Comic Book Resources

Bad writing?

I don’t understand the question.

I’d say the reason was publicity - for Civil War and the Marvel dollars that entails. The justification, plot wise seems pretty thin.

It does mean Spidey is more of a menace in public eyes now, rather than an established high-profile super-team member. And of course Peters life gets painted yet another colour of hardship. But at the same time he won’t have the problem of balancing his spider-worries with his parker Persona. I mean he’s pretty much a fugitive now, life as Peter Parker has pretty much hit bottom.

Also : Who else is begining to think the Genie Quesada was talking about putting back in the bottle was Aunt May?

To do stories about Spider-Man with his identity revealed?

No, wait. PLOT-wise, the reason was to get the public to trust the heroes who were backing registration.

So Then they can easily point to it as something that changed.

Duh.

Though it’s not the most revolutionary step they could’ve taken it’s not like they closed the book of potential stories completely. Trying too establish a whole new identity while your real identity is a that of a fugitive doesn’t seem like an easy task to me.

Because they came up with the unmasking as a sales-boosting stunt, and then had to think of a justification after the fact.

The simple answer is to boost the profile and sales of the Civil War comic to the general populace.

In a sense of the characters acting like “real people”, the whole debacle would’ve made more sense if Spidey refused to reveal himself. Then in turn only to be outed by Stark and crew.
This would’ve opened up all sorts of allegorical comparisons to racial profiling and “outing”, making it far more profound storytelling in the long run.

But I doubt they have time for that in spandex crossover epics.

I suppose that one could say that the Spidey titles didn’t get the sales boost they were expecting from the unmasking so they went another direction, but I don’t think Marvel’s on their toes like that.

To kill of Aunt May and/or Mary Jane and allow the Spider-man character to wallow in angst?

Actually, though, I’m more inclined to agree with Paul - a lot of the last year of Marvel output has felt like a sequence of event scenes that the writers and editors thought would be cool to write, strung together with just enough plot to connect them. Like the movie “Tomb Raider” - lots of cool scene ideas, implemented incredibly well, with only the barest semblence of an idea of how to get from scene A to scene B. Someone thought the unmasking scene would be cool (and, admittedly, the scene itself worked well), but they planned poorly for the lead-up and didn’t seem to have a clear plan for what to do with the aftermath.

Re: What “the kamisama said…” above in response #9, that would have been a fantastic idea.

Why do so many fans assume that if they haven’t gotten an answer in six issues that there will never be one?

years of experience and crushed nerd-dreams, probably.

I’d like to note that about a year and change ago, most people were complaining that Spidey had lost his roots as an “everyman”… he was living swank in Avengers Tower, Tony Stark was his close friend– as were most of the other big guys in the superhero community, etc., etc. What did the unmasking and subsequent going underground do? Shatter that status quo, to a new one where Peter is an underdog again. Which is, if I recall, what people complained they wanted with Spider-man.

Although I do totally agree with you, Mr. Cat; it does seem to bear noting that the current plot also involves a “fugitive Peter Parker,” which does sort of require somebody knowing his secret identity. To look at it from an alternate perspective–Spider-Man has often been treated in the past as being on the wrong side of the law (at least in the public’s view), but this is (AFAIK) the first time that Peter Parker’s been on the lam.

Marshall Maresca- Personally, I believe that “Everyman status” and “Underdog status” are two completely different things in this instance.

An Everyman is someone that we should all be able to relate to, but I find “Peter Parker:Fugitive” to be as difficult to relate to as “Peter Parker:Guy-Who-Lives-For-Free-In-Downtown-Manhattan-With-The-Coolest-Supergroup-Evah.” How many of us have been fugitives from the law. I’m sure the future issues of Spider-Man will sell very well among former members of the Symbionese Liberation Army, though.

Personally, I don’t think Joe Quesada got over the fact that Mary Jane was a supermodel when Peter married her. There are tons of great Everyman stories of hardship, loss and hope that could spring from a guy trying to support his aunt and struggling actress wife, who can’t be taken seriously because of her reputation as just a vapid model, on a teacher’s salary.

