Jan 5, 2008

Still Disgusted

Okay. Alright.
I've had a chance to sleep on it and give it 24 hours to mull over in my head.... and I'm still pissed about it.

I even found the interview on CBR that they had with Joe Q. about this whole storyline and why he did it.
If you haven't read it yet, here it is:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5 (actually, this part doesn't deal with the Spider-Man storyline. I just included it since it was part of the interview)

It's interesting to hear from him that the original idea to have Peter get married in the first place was a rush idea and wasn't well thought out.
Hmmm... yet it seemed to work for the last 20 years or so. Maybe because writers were able to be, oh I don't know, CREATIVE within the given context of his life perhaps?
Now they don't have to work in those confines anymore and they can tell more stories... which will probably be just as equally good and bad as they were before this happened.
So really, nothing creative has been introduced. It's just another marketing ploy to drum up dollars into the coffers.
And could he plug the fact that Spider-man will be coming out THREE TIMES A MONTH any more?
For whatever good that'll do.
After the writers can't keep their plots in line with each other and the artists aren't able to keep up on that schedule, I'm sure we'll be back to the old standard of late or missed deadlines that we've come to expect from the House Of (bad) Ideas.

Bonus!: Here's 8 pages from the following issue that picks up right after Amazing Spider-Man #545.
Ummm... Okay. Let's see:
J. Jonah Jameson hates Spider-Man. Well, THAT'S certainly new.
Aunt May is still old. Yup, another fresh idea there.
Peter needs to find a job 'cause he's broke... like always. I've never heard that before.

One good thing about this is they are going back to having the old-fashioned, mechanical web-shooters.
I was never a fan of him loosing them in favor of gaining "organic" web-shooters, but I understood the need for them to try and unite the comic-book character with the comic-movie character so fans from either side wouldn't be left scratching their heads.
But that's not enough for me to want to continue with this book.

Since I was planning on downsizing my comic book list this year, I think one of the titles won't be so hard to part with now.

Bye-bye Spidey. I really enjoyed the time we had.

3 things people had to say:

Anonymous said...

I already emailed you about this, but thought I'd post on your blog as well. I can understand why many Spider-Man readers are pissed. I dropped everything Marvel in the 90's between the awful Clone of Spider-Man story dragging on for years and the X-Men Age of Apocalypse crapfest. With issue #545 Marvel selectively undid pieces of Spider-Man history that fans loved, but the editors did not. This is a sure fire way to loose readers. I bet they ret con it within 6 months. But by then it will be too late.

Unfortunately, DC isn't doing much better. And I love DC. But so far beyond the Green Lantern story, everything has been between "meh" and sucky. Like you, I'm going to dump a few more titles that I've been buying from habit. I find the smaller publishers to be creating better works.

Ferretnick said...

It's hard to part with a title you've been reading for a while.
Especially one like this one, which was the book that first drew me into comics.

The only way I can expect to see a change back is to vote with my dollars and hope that other fans feel the same way.
If enough of us drop it and sales plummet, they can't possibly pick up enough new readers to make it worthwhile.

I though Joe Q. was a breath of fresh air at Marvel when he began as EiC.
He helped turn the company around and made thing interesting again.
Now they'll throw out crap for the fans with big names attached, ship late and tell us "how much it's going to be worth it", and then make complete blunders like this and tell us "we're trying to make it accessible".
Accessible to WHO? They just alientated the fans who were already supporting them, and new fans aren't going to be sure if they want to pick it up if the older fans tell them what a crap-fest is it.

Anonymous said...

So true. I wonder if there should be a weekly/monthly contest as to the suckiest comic put out. Like maybe Spider-Man #545 vs. Supergirl (any issue from 2007). Or epic story arc such as House of M vs. Countdown.