I've decided to give Marvel Comics' new direction for its flagship character, Spider-Man a shot; last week I bought the first of three issues of Amazing Spider-Man to be published this January, which prosaically enough bears the caption "Brand New Day."
Having suffered through the contrivance of One More Day and its ham-handed tabula rasa treatment of Spider-Man continuity, I couldn't help but groan at how Marvel is essentially trying to sell us a bill of goods by telling us that the Marvel Universe is essentially the same place it's been all this time, except that Peter Parker is no longer married to Mary Jane, Aunt May doesn't remember who Peter Parker is, and, oh Harry Osborn, who died quite poignantly in Spectacular Spider-Man 200, is inexplicably alive. As a comic fan I understand that contrivance is very much the name of the game, but that doesn't excuse a lack of creativity.
Oddly enough, I, a married man, even understand the logic behind 'un-marrying' Peter, but find the way it was done so slipshod that I simply cannot give my long-term support to the damage it's done to the last twenty or so years of Spider-Man's mythos. Oh, sure, Marvel editorial have done a great deal of online damage control saying that they've gone over Spider-Man's history and have figured out how this is all going to work, but frankly I'm no longer interested in waiting around to find out how.
I can't stand, first and foremost, that Peter and Aunt May's relationship, which had evolved quite beautifully under J. Michael Straczynski's tenure, has been reset to her not knowing his secret identity. Issue #38 of ASM Vol. II, the issue where May and Peter have it out about his long-kept secret, and easily my favorite issue of JMS's seven-year run on the title, has just been rendered null and void, as well as all of the other touching issues where Aunt May shows how strong she really is. Sure, the new Spider crew tries to show the audience that this isn't your daddy's Aunt May--she's a proactive, tough-as-nails member of the community, helping out in soup kitchens and election campaigns--but it feels like it's too little, too late. The point is that Peter is still bullshitting her, and not only that, he's now a bum to boot. Parker luck my ass.
I find the 'mysterious' superheroine Jackpot (to whom I was introduced as early as last May's Free Comic Book Day issue of ASM) similarly wince-inducing, and hope, most likely in vain, that it isn't Mary Jane under the tights because I can't possibly think of a worse conceptualization for a superhero. Where'd she get her super powers? Mephisto? Shouldn't she be on fire or something?
Most jarring of all is the return of Harry, whose death way back in 1993 was handled with such sensitivity and finesse that I was sure his demise would go on to be Spidey canon, like Gwen Stacy, Jean De Wolffe, or Kraven. I found particularly crass how Joe Quesada basically said "come on, you just have to have Harry back, it makes everything more fun" or something like that, basically showing that the only reason Harry's back is because he thinks it's a good idea.
I'm not even going to go into the hypergeekness that has fandom picking away at how One More Day and Brand New Day represent essentially a huge tear in Marvel's space time continuum as a whole. I don't even read that many comics, as big a comic fan as I may have been.
All I know is that Joe Quesada and company have whipped out their wangs and pissed on, by and large, my experience of reading Spider-Man comic books. I'm going to finish the first three issues of this new direction, and then I am going to swear off Spider-Man in general...not a hard thing to do considering 1) I hadn't been regularly collecting ASM since John Romita Jr. left the book and 2) I really do have to make some spending cutbacks in the next few months, so this is a good place to start.
It made me happy to see Marvel Comics dominating sales for two years in a row following DC's several years of dominance riding on the shoulders of Jim Lee, Michael Turner, and event comics with the word "Crisis" attached to it, but now I'm just depressed because I really get the impression that Joe Quesada thinks he can get away with murder.
Well, Joe, I can now honestly say that although I've enjoyed a lot, and I mean a LOT of the comic books that came out under your watch as Marvel E-I-C, I'm done letting you walk all over my favorite comic book character.
I'll be back if and when all of this new dreck is retconned out of existence.
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