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Glenn Greenberg
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 6746
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| Posted: 25 September 2007 at 12:42pm | IP Logged | 1
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Ironically, Matt, it was those very same sane heads who insisted on the
return of Norman Osborn!
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Matt Reed
Byrne Robotics Security
Robotmod
Joined: 16 April 2004
Posts: 36093
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| Posted: 25 September 2007 at 12:44pm | IP Logged | 2
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I know and thus my confusion!
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Andrew W. Farago
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 19 July 2005
Location: United States
Posts: 4079
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| Posted: 25 September 2007 at 12:56pm | IP Logged | 3
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Stop referencing past stories and they just go away, easy as that. If the next round of Spider-Man writers don't want to deal with any of JMS's inventions, it'll be pretty easy for them to not include any Spider-Totems or references to Sins Past or Civil Way or Morlun or Ezekiel or anything else that they don't want to deal with.
When the Spider-books were relaunched in the late 1990s, there was no mention of clones anywhere, and the Clone Saga has had no impact on the series since it wrapped up in the mid-1990s. Peter doesn't hang Ben Reilly's stocking at Christmas, he doesn't pour a 40 on the curb for his dead cloned homeys, he doesn't have thought balloons declaring "gosh, I sure am sad now that my clone isn't alive anymore." That's all it takes to move past a story that a creative team doesn't want to deal with.
And the creative team doesn't even need to bring up Sins Past the next time Spider-Man fights the Green Goblin. Norman Osborn hates Peter Parker, Peter Parker hates Norman Osborn, and the Green Goblin's moved onto a new plot to destroy Spider-Man, as he's done in the past. Don't bring up the magic goblin fighter babies, and they'll have no impact on the next story, or any future stories.
There are some rules that the writers should definitely stick to, but when it comes to moving on from the past, sweeping it under the carpet is the best way to handle this sort of thing. The people who absolutely loved a particular story don't get a six-part storyline that exists solely to tear that story to shreds, and the people who hated a particular storyline don't aren't forced to revisit it for the duration of an entire six-part storyline, either.
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Taavi Suhonen
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 27 April 2004
Location: Finland
Posts: 1544
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| Posted: 25 September 2007 at 12:58pm | IP Logged | 4
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QUOTE:
| Right now, he's a second rate Kingpin; a powerful NYC businessman who has a mad-on for Peter Parker. |
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Well, technically right now he is the commander of a team of
supervillains employed by the US government, but yeah, that's a pretty
accurate description of post-resurrection Norman Osborn up until now.
Edited by Taavi Suhonen on 25 September 2007 at 12:58pm
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Simon Bucher-Jones
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 04 May 2004
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 835
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| Posted: 25 September 2007 at 1:12pm | IP Logged | 5
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Re Doc Sam(p)son
I'd like to apologise for chalk-scraping Glenn's blackboard. In defense, because Samson and Sampson are both valid names and valid anglicisations of the same name for that matter transliteration from arabic being hit and miss, it doesn't set off my internal 'getting it wrong' filters when I mistype.
I'll try to keep a weather-eye out for it in future.
Simon BJ
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Thomas Moudry
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 5060
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| Posted: 25 September 2007 at 1:53pm | IP Logged | 6
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I remember reading The Amazing Spider-Man no. 400 some time after it was published; someone gave it to me in one of those "hey-I've-got-a-couple-of-comics-lying-around-do-you-want-th em" moments. When I got to the end, I thought, "Do they really know what they're doing here?"
Too often, folks come onto titles wanting to leave their mark; they--in their minds, at least--are bigger than the characters, and they're too busy focusing on what they could do that they fail to consider whether they should do it.
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Bruce Buchanan
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 14 June 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 4797
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| Posted: 25 September 2007 at 2:15pm | IP Logged | 7
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I know what you are saying, Thomas. But in the case of ASM #400, I believe that killing Aunt May was an editorial mandate - the Powers-That-Be wanted a big event for that milestone issue. Given that mandate, I thought DeMatteis turned in a touching, well-written story.
