Another posting from my Marvel blog of long ago, this one continuing to answer questions put forward by the readership about the post-One More Day set-up for AMAZING SPIDER-MAN.
What Would You Do..With One More Set of Spidey Answers?
October 24, 2008 | 1:00 AM | By Tom_Brevoort | In General
All right, I didn’t quite get through all of the responses, but I think I and everybody else is just about talked out on Spider-Man at this point. So here are the last bunch of Spidey Answers for the duration:
>My only question left is when BND starts coming out in TPB. So far its only in HC.
Posted by izzatrix on 2008-10-10 12:36:26>
The first one came out this past Wednesday!
Since You guys can’t talk about the marriage in the regular Marvel Universe, then How do you guys explain the concept of Spider-girl’s universe to a new fan ?
Posted by CAmbm on 2008-10-11 09:22:33>
It’s Spidey and Mary Jane in the future where they’re married and have a daughter that gained his powers. Simple. There’s no reason why Pete and MJ can’t be married in an alternative timeline—it’s only in the main books that it’s a problem.
>I forgot to ask if we will see Hybrid/Toxin/Scream ever again
Posted by tobys on 2008-10-11 20:09:32>
Given enough time, probably.
>Also, regardless of how the breakup happened – IT DIDN’T NEED TO HAPPEN. If you wanted a single Spidey – use Ultimate Spider-Man.
Posted by HiddenVorlon on 2008-10-11 22:30:29>
I think you’re missing the point here, Hidden. It’s not that we wanted “a” single Spidey, it’s that we needed the mainstream, regular, default, central Spidey to be single. To use the same argument in a more ridiculous manner, Ultimate Spidey isn’t an axe murderer, so does that mean we should have easy license to make the mainstream Spidey one? I don’t think so.
>Tom’s exact words: “As a general rule, we don’t want the editorial staff writing the books, as there’s a clear conflict of interests”.
Yet Joe Q altered JMS’ storylines to his own liking several times during his run, eg. sins past…and also guided OMD to it’s conclusion, again, to his own liking.
No, Marvel’s Editorial staff don’t write your books, do they? lol.
Posted by aussie macca on 2008-10-12 03:11:10>
This one really warrants a response, since it trades in a very basic understanding about what editorial does, and the role it plays. “Sins Past” wasn’t altered at all. What happened was that Joe Q spoke to JMS about him coming up with a big story idea for AMAZING. JMS thought about it, and came back with the notion of Gwen having had kids by Peter, who’d now shown up looking for revenge. Joe Q said that he liked the basic premise, but that we couldn’t give Peter two kids, that this would only exacerbate the already-existing problem of the marriage. JMS, Joe, Axel and a couple of other people tossed some ideas around, and eventually settled on the notion of Norman being the father. And then JMS went off and wrote his story. Saying that Joe Q changed this story “on a whim” is completely inaccurate—the story, at that point, had not yet been accepted. And the final story idea was accepted by all parties involved at that point (regardless of how people may feel about it all now.)
And on “One More Day”, Joe was not only the editor in chief, he was also the artist and co-conceptualizer of the story! That’s a far cry from somebody coming in from left field to changing things willy-nilly to his own liking. As one of the creators on the book, Joe rightly had a voice in the story, beyond that of simply being the EIC.
>Can a good character who made a pact with evil incarnate still be a good role model?
Could you give us a straight answer then?
Posted by rrargh on 2008-10-12 21:21:44>
I guess it all depends on whether you believe that heroes can have feet of clay, can make the wrong choice, or can learn from mistakes. And if you believe in the concept of redemption. I think the Marvel characters and the Marvel philosophy has been pretty consistently on one side of this question.
To throw it back to you another way, is Ghost Rider a hero?
> But the writers should know that the real Spider-Man would never have made such a gross, selfish clingy mistake as that which happened in OMD.
Posted by Derek Metaltron on 2008-10-13 07:37:40>
So you’re saying that the real Spider-Man would sit by and allow somebody to die that he could save because he wouldn’t be prepared to make a personal sacrifice? I don’t agree with that at all—and putting aside the question of who the people involved are, that’s the central issue.
In most of the retellings of Spidey’s origin that Stan wrote during the ‘60s had some version of a key line in them, towards the end, where Peter dedicates himself to his new mission after realizing that the burglar who killed Uncle Ben was the man he let go by:” Never again will somebody suffer because Spider-Man failed to act!” I think that sentiment is perfectly in keeping with Spidey’s actions in “One More Day.”
>If your sales numbers aren’t crashing, how do you explain that a year later you are selling half the number of copies? I don’t know what else you call it other than a crash!
Posted by HiddenVorlon on 2008-10-13 20:06:14>
I’d tell you that you’re not comparing apples with apples—you’re looking at the inflated numbers that AMAZING held for a year of “Road to CIVIL WAR”, “CIVIL WAR’ and “BACK IN BLACK” tie-ins. But if you look at the numbers that AMAZING had been posting for the year before that, they look very familiar. Now, of course I’d like to be able to score crossover-numbers three times a month all the time, but other than doing thirty-six SECRET INVASION issues, that’s not realistic.
By this logic, ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN (which AMAZING has consistently outsold) must be on its last legs. But it isn’t, and we all know it isn’t—it’s one of the most beloved and respected series we put out. And nobody’s talking about that book crashing.
>Also, Peter was not condemning Aunt May to death, he had no choice and there was nothing he could do.
Posted by deadpool1977 on 2008-10-13 21:09:34>
Except that there was something he could do—as witnessed by the fact that he did it!
>The ferocity of the HEAT days had died down, but there was clearly still strong nostalgia for Hal Jordan, and few people were satisfied with how he’d been written out. If there hadn’t been that level of demand for Hal’s return, it wouldn’t have been the sales event that it was.
Posted by CylverSaber on 2008-10-14 09:46:33>
Oh, there was absolutely a nostalgia element to bringing Hal back, no question. And there’s even a bit of sense to the argument that Hal was the Green Lantern that everybody knew (though that argument was punctured pretty thoroughly once John Stewart was the GL in the JUSTICE LEAGUE cartoon.) But at the end of the day, going back to Hal was a creative choice, rather than a choice of necessity. The same thing can be said about the Barry Allen Flash returning now. Do you think, at this point, that there was any great groundswell of support for bringing Barry back? That’s not saying that either of these was necessarily a right or a wrong move—we make creative decisions like this every day. But any impetus among the fan community that these replacements were a situation that had to be “rectified” had long since eroded away. And I’m thoroughly convinced that the same will be true of the Spidey marriage, in time.
>Hypothetically speaking, if you were going to go about reversing OMD, how would you go about it? Not suggesting that you do it, but i’d be interested to know how you would
Posted by jenius on 2008-10-14 13:08:29>
I have absolutely no desire to reverse OMD, so I haven’t given it any thought. I probably wouldn’t have initiated that story left to my own devices—I’d have been just as paralyzed as all the guys who came before Joe—but now that we’re here, I’d move Heaven and Earth not to change it back.
And that’s it, folks! Thanks for all of your questions and responses on this. I don’t know that we changed the mind of a single solitary person, but we sure did fill up two weeks of blog-posts, and that’s good enough for me!
More later.
Tom B
0 (0)
Report
The Tom Brevoort Experience 