Lorendiac
04-01-2006, 06:46 PM
Dateline: 20 August, 2037
Today I downloaded the latest batch of Spidey comics from Marvel.com and printed them out with my quantum documaterializer. This is a special occasion; it’s Spidey’s 75th Anniversary! The new batch is cover-dated precisely 75 years after his first appearance (in a title that was already being cancelled)!
Let’s see what we’ve got.
Amazing Spider-Man #900.
A bunch of friends throw a birthday party for Spidey. His ex-wife, Mary Jane, doesn’t show up, but does carefully schedule a friendly telephone call to come in the middle of the festivities. Just about every other girl who ever dated him (except the dead ones) shows up, in most cases bringing along their current husbands or boyfriends, along with an awful lot of other people. Matt Murdock even drops in. It’s the sort of thing that appeals to continuity lovers, which is a good thing, because let’s face it, “Amazing” is the only Spider-title that’s really catered to them for the last couple of decades.
The Adventures of Spider-Man #135. (Vol. 1) Written by the clone of Stan Lee. Illustrated by the Artificial Intelligence that calls itself “Steve Ditko Redux,” or SDR for short.
Colored in the simpler, “classic” style of Silver Age Marvel. The panels on each page even have nice big white margins around them! It’s like stepping into a time machine! And of course this effect is amplified by the way the “Adventures” Spidey has, for eleven years now, been firmly rooted in his high school, rubbing shoulders with Flash Thompson, Liz Allen, and others. Basically, Stan the Clone looked carefully at the old continuity by the original Stan the Man (and the original Ditko, of course) and threw away everything that involved or followed Peter’s college graduation. He’s been keeping the usual gang of suspects ageless ever since, without ever letting them comment on this remarkable fact. Shades of Archie Andrews!
Spectacular Spider-Man #56. (Vol. 15)
Peter Parker, who lost his powers some time ago and has been making do with gadgets (some of them provided by the Prowler) as substitutes, finally punches out J. Jonah Jameson in the scene that fans have been dying to see for ages. (In a scene when he is not in costume.) Previously, Peter was always restrained by the knowledge of what an unfair fight it would be. But now that he’s back down to normal human levels, he thought it was time to indulge himself after the libelous way in which Jonah rewrote a story Peter submitted for publication.
It is possible, however, that this public loss of temper will seriously hurt his chances of continuing to date Jameson’s cute and normally sympathetic secretary: Betty Brant.
It remains to be seen how Jameson will react to this after he recovers from the shock of having the worm finally turn. Heck, it’s possible he might even clap Peter on the back and say, “Finally grew up, hey, kid?”
Web of Spider-Man #7. (Vol. 8)
Peter Parker (Spider-Man) and his loving wife, Mary Jane, cope with the news that she is (unexpectedly) pregnant with their second child. Will Toddler May now have a little brother or a little sister?
The New Spider-Man #56. (Vol. 1)
Ben Reilly, Spider-Man, finally proposes marriage to his beloved Jill Stacy. (Note: It is expected that Ben’s “cousin” Peter and MJ will show up at the wedding, if and when that happy event actually occurs. Of course, they’ll have to fly all the way back from Seattle, but with the salary Peter makes as a renowned research scientist these days, I expect they can afford it. Ever since he shared a Nobel Prize with Hank McCoy, he’s been sitting pretty.)
Sensational Spider-Man #111. (Vol. 3)
Peter Parker, finally as recovered as he ever will be from the death of his wife Mary Jane a few years ago, actually goes out on a date again for the first time since that tragedy. Naturally, he has to make excuses to justify his disappearing for five minutes to fight the fifth Scorpion, ten minutes to fight the twelfth Electro, and so forth. However, he does handle the purse-snatcher entirely on his own without changing into costume.
Spider-Man #12. (Vol. 13)
In recognition of his recent services to his beloved country, Spider-Man (whose identity is publicly known) meets our beloved Chief Executive of the United States, the first woman ever elected to the Oval Office . . . President Clinton! (Who’d have thought Chelsea had it in her to go the distance?)
Ultimate Spider-Man # 499. (Vol. 1) Written by Brian Bendis.
