I guess milestone issues these days don’t agree with me because I think I dislike Amazing Spider Man #700 as much as I disliked Walking Dead #100. If I really think about it, I dislike it even more.
Amazing Spider Man was the title that got me into collecting comics. The first comic I ever bought was ASM #151. I’d beg my mom every week after church when we’d stop the pharmacy for a quarter or two to buy a comic. I started tracking each issue to make sure that I got them all in order. Fantastic Four was my next regular title.
A few years later my uncle told me that he had a comic book shop in his town. A shop that ONLY sold comics? Rock Bottom Books and Comics in Columbia, MO (still run by the same guy, btw!) became my holiday Shangri La, imploring my family members that lived there for comic book Christmas presents. Soon after that, I found The Turning Page in Milwaukee, WI (near where I lived) and started a weekly pull list, at the top of which was Amazing Spider Man.
Sure, there were other Spidey books over the years…Spectacular Spider Man (a durable but not quite there book)…Web Of Spider Man (solid stories and art)….Sensational Spider Man (didn’t go long enough)….or Ultimate Spider Man (bleh!) but none matched up to the flagship book.
The last few years have been sub par, in my opinion, although I will never stop collecting it. Dan Slott is a decent writer but the art has really been awful. My artist for Spidey will always be Ross Andru. His work popped out of panels and displayed my hero in a larger than life, brilliant colored way. The newer artists (Huberto Ramos, Giuseppe Camuncoli) are just plain awful. The bodies aren’t in any sort of proportion and look more like Vertigo art…dark and moody. That’s not how Spidey should be drawn.
Even the stories have been hit or miss and this latest one is definitely a miss, although it’s ridiculous to hear that Slott is getting death threats. It’s just a fucking story, people! Yes, it ends with the “death” of Peter Parker but you know he’s going to be back somehow. Let’s leave the psychosis behind and focus on why this book sucks: it’s a stupid cop out.
First of all, a mind switch story? Yeah, that’s never been done (ahem…Freaky Friday) before. How original. But then Slott gives himself an out by injecting powerful memories (yeah, those kind!) into the Doc Ocked mind of Spider Man so now he knows that with great power comes great responsibility. I guess the Superior Spider man will be a good after all….gee, how wonderful.
And maybe someday Peter’s memories will take over and everything will be back to normal again. Or maybe a time travelling younger version of Peter Parker will mind switch everything back and he’ll only lose a year or two of his life. Or Aunt May will step out of the shower after jumping over a shark and it will all be a dream.
Or maybe…(dum dum dah)…it was a clone that Doc Ock mind switched with…wouldn’t that be just about perfect?
Obviously, I’ll be picking up the first issue of The Superior Spider Man (out next month) and following the adventures of my remade hero but that doesn’t preclude me from bitching. This was a profoundly stupid idea (as DC discovered when they killed off Superman) and it intimates a struggle that Marvel Comics is having in trying to be relevant in the age of the New 52. DC simply makes better comics these days and, with stunts like this, they are still going to be number one.
This begs the question…is Marvel capable of telling an original story anymore?
