OMD/BND: The thread that does not die!

[michaelpaciocco]

and again, ItsJustSomeRandomGuy proves that in any kind of sane world, he'd be writing the comics



Seriously, listen to Batman's speech at 4:03. Not only is it a perfect bit of analysis on Batman, it explains pretty clearly why no other hero SHOULD be like him.

And that's why, for all Joey Q's whining, making Spider-Man every bit as cynical as Batman just DOESN'T WORK.

Michael

[Anders]

If someone had described that clip to me I would have thought it totally lame, but it's AWESOME!

[jensaltmann]

I love those RandomGuy videos. I wonder why he chose to do re-runs, though. Perhaps because he felt it was getting too long in-between videos? Anyway, I already loved this the first time around.

[michaelpaciocco]

www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=18485
Thank you Dan Slott,

"The thing that people seem to have a hard time wrapping their heads around is the fact that no one knows now doesn't mean that no one knew. Something happened and obviously Peter knows about it. Let me say again, whatever Peter did and whoever the 'We' is that he made reference to in 'New Ways to Die' chapter two, Mephisto was not part of that. Peter and his accomplice or accomplices did something and now people don't seem to know that he's Spider-Man."


I would like to be the first to give this an official name,

I dub this "the nested Recon"

So here's where we are; we have at least two separate additional recons within the original OMD recon, much like a loop within a loop. These two inner recons are:
-How everyone's knowledge of Pete's ID was wiped and continues to be undiscovered by the Marvel U (and Slott specifically states that because of this event, no one will basically ever be able to figure out Parker's ID because it forces them to be incredibly stupid)
-How ever the fuck Harry Osborne came back from the dead.

Ok, so because of this unlimited editorial fiat, NO ONE CAN FIGURE OUT PARKER'S ID. So yeah, I can't see how it can possibly get more made of fail here.

[K-Box]

"The thing that people seem to have a hard time wrapping their heads around [...]"

Dude. The fact that NO ONE can seem to "figure this out" doesn't give you a CLUE that, you know, maybe it's NOT THEIR FAULT, and instead, it's the fault of the COMPLETELY INCOMPETENT WRITING? You know, the same completely incompetent writing that is still CALLING ATTENTION TO THE RETCON THAT STARTED THIS STATUS QUO NEARLY A YEAR AGO, WIITHOUT ANSWERING ANY QUESTIONS ABOUT IT?

There is absolutely nothing of any redeeming value here. This is literally worse than the Byrne reboot, because at least the Byrne reboot EXPLAINED its indefensibly shitty retcons. This ongoing story, by contrast, is so poorly constructed that it DOESN'T EVEN QUALIFY AS A STORY. It's like listening to Sarah Palin speak - she's not even LYING as such, because it's all just RANDOM WORDS IN AN INCOMPREHENSIBLY NONSENSICAL ORDER.

[jessebaker]

The worst thing is that they COULD HAVE PRE-EMPTIVELY nipped it in the bud but refused to do them mainly to spite the readers:

MJ and Peter should have been dating in the new status quo or at the very least, the first arc should have focused on Peter successfully winning MJ back from whatever one-dimensional scumbag character Slott could come up with to pair MJ with for the purpose of giving fans a jump for join when MJ dumped his ass and reunited with Peter, in order to make her reuniting with Peter work as an arc, hence giving fans the half-assed hook of Peter and MJ still being a couple but not married to keep them around.

Use the god-damn Secret Invasion to explain Harry being back. Force Bendis to rewrite the plot to include Harry as the only real human on the prison ship/use an issue of New/Mighty Avengers to tell how the Skrulls replaced him before "The Child Within" arc in Spectacular Spidey #177-183 and that the modified Goblin Formula kept Skrull Harry from turning back into Skrull form when he died.

Done an issue/back-up focusing on how post-OMD retcon, Peter never unmasked at all and show what happened (post-retcon) as a result of him not unmasking having on his and his family's life.

Oh and kept Aunt May knowing for fuck's sake! Or at the very least, give her amnesia/memory loss/alszheimers of some kind so that she doesn't remember!

But instead of these things that might have worked as proverbial bones to readers, they went about shit that purposely pissed off readers (no MJ/Peter whoring around, no answer to the Harry Osbron return until fan complaints about their insistance in not explaining it got too loud for them to ignore them) just because they could.

[K-Box]

cyberghostface posted it from the Marvel solicits on scans_daily, and I'm reposting it here, so please, don't shoot the messengers:

---

Huge "Three's Company" cover image:

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #583
Written by MARK WAID
Pencils by BARRY KITSON
Cover by JOHN ROMITA SR.
YOU ASKED FOR IT, YOU GOT IT! PETER PARKER ON A DATE!
After the revelations of "Mind on Fire", love is in the air for more than one member of the cast and Pete finally gets some time out with the ladies. (and who better to bring it to you than two men who both had dates as recently as 1987!)
Amidst the romance though, forces are gathering that will spell trouble for Peter in the months to come

---

You mean, Peter will spend some time with attractive women, but events will contrive to make their outing unpleasant?