The final chapter of the ultra-decompressed “Shamefaced” story arc. Concluding a fifteen-issue conversation that’s been full of scintillating dialogue between Peter Parker and Deb Whitman regarding why he pulled that nasty trick on her about fourteen years ago (in the “Dirty Tricks” story arc of 2023-2024) and made her think she was nuts.
A friend of mine states that after this conversation had gone for five issues and showed no signs of slowing down, he started up a betting pool on how long it would last. His money was on a total of sixteen issues, based on his exhaustive study of how Bendis usually paces these things over the years. His calculation of the total page length for this conversation was very nearly correct, except that he didn’t realize the fifteenth issue would be double-sized. So my friend lost and a teenager from Albuquerque took the pot..
(Next month, #500 is supposed to be a real shocker. Marvel has really been keeping the lid on this one. One rumor has it that they’ve got a dozen different versions all ready to go, and that even the Editor in Chief doesn’t know which one he’s going to end up approving.)
Closing Thoughts:
You young folks may not realize just how peculiar this rundown of the various Spider-titles might have seemed, oh, forty years ago or thereabouts. Back around the turn of the century, almost everything (except Ultimate Spidey, I admit) was, for no particular reason, all supposed to fit together into one huge self-consistent continuity within the mainstream Marvel Universe. Meaning that if one writer had written a story way back when in which Peter married MJ all legal and proper, all subsequent writers were expected to use that as a foundation for any stories they later wrote. Even if they killed off MJ (which was certainly tried!) they still had to admit she had existed as Peter’s wife once upon a time. Multiply that by a zillion other points of “continuity” that handicapped someone’s creative vision regarding the special twist he wanted to give to these “iconic” characters, and you ended up with a mess that made everybody unhappy to a greater or lesser degree, all the time.
Yes, an awful lot of good things have come out of Marvel’s decision, back in the 2010s, to begin what someone dubbed the Discontinuity Experiment. They said at the time that they were inspired by the success of all those old Star Trek paperbacks from way back in the later decades of the 20th Century, published by Pocket and full of mutually contradictory views of the 23rd Century. The effort to “reconcile” all those different takes on the the Star Trek universe could give a sincere fan migraines . . . except that many people who read the silly novels didn’t seem to care! It was almost as if (scary thought) they were able to take each novel on its own merits without screaming bloody murder over the explicit or implicit contradictions of stuff previously stated in another novel!
To provide just one example: In John M. Ford’s version of Klingon society, the Klingon homeworld was called Klinzhai and their rules of inheritance were very patrilineal. It appeared that the longer your “line” (male line of descent, using a special family name, etc.) had been going strong, the more dignity and respect your line was considered to have in Klingon culture. Several volumes later, in Majiliss Larson’s Pawns and Symbols , the rules of inheritance were that a powerful Klingon male’s title was passed down to his eldest sister’s eldest son , and later to that person’s nephew, and so forth, in perpetuity. (You wouldn’t expect the editors at Pocket to do anything so strenuous as trying to make sure the various Star Trek authors feel obligated to share any sort of common vision regarding how Klingon culture worked, would you?)
So today, any writer who can make a successful pitch to the Spider-Man editors can get permission to start up a new series. He can annonce it’s “spinning off” from “classic” Spider-Man continuity at some previous point, or he can pretty much start all over from scratch. He can recycle any series title that isn't currently being used by someone else, starting over with a new #1 in most cases. When he leaves (or gets canned), the series ends unless some other writer explicitly wants to pick up where he left off, further developing the “same” continuity. This means that the Spider-Man “character concept” is habitually being used six, eight, or ten different ways, in mutually exclusive “timelines” (or whatever you want to call them) that have no bearing upon one another’s development.
(The X-Men eventually ended up doing something similar after they got to the point where just reciting the list of all past and present X-Men would take an hour, and even the most diehard fans of the old continuity were starting to admit that it was a trifle unfair to expect a new writer, or new editor for that matter, to actually be able to keep even half of the continuity straight!)
DC has consistently failed to get a clue about the value of doing it this way, whole-heartedly, on a really big scale. This probably has a lot to do with why, after all these years and all these movies, DC is still Number Two in total monthly sales. Isn’t that sad?
