Spider-Man General Discussion

To be fair to the Green Goblin, at least the Goblin parts of the costume are green. Also merry Christmas everybody.

I'll teach you a lesson about just how cruel the world can be. That's my job, as an adult.

Merry Christmas to you too...and to all the Spider-Man boards.

I just found out something really interesting. Don't know if any of this was reported before. So around 2000, a number of writers for Superman including Grant Morrison, Mark Millar, and Mark Waid, pitched an idea for a Superman reboot that would return the character to what the writers believed was its roots. They believed that the Silver Age tropes that they saw as central to Superman was missing in Post-Crisis and they cited Clark's marriage to Lois as the problem. Their solution...Mr. Mxyzsptlk forces them to bargain their marriage in exchange for saving the world, and Clark and Lois would accept and this would lead to a reboot. Mark Waid by the way went on to be one of the writers who Quesada consulted in 2005 when he was planning his grand heist, he also supported OMD and wrote Spider-Man during the wretched Brand New Day era before Slott bailed everyone out. And while I think it might be stretching it to say that Waid gave Quesada this idea, Waid was pretty embittered when his pitch on Superman got rejected by DC's President)...the similarities are uncanny.

I don't know if Waid was interviewed about this connection. All I found was an interview he gave after BND where he basically said, "we are trying to be as compassionate as possible to the shrinking fanbase of the marriage" which is actually a very mean thing to say and inaccurate (newsflash a huge portion of fans who like the marriage are millenials). It's a little sad because I actually do like some of Waid's stuff, especially Justice League of America: Tower of Babel but he's probably the guy you can thank for giving Quesada the idea to use Mephisto, even if he may not have suggested Mephisto himself. DC later did go to a single Superman but they did it via their Continuity Reboot i.e. they created new versions of Superman and so on, separate and distinct from the Post-Crisis one (which is sep. and distinct from Silver-Bronze Age Superman). That meant that the version of characters that an entire generation knew weren't violated and so on, and people treated New 52 Superman as essentially a new character and it also meant that when they brought back in that new comic with Superman and Lois and the kid, they still had things both ways. They can do stuff with this Superman and maybe still plan another Continuity Reboot with a new one that does it better, and still keep this one around for future use. It gives more options.

Edited by Revolutionary_Jack on Dec 25th 2018 at 6:27:19 AM

I would expect this shit from Chuck Austin but not from Morrison

Fie and shame, I thought better of you, Grant

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Morrison had nothing to do with OMD. If he did, it would probably have been much better written.

listen a married superman was too much like a soap opera, the only answer is to magic them divorced and create a love triangle between superman, lois, and clark which is not t all like a soap opera

Regarding the similar Superman idea though

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At the very least it would have been trippy as fuck so yeah it prolly would have been more entertaining.

Edited by slimcoder on Dec 25th 2018 at 8:17:49 AM

"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."

Anyway, Waid is the connective tissue. And he cut his teeth on DC before coming to Marvel. So this is technically still DC's fault.

If you read that article, it says that there are two versions, one was Superman Now that was more Morrison-centric, whereas Superman 2000 was the group-effort. I read Grant Morrison's stuff on X-Men (which I liked until Planet X, and even then I am more positive about Here Comes Tomorrow, his closing run, than negative). Batman, and the most entertaining part was the Batman comics of the Silver Age he was referring to such as Zuh-En-Arrh and Robin Dies At Dawn. I also read All-Star Superman which is a tribute to the Lois Clark romance but there isn't a marriage there. Morrison isn't interested in Spider-Man I believe. He said once in passing, according to Thomas Mets, that Spider-Man was an infantile and teenage smear on Superman and Batman and part of Stan Lee's irreverence to the Silver Age. He's part of that British Invasion wave that went over to DC and away from Marvel in The '80s (to give Quesada credit, he actually did bring English talent on to Marvel, like Mark Millar, Warren Ellis, though the best of them is Paul Jenkins who wrote The Spectacular Spider-Man and is pro-marriage).

