Tuesday, January 8, 2008

I love comic fans

http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=142267

Most people have been spared the atrocity of One More Day but not the folk who've posted 28 pages in a day (& counting) of commentary. Out of, what, five billion people on the planet only one was annoyed about Spider-Man's marriage and since he happened to be Marvel's Editor-In-Chief he decided to do something about it. The resulting OMD story was the kind of thing that gives superhero comics such a bad rep, so bad that even Straczynski who already created the worst single comic book ever (the 9/11 "tribute" in Amazing Spider-Man) claims that he was asking Marvel if his name could be removed from the story. It's not just that OMD was turgid and devoid of any dramatic conflict but that it was presented as the deepest soul searching as if we'd believe that just on somebody's say. Yeah, DC also backed off on the grim control-freak version of Batman and that wasn't a bad move--it doesn't take long before such narrow characterization runs its course--but Spider-Man stories were just starting to get really interesting. Now it appears we're in for more Marvel deja vu all over again.

So why are comic fans upset? Because basically Marvel reverted to SM status quo of about 20+ years ago and for no reason that anybody can see. It's a Bobby in the shower moment. Sure most readers expected that at some point Marvel was going to reset SM so that his secret identity was still secret (I actually liked the story potentials that revelation opened up) but putting everything back that far is more than a little odd. We already have Ultimate Spider-Man and the Marvel Adventures version so why go with yet another teen heroes & villains story? And with just one SM title that comes out three times a month making it a little tricky to keep track this may be the time many readers bail.