Straczynski thinks OMD sucks

Is that having your cake and eating it too?

Hell, beyond the obvious editorial mandate, the story is dull, poorly structured, and has ugly art.

He went into that a bit in the full quote

Did they retcon her being visibly pregnant, because I don't see how a skinny thing like Gwen could have hid twins from the world, even at mid-term.

I'm so happy I gave up comics when I did. Son of a bitch, that is a lame idea for a story.

She had vamoosed to Europe for a time (while she and Peter were on a "break"), had the kids and left them in Europe (with either family or nannys from Osborn - don't have the books in front of me), while she went back to Peter (she realized she was in love with him). She was planning on telling Peter everything when Osborn killed her. MJ knew about all of this, but Gwen swore her to secrecy.

10 out of 10 for the concept, minus several million on the execution. Quite a few fans were pissed about the storyline.

Roughly 4-5 years after the Clone Saga ended and then kicked into full gear about a few months after Spider-Man was released to theaters.

It's really weird to see JMS pass the buck on his final shitty Spider-Man story. He's got years of material to answer for before this crap ever came to happen.

I love how JMS and others are just nodding and going "Well, editorial/corporate has the final say, that's just the way things are", as if that were just the natural order of things. As if you'd get a situation like this in any other medium. Even huge megabudget movie franchises have more respect for the creative talent that made them profitable than comics do.

Loath though I may be to agree with Dave Sim, he's on the money about this particular topic. And Alan Moore's recent talk about "gangster mentalities" and why he splt from DC again is hard to disagree with in light of stuff like this. The assembly-line, corporate-controlled approach is killing mainstream comics, especially DC and Marvel.

With the continuity being what it is. It'll turn out to be a hot young clone of Aunt May that he dents the headboard with. *shudder*

I remember in the mid 90s I was a huge Marvel Zombie (sigh) and I enjoyed the hell of out of the SM titles and others at the time. Before all this "realism" and whatnot started watering down the MU titles. I miss the days when anything and everything could happen in a Marvel book, now we get stuff like CIVIL WAR.

The last good Marvel comics I read were Morrison's X-MEN run.

This news really hurt my feelings until I realised that I misread the headline, and besides, there was never even anybody named Straczynski in OMC. How bizarre.

Then again, isn't that pretty much what happened on Spider-Man 3? Raimi was all set to make his Sandman movie, and Marvel pressured him into throwing Venom in the mix.

Then again again, I guess we're still dealing with Marvel there. So it has more to do with Marvel's interfering ways than with film in general.

The only comic that reminds me how fun superhero comics used to be was Kurt Busiek's ASTRO CITY. Nowadays the most entertaining ongoing superhero comic is Erik Larsen's THE SAVAGE DRAGON, at least in my opinion anyways.

I thought of that as I was posting, and obviously I acknowledge that big studio movies feature some corporate interference. That specific example is a very good counterargument, but as you say, it's Marvel applying their comic-book philosophy to the movies--it's not a typical example. But even if Sony plans on making Spider-man movies forever, and even if they start treating Raimi as completely replaceable, the nature of the medium still prevents it from sinking as low as comics do in terms of grinding out branded crap. You can only make one movie in a franchise every two years or so, and a change of creative team (actors especially) can cause havoc. Even the longest-lived franchises need to go dormant for long periods.

With comics, it's the attitude of "There must ALWAYS be a Spider-man comic on the shelves", combined with the historical treatment of writers and artists as hired hands, that leads to this situation. In film there's always a modicum of association between the author and their creation--I'm not saying no one would make another Star Wars movie if Lucas died, but everyone would accept that it was a new start, and people would disassociate them from the old ones. There's at least a slight trace of shame going on there. With comics, it's just, "Kirby's not doing FF anymore? OK, Next!" without even a moment's reflection that maybe the FF aren't worth doing without Kirby.

Obviously this is complicated by the fact that there are people who can pick up the torch of an existing property and produce something good. And yeah, that comic-book-everlasting-franchise mentality is starting to creep into film and TV, but I still say it's ingrained in comics in a way it just isn't anywhere else.

