Monday, June 28, 2010

Rubbing Salt in the Wound – Or Pre-Judging Amazing Spider-Man O.M.I.T.


So I read the wordless preview of the new Spider-Man story where Joey Q. is going to give us the story of what happened to Peter and Mary Jane’s wedding.

Joe has been telling anyone who listens that he wanted to get rid of the marriage and he was always telling the story of how it was put together really fast in answer to Superman’s marriage or whatever.

Should Spider-Man be married or not, why he is married or whatever was all unimportant. Whether by editorial fiat or the twisted hand of fate it had been part of the character for many years and was an integral part of Spider-Man’s history. It made him unique as one of the few characters in comics who was married. In my years of reading Spider-Man on and off I never saw the marriage as a bad thing and during JMS’ run on the book it made for some great stories. One example is when they were getting back together after almost getting a divorce. It made Spider-Man relatable in different ways then other characters.

Joe hated it and it had to go and so we got One More Day. One of the worse retro-cons in the history of comics and a betrayal of what the characters stood for as well as a metaphysical solution to a very grounded and scientific based hero. Whatever, I’m now off this book, maybe forever. I’m not going to reinvest in a bunch of stories to have the next EIC blink his eyes or wrinkle his nose (two very old TV show references and a cookie if you know them) and change it all again.

So One Moment In Time is not for me as I don’t care. But it is rubbing salt in the wound. Greg just wrote a glowing review of what is happening in the title right now and I have had a bunch of people tell me they are telling great stories with great art in Amazing Spider-Man. I’m not getting back into the book, but there is a buzz on the book and the faithful are being rewarded and new/old fans are coming back.

So why the f*** are they throwing a monkey wrench into the momentum of this book. It feels to me like Joey wanted to try and show everyone why the marriage was wrong and why it should never have happened. It is almost like his ego is being gnawed at by the criticism of One More Day so he wants to prove he is right or some such crap. Remember he and JMS butted heads over OMD and seemed to be one of the reasons JMS left Marvel eventually.

Dan Didio decided he wanted to write a comic and now I no longer buy Outsiders that I was enjoying under Peter Tomasi’s pen. Now I will grant you I was not ready to buy Spider-Man again, but any progress that I had made in forgetting the travesty of OMD has just lost and my flame of hatred for the story has been stoked back to its full fury. I’m guessing I’m not the only one and the completeist crowd are stuck buying this while they were wishing for more stories they were enjoying. This appears to be all for the sake of satiating the ego of Joey Quesada. It is shame, but it does seem that any power will be abused - and who can say no to your boss when you still want to have a job?

It seems the only time great power comes great responsibility is in comics, in the real world with great power comes immense ego and abuse of that power.

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