Each would think they are letting the other one down, but of course, Mary Jane and Peter would be very proud of the other. However, they would be too busy privately nursing their unnecessary shame to talk about it. Peter would be proud of Mary Jane for following her dream, and Mary Jane would be proud of Peter for all the great work he’s doing with the kids. Money might be tight, but they are young and in love. Of course, whenever Peter is ready to confront the issue, the Hobgoblin would decide to tear up the Bronx again.

Gee, Marvel, is it that difficult! I just wrote fodder for months worth of in-character subplot and great internal monologues in 5 minutes, and I didn’t even have to have Clor kill anybody to do it.

Okay, I get the question now that it’s rewritten.

If Peter Parker didn’t reveal his identity, then “fugitive Spider-Man” would just involve Peter Parker secretly being Spider-Man. But since Pete’s identity is public as well, he’s a fugitive both as Spider-Man AND as Peter Parker, which is a double-whammy. So it seems like the revelation does play a role.

Sensationalism! It briefly grabbed the headlines and our attention, so it did its job. Now it’s time to make Ms. Marvel a lesbian!

Do I want “Spider-Man, Avenger and Best Pal of Millionaires”? No.

Do I want “Spider-Man, Fugitive”? No.

I want “Spider-Man, aka Peter Parker, photographer for the Daily Bugle who interacts with a great supporting cast including, but not limited to JJJ, Robbie Robertson, Betty Brant, Flash Thompson, and Mary Jane Watson-Parker.” Is this really so hard to do that they can consistently screw it up for fifteen solid years?

“I want “Spider-Man, aka Peter Parker, photographer for the Daily Bugle who interacts with a great supporting cast including, but not limited to JJJ, Robbie Robertson, Betty Brant, Flash Thompson, and Mary Jane Watson-Parker.” Is this really so hard to do that they can consistently screw it up for fifteen solid years? ”

No, but that was the status quo for, what, 30 years? I don’t see any reason to go back to that, specifically, other than nostalgia, and a sense that Comics Characters Should Never Change.

And, honestly, there are hundreds of Spidey comics already that are exactly that. Why write more?

The question I always ask of such plot developments is, “Is this inherently compelling?”

Very few of the six or seven massive status quo changes for Spider-Man over the last few years have seemed inherently compelling to me. They’re the sorts of things that are superficially interestign because their happening to Brand-Name Man in defiance of his particular formula, but pretty much all of them are simply other stock formulae being substituted for the usual one.

Mystical totems have been done to death at this point. Heroes unmasking has as well, during Marvel’s “unmask them all! it worked for Bendis’s Daredevil!” phase a few years back. And fugitive heroes…well, the old Hulk show is on DVD, as far as I know. So is The Fugitive, for that matter. And as for making something “important” by having a longtime cast member shot and hospitalized in a “will they/won’t they die” phase…need I express the tedium of that concept to anyone here?

Slapping other tired ideas onto a franchise yoiu have no idea what to do with isn’t daring or innovative. It’s flailing.

Spider-Man has been flailing for around seven years now.

The problem here is that everyone is so experienced/jaded that the only question on most people’s minds is “when’s it going back to the status quo, and in how stupid a manner as possible?”

And rightfully so, as we’ve seen every single retcon and return from death you can imagine, and there’s no reason to think that Marvel won’t have Spidey back in the same old same old after a while, with his secret identity intact.

That may not be the plan, but when sales inevitably tank again, either due to lack of closure, event-apathy, poor storytelling, or all of the above, then it’ll happen again.

Superheroes are cyclical, something that the Ultimate universe should have prevented, but instead seemed only to exacerbate.

“I’d like to note that about a year and change ago, most people were complaining that Spidey had lost his roots as an “everyman”… he was living swank in Avengers Tower, Tony Stark was his close friend– as were most of the other big guys in the superhero community, etc., etc. What did the unmasking and subsequent going underground do? Shatter that status quo, to a new one where Peter is an underdog again. Which is, if I recall, what people complained they wanted with Spider-man. ”

Yeah, but Marvel put him in the Avengers Tower soley so he had a full during in Civil War.
We were complaining about the changes they were making soley so they could lead up to this change, hence, they aren’t giving ‘us’ what we want, or shaking up his world, as they had to change his world to get it to the point that we were complaining about it.