Isn't this the same idiot who came up with that Spider totem crap???

One more day is worse than anybody could have imagined ... http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=140806

Highlight for spoilers ...

Copied from the newsarama thread ...
Ok I will be mr spolier but you might not believe it as it is SO bad. Pete wakes up alone in the bed to find MJ in that bathroom puking I guess (the art & story telling are so bad who can tell what is up). First 3 1/4s was pete & MJ talking over accepting the offer. They come off as so dumb with neither asking the ultimate question, what would May want which we all know she would want then to stay married. So then the devil appears, they say yes cuz... well theres no believable reason they would. Then as just a freebie the devil tosses in that he is gonna rub out the demasking of peter parker. MJ whispers something to the devil to get an easy way out if the writters need it later. Then after they agree the devil says what I predicted, hes rubbing out the child they would have had in the future,,, UGH, Then... poof! Pete wakes up alone, goes downstair to ol aunt may making wheat cakes then run off to a party for .. HARRY OSBORN!!!! Yes everything is totally as if the last 20 years hasnt happened (in fact last panel shows them making a toast & you can see petes web shooters peeking out just to say screw you payed to read is worthless now). It is so much worse than I expected it to be. They have just turned Amazing into the start of Ultimate Spider-man. Its the worst time ever in Amazing Spider-man history.

Wow, all I can really say is, jackasses.

Ok, so that being said...*swipe*does that mean Civil War never happened now either, since they "took back" the unmasking? Somebody watched "Dallas" one too many times. I'm not reading the comic, but jeez, that's kinda lame.

Thank God I bailed when I did - from what I read on the Newsarama site, as well as this thread (and yes, I've flipped through the first three OMD books at my friend's shop), Joe Q. really screwed the pooch on this one.

Seriously, is the fan backlash this move is going to generate worth it to Quesada? How soon before things revert back to the post Civil War Spidey? I give it a year, tops.

I just picked it up and it as they say it is the worst most disappointing thing I've read in a very long time. The potential to tell a good story is gutted by one man's need to align a character with the movie perception of him. Just plain stupid.

Wow, now that is a CRAPPY storyline. Makes ya kind of miss the simpleness of the Clone Saga. (I kid, I kid)

So, wait a second. How can you take one character who is part of a continuous, persistent and integrated universe, and just retcon his reality? Wouldn't that kind of cosmic reset button wash over everything in the Marvel universe that's happened since then?

That's what an intelligent reader who had half a brain would think. But I honestly don't think that's who they are writing these books for any more.

Wasn't quite the same. That story had everyone forget they knew the Flash's true identity, including the Flash himself, Wally West. It didn't change history and was quickly resolved.

I skimmed through it when I went to the comic shop today, so fucking stupid.

I'm pretty sure this isn't going to last - somebody mentioned earlier Quesada inadvertently confirmed the fact at one of the conventions. I give this storyline about a year tops before the way out kicks in and things go back to "normal" - that is, the big convoluted mess the Marvel Universe has become of late. Probably sooner if sales drop and fans continue to rail against the change.

What bugs me about the whole thing is that even though Quesada, some of the writers, guys like Alex Ross, etc. hate the fact that Peter and MJ are married, it seems the majority of the fans (who, y'know, BUY the books and pump money into Marvel) like it and don't want it fucked with. Why the hell would anyone at Marvel want to fuck with the fans if it means fucking with the income?

Plus, they've tried this shit a couple of times before - Kevin Smith wisely bolted prior to his stint on Amazing because word from the higher-ups was they wanted MJ gone. Smith said "No" because he just greased Karen Page in Daredevil, and he knew the fans would lynch him if he took out MJ. Also, when MJ was supposedly blown up in an airplane, the fans revolted. They brought her back, fans were happy, but then Marvel separated them. Fans got pissed, sales dropped, and when JMS got onboard, the first mandate he had was to bring Pete and MJ back together.

