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Post by Elliot Kane on Dec 28, 2007 9:31:14 GMT
So there ya go. In order to save Aunt May's life, Peter has agreed to allow Mephisto to change time so that he and MJ were never married. Not just play with memories, but actually change time so that things like the unmasking never happened and Harry Osborn is still alive...
In other words, Crisis On Infinite Earths the Marvel way. Everything you thought happened in the last 20 years of Marvel continuity never happened at all. All those team ups Spidey had because he happened to be nearby never happened, because his life was different and he wouldn't have been there.
Every life he saved may have been lost. Lives may have been saved we never saw because Peter's life was completely different, putting him in different places at different times to those we think we know.
Characters whose lives he saved may be dead or crippled... Who can know? The entire MU is now a completely different place.
I just wonder how many people at Marvel have actually worked out yet that you can't change the life of someone like Spidey who is totally fundamental to the MU without changing everything... I'd bet on 'darn few' ;D
The entire history of the world is utterly changed in many, many ways - all so Peter can save the life of his perpetually-on-her-death-bed Aunt who may at most have a couple more years anyway.
At cost of his marriage, the whole of history for the past several years of his life and who knows how much damage to others? In short: the most utterly irresponsible decision in MU history.
His new motto: "With great power comes great irresponsibility."
So - thoughts?
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Post by Gray Lensman on Dec 28, 2007 20:23:14 GMT
I've not been reading Spidey for some while, must admit. From what I've heard, though, this should be renamed to "One More Disaster".
The problem with OMD is that it's designed solely to justify Joe Quesada's idiotic ideas about the Spider-Marriage. This has to be the most arrogant and heavy-handed editorial fiat that I've seen in comics in quite some time. And given how heavy-handed that Quesada has been in the last few years, that really is saying quite a lot.
In and of itself, the story could be workable with the right execution... but only as a temporary "Elseworlds" type of story arc. If the deal with Mephisto turned out to make the world into a nightmare because Peter failed to save the world from a villain that he'd otherwise have stopped, then that would be interesting. (Which is quite possible... MJ has done a lot for Spidey over the years; without her, a lot of things crumble.) The story would then be Peter's realization of what he'd done, and then trying to set things right again. In that case, the story would be a validation of how important MJ is to Peter's life, and how the world would be a worse place because she isn't in it.
But then, this is not a story about anything but Quesada's foolish desire to roll back the clock. This was never a story that was told for a narrative or character purpose. This is a story that was told solely because Quesada hates the Spider-Marriage. This does not add any character or story possibilities that were not there before, and if anything limits them. The result is really the worst kind of storytelling, and that is the kind based solely on the EIC's wish-fulfillment.
And then, as previously stated, there's the mess that is now Marvel's current continuity. MJ was instrumental in a number of Spider-Man stories in the past 20 years... all of them, now gone. What happened and what didn't? Who the heck knows? I highly doubt we're going to see any kind of clear notion of Peter's current timeline, in any case. When we add in things like major line-wide crossovers, it becomes even more problematic.
At least Crisis could be justified as a necessary housecleaning; OMD is purely the result of an editorial whim. Quesada has basically put the torch to 20+ years of stories and a character dynamic that most fans enthusiastically support, and all solely because it's not the way HE wants it. That really is the height of editorial arrogance. At the rate that Q keeps "fixing" things, I honestly don't know if there will be anything left of the MU worth reading about...
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Max
Chaosite
![*](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/stars/star.png) ![*](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/stars/star.png)
Imagine all the people...
Posts: 610
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Post by Max on Dec 28, 2007 22:19:24 GMT
Well that's the final nail in the coffin for Marvel.
Did Quesada not think about everyone that had started collecting Spider-Man in the past 20 YEARS, and the fact that the person they have followed month after month no longer exists? With one click of his fingers he's just wiped out all the work that previous writers/artists did and all the fantastic stories we've lost just because he's like a sulking child...wanting something his way.
New Avengers, Civil War, Back In Black, One More Day, House of M and all the other shock value, blockbuster rubbish he's forced on us one after the other. I've given up on Marvel. They dress their comics up as sophisticated, modern clever stories but it's just idiotic trash that should've stayed in What If? titles.
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Post by Gray Lensman on Dec 29, 2007 2:34:02 GMT
For those interested, Joe Quesada talks One More Disaster on CBR..."Sometimes when I look at the way that the lines of opinion have been drawn in comics about the marriage, I see the argument falling into two basic camps. The fans may not perceive it this way on the surface, but it is what's happening when you look at it clearly. When we fall in love with these characters, we claim ownership over them in our own way; so for some fans, Peter belongs to them and no one else. So, the way I see it, there are two sides of the argument, two segments of fans. On one side, there is a contingency of fandom that wants Peter to age along with them and live life as they do. He needs to get married, have kids, then grandkids, and then the inevitable. One the other side, there are fans that realize Spidey needs to be ready for the next wave or generation of readers, that no one can lay claim to these icons, no one generation has ownership and that we need to preserve them and keep them healthy for the next batch of readers to fall in love with.
