Yes, the book that even we at Marvel have started calling “F’n Spider-Man” has its fourth issue–and second one by me–out this week.
Whad’ja think?
PAD
Yes, the book that even we at Marvel have started calling “F’n Spider-Man” has its fourth issue–and second one by me–out this week.
Whad’ja think?
PAD
• 
Am I the only one who’s convinced that that really isn’t Flash Thompson at the school?
I’ve enjoyed the Other story overall. It’s been a long time since I read Spider-Man, and I initially wasn’t going to follow the Other, but Peter’s run got me interested. I did not care for Hudlin’s writing (and I tried to get into Black Panther, but I get real tired of those thinly veiled characters based on real life people where they change one letter of their name-it’s not clever at all). I really do not like Pat Lee’s art, so that Spider book is definitely out now that the Other is coming to a close.
I don’t mind the who bit about man or spider, though “the Weaver” feels vaguely Swamp Thingish to me.
I really enjoyed Aunt May’s interaction with the other characters, especially under Peter’s pen. I loved Peter taking Mary Jane out for a ride. And I love Mike W.’s artwork. So I will be sticking around for Friendly fer sure.
I enjoyed Amazing enough to give it a try after the Other is done.
And I will try and bear the new costume.
Nooo, that’s definitely Flash Thompson. The concept that he suffered some brain damage that has led to memory loss doesn’t strike me as remotely out of the question for someone who was in a coma.
PAD
No, comatose people never lose their memory. Sure, I have zero evidence to back me up…but I am sure that is impossible. 😉
but is Wolverine now an Avenger? When did this happen?
When Marvel handed the keys to the MU over to Bendis.
He blew up/killed some Avengers in Disassembled, then the New Avengers came along.
More or less, they’re like the Defenders/New Defenders.
And it’s also more or less an excuse to do something off the wall, and then get yet another title for Spidey & Wolvie to appear in each month.
“yet another title for Spidey & Wolvie to appear in each month.”
Well, they’re just trying to even things up. In the March solicitations for DC, there were 10 different comics that had “Batman” in the title. 🙂
Well, I have yet to FIND a PAD Spider-issue, besides FNSM #1 – seen several copies of various issues by the other guys – so I can’t comment much, besides hoping that that really is a good indicator of the sales 🙂 (I will in all likelihood be adding FNSM to my pull list, but asking to pull one issue of ASM, etc. would have been tricky, if possible at all, at my shop; and from the sounds of “The Other”, the PAD issues are probably the only ones I would have wanted …)
Reading this thread did remind me that Flash had had a coma – after a car crash, IIRC; and I’m now recalling a sequence where he was sitting there drooling, and doubt was expressed that he would fully recover. So, his forgetting parts of his life doesn’t seem to me to be that unlikely in this light.
Peter
As someone who likes your honest ‘take no prisoners (or if we do, don’t pretend we haven’t!)’ approach to stating an opinion (even if i don’t always agree), can I ask you a fairly straight-forward question:
Whatever your personal opinons: does the ratio of likes-to-dislikes of the current ‘Other’ storyline expressed here (and on several other sites) which seems to tilt around 80+% against reflect the ratio you’re hearing from other people, or are we, the slightly miffed, just more vocal? 🙂
Thanks.
I just wish Peter’s run had not started in the midst of “The Other” storyline, which I have been less than impressed with. And from the sound of things I may be the only one that wasn’t too keen on the bringing Flash back without memory that he and Peter became friends. It makes me think Flash will be back to bullying “Puny Parker” again. ugh. Been there and done that. Hopefully, Peter has something more original in store for us.
Bobby
“Whatever your personal opinons: does the ratio of likes-to-dislikes of the current ‘Other’ storyline expressed here (and on several other sites) which seems to tilt around 80+% against reflect the ratio you’re hearing from other people, or are we, the slightly miffed, just more vocal?”
Depends where I am. What seems to be happening is that if a few people start off a thread by saying they like the book/series, then the majority of the comments turn up positive. If, on the other hand, a few people crab about it up front, then people start to pile on. Case in point.