It's like sticking your hand into a fire, burning your skin, healing up, then doing it over and over again.

I can see the source of the conflict. Fans want Peter and Mary Jane together because they like him, and they want him to get the girl and be happy. But from the writers' and editors' perspectives, that's death to the character. Stan Lee discovered very early on that the more shit you pile on Peter Parker, the more he works as a character. If things are going well for him, he becomes very difficult to write interesting stories for, because the root of who he is is gone.

Letting Peter get the girl and live happily and, in short, grow up, is the end of Spider-Man. Once you stop feeling sorry for him and his shitty life, and start to admire or envy him, he's over. It's like letting Bruce Wayne get revenge on the man who killed his parents. It kills the core of what the character is about.

Mind you, this is a pretty stupid way to take the character back to his roots, but I can see the motivation behind it. This is one case where giving the fans what they want is hurting the character.

I don't think this story is giving any fans anything they wanted to read out of Spider-Man. As stated, this is meant for bringing in new people and to keep Spider-Man "fresh".

Here's Joe Q in his own words about what he's trying to do here (latest interview on OMD);

http://comicbookresources.com/news/n...m.cgi?id=12664

These quotes from JQ really irk me because he makes it sound like current fans are greedy bastards who don't want to "share" the character. They are also against change, which is ironic seeing as he's just going back to the status quo of the 70s.

That's what I said. Letting him live happily with MJ is what they want. And what they want is killing the character. The fans want every minute of the last 45 years of every Spider-Man comic to count as part of the history of the character, and that's fucked up. There is no continuity. Occasionally, you have to hit the reset button. Not like this, mind you, but somehow.

He's not wrong. To me, this is the most sense he's ever made, actually. These character do need to remain ready for the next generation to pick up. This is something that comics writers have either forgotten how to do, or stopped caring to try to do. They become so mired in history and past minutia that they forget to tell an engaging story for someone who's just picked up the book. It's one of the many reasons that monthly comics are flailing. They're preaching to the converted, and the converted scream every time they try to stop.

I'm with Mr. Greg David on this one:

And, really, at the heart of it, does anyone really disagree with the idea of "rejuvenating" the characters now and then? I doubt it. But I think what everyone is upset about here, and rightfully so, is the way this particular reset is being executed. To steal a page from Quesada's way of thinking, it doesn't feel right. You don't spend the last however many years (fifteen? I don't remember) building up this marriage and then suddenly shit all over it. That's what rankles me -- unintentional or not, the message they're sending is, "All that stuff we told you was important and we asked you to care about? We were lying." And it's simply because of the way it's being executed.

You know who did it right? DC Comics, right before Byrne relaunched Superman with The Man of Steel (incidentally: still a great read, all these years later) -- they got Alan Moore to write an ending for the classic-era Superman. That's all Marvel needed to do. Write an ending for Peter and Mary Jane that allows us, the readers, to have closure on the relationship. "Yeah, hey, it worked out for them. That's great." That way readers don't have to bring any bitterness to the table when they pick up the all-new adventures of 20-something Peter Parker and his pal Harry. It puts it in the context of a fresh start, instead of as a betrayal of years & years of storytelling they've been invested in.

That's a great example. I still have that big "Final Superman Story" issue. The whole Crisis thing at DC was great, both in the way they ended everything, and the way they started it again. Marvel could really use an approach like that. When they first launched the Ultimate line, I was hoping that they really were rebooting everybody, and leaving the continuity behind. Alas, it just turned out to be another way to sell multiple books about the same characters.

I firmly believe that all monthly comic book superheroes should be routinely rebooted every ten years. It would free the writers from the pressing weight of decades of "continuity" that the fanboys won't let them ignore, and help bring new readers in.

Greg and Daniel nailed it. I have no problems with a reboot (hey, I thought that was what the Ultimate line was), and Marvel is kind of past due for one, what with all the complicated storylines, years of continuity, etc.

