Columns
I’m Just Sayin’…#22
Hey-hey, comic book heads - I hope you’ll forgive me but I almost feel as though it were my mission to talk up THE SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN at any opportunity, so I would be remiss not to mention that there was a panel held to discuss the second season at the San Diego ComiCon:
I know at least one guy who's gonna be tickled at the sight of Mysterio. That's right, Poinko - I'm lookin' in YOUR direction, baby!
Given that this won’t be debuting until the spring of 2009, and not on the Kids’ CW, it could be incredibly easy to miss out on the second season of one of the best animated series Marvel has ever produced. Well, as Stan as my witness - not on my watch, Jack!
I guess it’s true what they say about things coming in threes: a few weeks ago, Marvel got me to dabble in their zombie craze with THOR: REIGN OF BLOOD. Then, they got me to sample their Skrullberry Green ™ Kool-Aid with SECRET INVASION: FANTASTIC FOUR. This past week, Marvel did the impossible once again, and got me to purchase a Spider-Man comic that had BRAND NEW DAY right on the cover, and how did they manage that?
By filling it with content that had next to nothing to do with BRAND NEW DAY!
In fact, in all of THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN FAMILY #1 the only story that was set in the BND status quo was a ten-pager starring Aunt May. Other content included an untold tale written by J.M. DeMatteis set merely days after Uncle Ben died, a largely forgettable MARVEL APES bit, a reprint of THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #300 featuring the first appearance of Venom, and - for the time being - the closest thing we’ve got to the proper continuity in the form of a story set in the MC2 universe called MR. & MRS. SPIDER-MAN, brought to us by Tom DeFalco and Ron Frenz.
Here we have a story set in the world of THE AMAZING SPIDER-GIRL, in the time when May was just a wee drooly babe, and Peter Parker was a now semi-retired Spider-Man trying to help out a friend in need, while trying to make sure he gets home to his family at the end of the day’s struggles. All the while aided by a wife who understands his dilemma all too well.
But you know what the real kicker was?
Well…you’re not gonna believe this, but…by the time I got to the end of the story…
…I found myself completely unable to relate to Peter Parker at all! I know - I’m as surprised as you are! It was like I wasn’t even reading Spider-Man anymore. It was like I was reading…ARCHIE or something. Hunh. Guess Marvel dodged a bullet there, huh?
"Uhm...Greg? Wanna have a care there, buddy? Y'almost blew out the Nexus server on that last volley."
Ahh, alright, alright. In that case, I think I’d like to keep it light this time around, and hit y’all with a few images and strips that I’ve found here and there, in a little segment I’m gonna call, A FEW THINGS I DIG.
From gaming webstrip CTRL+ALT+DEL…
Heh...it's like Spy vs. Spy for gamers!
I’d be hard pressed to find someone who doesn’t already know about THE K CHRONICLES, and if you don’t…well, here’s a little of the goodness. Enjoy…
You can always email him some of your own - he just might include them in his next Victory strip!
Who knew that if you Google the word “steampunk,” you can actually get a pretty concise answer in return:
Heh.
And I wanna thank JIM SMASH !!! for leading me not only to this sweet lil’ thang…
I like to think he's running in the direction of "BATMAN & ROBIN"...
…or to such blatant evidence of the many crimes of the infamous Greg Land for my previous column…
Interestingly enough, there was a cigar in this scene...but Quesada took one look and ordered it removed.
…but also to somethingawful.com, where I found THIS baby. Description courtesy of JIM SMASH!!!: The Something Awful guys took movie posters and edited them to show how they would appear “when viewed through the eyes of the typical elementary school kid”….. or Stoners.
Yeah, that about nails it.
And that’s it from me this week - special welcome goes out to new columnist Grey Scherl, author of THE GOLD STANDARD right here on the Nexus. Give it a look and praise be to the Booster! So until next time folks, always remember: the best things aren’t free. They’re messy. Take a moment to think of your favorite memories - your most fondly remembered moments, and ask yourself one thing: when it was over…were you sticky?
Just sayin’, is all.
Last 5 posts by Greg Manuel
- I'm Just Sayin'...#36 - November 19th, 2008
- I'm Just Sayin'...#35 - November 12th, 2008
- I'm Just Sayin'...#34 - November 5th, 2008
- I'm Just Sayin'...#33 - October 30th, 2008
- I'm Just Sayin'...#32 - October 23rd, 2008
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I actually didn’t see the sarcasm there, I thought you genuinely saw the error of your ways!! That did look like a boring story to me, there’s no way to sustain that level of happy-happy from a storytelling point of view and still keep readers interested.
Here’s a challenge: read the past few months of BND, and ignore OMD. Pretend that they’re still married but MJ has had to move to Europe for a theatre show on the West End or something and Peter’s left to fend on his own.
Actually, even though I’m not buying the comics, I have still been following BND in the shops. Mainly for two reasons: (A)I’ve still got my eye out for some sort of intrinsic justification for OMD in the subsequent stories themselves, and (B) after all, if I plan on writing these characters someday, it’s best to keep abreast of their happenings even if I don’t support the status quo.
Either way, skipping over OMD to give BND the benefit of the doubt, for me, is about as useful as pretending that Peter & MJ were just shacking up this whole time. Neither illusion helps.
Besides, even if I were to pretend that they were still married, Mary Jane’d damn well better have an explanation for running around with Bobby Carr in THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #559 - 561!
Ooh - almost forgot…
Readers: if you click on some of either the CTRL-ALT-DEL or K-CHRONICLES images in A FEW THINGS I DIG, they’ll take you right to their respective websites and their complete webstrip archives. Go nuts!
Hey, it’s very marginally comics related, but my new favorite site is badassoftheweek.com! It’s like Wikipedia done right! And the Punisher is on it, so there’s your comics tie-in. That and firejoemorgan.com for the baseball fans ou there are sites I check at least once a week, and laugh out loud reading them!
I noticed there;s another new printing of Kraven’s Last Hunt on the stands today. They should offer that bundled with the OMD Trade for the same price as an apology. Kraven’s Last Hunt is REQUIRED reading for any true comics fan. Right up there with Watchmen, Batman Year One, Cosmic Odyssey and The Death of Captain Marvel.
Jeff - I’ll tell you this…I was sold the minute I saw Pancho Villa, Lennie Briscoe AND Jack McCoy on there. I’m going to have faith that somebody on that site is working on first black heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson as we speak…
…and even if Marvel released “Kraven’s Last Hunt” with each hardcover of OMD with a vial of Grant Morrison’s blood hidden in the back cover, they’d still have a long way to go before we start accepting apologies or anything.
…and let me just say, the comment above was entered before I read the entries on Jesse Owens and Makoto Nagano. NINJA WARRIOR FOREVER!!!