And, just in case I need to say it after all this:
APRIL FOOL'S!
Today I downloaded the latest batch of Spidey comics from Marvel.com and printed them out with my quantum documaterializer. This is a special occasion; it’s Spidey’s 75th Anniversary! The new batch is cover-dated precisely 75 years after his first appearance (in a title that was already being cancelled)!
Let’s see what we’ve got.
Amazing Spider-Man #900.
A bunch of friends throw a birthday party for Spidey. His ex-wife, Mary Jane, doesn’t show up, but does carefully schedule a friendly telephone call to come in the middle of the festivities. Just about every other girl who ever dated him (except the dead ones) shows up, in most cases bringing along their current husbands or boyfriends, along with an awful lot of other people. Matt Murdock even drops in. It’s the sort of thing that appeals to continuity lovers, which is a good thing, because let’s face it, “Amazing” is the only Spider-title that’s really catered to them for the last couple of decades.
The Adventures of Spider-Man #135. (Vol. 1) Written by the clone of Stan Lee. Illustrated by the Artificial Intelligence that calls itself “Steve Ditko Redux,” or SDR for short.
Colored in the simpler, “classic” style of Silver Age Marvel. The panels on each page even have nice big white margins around them! It’s like stepping into a time machine! And of course this effect is amplified by the way the “Adventures” Spidey has, for eleven years now, been firmly rooted in his high school, rubbing shoulders with Flash Thompson, Liz Allen, and others. Basically, Stan the Clone looked carefully at the old continuity by the original Stan the Man (and the original Ditko, of course) and threw away everything that involved or followed Peter’s college graduation. He’s been keeping the usual gang of suspects ageless ever since, without ever letting them comment on this remarkable fact. Shades of Archie Andrews!
Spectacular Spider-Man #56. (Vol. 15)
Peter Parker, who lost his powers some time ago and has been making do with gadgets (some of them provided by the Prowler) as substitutes, finally punches out J. Jonah Jameson in the scene that fans have been dying to see for ages. (In a scene when he is not in costume.) Previously, Peter was always restrained by the knowledge of what an unfair fight it would be. But now that he’s back down to normal human levels, he thought it was time to indulge himself after the libelous way in which Jonah rewrote a story Peter submitted for publication.
It is possible, however, that this public loss of temper will seriously hurt his chances of continuing to date Jameson’s cute and normally sympathetic secretary: Betty Brant.
It remains to be seen how Jameson will react to this after he recovers from the shock of having the worm finally turn. Heck, it’s possible he might even clap Peter on the back and say, “Finally grew up, hey, kid?”
Web of Spider-Man #7. (Vol. 8)
Peter Parker (Spider-Man) and his loving wife, Mary Jane, cope with the news that she is (unexpectedly) pregnant with their second child. Will Toddler May now have a little brother or a little sister?
The New Spider-Man #56. (Vol. 1)
Ben Reilly, Spider-Man, finally proposes marriage to his beloved Jill Stacy. (Note: It is expected that Ben’s “cousin” Peter and MJ will show up at the wedding, if and when that happy event actually occurs. Of course, they’ll have to fly all the way back from Seattle, but with the salary Peter makes as a renowned research scientist these days, I expect they can afford it. Ever since he shared a Nobel Prize with Hank McCoy, he’s been sitting pretty.)
Sensational Spider-Man #111. (Vol. 3)
Peter Parker, finally as recovered as he ever will be from the death of his wife Mary Jane a few years ago, actually goes out on a date again for the first time since that tragedy. Naturally, he has to make excuses to justify his disappearing for five minutes to fight the fifth Scorpion, ten minutes to fight the twelfth Electro, and so forth. However, he does handle the purse-snatcher entirely on his own without changing into costume.
Spider-Man #12. (Vol. 13)
In recognition of his recent services to his beloved country, Spider-Man (whose identity is publicly known) meets our beloved Chief Executive of the United States, the first woman ever elected to the Oval Office . . . President Clinton! (Who’d have thought Chelsea had it in her to go the distance?)
Ultimate Spider-Man # 499. (Vol. 1) Written by Brian Bendis.
