Didier Yvon Paul Fayolle wrote: " Spider-Man was more into drama and a little bite of action at the opposite of Superman or Batman titles who were more action with a little bite of drama.

No slam against you, Didier, but I find that quote to be, well, bullshit.  Spider-Man was only ever about a little bit of action?  Has this guy even read any of the Stan Lee run? Sure, there were always soap operatic elements in ASM, as there were in all Marvel books circa FF #1 and beyond, but that doesn't mean that they were more about drama and less about action.  Hell, the drama was packed into a page or two, and then the rest of the comic was normally all-out action.  Hardly "a little bit of action".  The only way the above statement might be a little bit true is, at the time (early-mid 60s) DC comics really didn't concern themselves with the private lives of it's characters unless they served the story (wow, wouldn't that be unique in today's marketplace instead of what seems to be the other way 'round?).  But that doesn't mean that Spider-Man's life was any less full of action than Superman or Batman.

When I was getting into the business, tho, I noticed writers who were lesser lights than Stan (in the way candles are lesser lights when compared to supernovas) dimissing this approach as "cliché". There was a lot of that kind of thinking going round. It was as if people were remembering all the old Marvel stuff and saying "Wasn't that great? Let's never do that!"

Why does one preclude the other? Stan Lee and Jack Kirby did more than 100 issues of FANTASTIC FOUR without "rehashing old plots" -- unless you extend your definition of "rehash" to include the newest threat from Doctor Doom or Galactus. Yet, in all those 100 issues, what "development" really occured? Reed and Sue got married -- but they were engaged when introduced, so no substantive change there. The Thing got a girlfriend -- but in the ninth issue, before Lee and Kirby slammed on the brakes and the characters stopped moving thru "real time".

Much the same can be said of all the Marvel books when Stan was in charge. The illusion of change was ever present, but real change was rare. Even when Peter Parker moved from High School to College it had little impact on the adventures of Spider-Man -- which, after all, was what the book was about.

++++++++++

GK: In all my arguments with people about this topic, they always accuse me of wanting Spider-Man to "be just like you, to be what YOU see Spider-Man as", and wanting "things to stay frozen forever, with the same old stories over and over. Go read the old stories instead!".

They miss my point. I want the characters to be the same, not the stories.

JB:

There isn't one -- and this fact is underscored by the unspoken subtext to be found in the statements of virtually everyone who thinks "realistic" aging of characters is a good thing. In the vast majority of cases, the phrase "since I started reading" is folded into the demand. I started reading with AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 1, in 1963, and Peter Parker was about three years older than me. Hands up everyone who'd like to read the adventures of a 59 year old Spider-Man! How about a 92 year old Batman?

And lest anyone feel the urge to suggest the aging originals could be replaced by "legacy" character, lets consider the squawking when that happens! And, indeed, how many times it would happen! What Roman numeral would Batman be up to, at this point?

++++++++

GK: I've seen a lot of speculation as to when the "Spider-Man mantle will be passed on". UGH.

There is no Spider-Man without Peter Parker. And there is no Spider-Man without a youthful (college-age, even) Peter Parker.

Stan also made use of the fight scenes to have the hero thinking about other stuff in his life that was not going smoothly. This trick turned up in books other than SPIDER-MAN alone.

When I was getting into the business, tho, I noticed writers who were lesser lights than Stan (in the way candles are lesser lights when compared to supernovas) dimissing this approach as "cliché". There was a lot of that kind of thinking going round. It was as if people were remembering all the old Marvel stuff and saying "Wasn't that great? Let's never do that!"

++++

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Spider-Man the first to make really extensive use of (and popularize) thought balloons in superhero comics?

Today, it's all pseudo-Miller first-person narrative captions: "I hit him hard. Damn hard. He hits me harder. I stab him with my stingers. He spits at me and dies. It's tough being a superhero. But at least I have a hot wife at home to ****."

UGH.

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Spider-Man the first to make really extensive use of (and popularize) thought balloons in superhero comics?

Today, it's all pseudo-Miller first-person narrative captions"

Thought balloons were in use long before Spider-Man.  I think Stan Lee might have been first one to fully emancipate the thought balloon from what was going on in the panel, allowing Spider-Man to worry about Aunt May's health while battling the Rhino and such.

And while creators are entitled to their own storytelling decisions, I chalk up the almost total disappearance of thought balloons to insecure writers who want to make comics more like books.  I don't quibble with any one creator who doesn't like them, but the fact that their use has been so widely abandonded is wrong.

Mike

"Ellis likes the comic book format for telling stories.  He likes the fact that, for the most part, there's far less interference than in TV or movies, where the end result is often quite different than what the writer put on the page.  He doesn't like that 90% of the comics on the shelf are superhero books, and that a large percentage of those aren't very good."

Then why not write a novel instead of producing even more work-for-hire super-hero books?  If he can't make a living doing his creator-owned stuff, why continue to contribute to the very things he so profoundly bitches about?

And what involvement did Ellis have in the GLOBAL FREQUENCY television pilot?  Did he just get a rights check as the original creator or did he have more to do with it?

Mike

"Many people consider the changes that Simonson made to Thor some of the greatest work in the charachter's history. Walt certainly eliminates many of the key aspects of the original Thor stories. He got rid of Don Blake, possibly the single most defining charachteristic of the original Lee/Kirby stories, and he also got rid of Odin, the second biggest cornerstone of the original stories. Both of those things led to great stories. Wouldn't it be a shame if editorial mandate decided that he couldn't deviate from those two "laws of Thor"?"

Yeah, those were great stories...BUT you could argue that the folks who followed Simonson had to constantly struggle with the changes he made.  When he took away Don Blake, Simonson severed the one major connection Thor had to the super-hero genre and I think creators ever since have been burdened by that loss.

Mike