It just amazes me that only a handful of comments on this thread are remotely relevant to the specific issue and instead just complain about the entire crossover. Even people who *haven’t read a single issue* are slagging it. I suppose it was stupid of me to think that people would actually concentrate on, y’know, the topic: FNSM #4. No one’s saying it’s badly written or badly drawn or not engaging or interesting or exciting or intriguing. Curiously, whether I turned in a dynamite issue or phoned it in seems irrelevant.
Actually, on second thought, I’m not amazed.
PAD
Jason M. Bryant: Yep, Wolvie is an Avenger now. It’s Captain America, Iron Man, Spidey, Luke Cage, Spider-Woman, Wolverine, and the Sentry. So there are several people who we don’t usually think of as Avengers.
Luigi Novi: Yeah, me not likey. In my mind, I can’t separate Spidey and Wolvie from the idea that they’re mostly outcasts. Spidey being a reserver member, as he was way back when, was one thing, but him and Wolvie both being full members? It’s hard for me to accept.
Jason M. Bryant:Flash doesn’t remember Peter after high school. If you’ll look one page earlier, the principal was asking Flash about brain damage that he had received. Flash tells him that chunks of his memory have been lost.
Luigi Novi: And apparently, I suffered some as well, apparently. D’oh!
Thanks, Jason.
Peter David: It just amazes me that only a handful of comments on this thread are remotely relevant to the specific issue and instead just complain about the entire crossover. Even people who *haven’t read a single issue* are slagging it. I suppose it was stupid of me to think that people would actually concentrate on, y’know, the topic: FNSM #4.
Luigi Novi: Well, the issue is part of the crossover, so naturally, people are going to comment on the story of which it is a part, and how the issue contributes to it.
“Depends where I am. What seems to be happening is that if a few people start off a thread by saying they like the book/series, then the majority of the comments turn up positive. If, on the other hand, a few people crab about it up front, then people start to pile on.”
“It just amazes me that only a handful of comments on this thread are remotely relevant to the specific issue and instead just complain about the entire crossover.”
I think these comments are just a little unfair, Peter. It’s entirely possible that the majority of people on this site actually *do* dilike the crossover, and they’re not just going with what the first guy said. It’s also possible that on another website that is less dominated by your fans, most of the people are reading the comic because the crossover brought them to it. So that site might get a completely different set of responses for perfectly legitimate reasons.
Also, there have been quite a few comments on the issue. Lots of people liked the MJ moment with JJJ. Some people liked seeing Flash back, and a few of those people expressed concerns about what his coming back might mean. A few people even commented on how well your comic fits in with the crossover, and how they were able to follow the story even if they didn’t read the other parts. Personally, I commented on how I don’t like big crossovers in general, because I want to be able to buy one Spidey comic a month and get a complete story.
I think the people in this thread have actually tried pretty hard to answer the original question in a reasonable manner.
1
>>It just amazes me that only a handful of comments on this thread are remotely relevant to the specific issue and instead just complain about the entire crossover.
–Peter, for my part, I’m not reading *any* of the crossover. I long ago gave up on JMS’ Spidey and Reggie Hudlin won’t get a dime of my money. I was excited to hear you were coming back to write Spidey until I heard it was at the start of a crossover I had no intention of getting. I’ve flipped through various issues in The Other and not only has nothing really grabbed me, but the crossover itself has really underwhelmed me. The *only* things that have stood out were your (thus far) two issues of FNSM. I can say that what little I read, I enjoyed…when it wasn’t directly involved in the crossover (such as Peter and MJ swinging across the city in the recent issue). It’s just hard to dissasociate oneself from the crossover to judge the book on its own merits.
When The Other is done, then I think you’ll see people judging the book based on your writing.
I’m sure you had to know that people would have some major reservations with the story and possibly be unable to objectively judge your writing in the midst of it.
