the hype over this is a lot of sound and fury. otto octavius will be operating peter parker's body for awhile. who knows? it could be FOREVER (or at least 20+ years), so that a whole generation only knows ock-as-spider-man.

but as has been pointed out, it's all fiction. if marvel so chooses, they can reverse this with a snap of the fingers. it's possible dan slott is playing the long game, too, setting up peter's eventual return from death. in the meantime, read the comic or don't read it-- marvel is doing what it is supposed to do, and that is generate buzz for one of its characters.

I was thinking about something, lately. I suppose it deserves a thread of its own, but it's relevant here, too.

What's your tipping point for a fictional universe's "house of cards"?

I "lost" Spider-Man a long time ago. Yet, I can read issues from the good 'ol days, and still get sucked into the stories and characters--even when I know about backstage controversies and such.

But, for a long time, now, characters like Spider-Man have felt so much more about the singers than the songs. As a result, I can't connect. For many years, picking up an issue has not made me feel that these are the same characters I know and love. It just feels like Writer X putting their stamp on a character for a few months or years, before someone else comes along and does something completely different.

All I can see are rockstar writers and editors having their way with the characters. Stunt after stunt after stunt. Where's the room for verisimilitude in that atmosphere?

Again, it's weird, because I can pick up an old issue of ASM or FF or whatever, and get sucked in. So, it's not a matter of my lacking verismimilitude, or needing a new hobby, right?

Seems to me like these fragile, fictional houses of cards fall apart when all of the attention is drawn to the people behind the curtain.

Without consistency, without the relative anonymity and secrecy that the creators used to have, it's much harder to believe in the characters and the universe, I think.

One of the great things about classic Marvel--even up through the 90s--is that, occasional bumps in the road aside, it still mostly felt like one cohesive universe, with the same characters doing their thing over decades of publishing history. Now, anything goes, and the tonal/character changes and constant retcons just obliterate that feeling of consistency for me.

As I've noted in the past, nitty-gritty continuity is not so important to me as is continuity of character and theme.

A Peter Parker who bounces from one ill-conceived stunt event to another, hangs out with the Avengers and the FF, and has one-night-stands does not feel to me like the same Peter Parker of 1962, 1972, 1982, or even 1992. It doesn't feel "real", y'know?

Even if good stories do occasionally come out of the modern titles, for me, the damage has been done. I can't invest in such an unstable house of cards, anymore!

Especially when the house was long ago bulldozed, and replaced with a strip club.