There’s word that Spider-Man has undergone a change of late. Marvel has been proudly touting its Brand New Day storyline, which is supposed to introduce the first new status quo for its popular superhero. Now I haven’t been following comics in a good couple years, but I figure let’s jump in and see how Spidey’s been doing since he opened himself up to the world.
So I come back to comics, start reading this bold new vision that Marvel has released and what do I learn?
– Peter Parker and Mary-Jane are no longer married and are apparently on bad terms with each other. Apparently this happened due to a deal with Mephisto that he would save frail Aunt May for the existence of their marriage. Yeah, that alone is pretty stupid and totally against the Parker character. How many people close to Peter have died? Did he make a deal to bring back any of those characters? That’s just bullshit! Why don’t we make a deal that brings back Uncle Ben too? Or any of the other 500 characters that have died in the Spider-Man comics… oh wait.
– Harry Osborn is back from the dead, on good terms with Peter, and hates Spider-Man… Christ, are you fucking kidding me? Bad enough we brought back Norman Osborn for that Clone Saga years ago, but now we’re brining back Harry because of this whole Devil deal? Bullshit! Again, why not bring back Uncle Ben instead of Harry? And if Harry hates Spider-Man, shouldn’t he hate Peter too? After all, Peter came out of the closet and… oh wait just a minute there, King.
– Nobody knows who Spider-Man is anymore. Don’t worry, it’s still Peter Parker, but apparently the whole thing is reorganized so that the whole unmasking thing that was much publicized, debated, criticized, analysed, whatever… never happened. Why would you do this? This is a move I expect from the Distinguished Competitor, not fucking Marvel. Again… BULLSHIT! It’s almost like they’re trying to rewrite history.
– Ol’ Jonah suffers a heartattack and his rival buys the Bugle and renames it the DB. Yeah, really fucking original. The DB. Yeah… BULLSHIT!
– Spider-Man no longer has organic webshooters, but the old-school mechanical ones. Some people might be happy with this, but I actually preferred the organic shooters. After all, spiders don’t have mechanical shooters, but I digress.
– A new heroine called Jackpot appears… and you know it’s obviously Mary Jane because she has red hair and calls Spider-Man “Tiger”. Christ! And who the fuck is Menace? Another goblin-like foe? BULLSHIT!
How do you fuck up Spider-Man?! Please tell me! PLEASE!
Okay… I guess I should be asking myself if the books are any good.
Truth be told, the stories aren’t that bad. They do try to bring back some semblance of classic old-school Spider-Man, but apparently nobody clued in on the fact that Peter is still old. The art for these books are… mediocre at best. Don’t get me wrong it’s not terrible and it’s fairly decent, but it’s nothing that hasn’t been done before. Overall, it’s worth a quick look, but the whole rewriting of history just ruins the whole thing for me. Again, why do these things need to change? It simply doesn’t make any sense. It reeks of… BULLSHIT!