The Illusion of Change

digresssmlOriginally published July 3, 1998, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1285

“The illusion of change.”

That’s what Stan Lee always said was the secret to Marvel storytelling. Make it seem as if things were changing in the life of a character… but, in point of fact, have them remain exactly the same. It’s a terrific theory, and creators and publishers still abide by it.

However, at this point it may have led to a readership that is so jaded that it’s hard to convince readers that anything matters anymore.

There is, of course, something to be said for maintaining the illusion. Why commit oneself to genuine change when by simply pretending to change things, one doesn’t have to risk finding oneself stuck with a character who has lost those elements that made him appealing in the first place.

Look, for example, at Peter Parker.

Originally, he started out as a student with girl problems, a sickly aunt, and money difficulties. (Although why a young man so brilliant couldn’t make money selling designs for his web-shooter to makers of–oh, I dunno–mountain climbing equipment is completely beyond me. Actually, I do recall an issue where he tried to sell his web-fluid adhesive, except that the people he went to couldn’t see any use for something that was only a temporary adhesive. As if Peter couldn’t have come up with a way to make it permanent.)

Over the years, Stan and Steve (and later John) put him through changes. But when you get down to it, they satisfied the concept of illusionary change. Peter went from high school to college… but he was still a student. Betty Brant and Liz Allen gave way to Gwen Stacy and Mary Jane Watson, and nemesis Flash Thompson stepped aside for nemesis Harry Osborn. Otherwise, though, he was pretty much the same guy. Sure, he got a motorcycle, which was the ultimate in cool… but he wound up having to sell it, thereby bringing the money problems back to the forefront. It was evolution, but 360 degrees’ worth. Same old Spider-Man, same old Peter Parker, same old problems at the core.

That was why there was so much internal resistance to the concept of Peter Parker getting married. “It can never be undone,” said one spider-writer. “He can never be single again. If we kill off Mary Jane, he’s a widower. If they get divorced, he’s a divorced man. Spider-Man will be irretrievably older in the eyes of the fans.”

It was ironic, then, that the spearhead behind this permanent, non-illusory change in Peter Parker’s status was none other than the champion of the illusion of change, namely Stan. Stan became enamored of the notion of Peter getting married both in the comic and in the comic strip, and more or less steamrolled it through by going public with it before any of the powers-that-be could talk him out of it. Me, I thought it was a nifty idea, but no one ever accused me of being excessively smart.

By giving Peter Parker a life-mate–a loving babe and successful model who accepted his dual identity–he was so permanently and irretrievably away from his roots as nebbish and loser that Marvel felt he had totally lost whatever identification the younger fans might have with him. The illusion had been shattered. Consequently, the Powers-That-Be felt that extraordinary measures should be taken.

Their feet inevitably set on the road to personal growth, those self-same feet became cold. So they did the comic book equivalent of cracking open an odometer and rolling back the mileage: They came up with the Spider-Man clone. Free of any of the baggage the character had accrued since the death of Gwen, he was supposed to reconnect the audience to Spider-Man. The problem is, all writing is a magic trick. You try to pull fast ones on the audience so that they don’t look too closely. In this case, it was easy to cast Marvel as Bullwinkle, announcing his intention to pull a rabbit out of his hat, and the fans as a skeptical Rocky loudly proclaiming, “That trick never works!” And it didn’t.

Because fans don’t like to be treated as if they’re stupid.

That’s the problem with illusion of change.

There are all sorts of shades of philosophies in between, I would surmise, but if we take two schools of thoughts as the basic extremes: There are those creators who believe that anything goes as long as it’s not too completely out of left field and as long as it tells a good story. There are others who believe that any change should be transitory, serving only to provide a story arc but otherwise leaving matters exactly as they are. The latter mindset might be ideal when dealing with mainstream superheroes, since these characters are the properties of large companies and have to be kept nice and spiffy for whoever might come next. What becomes problematic is mustering any continued fan interest in the fates of these characters, because it’s becoming perceived that there is no fate that is irrevocable, no development that cannot be undone inside of twenty-two pages.