I'd give damn near every major Marvel character a happy ending (something for the fans that stuck with a favorite character for so long), in the 616 universe. That being done, instead of a DC style "restart the universe" type of reboot, Marvel could pick one of their myriad alternate universes and restart the whole line there. Make some long called for changes (say change the ethnicity of certain characters and bring in a new demographic besides white kids/collectors) to keep the material fresh and contemporary. Besides, all the older stuff will still be available via graphic novels and collections, or on Marvel's website.

A reboot every 10 years or so is a perfect timeframe, and simplifies continuity for newer readers to jump in fresh and catch up.

I'll reiterate that I'm not a hardcore superhero fan, but I'm not sure I get the "Spidey can't marry MJ because he's not allowed to be happy" thing. Wasn't there a Lee-penned story that ended with the acknowledgement that, yes, Spidey's going to win one every once in a while? Isn't the fact that he got MJ as a girlfriend in the first place proof that he can be happy from time to time? Seriously, who the fuck wants to read a 40-year-long story with no happy endings? Because I'm pretty sure that's not what Spiderman is.

But even putting that aside, this "Peter married and happy makes it hard to write stories" is bullshit that just highlights how crappy Marvel's writing staff is. If you can't write stories for a married character, you need to go back to writing school. And, correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty goddamn sure a marriage should provide plenty of opportunities for Spidey to be unhappy and conflicted anyway. If the original point of Spiderman as a comic was that he was a superhero dogged by the minutiae of everyday life, marriage should provide TONS of story opportunities for that. If they were writing the character correctly. Which, apparently, they have no interest in doing.

Well that's kind of the problem, isn't it? It's a forty-year-long story about a guy who was eighteen at the beginning of the story. If we're going to tackle it as if it's anything resembling real life (ie, dealing with growing up and being married), then there should be radioactive spidery grandchildren by now. I'm not averse to telling that story, but at some point, they're going to have to start over, because Peter as a character loses what makes him tick. He's the guy who won't ever give up, no matter how many times he doesn't get what he deserves. And the more he doesn't get it, the more we can admire him for still trying to get it. And all these years, the one thing he wanted to get more than anything was Mary Jane. Once he has her, it makes everything else in his life small potatoes (yes, even Spider-Man), and watching your hero pursue lesser goals for the rest of his life isn't terribly interesting. It has nothing to do with whether the writers are any good. They're starting out in a dramatic hole. It's like having Ahab kill the white whale, then following his adventures after that. If we're not following the most important quest of the character's life, then we're wasting space. That's Drama 101.

I'd say that any improvements another medium has over comic books is less the result of the sanctity of the artists and more the leverage of celebrity. Spider-Man is more important than any single person working on him because he's more well known almost any person bound to work on him will be. Talent has a lot of power because 1) Actors are very high profile, and the public will notice, and 2) If you're a Hollywood director, chances are you've climbed through some pretty mountanous ranks to get where you are.

It's not just with comics--you'll notice Mickey, Donald, Bugs and Daffy remain long after their creators have passed on, and are probably subject to all kinds of mandates. Likewise, the muppets are a little more of a family operation, but they will outlive any stint one particular artist has over them.

You can argue for the results, but I'm just saying studios don't treat high profile talent as less disposeable because they want to, but because they're not in a position to. One tends to wonder how this Beowulf technology will change things...

I really doubt that fans have been clamoring for (1) Peter to "age" with them, (2) Have stories that are completely mired in continuity minutia, (3) not willing to accept changes in the character.

Joe Quesada chose the possibly worst way to "reboot" the character, and quite honestly, for a character in a "shared" universe like the one they have in Marvel (and DC) it's more confusing and complicated to reboot a single one rather than the whole "universe".

I also don't think that the goal in Peter Parker's life was to "marry MJ" and then the story is done. If that was the case, maybe I was reading the wrong comic book. To me, it was always about a regular guy trying to live a normal life while being a Super-Hero. You know, there are a lot of regular guys that are married. And if they wanted to explore that without MJ, divorce, separation, death, etc would have been much better options with even more possibilities for interesting stories.

