Comments on: Good Thinking – (Almost) Weekly Amazing Spider-Man

By: Bill Reed

Bill Reed — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 21:54:49 +0000

Unless itâ€™s DC Challenge. They should do another one of those. That was awesome.

We speak the same language.

By: yo go re

yo go re — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 08:38:58 +0000

When I was reading the post death issues of Superman, those were the issues I looked forward to artistically. The rest featured dull, uninspired art in comparison.It was more in line with the mountain of black and white comics I was primarily interested in at the time. Superman was my guilty pleasure.

Sorry you didnâ€™t dig it.

Ah, what can I say? I was, like, 14 then…

By: stealthwise

stealthwise — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 21:07:08 +0000

What a great idea. It makes no sense to read the sales charts and find that when the Spider-books are doing a crossover, the other two titles sell far less. What the hell are these people doing with their 1/3 of a storyline in ASM? Rolling them up and smoking them?

Anyways, I can see the effect being some akin to Ultimate Spider-Man, where the books drop a bit overall (once it went bi-weekly), but keeps a fairly steady sales figure.

By: Scavenger

Scavenger — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 20:50:59 +0000

I’ll take the counter and say it’s a dreadful idea.

3 writers all doing the same story just leads to a cluster@#$@#$ like The Other…or Triangle Superman.

The best usage of multi-titles is when they cover different aspects of the character’s life. Like when Amazing was suppsoed to be the peter as super-hero book, Web was Peter as journalist and Spectacular was Peter as a person.

That was the idea with FNSM, but the book kept having to deal with the crap coming out of JMS’s gutter.

By: Ian

Ian — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 18:36:23 +0000

I think the OTHER was more a story about Peter’s death and how he and his family came to terms with that than it was his powers changing.

By: markus

markus — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 09:09:28 +0000

â€œThe Otherâ€ has gotten plenty of follow-up in Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man.
Thanks, I wasn’t aware.

Then again, since when was the benchmark of a good story that subsequent stories strip-mined it for material?
Nobody said it was. The Other was awful in itself. It is (or would have been save for FNSM apparently) however a major failure in a _series_ if big changes are not followed up upon. That’s kind of the point of having a series. If one doesn’t care about its ramifications, a mini is the right venue for a story.

By: Ian

Ian — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 02:42:30 +0000

Looking at the sales chart its a pretty good idea. I’m not sure how its going to work in the long run though. Obviously its not going to work the same as 52 but I think Marvel MUST know that. I already read all three books, and I feel that sometimes the other two are just sort of there.

What I AM concerned about is who is the writter going to be? Is Wacker going to be basically writing the book or is there going to be one writer in charge of the general storyline? How are the other writers going to come into play?

All that being said, I’m excited.

By: Filipe

Filipe — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 02:17:36 +0000

Another similar previous case was that Batman era when Dough Moench was writing both Batman and dEtective and they became pretty much a bi-weekly. It when from 83 till Miller and Barr took over and start the post-crisis era. And they were mostly good books.

By: Josh

Josh — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 01:40:56 +0000

There’s a difference between Spider-Man & the X-Men, though. The X-books have a bigger cast and multiple characters who star; Spider-Man is just one guy.

By: Andrew Brown

Andrew Brown — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 23:26:24 +0000

The other was just twelve issues. Back in the before time, the long, long ago (the 90s), there were three four Spiderman books that were totally interconnected for years. And none of them were any good! Years of the Spider, and then Clones, it was bad times.

By: Paul

Paul — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 22:36:01 +0000

I’m with Bill, all the way. The Superman “triangle number” books were mostly awful, and this isn’t going to work, either.

I mean, good idea to get rid of all the pointless books? Yes. Multiple writers/artists on one story? Crap.

Unless it’s DC Challenge. They should do another one of those. That was awesome.

By: Ryan Dunlavey

Ryan Dunlavey — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 20:53:17 +0000

I agree – that’s an excellent idea. They should do the same to X-Men while they’re at it – cancel Astonishing and adjectiveless and just publish Uncanny 3 times a month.

By: Michael

Michael — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 20:22:56 +0000

“The Other” has gotten plenty of follow-up in Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man.

Then again, since when was the benchmark of a good story that subsequent stories strip-mined it for material?

By: makus

makus — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 19:30:21 +0000

re: clones
The most recent such case would be “the Other” which AFAIK was awful and had no follow up whatsoever.
Then again, the same is true of Peter’s revelations during House of M.
Then again, maybe a single book can fix that problem. There isn’t “some other book” anymore, whose writer obviously has inferior creative vision and really should be more of a team player and deal with the fallout from one’s own storyline.

By: Andrew Brown

Andrew Brown — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 19:08:14 +0000

It could be a good idea…or it could blow up in Marvel’s face. I only read Amazing right now, but if I have to read three books a month to get the story, Amazing is getting dropped with a quickness. Peter Parker hasn’t been that interesting a character in 25 years, I couldnt imagine having to read three books a month. I kind of remember the last time you had to buy all the Spiderman books to get the whole story, I think it involved clones. Did that end well?

By: Flush it all away

Flush it all away — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 19:02:05 +0000

I dunno, back when I used to read them, I always liked having multiple titles because then you weren’t stuck with one story or creative team.

In any one month or two, you could have three different Spider-Man stories to follow, and you weren’t locked in to following a crap storyline if you wanted your Spider-Man fix. In other words, whenever Amazing started to suck, Spectacular or Web Of were there to pick up the slack. (Okay, so it was rare that Web of Spider-Man wasn’t the weak sister, but you get the point.)

By: Bat2supe

Bat2supe — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 18:21:31 +0000

I don’t think that’s a bad idea. We’ll see how it’s executed.

With all the Marvel creative summits, I think it’s been a long time since Marvel moved to ‘editorial-driven series’. Maybe they’ll take inspiration from TV series writing.

I share Brian’s thoughs about the art side: either they have 1 artist for an arc or a rotating team.

Wasn’t John Romita Jr supposed to come back to Spider-Man sometime soon ?? (I remember reading that in a Joe Friday, IIRC) Since he’s pretty fast maybe with enough time, he can fit that schedule for a while who knows, wasn’t he making 2 books a months at some time ???

In any case, it’s been a long time since I wasn’t interrested in Spidey’s books.
So, if Marvel could finally stop the crap & put 1 decent Spidey book, stop the whining about Peter & MJ’s wedding, stop making Peter a kind of newcomer unable to handle a situation & making him depressive, & move along with a little bit of leading, I’ll be satisfied with Marvel(MAYBE)hehe !!

By: Bill Reed

Bill Reed — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 17:51:26 +0000

I think it’s a completely god-fecking-awful idea. I have a deep, deep hatred for editorial-driven series, and that’s what this is going to be; with multiple creative teams, there’s no true creator vision.

Marvel has learned from DC’s 52 that mediocrity sells so long as it comes out often and is hyped to death. Ugh.

By: Brian Cronin

Brian Cronin — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 17:25:48 +0000

By the by, as it turns out, it appears that it was no accident that Steve (original editor of 52) Wacker is now the editor of Amazing Spider-Man.

If anyone can coordinate it, it’s Wacker.

By: km

km — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 17:16:39 +0000

Spider-Man you know is just going to goâ€¦on and on and on and on, given their choices. There will be a few weeks of initial interest and then it just turns into another reason to skip a book or two if the storyline of creator this week isnâ€™t your cuppa tea.

Interesting point. I agree that there better be an *extremely* tight, planned-out-for-the-long-term storyline driving this experiment, with all of the writing teams having input. Otherwise this could become a real creative mess, real fast.