Look at Alan Moore’s take on Swamp Thing, for example. As the character was conceived, he was a muck-encrusted Alec Holland. Moore changed that irrevocably. Alec Holland, said Moore, was dead. Gone. Had been for a real long time. A writer at the time commented that he didn’t see the point of it; that it seemed a simple sleight of hand that had no real meaning. He mistook genuine change for the illusion of change, and consequently didn’t see why everyone was making a big deal about it since it just seemed business as usual.

Except it wasn’t. Swamp Thing thought he was alive; he wasn’t. He was a ghost with delusions of being alive. Moore inflicted Swamp Thing with a terminal illness–death itself–thus allowing him to take the character through Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s arc of reaction to terminal illness: Shock, fear, denial, anger, bargaining, despair and, finally, acceptance. Acceptance of not only his death, but of his new “life.” It was only upon that final acceptance that Swamp Thing was led to a sort of resurrection as an elemental force.

The thing is, Moore was so thorough in his presentation of the material that there was simply no going back. Fans didn’t read those stories wondering how the status quo was going to be restored; they read them knowing that they were seeing the inevitable and permanent evolution of the character, and wondered about all the possibilities that Moore was presenting.

Contrast that with virtually any other of the major superheroes, and you see the difference. The illusion becomes plain. All too often, the work of producing superhero titles harkens back to Paddy Chayesfsky’s newsman in Network proclaiming, “We are in the boredom-killing business.” Batman’s back breaks, but we know he’ll be back. Superman dies, or becomes an energy being, but we know that–sooner or later–he’ll be back the way he’s always been. Fans perceive the changes simply as an array of gimmicks concocted to maintain interest in characters who have as much growth potential as Garfield.

The illusion of change has raised the threshold of what will grab and hold an audience. Genuine change becomes extremely problematic because in order to make it really stick, you have to do something drastic just to get the reader’s attention. So Hal Jordan goes completely and indisputably nuts and winds up getting killed off. That was no illusion; it really happened (or at least it was as real as fiction ever is.) It outraged fans beyond imagining. But at least it wasn’t as badly executed as the Spider-clone, because Hal Jordan hasn’t been the only holder of the power ring for decades, so at least there’s some precedent for bringing in a new Green Lantern.

In the pages of the Hulk, I walked a fine line. I made changes in the character that were, to my mind, permanent, but they were also illusional. I knew that I would never return the character to the mindless, “Hulk smash” Hulk because I found that limiting and simply not inspirational for storytelling. However, none of the changes that I made were irrevocable. Indeed, the last irrevocable change to the Hulk’s status was made by John Byrne, when he married off Bruce Banner and Betty (placing Bruce in the “can’t ever be single again” category that Peter Parker fell into.) In my penultimate issue of the title, I knocked off Betty. And by today’s standards, even that change was illusional; I had no intention of ever bringing Betty back for as long as I was writing the title, little realizing how short a time that would be.

However, I hedged my bets; I left a “trap door” to bring Betty back, a clue in the series that could easily be utilized to reinstate her, presuming a subsequent writer wanted to do so or even if I suddenly decided that I’d totally blown it and wanted to bring her back (even though her demise had, in fact, been foreshadowed back in Future Imperfect.) Killing off Betty was one of the most personally emotionally traumatizing stories I’d ever done; yet any number of jaded fans remained unmoved, announcing with conviction, She’ll be back. Maybe they’re right. Who knows?

Over on Supergirl, I still get people asking when the “angel storyline” will run its course. Except I’d never conceived it as a simple storyline. Her new status was intended by me to be permanent. That’s a hard notion for fans to wrap themselves around, and I can’t entirely say I blame them. They keep waiting for her status quo to be restored, just as they waited for Superman to stop being an energy being. Why should changes or development in Supergirl be, by their nature, any more permanent than anything in any of the “S” titles?