FWIW, I do think Alan Moore would have been on board with a married Spider-Man. In 1983, he wrote this article on how Marvel's "illusion of change" attitude stinks, and he cited Spider-Man:"If you take a look at a current Spider-Man comic, you’ll find that he’s maybe twenty years old, he worries a lot about whats right and what’s wrong, and he has a lot of trouble with his girlfriends...Do you know what Spider-Man was doing fifteen years ago? Well, he was about nineteen years old, he worried a lot about what was right and what was wrong and he had a lot of trouble with his girlfriends."

So I've read Miles Morales: The Ultimate Spider Man vol 1 here's some hot take.

• Miles is a much more understated than the movie version. His expressions are more subtle early on.
• Prowler is quite a creep and I do like him that way, it makes me want to see Miles kick him in the face.
• Scorpion is really badass. I like this more than ITSV version, though this guy is not PG-friendly.
• Not really into the supporting cast. The only person Miles has constant interaction with is Ganke and I don't like him.
• Really like Spider-Men. Seeing Aunt May and Gwen beat up 616 Peter is carthartic.

I'm going to read Ultimate Spider-Man vol 1 now and the art does not inspire confidence. Peter looks 30 years old for a teenager.

Edited by RAlexa21th on Dec 25th 2018 at 9:04:06 AM

Where there's life, there's hope.

...wow. That's enough shade to cover the entire planet.

...why?

To both why you enjoyed it, and why they beat him up.

One Strip! One Strip!

They beat up 616 because they thought he were someone cosplaying as their dead nephew/friend.

Where there's life, there's hope.

Wait are you reading the original Miles series?

My first comics ever was his first run.

Edited by slimcoder on Dec 25th 2018 at 9:09:50 AM

"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."

Yes, Miles' origin story to Prowler's death, plus the first Spider-Men.

I have some issues with the trade though. In Spider-Men Aunt May and Gwen clearly knows Miles but in the main story proper they haven't met yet.

Edited by RAlexa21th on Dec 25th 2018 at 9:15:09 AM

Where there's life, there's hope.

I was personally disappointed with Here Comes Tomorrow

It is one of my least favorite Bad Future because there’s little to recommend it aside from the psychic Scottish whale

Changing gears, I’m in the midst of my own read of Ultimate Miles and I agree that he needs a better supporting cast. I personally like Ganke but there needs to be more than just him. And also they really should have kept Miles out of any big crossover events for a longer while

Edited by Bocaj on Dec 25th 2018 at 12:20:12 PM

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I thought Goldballs was a nice addition to Miles' cast. I know that he was only added because he was a Bendis character, but he was also the type of character that fit in really well with Miles.

Man Bendis really loved his name.

It was a joke that would not end.

"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."

...Well, now that we're on the subject.

What did Goldballs do? I'm legitimately curious.

One Strip! One Strip!

He was a mutant whose power was to literally eject gold-colored balls from his body. Not kidding. He was from Bendis's Uncanny X-Men run.

Edited by alliterator on Dec 25th 2018 at 10:14:10 AM

He was the most memorable of the new X-Men introduced in Bendis’ X-Men run.

Alongside the time-manipulating Tempest though in her case, she went off the fucking deep-end & became willing to threaten to unborn people for shit they aren’t even responsible for (just ask Cyclops).

At least Goldballs stayed a hero.

"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."

If we are bringing up OMD again, i gotta say i feel like someone at Marvel is venting out issues when they say that no one can relate to a married man. This may sound insensitive but how many writers/Executives at Marvel are divorced?

Also: hot take: OMD made Peter so unlikable and such a hypocrite when it comes to responsibility, Doc Ock stealing his body and wiping his memories later on, is kind of laser-guided karma in a way.

I'll teach you a lesson about just how cruel the world can be. That's my job, as an adult.