WOW WHAT AWESOMELY ORIGINAL AND INTERESTING STORYTELLING

Coming up next: Archie has dates with both Betty and Veronica, but he just can't seem to make up his mind between the two of them - OR WILL HE??? DUN DUUN DUUUN!!!

This was TOTALLY worth DESTROYING 20 YEARS OF STORIES FOR

Also? Mark Waid should not be allowed to write any female character ever, unless that female character's name rhymes with "Linda Park," because he WILL fuck it up otherwise.

As seriousfic is so wont to point out, if Peter is no longer with Mary Jane, he should be living in Black Cat's bed - except, oh, wait, she's one of the people whose character hook centers around the fact that she's known his secret identity for years, and NOBODY IS ALLOWED TO KNOW OR REMEMBER THAT THEY KNEW HIS SECRET IDENTITY NOW WHICH MEANS OH SHIT YET ANOTHER CONTINUITY CLUSTERFUCK DIVIDE BY ZER-

[jessebaker]

I think they've downplayed Black Cat because they know using her as a homewrecker would turn fans against the character, who Marvel wants to present as a goody-two shoes femme fatale character suitable for sidekicking with Spidey.

And given what's happened to Emma Frost (turned into a giant, unlikable bitch Mary Sue of epic proportions since officially hooking up with Scott with Jeans' death), I'm kind of glad Black Cat's in some hole waiting for this OMD/BND crap to end so she can show her face.

[K-Box]

From the Marvel solicits, to kusonaga, to scans_daily, to me, to you:

---

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #584
Written by MARC GUGGENHEIM
Pencils & Cover by JOHN ROMITA JR.

CHARACTER ASSASSINATION BEGINS!
The climax to the last year’s worth of Spider-man stories starts with a bang as questions are answered and Spidey’s new world is rocked to its core.

Who's the person terrorizing people as Menace? Who's behind the Spider-Tracer Killings? Who's going to be the Mayor of New York City? After more than 365 (Brand New) Days, Marc Guggenheim and John Romita Jr. have all the answers in the first chapter of “Character Assassination” -- a story over a year in the making!

---

Considering that it took a whole year to tell this story, I'm amazed that they somehow failed to make any part of it good. I mean, seriously, if it takes you a year to tell a story like this, you have to be TRYING to fail.

I'm equally stunned that they've failed to keep it from being so predictable, because, SPOILERS, but I don't care:

Anybody who doesn't know by now that Lily Hollister is Menace?

You're fucking stupid.

[K-Box]

ICv2 has posted its sales figures and analysis for September, so as usual, I'm using those to track the sales trends for the "NuSpidey" era to date, together with previously released monthly sales figures also drawn from ICv2:



At first glance, September's sales might seem to be all over the map, but they start to make more sense once you take into account that the first two issues of "New Ways to Die" were apparently under-ordered by retailers in August.

Indeed, if you look at the same sales figures that I linked to above, you'll see that Amazing Spider-Man #568 clocked in with 6,967 reorders in September. How many reorders did Amazing Spider-Man #569 score in the same month? Well, we know it had to be less than 2,889, because that's the lowest-selling title on ICv2's list of top 300 sellers for September. So, let's be generous and add as much as 2,888 reorders in September to 77,950, the number of initial orders for Amazing Spider-Man #569 in August. That gives us 80,838, which is only 1,641 less than 82,479, the number of initial orders for Amazing Spider-Man #570, the first issue of September. So, in September, retailers appear to have corrected (if not slightly over-corrected) for their under-ordering in August, and for that reason, I doubt we'll be seeing many, if any, reorders for September's issues in October.

That being said, what's up with that slight sales boost between the second and third issues of September? Is it yet another course correction on retailers' part, to catch up with greater-than-expected demand? Possible, but doubtful, given that the sales charts to date have shown that the broadest sales swings are either between the first and second issues of the month, or between the third issue of the month and the first issue of the following month. Instead, I see this as a matter of an anticipated, but minor, increase in demand, since Amazing Spider-Man #572, the third issue of September, also marked the debut of Mac Gargan as the "Brand New Scorpion." Let's not forget, the debut of the "Brand New Kraven" seemed to give the title a similar, albeit much more minor, sales uptick.

Here's the deal, though - last month, I predicted that the remainder of "New Ways to Die" would probably manage to stay above 80K, with reorders. However, even if you gave the second and third issues of September the maximum possible number of 2,888 reorders that the third issue of August could have received in September, neither of those two September issues would make it to 80K with those October reorder numbers. Let me say that again - this story arc, WITH THE MAXIMUM POSSIBLE NUMBER OF REORDERS INCLUDED, can't even sustain sales of 80K or more, EVEN WITH A VARIANT COVER ON EVERY SINGLE ISSUE.