The illusion only works for so long. The problem is that on the one hand fans want real change, want a sense that something has long-term meaning; on the other hand, as creators we’re boxed in. Things intended as changes in the status quo are seen only as the latest in an endless succession of unconvincing and temporary morphs, unless they’re dramatic enough that they can’t possibly be undone… at which point the fans go nuts and demand not only the reinstitution of the status quo, but the heads of everyone who had anything to do with the change in the first place.

What’s the answer to it all?

Well… the only thing that comes to mind is that all the current incarnations of the characters are yanked out of existence and the characters are completely rebooted into all-new, anything-goes versions of…

Hmm. Or, well, maybe the characters can be relegated to another version of earth entirely and a whole new set of characters with new powers and identities, but the same names as the originals, could be brought in to…

Hmm. Or we could clone all the…

Ah, forget it.

That trick never works.

(Peter David, writer of stuff, can be written to at Second Age, Inc., PO Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705.)

 

38 comments on “The Illusion of Change

  1. That was why there was so much internal resistance to the concept of Peter Parker getting married. “It can never be undone,” said one spider-writer. “He can never be single again. If we kill off Mary Jane, he’s a widower. If they get divorced, he’s a divorced man. Spider-Man will be irretrievably older in the eyes of the fans.”

    And so, years later, someone decided that a literal deal with the devil to get rid of the marriage would harm the character less than a death or divorce. Spider-Man’s been dead to me ever since, and that mindset has led me to divorce myself from the majority of Marvel books.

    –Daryl

      1. Truth told, I started picking up the Spider-Man books again during the clone storyline, and, generally speaking, enjoyed it. I appreciated the attempt at not only the scope, but Marvel’s apparent willingness to upset the apple cart…at least temporarily. I guess I was that jaded fan who concluded this was illusion of change. Don’t get me wrong, there were some major missteps along the way. But I never expected the “Ben is the real Peter” reveal to be permanent.

        –Daryl

      2. I was one of the ones who didn’t hate the clone concept and, truth be told, I actually grew to like it quite a bit as time went by. Such a great concept wasted by poor execution and fan reaction.

      3. The rest of the silliness aside, it was the “Ben is the real Peter” reveal that really killed the clone saga for me. It just felt over dramatic, tacked on, and unnessasary. You wanted a whole new Spidey, you got one. Leave it at that. I really think Ben might have lasted longer and been a bit more popular if they had just left him the clone in the first place.

    1. I hated the mindset I heard behind the change: “The movies are popular, causing more people to pick up the comics, but these new readers are getting confused that comic Spidey is married and movie Spidey isn’t. They feel like they’ve missed something. So…. Let’s make them match.”. I’m still trying to decide if this is pandering, crass marketing, or assuming readers are stupid.

    2. And until they undo that demonic deal, I’m out as a Spider-Man fan as well.

      Of course, they’ve further doubled-down in the years since that decision from what I’ve read elsewhere.

    3. I’ve jumped ship with Spidey twice. Once during the clone saga, which oddly enough was originally supposed to be actual change (didn’t like the idea that I had unknowingly spent 100s of dollars buying a clone’s adventures). I returned after the clone stuff finally got deep sixed. Then again when an actual change (the marriage) turned into illusion of change due to a deal with the devil. Bot of those took him too far from the admittedly already worn down concept of an everyman. Judging from what comic news sites have been reporting, I can still continue to save money on Spider-Man titles for a while yet.

  2. You could write a book on Marvel’s abysmal record with married couples. Aside from the Sue Storm and Mr. Fantastic, can you name another major character whose marriage hasn’t crashed and burned? Let’s see: Cyclops (death, infidelity, death again), Spiderman (deal with Satan), Banner (death, divorce, mutation), Hulk (death), Frank Castle (death), Ant Man (domestic abuse). Am I missing anyone?

    It’s reached the point where a recent marriage in X Factor (how long do you wait until it’s not a spoiler?) actually made me cringe and think, “Now it’s really going to hit the fan.” Of course, PAD seems to the one of the few comic writers who can write people in relationships well, so they might get a few good years in.