I'm all for "refreshing" Spider-Man, I stopped buying it a while ago since there is no semblance of a recognizable regular cast and I just wasn't interested in this whole Spider-Totem nonsense that they had not too long ago. But a better idea would be to build new characters and a new set of regular characters, bringing back people like Harry is just beyond lazy, specially when his story has already been told. Is it really impossible to build new relationships and characters like those without resorting to silly reality altering devices?

The irony is that the Spider-Man Joe Q wants already exists, he's in the Ultimate Universe, and is almost exactly what "reboot" people here seem to clamor for. But apparently that is not enough ...

Well, you're completely wrong on point 2. Fans of any property want to have stories that are completely mired in continuity minutia. Have you ever heard a group of Trekkies when an episode appears to ignore something that happened on another Trek show ten years earlier? Fans are like that.

What can I say? Apparently, you were reading the wrong comic book. Being a superhero is not the most important thing to Peter Parker. He's stopped being Spider-Man several times. Why? In order to lead a normal life, and stand a better chance of landing a relationship with Mary Jane.

Didn't most of those "Spider-Man no more" issues take place when he was with Gwen Stacey? To be honest, MJ wasn't unavailable because of Peter being Spider-Man, but because she had abandoment issues and wouldn't get close to anyone.

Really, at what point was Spider-Man the dork who's girl problems we could relate to? When he had two women fighting over him? When he was with the hottie who's only problem was she couldn't settle down? When he was partners with the bad girl in spandex? I have to say, this "Spider-Man can't get the girl" perception people seem to apply to him has never really lasted very long. There have been very, very few points where Peter's relationship with women wasn't every bit the fantasy having superpowers was.

More to the point, reboots, continuity and "comic time" are a separate, much more complex issue than "Spiderman must always be miserable".

But overt, nerdish continuity does seem to be the source of a lot of these problems. And this goes back to my thing about coporations owning characters rather than creators. Kirby, Lee, and Ditko were able to keep the Marvel Universe ticking along with the kind of tightly-woven storytelling that they did because it was a small creative team running everything. I mean, between them, they were doing what, six? Seven books at a time? And influencing everything else. Meanwhile, most of the even remotely successful continuity/crossover based stuff of the last thirty years has usually been the brainchild of a small team, sometimes even a single person (like JLA: One Million). But that kind of thing should be a rare flourish, not the status quo. It certainly shouldn't be demanded of every superhero comic writer, especially one who's picking up several decades of existing continuity. But it is, because apparently Marvel comics is expected to retain Kirby's brilliance after the man himself left. Despite being a soulless corporate entity. It's not going to work unless someone has the passion for it.

MKGT, what about authors of books? An author is always intimately linked with his or her creation in the public mind. And that includes Mickey and Donald with Walt Disney, and the Muppets with Jim Henson. Yes, people keep them going for profit, and there's nothing inherently wrong with that, but no one expects, for instance, Fantasia 2000 to be part of a seamless continuum with the original Fantasia. Everyone ackowledged it was a new thing, and it's already been forgotten, leaving the original untarnished.

With comics, a shitty Spiderman storyline is somehow enough to destroy the character forever. It makes no sense to me. Just ignore the crap you don't like, that's the right attitude. If it sucks, it's not canon. I mean, Christ, Lee and Kirby did a FF story where the Sub-Mariner poses as the director of a Hollywood movie in order to ambush them. That was fucking Lee and Kirby, but I don't see most people treating that story like holy writ. I don't see modern writers having Subby playing dress-up. Why should whatever JMS barfed out recently be treated like an indelible stain forever?

I think if superheroes are going to survive, they're going to have to adopt the All-Star Superman model--just treat each new run of the character as a separate project rather than a continuation of the last one, with whatever continuity elements the writer wants to use implied. That way, there's no "tainting" and idiotic backpedalling, and the writer gets the credit for a discrete story rather than keeping a bunch of balls in the air. You can even do Civil War or whatever big event you feel like without fucking Iron Man. Devin was talking about this, kind of, when he wrote about the looming Final Crisis a few months ago. Of course you'll lose "official" inter-title continuity, but I think that's on its last legs anyway. Why prolong its misery?