It wasn't that no one could "relate" to anyone who was married (Mr. Fantastic has been married since the '60s and nobody cares about that), it was that Joe Quesada thought that marriage "aged" Peter too much and wouldn't make him relatable to new fans. Joe Quesada himself grew up during the time when Peter was in his early 20s and struggling with college and so on and felt that this intersection between his life as Peter and his life as Spider-Man was essential to the comic, which meant that he couldn't be married.

In fact, this is what he had to say about it during an in-depth interview with fans (say what you will, but Joe Quesada made himself available to answer loads of questions):

While I can see his viewpoint (Stan Lee already stated something similar with the "illusion of change"), it doesn't work with the introduction of the Ultimate Universe and Ultimate Spider-Man, i.e. there can always be stories with a young Spider-Man or a 20-year-old Spider-Man, even if the main Spider-Man gets married and gets older.

It’s a false dichotomy anyway

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Let's not go there, I mean personal lives of people behind-the-scenes. It's probably not healthy and proper on our part and it keeps stuff away from the actual debates about character progression and growth. I personally find that uncomfortable. Remember that at the end of the day these are corporate products and fictional characters and I am sure that people behind the scenes will think of their real families, real careers, and real incomes, and other stuff and put that over some fictional character's life. You can argue against that creatively, you can question their judgement, and definitely their justifications, but beyond that there's no point. This isn't to say that nobody puts bits of themselves and stuff into their creations of course but it's grounded in reality.

I must say that now that Spencer has taken over, I can actually go back and read Slott's stuff with some amount of relief. Since there's now an ending to it, I can be more neutral in judgment. There's none of the yanking of chains. I read the Regent Arc in Parker Industries and let me say Peter comes off as a colossal a—hole. I mean it takes a lot to make Iron Man the good guy when he and Peter Parker interact but Slott did it. Like Peter striking at Tony Stark first for no reason than petty jealousy and then as Spider-Man, in front of Miles Morales, accusing Tony of stealing his girl (Mary Jane...who he's broken up with, and is not dating Tony). Since when is Peter James Franco's Harry Osborn. Then at the end of it Iron Man and Spider-Man say that it's not good for heroes to fight and it's played like both were in wrong, but no Peter punched first and for no good reason. It's not a case where both are wrong. I found Go Down Swinging quite enjoyable by contrast. I know a lot of people disliked the Peter and MJ scene there but in retrospect, Slott is actually undoing some of his earlier stuff and seeding their reconciliation. Obviously when he wrote that he knew Spencer was taking over and that he was bringing them back together, so he wrote a small thaw and moved them together by the end, while allowing Spencer to actually bring them together. Issue #801 is sentimental and obviously manipulative but not bad. Chip Zdarsky's "Finale" is better. What I dislike about Slott is that it's weird and creepy seeing Peter and his Romita-era gang basically as narcissistic 1%-ters. Like Harry is super-rich, Liz Allan is Cersei Lannister basically, MJ works for Stark, and it's like the entire drama takes place in these corporate offices and we're supposed to care about these very rich people and so on. Peter is an ex-rich guy.

Spencer's run on the other hand is shaping up to be fun. I loved the Peter and MJ stuff and I like the bit with Peter and Boomerang in that club. MJ and Peter both back in the lower middle classes feels right and you have real humanity in the story.

The problem with that logic is that fans don't get introduced to the character the way that editors think they do. The fact is the marriage was popular and liked by younger and newer audiences. It's popular among millennials. The 616 Comics aren't targeted at kids, and aren't read by them mainly. I mean growing up I read Spider-Man in the newspaper where he was married...and the reason is that was an all-ages lighter-and-softer comic that young kids could read. It had no violence, it was funny, and it had the adventurousness nature of a superhero story. In current comics, only Renew Your Vows has that quality. And now you are going to have a situation where young kids read a married Spider-Man, and as teenagers read teenage Spider-Man and are told to accept as adults that Spider-Man being single makes him unrelatable.

That's not Peter Pan. That's Benjamin Button.

Edited by Revolutionary_Jack on Dec 26th 2018 at 12:32:21 PM

Huh? Who brought up writers' personal lives?