      1. Black Panther & Storm’s marriage was a bizarre one to begin with. Unless I missed a lot of stuff, there was never any foundation there for them to build a house of marriage on in the first place.

        Marvel calls themselves the House of Ideas (or at least they did once upon a time), but any more the Big 2 seem more like Houses of WTF!?

      2. Luke Cage and Jessica Jones is stable so far. But then only one writer (Bendis, who loves both characters, created one of them and did the marriage and child) has played with it.
        Namor – married twice, both wives died.
        Northstar and his spouse may end up the most stable of all.
        James and Heather Hudson – Long married, but a rocky road. Both have been somewhat “death-prone.”

  3. “Hmm. Or we could clone all the…”

    Like the “New” 52?

    One thing I hate about superhero comics is the frequency of retelling or rebooting the main/classic characters instead of creating new ones. If the original X-Men had been more popular, odds are there wouldn’t be a Wolverine, Storm, or Colossus because we’d have the 5th version of Cyclops’ origin or “Beast: Year 1/2/8.”

  4. A possible solution would be to split a characters books into different time periods.

    For instance with Superman:

    20s~30s He’s single, dates Lois occasionally but others too.

    50s~60s Either engaged or married to Lois.

    80s~90s Lois is elderly, Superman has ‘retired’ and lives full time as Clark.

    Present Lois has past away, Superman is back and maybe dates Wonder Woman.

    Each book would maintain its status quo and if a reader wanted change they could read them all.

  5. Peter David: I do recall an issue where he tried to sell his web-fluid adhesive, except that the people he went to couldn’t see any use for something that was only a temporary adhesive. As if Peter couldn’t have come up with a way to make it permanent.
    Luigi Novi: Or, if Peter were a better salesperson, he could’ve pointed out why it was more than useful to the market: By making it biodegradable, one did not leave long strands of goop hanging off the side of a mountain or rock face. A person climbing a mountain was not likely to hang around for an entire hour on one strand, and he could’ve outfitted the shooters with some type of timing device that reset itself every time the pincers snapped off a shot strand and/or the shooters shot off a new one. All in all, as mountain climbing equipment goes, the shooters and a belt of backup fluid cartridges are far lighter and less bulky than what mountain climbers have to carry with them now.

    Peter David: That was why there was so much internal resistance to the concept of Peter Parker getting married. “It can never be undone,” said one spider-writer. “He can never be single again. If we kill off Mary Jane, he’s a widower. If they get divorced, he’s a divorced man. Spider-Man will be irretrievably older in the eyes of the fans.”
    Luigi Novi: So uh, how did that turn out? 🙂

    The StarWolf: A storyline so dumb, it made the clone saga appear to rival KINGDOM COME in quality. And, yes, it killed me off Spidey, too.
    Luigi Novi: As much as I was opposed to “One More Day”, I have to admit that Straczynski and Quesada pulled off that last issue in a manner that came off as poignant and sincere, far better than any of the “Clone” storyline that I read.

    1. Can’t agree with that last, Luigi.

      “Here, Mephisto. Take exactly what you want.”

      Literally letting the devil have his way doesn’t strike me as poignant or sincere. It strikes me as the ultimate defeat of Peter and MJ. To me, the “mainstream” Spider-Man is forever more someone who let the bad guy win to get his own way.

      –Daryl

      1. I wanted the end of “One More Day” to be Peter taking the deal, the universe resets, and just as Peter’s last memories of the deal linger, he sees Aunt May get hit by a bus.

        Because when has making a deal with the Devil *ever* worked out the way a person wanted?

      2. I agree with your overall feelings about the storyline in general, though in terms of execution–Parker’s characterization notwithstanding—it was done well, as it could’ve been far worse. To each their own.