To me, only one side of this argument is correct. If Spidey grows old and dies off with our readership, then that's it -- he'll be done and gone, never to be enjoyed by future comic fans. If we keep Spidey rejuvenated and relatable to fans on the horizon, we can manage to do that and still keep him enjoyable to those that have been following his adventures for years. Will everyone be happy with the decision? No, of course not, but that's what makes it a horserace. At the end of the day, my job is to keep these characters fresh and ready for every fan that walks through the door, while also planning for the future and hopefully an even larger fan base."Quesada really comes across as a total hypocrite here. Isn't Quesada doing exactly what he's saying that fans of the marriage are doing... trying to keep the character the way he wants it instead of thinking of the franchise and the fans? It's just more of his usual spin. And I have to laugh at the way he got rid of the organic webshooters after slipping them into continuity under the cover of darkness, too. Seems Q finally figured out that the mechanical ones were more dramatically interesting. He's only a few years behind fandom... ;D
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Post by Elliot Kane on Dec 29, 2007 2:34:07 GMT
I think Q's only thought was "I hate Spidey being married!" That's where the entire process seems to have began and ended. I think even the minority of readers who would prefer a single Peter would have to agree that doing it this way was a terrible idea.
I think Q will ultimately be regarded as the EIC who could not stop fixing things that were never broken in the first place.
***
Good find there, Steve. Yes, Q is absolutely being a hypocrite. he's also wrong. While a tiny minority of fans do seem to want Peter to age and have kids, most of them don't. They understand perfectly well that Peter will still be a 'twenty-something' long after they're gone and that that's the way it will always be - as with most comic characters.
Most comic readers don't see any incompatibility being a twenty-something Peter and a married Peter - especially as he is a character whose whole schtick is responsibility.
As Max said, there is a whole generation of Spidey readers who have only ever known a married Spidey - and they seem to have no problems at all with that.
What this comes down to is Q wanting to turn everything back to the way it was in his own childhood, despite the fact that the fans have rejected all prior attempts to ditch MJ and Spidey's marriage.
Q is doing this for Q and Q alone; I have no doubt whatsoever of that.
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Post by Elliot Kane on Dec 30, 2007 6:26:19 GMT
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Post by peterh on Dec 30, 2007 16:20:59 GMT
ROFL that was funny ![:D](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/grin.png)
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Post by Venom65437 on Dec 31, 2007 1:38:21 GMT
That made me laugh really hard. As for my thoughts about OMD... it would make the censor feature explode.
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Post by Gray Lensman on Jan 1, 2008 1:13:18 GMT
Some interesting items for update on the OMD fiasco... First, the next part of Quesada's latest spin cycle...Quesada, when asked about JMS disavowing the story, replied with this... What had unfortunately happened with Joe's original scripts is that we didn't receive the story and methodology to the resolution that we were all expecting. What made that very problematic is that we had four writers and artists well underway on "Brand New Day" that were expecting and needed "One More Day" to end in the way that we had all agreed it would. Joe's original scripts, especially the fourth, didn't provide that.
I had a Solomon-like decision to make: I could either keep Joe's story as he delivered it, and then tear up tracks on "Brand New Day" and make an entire year's worth of Spider-Man stories worthless and stop shipping the book until we righted the train, or go to very extensive rewrites on Joe's scripts. Unfortunately, we had to go to the rewrites. The fact that we had to ask for the story to move back to its original intent understandably made Joe upset and caused some major delays and page increases in the series.
Also, the science that Joe was going to apply to the retcon of the marriage would have made over 30 years of Spider-Man books worthless, because they never would have had happened. We would have also had a "Crisis" in the Marvel Universe because it would have reset way too many things outside of the Spider-Man titles. We just couldn't go there and in the end we weren't expecting that kind of story.And Quesada's colossal arrogance continues. I can't believe that Q honestly expects us to believe that JMS came up with the idea of a universal retcon, and in the same breath denies that the story that saw print isn't a Crisis-like retcon. The fact is that this story wished away over twenty years of stories into the cornfield, and it mucks up every story that involves Spidey and Mary Jane published in the past two decades at minimum. This is a universal Crisis-like retcon of the MU, however Q tries to rationalize this. Of course, this is the same Quesada who promised that there would not be a retcon fix for the unmasking, and also said that there wouldn't be a universal retcon to undo the marriage. Both of which turned out to be flat-out lies. And frankly, I don't believe a word of what he's saying now either. This was his decision, and now he's trying to duck out of the responsibility. But then, I guess Q was lying when he said he'd take the heat if OMD failed too...
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Post by Elliot Kane on Jan 1, 2008 3:32:46 GMT
But... That's exactly what they DID do! No, wait - only twenty or so years of stories that never happened and a Crisis-like event, which is apparently OK...
What on Earth does Joe think happened? And why is it so different to what everyone who read it thinks happened? This is just bizarre...