The final chapter of the ultra-decompressed “Shamefaced” story arc. Concluding a fifteen-issue conversation that’s been full of scintillating dialogue between Peter Parker and Deb Whitman regarding why he pulled that nasty trick on her about fourteen years ago (in the “Dirty Tricks” story arc of 2023-2024) and made her think she was nuts.
A friend of mine states that after this conversation had gone for five issues and showed no signs of slowing down, he started up a betting pool on how long it would last. His money was on a total of sixteen issues, based on his exhaustive study of how Bendis usually paces these things over the years. His calculation of the total page length for this conversation was very nearly correct, except that he didn’t realize the fifteenth issue would be double-sized. So my friend lost and a teenager from Albuquerque took the pot..
(Next month, #500 is supposed to be a real shocker. Marvel has really been keeping the lid on this one. One rumor has it that they’ve got a dozen different versions all ready to go, and that even the Editor in Chief doesn’t know which one he’s going to end up approving.)
Closing Thoughts:
You young folks may not realize just how peculiar this rundown of the various Spider-titles might have seemed, oh, forty years ago or thereabouts. Back around the turn of the century, almost everything (except Ultimate Spidey, I admit) was, for no particular reason, all supposed to fit together into one huge self-consistent continuity within the mainstream Marvel Universe. Meaning that if one writer had written a story way back when in which Peter married MJ all legal and proper, all subsequent writers were expected to use that as a foundation for any stories they later wrote. Even if they killed off MJ (which was certainly tried!) they still had to admit she had existed as Peter’s wife once upon a time. Multiply that by a zillion other points of “continuity” that handicapped someone’s creative vision regarding the special twist he wanted to give to these “iconic” characters, and you ended up with a mess that made everybody unhappy to a greater or lesser degree, all the time.
Yes, an awful lot of good things have come out of Marvel’s decision, back in the 2010s, to begin what someone dubbed the Discontinuity Experiment. They said at the time that they were inspired by the success of all those old Star Trek paperbacks from way back in the later decades of the 20th Century, published by Pocket and full of mutually contradictory views of the 23rd Century. The effort to “reconcile” all those different takes on the the Star Trek universe could give a sincere fan migraines . . . except that many people who read the silly novels didn’t seem to care! It was almost as if (scary thought) they were able to take each novel on its own merits without screaming bloody murder over the explicit or implicit contradictions of stuff previously stated in another novel!
To provide just one example: In John M. Ford’s version of Klingon society, the Klingon homeworld was called Klinzhai and their rules of inheritance were very patrilineal. It appeared that the longer your “line” (male line of descent, using a special family name, etc.) had been going strong, the more dignity and respect your line was considered to have in Klingon culture. Several volumes later, in Majiliss Larson’s Pawns and Symbols , the rules of inheritance were that a powerful Klingon male’s title was passed down to his eldest sister’s eldest son , and later to that person’s nephew, and so forth, in perpetuity. (You wouldn’t expect the editors at Pocket to do anything so strenuous as trying to make sure the various Star Trek authors feel obligated to share any sort of common vision regarding how Klingon culture worked, would you?)
So today, any writer who can make a successful pitch to the Spider-Man editors can get permission to start up a new series. He can annonce it’s “spinning off” from “classic” Spider-Man continuity at some previous point, or he can pretty much start all over from scratch. He can recycle any series title that isn't currently being used by someone else, starting over with a new #1 in most cases. When he leaves (or gets canned), the series ends unless some other writer explicitly wants to pick up where he left off, further developing the “same” continuity. This means that the Spider-Man “character concept” is habitually being used six, eight, or ten different ways, in mutually exclusive “timelines” (or whatever you want to call them) that have no bearing upon one another’s development.
(The X-Men eventually ended up doing something similar after they got to the point where just reciting the list of all past and present X-Men would take an hour, and even the most diehard fans of the old continuity were starting to admit that it was a trifle unfair to expect a new writer, or new editor for that matter, to actually be able to keep even half of the continuity straight!)
DC has consistently failed to get a clue about the value of doing it this way, whole-heartedly, on a really big scale. This probably has a lot to do with why, after all these years and all these movies, DC is still Number Two in total monthly sales. Isn’t that sad?
And, just in case I need to say it after all this:
APRIL FOOL'S!