After announcing at San Diego Comic-Con that they would be ending the Brand New Day plotline in which Peter Parker - Spider-Man - is no longer married to Mary Jane Watson and essentially had a “reboot” of his life, Marvel Comics has once again stirred up controversy with Marvel fans.
Being fanboy elitists, it is in our nature as comic book fans to never be satisfied with anything that a publisher does. These are our characters, after all, and who are they to screw them up? Despite my enormous ego and my undesirable need to always be counter-popular thought, I fall into this category as well, at least when it comes to ol’ Webhead. When One More Day/Brand New Day happened, I swore off Spider-Man as a whole. I had no desire to see 20 years of continuity and the best part of Civil War flushed down the toilet due to Peter Parker making a deal with the devil. In fact, I’ve written about it so many times in various top 10 lists and such that I can’t even link to all of them, for the sake of space.
But here we are, a few years later, and again I’m angry. Iann Robinson and I discussed it briefly in The Book Report - Episode #22, but essentially my issue is that Marvel didn’t stick to their guns on this one. They drastically changed something, and yet all of a sudden, quite randomly, it’s going back to “normal”. The real shame is that I’ve only just begun actually enjoying Amazing Spider-Man again. After the series of “Gauntlet” stories, I was completely hooked back into Peter Parker’s life, married or otherwise. And now, here I am, feeling how I did back in 2008.
I know that this article essentially proves the stereotypical fanboy nonsense that we are never satisfied, but I’m alright with that. In the case of Spider-Man, the issue is consistency. If you’re going to shuffle the deck after years of a steady continuity, then at least be brave enough to stick it out long term. In superhero comics, a couple of years for a plot thread - retrospectively - really isn’t a long time. Granted, Marvel was publishing Amazing thrice monthly, essentially tripling the number of issues that the book would have had otherwise. I suppose my issue lies in the fact that just when I warmed up to the new situation, Marvel took it all away again, presumably leaving some exciting new plot threads behind.
Many things are still unanswered; are the new villains from “The Gauntlet” sticking around? Is Peter still unemployed? What about his new love interests? Is Aunt May still a total bitch? There is a sense of uncertainty surrounding the re-reboot, and comic fans don’t dig that. The timing of the change is interesting too, especially with the film reboot impending. You’d think Marvel would want to keep the character “accessible” to new readers (because having him be a married man is so ‘out-there’, after all). The kicker is that this sort of gives the impression that Marvel has no idea what will really “work” for the character; between Clone Sagas, continuity changes and scheduling alterations, I’m not sure Spidey has had a solid foundation since the 1980s.
Interestingly, Amazing Spider-Man editor Steve Wacker started an interesting series of blog posts at the official Spider-Man blog, showcasing old reader letters from back in the day (including one from Kurt Busiek), proving that Spidey fans have never been satisfied. In a great line from Wacker, sensing our dissatisfied nature as comic fans, he said “The one thing that’s great about Marvel fans is that there’s nothing they won’t argue about. That kind of dedication and love is the reason our characters resonate with so many readers. So for everyone who thinks debate and controversy and over our favorite wall-crawler is something new, you may be surprised to find out that Marvel’s been screwing Spidey up from #1!”
Though we may bitch and complain, I think we can all agree that eventually, we get over it. If I started to enjoy Spidey post-Brand New Day, then pigs must now be able to fly. While it will take me a while to once again give the Spidey books my trust, I imagine that it will happen eventually.
I just wish I had the same confidence for J. Michael Straczysnki and Wonder Woman.