    2. There’s another potential use of those web-shooters, with a HUGE market.

      I once played in a superhero RPG, whose setup was “offshoot of the Marvel universe” (using the 3rd edition Champions rules, not the Marvel Superheroes RPG). My character was a cop from a low-probability future timeline, one in which parahuman and baseline human were united as one in the face of the rest of the universe. My character even had a low-level mutant power – he could feel how probable a given timeline would be, based on what he was about to do. (He jumped through a time-portal to the late 20th century when he felt that the actions of the criminal he was chasing were about to render his timeline, already low-probability, completely impossible.)

      He wore Stark Interplanetary police armor, equipped with a stunner (10d6 EB, NND (defense is sonic-specific armor), STUN only), some PD and ED boosts, boosts to basic stats – and a police-web shooter, as designed by Parker Chemical.

      In his timeline, you see, Sen. Peter Parker (D-NY) funded his political career by founding a company that sold, among other things, webshooters for police and military use. The completely non-lethal containment method was an instant hit…

      1. My guess from the above comments means that none of the posters have been reading lately. While I am not a subscriber to ASM, I do look at it now and then in the newstands at Narn’s and Nobles. Pete sometime in the last year or so got hired, or started, a company that is making commercial use of many of his inventions, to not always the desired effect…

      2. James Lynch
        “I wanted the end of “One More Day” to be Peter taking the deal, the universe resets, and just as Peter’s last memories of the deal linger, he sees Aunt May get hit by a bus.”

        Which of course is pretty close to what happened with Johnny Blaze’s deal. Crash Simpson dies in a motorcycle crash instead of due to failing health. Now *that* is how you depict a deal with the devil.

  6. I think the difference with Swamp Thing is that it was a different sort of “illusion of change.” Moore’s re-imagining did change the character, but it didn’t really change anything that effected how the character could be essentially portrayed. Marrying off Peter Parker would force Peter to grow and mature, and to take on an entirely new set of priorities (or else be a callow jerk). Making Hal Jordan go nuts and become a villain doesn’t just change the character, it comes pretty close to ruining the character forever. Swamp Thing was character evolution, Spidey getting married was character change, Hal Jordan was character derailment.

    1. To expand Gray64’s comments: Spider-Man’s marriage had the effect of throwing off the basic formula that Spider-Man stories had classically been structured around. (As did Superman’s, but that particular formula had kind of worn out its welcome during the Weisinger era.)

      The classic formula for Spidey is that he’s driven by personal responsibility, so internal conflict is created by introducing competing responsibilities, with their priority in a descending order of: family, fighting supervillains, romance, job/school (these last two vary in their importance depending on the situation). One of these might get tied to another (“I have to take that photo so I can pay for Aunt May’s operation!”) and resolving the conflict would often involve satisfying more than one at once (“I stopped the Rhino’s rampage and got some photos that JJJ will pay good money for!”), but often at the expense of another priority (“But I missed my date with Betty–she’s going to kill me!”). It’s rare for Peter to be able to fulfill all these needs at once, and he has to let the lower priorities slip to take care of the higher ones, thus accounting for his inconsistent love life.

      Marrying MJ changed this, because it permanently tied one of the lower priority categories, romance, into the highest category, family. Further, one source of conflict, his girlfriends not knowing his secret identity, was removed. This made it harder to balance the classic formulas, and led to some stories in which Peter came off as insensitive or MJ came off as selfish. This didn’t mean that good stories couldn’t be told with Peter and MJ married, but it did require a different approach to storytelling than the one that had been honed over the first 25 years of the character’s existence.

  7. As someone who has now been following comic books for over 50 (!) years, I can remember when Mort Weisinger had essentially made “Superman’s Girlfriend, Lois Lane” into a constant game of “Not a hoax, not a dream, not an imaginary tale!” Many of the stories (often promoted on the cover) showed Lois apparently marrying Superman, proving Superman was Clark Kent, marrying someone else, etc. And I’d always be willing to buy it, not thinking that what I should really be wondering is “How are they going to get around it this time?”

    And I’m still doing it.

    When Spider-Man unmasked at a press conference, I was looking forward to years of Marvel dealing with the public knowing who Spider-Man was. After all, Marvel didn’t do massive reboots of their universe like DC, right?