Well lets see. Here’s a couple things I didn’t like, the beginning of the issue Spidey surrounded by these lab techs, I mean this isn’t exactly PAD’s fault but this cavalier attitude about his identity. I don’t know, if I could buy that Spidey was really an Avenger to stay, but thats hard. Flash Thompson’s convenient memory loss is also a little hard to take, its just a little forced. That said, I can’t wait to see what comes of it, I think thats going to be great, getting there is causing me a little pain, but oh what fun we’re gonna have.
As for the rest of the issue, I loved it, Aunt May telling them to let Peter come play. That woman is indominatable. She just defeated Iron Man and Yellowjacket, and at least fought Mr Fantastic
to a draw. Then there was Peter and MJ’s swinging conversation, it was realistic, I’ve had conversations like that, that are almost surreal but incredibly relevant. Oh, and MJ giving J.J.J. the finger was precious ( we don’t see hime enough, fix that please). I find this whole Avenger thing hard to get a hold of myself, but I like it when PAD is writing it. I mean obviously Pete’s got his friends and then the people he doesn’t get along with so much, its just like most jobs I’ve worked, or he’s worked for that matter. It’s also kind of a better supporting cast we’ve had for him in a while, think about how inbred the Spider Man supporting cast relations have been in the past several years, all these people that shouldn’t be in Peter’s life anymore, not to mention that half the time they turn into villains. No these varied people whom Peter has been put into a situation to live with and work with thats got potential. Sorry I’ve been on a tangent. Other things that were nice, Peter does a great job of keeping the web swinging action up. Really, all of this could have been Bendissian talking heads (I love Bendis but really…), Peter keeps us swinging along and never once lets us forget that this man is Peter Parker, and this man is Spider-Man, a lot of writers have some trouble with that, writing a story for one that doesn’t adequately include the other. PAD it was really a Dynamite issue, probably my favorite of your current run. Oh, and while its not his board lets here it for Wieringo, I’ve never found his style manga-esque, maybe a little cartoony, but I don’t think thats wrong, and I don’t mean just for this book, I mean for comics. He does action very well and his versions of the characters can look like whatever version of the character thats being used, not some wrote preconception. I will admit that some of the faces in this issue, were a bit odd, but unexpressive is not what’d I’d call them.
Mind you I might be a bit biased, I’ve been reading Peter since I was very small, he had me at the Mayo Jar. I watched Space Cases, read his X-factor and Sidey 2099. I never paid attention to who did things when I was a kid I just read and enjoyed, and then when things weren’t fun anymore, after growing up some and observing more I found that things ussually stopped being fun when PAD left a book, since getting back into comics I’ve been reading just about anything PAD puts out, and everytime I’ve had fun.
One further thought on this: I couldn’t help feeling that Mary-Jane was being a bit unreasonable. It’s something of a moot point, now that she’s come to terms with the new lifestyle, but anyway…
Previously, she was saying: “I feel like you’re having an affair with me, because I never get to meet any of your friends”. Now she’s saying “I’ve met your friends, and they all think of me as your wife, so I want to spend time with people who know me as me”. Poor baby…
As I understand it, she still has her acting career, with her own circle of friends who are completely separate from the superhero set, so it’s not as if she’s cut off from normal life; the only problem is that she and Peter can’t easily invite friends over for dinner. Then again, it’s been heavily implied in the past that Robbie does know Peter’s secret, so they might as well just be open about it now that he’s telling so many other people.
As for the Bugle staff, I like JJJ, and I’m happy to see him showing up in PAD’s stories. On the other hand, he and Robbie appear fairly often in “The Pulse”, so I’m not sitting here thinking “Wow, I haven’t seen them for ages”.
I love your writing on F’n Spidy.
But, I feel you keep getting hobbled by the current crap that I don’t like in Spidy’s books to do a really good Spidy book.
I’m not a fan of his being in the Avengers, but you do the best job of dealing with it.
I hate the whole mystic spidy stuff, and it makes it hard to enjoy any scene it’s mentioned in.
The “Other” story is dreadful, and you can’t avoid it.
