Around the summer of 2001 I got back into reading comic books after listening to an interview with Kevin Smith on The Howard Stern Show. The two discussed their love of comics; Stern went on about his love of Superman and Smith spoke of his recent Green Arrow relaunching for DC. This was enough to pique my interest and get me back to the comic shop.
As overwhelming as it was, I knew there was one character I wanted to immediately catch up with: Spider-Man. And there was a lot of good stuff to pick from.
J. Michael Straczynski had recently taken over the writing duties on The Amazing Spider-Man and I followed with great delight for a few years. Then came a creepy Gwen Stacy story, the Spider-Armor (seen below), Spidey’s unmasking in the pages of Civil War, and finally, the coup de gras: “One More Day”. In the span of two years, Spider-Man had gone through one dramatic status quo change after the next and I wasn’t enjoying where they were taking the character so I eventually dropped all of the Spider-titles.
Love it or hate it, Marvel is to be commended for the choosing to unmask the character. Significant changes to such a mainstream character’s status quo are a rare thing (Hulk doesn’t count because his character demands it). Ultimately though, Peter Parker may have been backed into too tight a corner. Magical cleanup was required.
Only recently, thanks to stories penned by the likes of Mark Waid and Joe Casey, has The Amazing Spider-Man gotten back to some really strong stories.
Today’s announcement that Dan Slott would become the ongoing writer of Amazing seems to hit most of the right chords. Humberto Ramos, who drew a fantastic Peter Parker: Spider-Man arc back in 2002, is the artist of the first arc—I’m not sure if he’ll be sticking around. According to Slott, Peter will be given a career befitting a man with his obvious intelligence. This sounds good. He’s going to get some kind of new sciencey-enhanced costumed. This sounds… like another opportunity to reserve judgment.
While I have been enjoying most of the stories produced by Amazing’s rotating team of writers, it will be nice to have a single, consistent voice for the character. Is it too much to ask for something this side of spectacular?
2 comments:
Spidey's got another costume coming soon too....
Its like a cheesy glow in the dark action figure.
I like it. Oh Spidey
That's right... I thought I had seen something about that and wondered... "why?"
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