    And, at DC, not only was Hal Jordan dead, he had become The Spectre. No way they could undo that, right? Or Superman being married to Lois for real?

    I have to say, the latest DC reboot has me nearly ready to stop reading for good.

    And now, at Marvel, we have the events of “Amazing Spider-Man No. 700. No, I’m not revealing what they are here, just that I know some fans are having fits about them. But I now know that, someday, somehow, probably not that far in the future, the status quo will return.

    At least at Archie, Archie’s marriages to Betty or Veronica have been always set in alternate time-lines.

    I’m looking forward to the one where Archie runs off with Betty’s sister, Polly. (Anyone remember her?)

  8. I just bought my nephew a web-shooter. It turns out that Spider-Man’s web-fluid is Silly String. If Peter Parker had marketed Silly String that disintegrated after a few hours, he would not only be rich, he’d be the hero of parents everywhere.

  9. The problem was never that Spidey got married. The problem was that they started making the stories dark with the fake parents arc. Once that concluded, Spidey stopped being funny because hew as messed up inside, and instead of lightening the mood, they kept making it worse with stuff like the clone saga, to the point that it was, at best, a chore to read about Peter.

    It was never the marriage that was the issue. The issue was writers that didn’t bother to TRY and make Spidey fun, who didn’t TRY to work with the marriage, which should have allowed for all new kinds of problems to crop up in Peter’s life. I still mourn that they didn’t let them become parents, because the notion of Peter and MJ trying to raise a kid that might have powers is intriguing. Imagine that baby suddenly crawling on the ceiling in the middle of a day care, and them having to distract the workers and kids long enough to get her down. That alone would be hilarious.

    Real change can happen in Marvel and work. Look at Fantastic Four. Reed and Sue got married. They had a KID. Hëll, they’ve had TWO kids. I swear, if these hacks had their way, Reed and Sue would still be back glancing at one another not realizing they’re in love.

    In addition, Sue’s gone from a wimp and nearly helpless female (it WAS the early 60’s…) to a strong leader in her own right. Her powers got massively increased. She grew up considerably and became a Woman instead of a Girl.

    Thing’s gone from loathing his condition to acceptance and even embracing it for the good it does for the world. He’s moved on from Alicia, who was his girl for over 20 years or so. That’s real change.

    Torch… Well… Okay, three out of four ain’t bad. (shakes head)

    Move on to the X-Men, perhaps? Wolverine’s been through LOTS of change, not remembering his past and actually becoming a bit of an elder statesman among the team. Cyclops too, has changed, with his horrible treatment of his first wife Madeline, to his growing obsession with Xavier’s dream, to now being almost an outright villain and a murderer. Kitty, Colossus, etc… MANY characters have changed wildly from what they once were. There’s also, frustratingly, a lot of backtracking (we’re looking at YOU, Storm).

    I could keep listing changes that have stuck to various characters, but there’s no point. Marvel insists that it’s flagship cannot change permanently (we all know the current status quo for Superior can’t last. It’s blatantly a story with a finite amount that can be done with it). Peter’s the everyman. He NEEDS to grow and change because EVERYONE grows and changes. By stagnating his development, they remove an essential component of what made him identifiable. There are no more consequences for his problems and mistakes. Nothing matters.

    God knows I can’t identify with a guy that made a deal with the devil, grew a whole new body, and, oh, is currently mind-dead and taken over by the enemy. But there’s a difference between real change that poorly written change. And Spidey’s suffered far more from poor writing in the last 20 years than from the marriage.

    1. Real change can only happen in superhero comics in very limited ways.

      Sue and Reed got married when Stan Lee was still writing them. Wolverine was a newer character than Spider-Man, and the change to elder statesman was more or less evident by the later stages of Claremont’s classic run. I don’t think whatever was done to Cyclops will really affect him much long-term.

      My point is, most of the main characters have been defined by their creators (or, in the case of Wolverine and others, by the guy that came soon after the creators), and all the basic traits were pretty much set.