I mean, this is a huge deal. This was the story arc that was being sold, by Marvel itself, as the one that would shake things up, settle some questions and prove that "One More Day" was a justified move on Marvel's part. Aside from the fact that nothing has been changed ("Anti-Venom" notwithstanding) and none of the lingering mysteries or points of continuity confusion surrounding any of these characters have been resolved in any real way, the sales tell the tale. This has been the most blatant sales stunt to date since the start of "Brand New Day," and the result so far has been to lift sales back up to where they were in ... MAY? Is that the new high-water mark of the "NuSpidey" era? Because looking on the horizon, I see ZERO rabbits left for them to pull out of their hat.

Now, don't be surprised if the Stephen Colbert back-up feature in Amazing Spider-Man #573 gives the title another marginal increase in sales at the start of October, but after that, I also wouldn't be surprised to see sales slip below 70K in November.

[liliaeth]

I'm just so sick and tired of seeing Peter fail at anything he does, all the time, all the way, often for no reason other than a cheap laugh or Quesada's stance of 'isn't he such a loveable loser'.

He's not a lovable loser, he's a Loser, plain and simple. He's not allowed any real victories, whatsoever.

I just Amazing Spider-Man family 2 and the only new bit worth reading in that entire issue, was the Mr and Mrs Spider-Man bit, because it was the only part of the comic that felt like Spider-Man to me.

When will these writers stop their one note writing, where Peter Parker is actually allowed to be a hero again, instead of being made to look like a loser at just about anything.

[michaelpaciocco]

"When will these writers stop their one note writing, where Peter Parker is actually allowed to be a hero again, instead of being made to look like a loser at just about anything."

Two Part Answer:
1) Never
2) He's not alone; check out the rest of the Marvel Universe.

In fact, if you want proof of 2), check out the latest ASM, where we find...SHOCKING SPOILERS..... (





Flash Thompson had his legs amputated in Iraq after taking ephenerine to save the life of another soldier
Now, while this development would actually be heroic because it seems that Flash isn't being self-pitying emo-boy, I doubt that characterization will last.

On the other hand, for fuck's sake, you'd have to be retarded to call this edgy storytelling because, well, as a general rule, if it's been a storyline for "JAG", it isn't edgy. At all. In this case, this storyline would only be edgy if you hadn't seen any war movies in the last, oh, say, 30 years, and if you just got out of the theatre from watching "Forrest Gump" in 1992. So, yay! Modern Marvel: Taking their story direction directly from your DVD collection!.

[K-Box]

How "Flash" Thompson got his nickname, from the same issue.

[K-Box]

So, sketchfast posted the remaining highlights of Amazing Spider-Man #574, a.k.a. the "Flash Thompson goes to Iraq" issue, on scans_daily, and I'm going to be posting my thoughts on it here, WITHOUT spoiler-guards. WHY? Because FUCK YOU, that's why. If you have such shitty taste that you actually LIKE NuSpidey, then you DESERVE to have these stories ruined for you by spoilers.

I can see how there were good intentions behind it, but the execution was terrible. The ending, with Flash shrugging off praise even though he'd lost both his legs, felt incredibly hollow to me, considering the number of soldiers who have come home to be stuck in hellholes like Walter Reed, and who get told to go screw themselves when they ask for the benefits to which they're entitled. And as for that "shocking ending," a) it was ripped directly off of a recent Doonesbury comic strip, which told the exact same story, except about a billion times better, and b) with the current status quo, the first thing I thought was, "I wonder when THIS is going to get retconned."

Because, don't fool yourself, it WILL. First off, in five years, Iraq is going to seem every bit as outdated as Vietnam, which means that any references to WHEN Flash lost his legs will be fuzzied up to say simply "while he was serving overseas," and secondly, every single argument that Joe Quesada has made, about how a married Spider-Man limits future storytelling possibilities, ages the character and takes him too far away from his supposed "core concept"? All of those apply even more to Flash with no legs (granted, I think such arguments are crap in both cases, but the point remains, if Flash isn't "ruined" as a result of having no legs, then Peter certainly wasn't "ruined" as a result of being married). And WHEN this is reversed, won't THAT be a nice "tribute" to all the REAL soldiers who have come home from this war permanently crippled.

I'm sorry, but this whole thing OFFENDS me, from start to finish, and much like Eli Stone, it serves as yet more evidence of how Marc Guggenheim is a horrible writer.

[michaelpaciocco]

and then there was the latest Spider-Man Annual, the true Identity of Jackpot.

community.livejournal.com/scans_daily/6521863.html#cutid1

Oy.

The stupid, it burns.

So, in conclusion
Peter Parker - Moron
The Initiative and SHIELD - massively incompetent in a way even *I* thought wasn't possible.
Marvel readers who paid for this - The biggest morons of all.