F’n Spidy just has too much crap to wade through to read.
I end up feeling bad for you whiel reading.
On the bright side, your Fallen Angel is nothing if not better then it’s ever been.
And X-Factor is great so far. Not as harmed by the “decimation” connection as I’d feared.
I had stopped buying the spiderman books a few months ago. I started buying them again with this storyline. Now while I’ve enjoyed the chapters that you have written for the most part I really can’t wait till next issue so this Other crap is over and I can just buy your book. Hindsight 20/20 I think that Marvel should have waited to launch this book until after this storyline was finished.
One other thing I hope that the stupid new power of his (the stingers) doesn’t last. Same for the new costume that they revealed at newsarama.
Dear Mr. David, Sorry I’ve never written before. Turns out I’ve been a fan since the beginning. FN Spidey #4 really made me laugh out loud several times. Few comics have ever done that. (“Yes Ma’am.” “Yes Ma’am.” “That’s a lovely outfit Mrs. Parker”)
You said you were just trying to write a good story and I think you did just that. Granted this whole Other story worked for me because the other two genttlemen pulled their weight too.
Don’t let the negativity get to you. Looking forward to what comes next
I’ve been buying the individual issues (’cause I want to support the launch of PAD’s title) but I’m holding off on reading them till the whole crossover is complete. However, I don’t really care about spoilers, so I have been reading people’s comments. And yes, the overwhelming sentiment I have heard so far is negative; as to the specifics of PAD’s run, the consensus seems to be that the cheesy elements of the crossover (like Spider-Man sprouting a Wolverine-like claw) are unfortunately being carried over into PAD’s title, and that is diminishing any enjoyment people have.
Personally, I could live with it if the crossover turns out to be awful, and then afterwards PAD is allowed to chart his own course. But my big fear is that this crossover is just the start, and the ideas from the other books will continue to be mandated to be included in FNSM, thus killing any enjoyment I might have. That would really disappoint me, because I wasn’t reading any of the main Spider-books before PAD came on, and I was really hoping that his book would be free to chart its course. If that’s not the case, it would really ruin the series for me.
Adding to my fears is the news that Tom Brevoort, an editor known for his respect and understanding of Marvel’s characters, has been replaced by Axel Alonso, an editor… well, not known for that.
I guess I feel into analyzing the whole storyline myself in my last comment, so specifically for this issue:
-Overall, really liked it. From the first issue of FNSM you wrote, your characterization was consistent for everyone and really funny. Especially your use of Aunt May – fantastic in just the right amounts.
-Art was good. Lots of action that translated well. However, for me, the big Flash Thompson reveal really stood out in particular. And not to go off on a larger storyline tangent, I will say that between the Other’s two appearances in this book and MKSM, its look seemed… inconsistent. This isn’t a comment about either artist’s talent, just an observation that they should maybe define the character’s appearance a little more if several artists are going to be drawing it.
-RE: Flash Thompson – I also thought that we might be looking at an imposter, but PAD has addressed that already in this thread. If I have a say, I’d like to see Peter and Flash redeveloping their previous friendship, not fall back into the bullying relationship from way back.
-Loved the lab scene. Please, please, please leave them in Avengers tower as long as possible. It’s a fun storyline to me, and frankly, it seems to give PAD a lot of toys to play with narratively. I will say, however, that it seemed a jump to me to have Peter unmasked in front of anonymous technicians when they had gone to great lengths previously in the same storyline to keep his identity a secret. I know that’s a metacomment, but it pertains to this issue specifically, since in all previous issues Tony always seemed to sequester Peter in his top secret personal lab or Cap was sending him to a specialist doctor who they could trust to keep a secret.
Overall, I liked this issue a lot. It delivered on its own AND made me look forward to the next issue of both the Other storyline and FNSM.
An unusual perhaps method of evaluating a comic I occasionally use is to count the references to science, pop-culture, etc. If a kid were reading this, what might they learn about? (In X-Factor #1, for example, I loved the reference to the etymology of the word Decimation) This issue scores well as an educational comic.
