Re: Mystery Spidey villians
I was wondering if they were Jill & Paul Stacy, who mysteriously vanished without a trace when JMS took over from Mackie (remember Mackie?)
But I think I’m probably wrong, since I think I recall reading somwhere that these two are all-new characters. I like JMS’s work though, so I’m eager to see what happens.
Wolverines super-effecient immune system should mean that he can’t get drunk. Your description does seem quite a bit out of character to me.
I mentioned that misstep on Wolvie when Secret War came out. He was drunk on the airplane, but being immune to toxins and such, would have had to basically had an alcohol-blood transfusion to get a buzz on. Plus the fact that Wolvie claimed he’d never seen Spider-Man out of costume. Surprised that Bendis let those slip by.
And on the Byrne ASM run, don’t forget that Aunt May was kidnapped for however many issues, and she never once mentioned where she was or who did it or wondered why she was picked out. And MJ gave birth to a cat. (ok, not exactly true, but close enough.)
To be fair to Byrne, a lot of this wasn’t entirely his. If we are to believe the Life of Riley linked earlier, bringing back Norman and having him be responsible for orchestrating the whole clone saga was a decision dictated by the editorial staff (Bob Harras, I think is the one referenced) before Byrne was even brought on board. The “Aunt May was replaced by an actress” decision was also made during the tail end of that writing-by-committee period during which the books were in continual crossover and major developments were being dictated by the editors. The explanation was offered in a Byrne written issue, and certainly could have been better (say, having her be a genetic duplicate with copied memories, like the Gwen clone was), but I don’t really think the blame is all his.
The corpse buried in issue 124 was explained in The Osborne Journal (Glenn Greenberg). Osborne survived being impaled by the glider, but was unconscious with life signs virtually undetectible. Harry paid off the ME to fake an autopsy report. Norman recovered, and substituted the body of a homeless man for his and escaped to Europe.
Yeah, it’s dumb. Undoing Norman’s death was just one more stupid thing that came out of the clone saga, but it happened before Byrne was involved.
I’m of two minds regarding bringing May back. Amazing #400, those damn near perfect final scenes with Peter and May on the Empire State building and May’s death bed were the only thing from the whole clone saga that should have been kept when they did the reboot. Bringing her back robs the fans who were moved by those scenes of a lot of the emotional weight they had.
On the other hand, having May back gave Strazynski the chance to write that conversation between May and Peter in #42 or #43, which is also a great moment (it would have been better if we hadn’t already had a different version of the same scene, but that’s something JMS had no control over).
Regarding the revamped origin, I think that it was unnecessary, but there are several things I liked better about Byrnes version. The big explosion that killed dozens or possibly hundreds doesn’t really bother me. What I do like is giving the thief who killed Uncle Ben a reason for being at the Parker house; that part of the original story never made sense to me before.
Mary Jane’s “death”, though, that was dumb.
Reading that behind the scenes examination of the clone saga was interesting look at what a mess things were at Marvel during that period. One thing I couldn’t for the life of me understand was that among all of the fighting and disagreements about how to wrap things up, everyone involved agreed that that Peter’s baby had to go away for him to go back to being Spider-Man. The reasoning seems to be that he’s too responsible a person to be risking his life when he has a daughter at home to care for.
I think this is nonsense, and is just an example of an idea that’s so widespread in the comic industry that nobody ever stops to question it, that Superheroes can’t have children, or they must retire if they do (the FF being the exception). So if the wife of superhero gets pregnant, she must have a miscarriage. Susan miscarried her second child, MJ is poisoned, inducing premature labor and killing the baby, Linda miscarries. It seems the only way for a hero to have a child is for the grownup offspring to come back to the present from the future (Valeria, Supergirl, Rachel Summers, Bart Allen, etc.)
It’s become a cliche, and a stupid one. There’s no reason why having a baby at home can’t make for interesting personal stories to supplement the superhero action. I think it stems from the seemingly industry-wide decision to change from aging heroes very slowly to stopping subjective time all together. Having a perpetual baby around makes this more obvious, but having the baby grow up requires the parents to age.
Ranting over.
By the way, I managed to pick up all of the first run of Batman Adventures 1-37, Gotham Adventures 1-60, and the current run 1-15 for less than what I sell two ASM #36 for. There was a bidding war for Batman and Robin Adventures, but the other titles were inexplicably ignored.
That sounds like a great deal! You’ll have to report on how they were, especially any “key” issues or particular stand-out stories.
I agree, I was using the phrase “the Byrne run” as (inaccurate) shorthand. Certainly a lot of the stuff that I complained about wasn’t his fault (the magic “She’s dead! No you can’t see what’s in it!” box had nothing to do with Byrne.) It’s just that Byrne had a particularly stupid interview before (or just as) he took over the book (essentially endorsing all that happened…he said something that boiled down to “Spider-Man was good during the early '70s, so that’s what we’re going back to.”) and that’s always stuck in my mind when I think of the run.
Plus, the whole “I kinda suspected that you were Spider-Man all along but I didn’t want to deal with it, or with the reprecussions of it” made her nagging and worrying make lots of sense in retrospect. That said, as much as I loved #400, I think I prefer what JMS has done with the character. (I loved the “Just don’t even think of telling me it’s a halloween costume!” line)
I hated the explosion part and I wasn’t fond of the reason Byrne gave for the thief being at the Parker house. It didn’t make a lot of sense. Pure co-incidence? I can buy that for dramatic reasons. But I don’t get why the thief, who just made a HUGE score (he had to have grabbed thousands of dollars at minimum) why would he be dicking around with the penny-ante stuff of guy in Queens? Frankly, if we must have a reason (and as stated, I’m ok with the idea that it was just coincidence), I really like the movie version’s solution. (Although the “computer” reason isn’t as bad as the ASM #200 reason–the thief thought there was hidden treasure in the Parker attic. Blah.)
Peter David (who I strongly disagree with on this point) said something like “Fans always say they want change, but they don’t…what they want is the illusion of change–things change then revert to the status quo.” I hate that theory, I hate that attitude and I just hate the whole idea. The thing that made Marvel stand out among '60s comics and the thing that (IMO) gave Marvel their biggest boost with college audiences was the fact that through about '68 or so, the characters did change. If Spider-Man had been a D.C. comic of the era, Peter would still be in high-school and trying to fend off Liz Allen and get closer to Betty Brant while dodging Flash Thompson. Reed and Sue would still be doing their “I love him/her…but she/he doesn’t notice me” routine. Franklin would never have been born. Marvel characters changed and grew. Look how complex the Sub-Mariner was in the early issues. I think a part of the problem with comics today is rarely if ever have real, lasting change.
Geez! You’ve got some great reading ahead of you! Lemme know what you think of 'em! 
Anyone reading Gotham Knights?
We get a follow-up to The Killing Joke this week. Is this the first time anyone’s touched the Joker’s origin since then?
At first I was confused by the change in the sequence of events. I.e, the wife threatened to make him do the job, and then killed, rather than killed before the job. But then I remembered Joker’s multiple-choice past, and I was glad they didn’t confirm every detail, but gave another spin instead. I’m not sure what to think about the Riddler’s involvement. It seems too convenient. I did like the conversation between bats and Tim, though. We’ll see where it goes, but it was an entertaining read.
Spam zombie reported.
And dealt with, thank you.