Those are good points, and particularly this last paragraph. I really think that these characters would be better off, and Marvel as well, if monthly comics went away. Marvel's machinery could be turned toward churning out graphic novels, one-shot stories told to completion in a single volume. That way, like prose novels, we could ignore the ones by authors/artists we don't care for, and seek out the ones by our favorite creators. Of course, there would still be the die-hard fans who seek out a character instead of a creator, but those people deserve what they get. By which I mean Rob Liefeld.

I don't think Spider-Man fans are obsessed with continuity to the detriment of the character, specially when they do ignore events that people would rather forget (like the Clone Saga).

Yes, but to me the character didn't have a "goal" he had to accomplish, and if he ever had one it never seemed to me it was getting married to MJ. "With great power comes great responsibility" is what sums up the character best, and what he's all about, and that doesn't mean his story ends at the marriage.

I think it's a bit idiotic from JQ to assume this is going to bring in a whole set of new readers anyways, because we already have a young single Spider-Man in Ult. Spider-Man. Also, this has been tried before, he must have forgotten what the Clone Saga was all about. And we all know how that ended.

Not to derail this thread, but it gets hard to take anyone's deep character analysis too seriously when they continue to write his name incorrectly ("Spiderman").

Not naming names, but Jesus, people.

The monthlies don't have to go anywhere. They're already "writing for the trade" mostly anyway. I'm just saying, instead of continuing from the old run, a new writer and artist gets to start a new story that can ignore whatever continuity he wants. Maybe have each new run start from #1 again, with a subtitle for the story...think of BRPD, but with flexible continuity. A series of miniseries (which could, obviously, include alternate reality or "what if" stories like Red Son or Kingdom Come). This would keep people from declaring that the character has been ruined forever and that they're never reading comics again, etc. Which frankly kind of pisses me off.

Well, I think there are interesting riffs on continuity to be done, like Dan Slott's Spiderman/Human Torch mini. (Or fucking "Spider-man", excuse the hell out of me.) All-Star Superman, which I'd pretty much hold up as the model to emulate, relies on awhole bunch of ideas from throughout the decades, reassembled in a fairly casual way. Obviously there ought to be something to please the longtime fans every so often, a sense of building on what came before. It just shouldn't be too obsessive.

Again, though, DC has the advantage, with its more static heroes who have gone through several iterations over the years. With Marvel it's basically just been a continuation of the Lee/Kirby/Ditko/Thomas era, continued for decades by others. I'd actually be interested to see an inventive reimagining of Spider-man or the FF or whoever, in the mode of some of DC's Silver and Bronze age reinventions, but I'm just spitballing.

Just finished the last part, and it's official:
One More Day is the most retarded thing I've read in a while. It's full of laughs, though.


The Devil: I don't want your soul....I want your marriage!

Peter: No way, man! No way!

MJ: Hang on, let's hear SATAN out.


The "Yeah but.... can we trust SATAN??" heart to heart discussions between MJ and Peter were also glorious.

Couldn't they at least have used Mephisto? I mean, keep it in the family, for god's sake.

It was Mephisto. Isn't he basically the marvel universe version of Satan?

Oh and I forgot to mention this part:

Mephisto: BWAHAHAHAHA And guess what?
If you had stayed married, you would have had the perfect child!

Shocked and Angry Peter: WHY YOU--!!

Barf.

Joe Q is pretty deluded. From CBR's interview with him:

"Also, the science that (JMS) was going to apply to the retcon of the marriage would have made over 30 years of Spider-Man books worthless, because they never would have had happened. We would have also had a "Crisis" in the Marvel Universe because it would have reset way too many things outside of the Spider-Man titles. We just couldn't go there and in the end we weren't expecting that kind of story."

Isn't that EXACTLY what happened?