It actually makes my head hurt worse than time paradox stories thinking about that.

Marshall Maresca said:

“No, but that was the status quo for, what, 30 years? I don’t see any reason to go back to that, specifically, other than nostalgia, and a sense that Comics Characters Should Never Change.

And, honestly, there are hundreds of Spidey comics already that are exactly that. Why write more?”

Because there are more stories to be told there than with any other paradigm. Let’s face it–yes, you went with 30 years with that status quo, but you could easily go another 30. While “Spider-Fugitive” and “Spider-Smithers” (to Tony Stark’s “Iron Burns”, natch) both run out of steam pretty quick.

I’m not of the opinion that Comics Characters Should Never Change, but I am of the opinion that Comics Changes Should Not Be Undertaken Lightly, Because It’s Much Easier To Screw Up A Good Status Quo Than It Is To Improve It. (Not exactly T-shirt material, I know, but hey…the alternative is getting ten years of bad comics as editors try to dig themselves out of a hole they created.)

I’m with John Seavey on the “changes to the status quo” issue, with a slight divergence: Though Jonah, Robbie, et al. are a good set of supporting characters, and it’d be nice to keep them around, being a newspaper photographer was primarily Peter’s way of making money as he worked his way through school. As a relatively young man out of college, it’d be natural for him to seek work involving science, whether in industry or as a teacher (as Marvel’s been portraying him recently). Either situation could be rich in new supporting characters and storytelling opportunities, though I personally prefer the industry option, which I believe has been attempted in the past (my Spider-Man collection is spotty). The other is likely to get bogged down in stories of cute kids with problems.

Of course, “Peter’s a science nerd” is also part of the longstanding Spider-Man status quo, so turning science from Peter’s hobby or major into his occupation is a natural evolution, not a Big-Change-and-Nothing-Will-Be-the-Same-for-Peter-Ever-Again!

Which makes me wonder: How many successful “paradigm shifts” (to borrow John’s use of the first word) have been drastic as opposed to evolutionary? I was reading Daredevil when Frank Miller took over the book, and I don’t remember noticing any major changes while Miller shifted the book’s tone: DD remained a swashbuckling hero even as he faced grimmer challenges. (As a matter of fact, as much as I admire Brubaker’s current work - I didn’t follow Bendis - I wish they’d bring more of that devil-may-care action back into the book.) And in reading “The Anatomy Lesson,” in many ways a huge revamp of Swamp Thing, my sense was not that I was seeing drastic change for its own sake so much as Alan Moore’s answer to an intriguing question that occurred to him naturally (namely, wouldn’t it be interesting if after all of Swamp Thing’s efforts to revert to Alec Holland, there was no Alec Holland left to revert to?).

For the sheer folly of watching Joe Quesada go through hoops on his weekly Newsarama interview puff-piece. I can see it now:

NEWSARAMA: For two years you bitched and moaned about how Peter Parker being married to Mary Jane takes Peter away from the basic concept of Spider-Man, and yet surely the secret identity is as much a part of that basic concept as Peter Parker being a single loser.

JOE QUESADA: Why no. Because one is a change is one I don’t like, and the other is one I came up with.

Hurrah for thekamisama and Jer’s comments; perhaps in a better world, this the road they might have taken. Civil War #7 has the same problem with disconnected set pieces. We have Spidey kicking Reed and everyone else’s ass with his speed and strength (I wanted to see him rip Tony’s helmet open) but then he’s knocked to the ground for no more reason than to shape a tableau. Apparently Joss Whedon told them “Captain America surrenders”, which I can imagine, but it’s disconnected, and instead of Cap as prisoner of conscience awaiting trial, we close with Tony Stark smirking… infuriating. The real ending to # 7 was contained in “Imbedded”, with the reporters confronting Stark, which makes Civil War 7, supposedly the grand conclusion, kind of a cheat. I expect we’re stuck with Quesada and his personal issues for so long as these hyped-up conflicts boost sales, rusing from one sensation to another, but how long can the medium live on sensation instead of drama?