Over the last couple of weeks I’ve finally caught up with my 4-ish months-worth backlog of issues of The Amazing Spider-Man, and I’ve gotta agree with a criticism I’ve seen on many underwear pervert websites: every one of those stories could have been told with the Peter Parker-Mary Jane Watson wedding intact.
Long story short: months ago, around the time Spider-Man 3 was leaving theaters, all the Spider-Man comic titles had gotten pretty bleak. Spidey was wearing his black suit again, his secret identity was no longer secret, he & MJ were running for the lives from revenge-minded criminals, and Aunt May was lying in a hospital bed, near-dead from a bullet intended for Spidey. That status quo was undone thanks to a story called “One More Day” which found Spidey making a Faustian deal with supernatural baddie Mephisto. In exchange for wiping the history books clean of his marriage to MJ, his aunt would be saved and his identity re-hidden, allowing him & MJ to be safe & clear of danger. The catch? He & MJ wouldn’t be married, of course, and they’d have no recollection of their married life together. Talk about clear-cutting. More details about the story and fanboy controversy can be found at Wikipedia.
The Spider-Man books rebooted with a clean slate: the dark themes were gone, replaced by genuinely fun super-heroing and zippy dialogue; Aunt May is alive, well, and living with Peter; MJ is a successful actress in LA; Spider-Man’s identity is a secret again; and his relationship with the press and the public is back to the love/hate/fear combo present in the most classic Spidey stories. Just like old times, no?
The new stories are really good, too: like I said, the dialogue is zippy, the characterization is light and fun, lots of new villains are introduced (nice to see some new additions to Spidey’s rogues gallery instead of seeing Doc Ock for the 874th time), and it’s been great to see each arc adding to the overall plot — every bit of the story serves a purpose. However, as fun as each issue has been, I can’t help but feel that the change was unnecessarily drastic and marketing-driven. “Let’s make the Spidey of the comic match the Spidey of the movies.” Blah. I liked the Meter/Mary Jane marriage — it felt like a smart, natural evolution of the characters and their story — and I was sorry to see it go, especially in such an oddball fashion. I’m not giving up on Spidey, like many others have, in the wake of these changes (the new stories are just too much fun), I’m just disappointed in the easy-way-out the creators took to get to the fresh, fun stories being told now.
Tagged Spider-Man
