bizzare that Joe Quesada who had hired JMS to fix Spider-Man would choose to co-plot JMS’s swan song like this because it seems to be that “if it’s fixed, then don’t break it and calling it fixing.” Most people would have said if it ain’t broke [anymore], don’t fix it.” But mine is more literal.
Still, I read on Newsarama that so many people are cancelling Spider-holds in their comic shop. Will this lead to DA Q’s downfall? (like I said earlier, don’t want it, but won’t be surprised)
Oh yes and in direct reply, maybe Mephisto is going o cloak Puma, DD, and Wolverine’s senses. Oh wait, I just saw pigs fly at that idea.
Meant to say “maybe Mephisto is going to cloak Puma, DD, and Wolverine’s senses.”