      Once in a while you’ll have some later development that is so popular that it’s added to the list of basic traits of the character, like Sue becoming Invisible Woman, Tony Stark being an alcoholic, Thor having no mortal ID, etc.

      Everything else is illusory, changes that are nullified sooner or later, the characters are like rubber pieces: they can be stretched, but when you let go, they return to their shapes. Worse, the longer these heroes go on, the more petrified they become.

      I have come to the conclusion that Stan Lee defined Spider-Man very well in the 100+ issues he wrote. That is the Spider-Man people keep returning to. Always will be. The real Spider-Man. That may come as blow to people who think the monthly comic matters, but the truth is, we don’t really need a monthly comic. Stan Lee wrote it all. It’s like Sherlock Holmes and Arthur Conan Doyle.

      Now, there are a few non-Stan bits that became immortalized. Gwen Stacy’s fate, Venom (perhaps), Kraven’s Last Hunt. They’re the exception.

      Perhaps that is not the case with all superheroes. Batman has quite a bit of must-read comics that were not written by Bill Finger. But even Batman eventually became an institution. What’s the last must-read Batman comic? Probably the late-1980s stuff like Dark Knight Returns, Year One, Arkham Asylum, the Killing Joke.

      If you take Marvel as a whole, the last comic that was “relevant” in that it influenced other media and stuff was Mark Millar’s The Ultimates. And that is more or less about it in the last decade. If we’re kind we can add Bendis’ Ultimate Spider-Man too.

      1. You can add The Spider-Man movie reboot. That version of lizard came from The Gauntlet: The Lizard arc by Wells and Bachalo.

  10. The timing of these BID’s gets more and more uncanny, especially given “Amazing Spider-Man” #700.

      1. I’ve just read some news reports, as well. Strangely, I’m actually glad Marvel soured me on Spider-Man with OMD. Because of that, my only reaction is to shake my head in disbelief. This particular comment of Slott’s from the USA Today article stuck out to me: “‘Peter Parker was selfish and horrible for all of part of one story. From then on, we’ve seen him be a hero,’ Slott says, referring to Spidey’s origin.” So, sacrificing your marriage to the devil to get something you want isn’t “selfish and horrible?”

        There are so few readable Marvel books to me these days, what with Marvel NOW! resulting in a few of my monthly Marvel books being no more…Brubaker on Cap – gone, Fraction and Larocca on Iron Man – gone. That just leaves PAD on X-Factor, and I’m checking out Waid on Hulk and Fraction on Fantastic Four, but the jury’s still out.

        There have been hits and misses for me with DC’s New 52, but I’m finding far more to enjoy there than at Marvel. And, while that’s been the case since about 1980 for me, there was a time that I was almost as equally excited about Marvel. Marvel, however, allowed me to learn that I could live without their books with Heroes Reborn, when I dropped all Marvel books but Hulk and Untold Tales of Spider-Man. During that time, former mainstays of my comics reading were abandoned, and…I didn’t miss them all that much. Once Margel was back to normal, I picked up a few of those series again, and not only did I not recognize the books any longer…I just didn’t care.

        Maybe I’m just getting old, but as the years go on, Marvel’s ideas and my tastes just seem to get further and further apart.

        –Daryl

      2. What I find interesting about the way the story seems to be trending in “[insert adjective here] Spider-Man” is the implication that the role itself forces certain things onto a person – “with great power comes great restriction,” as it were.

        Even after the change, the essence of Spider-Man as a hero remains, despite the current occupant of that role. Should that be carried forward, it could make for some intriguing storytelling. Which of course means it will be rolled back at the first opportunity…

  11. glad i am not the only one who always wondered why if peter could not get any takers for his fluid he just did not sell his shooters if nothing else to tony as a weapon or the blue prints to reid instant fortune. the clone saga actuly was interesting but went off the train tracks including the green goblin being sick to make peter and mj think their baby was stillborn and then got their hopes up she was alive only it be aunt may. as for one more day. wanted peter to tell the devil screw his deal even though technically it was mary jane who took the deal for peter

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