Elfsar Comics & Toys Blog

Okay,
My initial reaction to wiping away the History of Spider-man was that of “Crappity -crap crap… damn you Marvel”.   A bit of time has passed and I just finished reading Amazing Spider-man #546 Brand New Day and after a lot of thought my opinion has dramatically changed as this issue, much like Aunt May,  has breathed new life into an almost dead series.
I reflected back over the past year of Amazing Spider-man and to be honest this series had very poor readership compared with a lot of other Marvel titles.  In fact, there was only 8 issues that even came out last year which certainly did not help it’s sales.  At the beginning of the year we had the Civil War tie-ins  and then the Back in Black story which were in my opinion awful.  Then we had… oh yeah not much else.  

Now as a retailer, we are dependant upon books coming out MONTHLY.  Yes, I said “Monthly”.  Yes, it should be no surprise that like every other business, we have to pay rent every month and when books are late we can’t exactly be late with out rent now can we?  So it’s not hard to understand how frustrated we get when books don’t come out on time. Furthermore it’s even more frustrating when on top of being late, the books are not that good.

(On a side note: it’s interesting to see Marvel offer retailers a sale on all Straczynski trades this week at Diamond)

Anyway, I agree something dramatic needed to happen to bring new life into what should be one of Marvel’s top books.  I have issues with how this journey came to be as quite honestly they could had the same result using a much more creative method.  I still don’t understand how making MJ and Parker forget all of a sudden brings Harry back to life, but I am happy that Marvel was willing to take the risk.  My best guess is that Joe Q wanted an instant change in sales and was not willing to take his time to get from point A to point B.  As a retailer, I have to respect that what Joe Q did with One More Day and what he did was triple sales.  (Which as a side note: equals out to be the same if the book did come out monthly like it should have in the first place.)  His job at Marvel is to create buzz, talk and most importantly sales. Nobody can argue that he has fallen short of that.  It will be interesting to see if Marvel can keep up the pace with Amazing Spider-man 3 times a month.  

As a fan, change is always going to be a hard thing to swallow.  We fan’s sometimes are not willing to accept things without an explanation.  The “It’s Magic… We don’t have to explain it.” does not cut it and is simply a cop-out as it is less work than to be creative and work towards this desired result.  Why do we buy comics? For the journey and when we fans are told to go the back of the line and go thru it all over again we get upset.  Hopefully, this will be a different ride.  (Heck, Ultimate Spider-man was little more than a repackaged Amazing Spider-man and to be honest actually felt more like the main Spider-Man title.)

Regardless, Spider-man #546 issue was a great start and the best this book has been in years.  If you want to start reading Spider-man this is the issue to do it.  I am looking forward to this new journey as Peter Parker is piss poor again, he is unmarried and his pursuit of MJ can start all over again or maybe not.  If Harry is back… then what is to stop Gwen Stacy from coming back?  At this point we don’t know and I am willing to give this series a chance.  It will be interesting to see what deal with the devil MJ made on the side.  (I really hope it was not to become a superhero named Jackpot to help Spider-man)  What the hell is Jackpot supposed to be?  MJ and Blackcat combined into one?  That dynamic, will not last and probably will be short term at most.  Heck if you really want that, go read Kirkman’s Invincible.  I wonder if the Parker we grew up with will be joining the exiles anytime soon …lol.

In Brand New day Peter actually stood up to J Jonah Jamson, so maybe MJ’s deal with the devil was to give Parker a new set of balls.

Who’d a thunk it.