SPIDER-MAN: A BRAND NEW DAY

Wow, Bob Gale? What an odd choice. The only comics work he's done was that 6-part Daredevil story like 7 years ago, right?

Those Gale issues of DD were great tho, glad to see he's writing more comics (and that JMS is writing less!)

http://andrewfarago.livejournal.com/16145.html

Dan Slott w/ Steve McNiven??? sounds tasty!

A tasty treat covered with ANGST!

Guys I know I'm probably in the minority on this but the "reboot" has been pretty FUN (even if that last arc by Gale w/ the bookie had too much of a Web of Spider-Man fill-in vibe for my taste). And they're adding Joe Kelly & Mark Waid & Mike McKone & John Romita Jr. to the creative team(s)! And ZOMG Anti-Venom!!! (NB: Enthusiasm in the last sentence is possibly feigned.)

Tho, really, how did The House of Ideas greenlight CARNAGE all those years ago & not think of Anti-Venom?

PENICILLIN!

Give that man a contract & a Psylocke / Elektra mini-series!

No, I'm digging it, too. Yeah, there's nothing amazing about it, and it's mostly just a retro throwback, but thus far it's been really well-done, especially that Slott / Marcos Martin arc.

What's the August/Sept ILC feeling towards BND? I'm only reading library trades, so months behind the current floppies readers, but I found both OMD and BND relatively disappointing.

OMD was ham-handed, much like a lot of the Civil War, where folk acted out-of-character to speed along the plot. Mephisto as the deus ex machina, the "explore every possibility simultaneously" Dr. Strange section, Peter's two tons of dripping angst, Peter's inability to see the neon sign blinking "I'M YOUR POTENTIAL DAUGHTER", Aunt May's inevitable fate as a skeleton rocking in Peter's basement, etc. Overall, left a bad taste behind, and reminded me of Ebert's "Idiot Rule", where characters act like idiots to move the plot along.

This return to Joe Q's concept of the core Spider-Man feels like a mistaken desire to return to early '70s ASM. I wasn't for or against the marriage in the first place, but it seemed like a natural evolution for the character, and paralleled the aging readership. That is, assuming the character evolves, as it is 'comic book time', after all. Why not allow Spider-Man to evolve, and have children to feed the newer readers' need for age-relatable characters? Marvel strikes me as more stagnant than DC in this regard, but then Marvel doesn't have a huge roster of sidekick heroes to age, do they?

The initial BND trade was okay. Mr. Negative, Menace, etc. are all good villians, but also could have been as effective in the old married framework. The unremarkable nature of the story had me wondering why there was such a push to get back to that status quo. Throw in Jackpot, who may or may not be MJ in disguise, and, well, meh.

I'm guessing the Spider-Man fans with less than a 10 year history are reacting differently to the marriage dissolution and retcon than the older fans?

I think the idea of having one main title instead of three separate books is a good one. I think a bunch of other superhero franchise books that have multiple titles would be better off setting something like this up with a lead writer/editor that sets the macro tone for a series, then having writer/artists come in in arcs like how they are doing this run is a good idea. In theory it should help keep everything a bit more consistent continuity in the long run.

Of course, how this whole thing got started is really funky as they pretty much painted themselves into a corner then hit the reset button.

As an old fan (sweet shit 20+ years!?!?), I'm kinda on the fence about what was done. A married Spidey could have definitely worked (this is mentioned elsewhere on ILC, but the Matt Fraction / Salvador Larocca annual from 1-2 years ago was possibly THE married Spidey story), but the way it was being handled by the creative teams in question was not working.

The turn towards "serious" "mature" Spidey stories made MJ into a one-note ball and chain (nagging, whiny, nearly defenseless, always cowering in a corner w/ Aunt May, almost always crying), and it was tough to slog through that shit, especially when coupled with JMS' off-the-rails spider-totem garbage. That they decided to just retcon the whole business -- and the way it was done -- was equally slogworthy (as noted by alpaca).

The ideal solution would've been to, um, WRITE BETTER BOOKS, which could've happened w/out upending & rebooting the status quo. That said, I've definitely been enjoying the end result of all these machinations. And of course most of what makes these stories work (for me) -- the shift in attitude, the flippant humor, the influx of "goofy" villians -- could've been implemented w/out actually going through all the grinding OMD went through. Then again, I'm liking that the Daily Bugle & supporting cast is back in the fold (and with a "twist"). Which I guess means I'm part of the forever-young problem. :(

(xpost)

Piggybacking on earl's post -- I'm guessing old farts (hi dere) have drawn parallels between this & the Mike Carlin "diamond" days of the 3/4 Superman books (Adventures of ... / Superman / Action Comics / Man of Steel), tho the way Carlin did things -- with complete arcs crossing through 4 different creative teams, instead of just having 1 team per arc -- definitely added to the difficulty of that enterprise. And like the post-OMD books, I imagine most folks consider the "diamond" books to be at best enjoyably competent, but never great.

That said, getting enjoyable competence from a flagship character's book (given the dictates and expectations) seems to be the best folks can hope for, and there are plenty of cases where the Big Two fell way short in providing that sort of buck-bang.

So I heard that they recently brought back some characters from Clone Saga into Spider-Man after completely ignoring them for ten years. Also, they relaunched Web of Spider-Man, after the whole point of consolidating all the Spidey books into one Amazing title was that people only considered Amazing to be the real book and ignored the others.

Really? REALLY? I had heard this whole Brand New Day was kinda working out... haven't read any Spidey in a long while though.

Marcos Martin's Ditkoesque style is really great. The storylines are all kinda meh, take 'em/leave 'em.