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Glenn Greenberg
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Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 6746
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| Posted: 25 September 2007 at 2:17pm | IP Logged | 8
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<<<I'd like to apologise for chalk-scraping Glenn's blackboard.>>>
HAH!
I hope you didn't take offense, Simon.
It's been sort of a running gag here that I flip out whenever Doc Samson's
name is spelled with a P.
It started several years ago, when his name started being spelled that way
in THE INCREDIBLE HULK comic, when it was being edited and written by
people who apparently had absolutely no previous knowledge of the
character.
Since Doc Samson was named after one of the most famous biblical
heroes, I couldn't understand why they kept spelling it with a P--over and
over again! Especially since it had NEVER been spelled that way before.
Type it however which way you want to. Just ignore the muttering.
That'll just be me, sitting in the corner. :-)
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Glenn Greenberg
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 6746
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| Posted: 25 September 2007 at 2:19pm | IP Logged | 9
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<<<I believe that killing Aunt May was an editorial mandate - the Powers-
That-Be wanted a big event for that milestone issue. Given that mandate, I
thought DeMatteis turned in a touching, well-written story.>>>
I don't remember it happening that way. As I recall, it was JMD's idea to do
it, and the ideal place seemed to be ASM 400.
Edited by Glenn Greenberg on 25 September 2007 at 2:19pm
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Bruce Buchanan
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| Posted: 25 September 2007 at 2:23pm | IP Logged | 10
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You would know far better than I, Glenn. I just thought I remembered reading that somewhere - but I'm probably mixing that up with something else.
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Glenn Greenberg
Byrne Robotics Member
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Location: United States
Posts: 6746
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| Posted: 25 September 2007 at 3:05pm | IP Logged | 11
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I wouldn't be surprised, Bruce, considering just how many editorial
mandates there were in those days!
But in the case of Aunt May's death, it was very much a labor of love on
JMD's part, and no one had to issue it to him as a mandate.
And I'm with you--I felt that she shouldn't have been allowed to die at all,
but it was done so well that I didn't want to see it undone.
HOWEVER--I just remembered this and and it eerily echoes my
involvement in the return of Norman Osborn--I was actually supposed to
be one of the writers who undid the death of Aunt May!
The story line that brought her back crossed over into the last few issues
of THE SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN, which I was on board to write until
the very end. But out of the last six issues of that title, I ended up only
writing four: the conclusion of "Identity Crisis" and my own three-part
"Goblins at the Gate" story.
Edited by Glenn Greenberg on 25 September 2007 at 3:33pm
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Dave Phelps
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 4185
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| Posted: 25 September 2007 at 3:52pm | IP Logged | 12
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Brad Brickley wrote:
| I think the basic problem is that Spider-Man has gotten so far from where he should be. I mean he's like 30 years old, married to a Super Model, works as a teacher and who knows what else because I stopped reading or even looking at them. |
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Well, I do agree with the first sentence... but from my perspective it's because of stories where he's popping spikes out of his wrists, eating his enemies, etc.
I just don't get the obsession with him being a teenager. Sure, that's where he started, but Betty and Liz being Stan's answer to "Betty and Veronica" aside, when did it ever seem to be that he was meant to be a superhero version of Archie? He ditched the glasses with #8, graduated from high school (and split up with his Betty and Veronica) by the 30s, moved away from home in the 40s, made peace with his high school nemesis by the 80s, thinks about "settling down" with Gwen in #100, etc. From that, marrying him off and killing off Aunt May come across as stories Stan hadn't gotten around to yet rather than extreme violations to the character that must be corrected by any means necessary, no matter how ridiculous.
I would have been perfectly content had they not killed off Aunt May or had they not married Peter and MJ, but once they had done it, I thought reversing it was/is far more untrue to the "core concept" as I saw it than doing it in the first place.
I just don't see what's wrong with having a major character whose status quo gradually evolves to become something else as we go. Yeah, I have very little interest in reading about an octogenarian Spider-Man, but at the current rate of aging we'd all be dead before he got little more than halfway there so it's not a huge concern of mine. :)
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