Science
Cannibal spiders
Leonardo DaVinci’s The Vitruvian Man
Pop Culture
Eddie Haskell (Leave it to Beaver)
Lucy, I’m Home (I Love Lucy show)
Sing Out Louise (the musical, Gypsy…the only one I had to look up)
(I may have missed a few, this is from memory)
No one’s saying it’s badly written or badly drawn or not engaging or interesting or exciting or intriguing. Curiously, whether I turned in a dynamite issue or phoned it in seems irrelevant.
I got my copy late, so I am only now commenting.
Actually, I thought it was a great issue. I don’t like the art, not because it is bad, but I like a different style.
In regards to the crossover, I said it before and will say it again: Yours has been the only parts worth reading. I like JMS, and don’t hate the story, but felt it took a long time to go nowhere (yet). Your books are the only ones that felt like I got a real story.
Your mastery is seen in this issue. It stood on its own, whether I read anything else or not. It had great interaction (especially between MJ and Wolverine). I love your version of Aunt May (JMS also does her well ).
Bottom line in the context of this being an ongoing series and not a one book episode, I think you hit the ball out of the park with this one. This is why I read you, PAD, in spite of our huge political differences.
In regards to “The Other,” I felt it advanced the mythos enough to have warranted a crossover, I just would have liked stronger stories and it not being so drawn out. The only thing I hate is the “wolverine” style stingers that pop out. I can suspend disbelief to a certain degree, but the stingers seem both too large and too hard to fight with. (I have not read Spidey 2099 in forevever, but I seem to recall him having some sort of venom, but in a bite, so this was not as big a revelation to me.)
Iowa Jim
Bored at work today; can you tell?
Anyway, it just occurred to me that while the stingers are… different, I think the thing that is maybe putting people off is that stingers are a much more offensive, aggressive weapon. You web someone, they’re ensnared, trapped or otherwise incapacitated, but not really suffering a mortal injury directly from the webbing as a weapon. Even when Spidey’s punching someone, there’s only so much a closed fist can do. Now a stinger, that’s puncturing the flesh, that’s injecting venom, that’s causing an open wound, that’s drawing blood and taking the fight to a new level for Spidey. I can suspend disbelief about spiders having stingers because, hey, didn’t they just find like 30 new species of insects and arachnids in a cave in California? I’m more interested to see how Spidey deals with having these new, much more deadly weapons at his disposal, especially the first time he impales someone and blood starts spurting everywhere.
PAD
Thought it is clever. Dialogue between Peter and Tony show both Pete’s IQ and Tony’s scientist bent. Intro of Hank and Reed also added to the scene. Aunt May of course steals the scenes she is in. MJ and Pete’s coversation also made great sense given the context. Eager to see where the skin/spider entity leads. And Iron Peter will be a new status quo and am sure you will have plenty to say on that and the upcoming Civil War.
1 I don’t know if this was covered already because I don’t feel like reading 74 posts…but Peter, how much “influence” are you having on all of the Spiderman changes? I mean “STINGERS?” WTF? I thought taking away the WebShooter that were creatively designed by Ditko was bad enough, but now “STINGERS????” WEAK! I’m hoping that by June the Stingers will be all but forgetten.
Oh…and I think my above post is a “comment” on the actual issue at hand.
PAD, I love your writing and think you’re a great fit for Spidey.
However The Other has been a complete festering pile of dung from beginning to end. Marvel screwed the pooch on this one.
Just read it last night after finally getting my hands on a copy. I gotta say, bringing back Flash Thompson as a part of Peter’s social life is a stroke of genius. I figure there’s a reason why Stan Lee decided to make him a constant present in Peter’s life through high school and college, while the ladies like Betty Brant and Liz Allen eventually faded away. The Peter and Flash relationship is just more interesting. (Kind of like how Angel and Spike were more interesting than Angel/Buffy or Spike/Buffy.) These two characters are destined to piss each other off until they are old and gray. It’s like they say, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”