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Post by Elliot Kane on Jan 1, 2008 5:01:46 GMT
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Post by Gray Lensman on Jan 3, 2008 4:27:17 GMT
Part 3 of Q's Rationalization Interview...For your amusement today, we have Joe Quesada still acting like we should thank him for only throwing out 20 years of continuity instead of 30. And predictably, he's still acting like this isn't a huge universal retcon when it obviously is... So, to get this straight, OMD doesn’t actually negate the previous 20 years of Spider-Man stories?
Exactly, that’s precisely what we wanted to avoid. What didn’t occur was the marriage. Peter and MJ were together, they loved each other -- they just didn’t pull the trigger on the wedding day. All the books count, all the stories count -- except in the minds of the people within the Marvel U, Peter and MJ were a couple, not a married couple. To me, that’s a much fairer thing to do to those of us who have been reading Spider-Man for all these years. Like I said, is it perfect? No. As far as we investigated, short of divorcing Peter, nothing really is.Give me a break. It's still invalidating 20 years of continuity, however Q wants to spin this. There are still a number of stories during the past two decades that depended on Peter and MJ being married. Not a couple, not seeing each other, but married. They're now effectively cast to the winds, thanks to this heavy-handed editorial edict. And if 20 years of continuity are NOT thrown out, then explain to me all the other changes... the mechanical webshooters, Harry being alive, Peter's identity being secret. Q is trying to have everything both ways, and it doesn't even remotely make sense. It's a universal retcon, however he tries to explain it. As for Q's argument that marriage ages a character... tell that to Wally West. There are a lot of young married couples out there. Kids do age the character, but marriage? Not so much. When Peter Parker got married, it caused the character to be cut off from many of the social situations and settings that put him at conflict with his family, friends, and especially the girl he was dating. Suddenly, something as simple as the tension he had with Felicia Hardy was completely defused; if Peter ever gave in to temptation or even considered it, he would be, in the eyes of the fans, the lousiest guy in the world.As opposed to, oh, trading his wife and unborn child in a pact with the Devil? ;D I also don’t buy into the argument that just because "Ultimate Spider-Man" Peter is single that Marvel U Spidey shouldn’t be. I mean Ultimate Spider-Man doesn’t kill, does that mean that I should let Marvel U Spidey start killing his enemies?This is a totally fallacious argument and he knows it. Nobody is suggesting to keep a change that goes against who Spider-Man is as a character, and marriage certainly does not. But then, this is typical of Q... if he can't answer a charge directly, he'll twist it so it suits his position... Here is the question that I have posed over and over again and no one has given me a logical answer to: outside of having kids (which I never would have done with Peter and MJ in the first place) or divorce/annulment (which is another thing I never would have done) is there a story that I can tell with a married Peter and MJ that I can’t tell with a Peter Parker who is just dating and deeply in love with MJ? There isn’t a single one. Every story you can tell works just as well if they’re married of just dating and in love.Tell that to Mark Waid on Flash or Kurt Busiek on Superman, both of whom are telling very strong stories about marriage and family life. For that matter, tell that to PAD, who did find ways to make the marriage work. Nor did anyone specify the marriage had to be happy all the time... there can be tensions and strains, and the characters work to overcome them. Although, Q really undermines his own argument, thinking about it. Q talks about how marriage involves accepting a lot of adult responsibilities... that in itself makes a good story. And isn't accepting responsibility what Spider-Man should be about? And on the contrary, I still haven't seen a convincing argument from him for a single Spider-Man. I guess the standard of proof is different if you're EIC... ;D
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Post by Elliot Kane on Jan 3, 2008 6:30:43 GMT
Being married doesn't mean you are totally free of temptation, either. Anyone think Black cat making a serious play to get Spidey back might work far better with a married Peter? That's without 'we could lose the flat/house', career vrs family stories... there's a ton of stuff you can do with a married couple that won't work with single people, simply because their lives are bound together.
Personally I'd like to hear Q's wife's view, as Q seems to be saying that marriage makes no real difference to your life or relationships at all...
But then, if Q truly believed that he wouldn't be so insistent on having an unmarried Peter, would he?
As for the rest - I agree with Steve.
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Post by Elliot Kane on Jan 3, 2008 7:13:55 GMT
A few notes on Q's answers:
I take it Q DOES know that Sharon Carter is pregnant by the late Captain America. right? Apparently it's OK for the most moral character in the MU to have unprotected sex & kids outside marriage, but not for Spidey...
***
Q's explanation on why a married Peter is worse than a single Peter = 'less soap opera'. Boiling down about three pages to the important detail ;D I don't see that at all. Stuff like 'less hanging out with friends' really depends on the couple - and the writer. Then there's the people Peter works with, and now the people MJ works with and all HER friends. So in fact the supporting cast could be a whole lot bigger...
Not to mention the slightly important detail - he's still Spider-Man. His life hasn't got suddenly boring or settled. he's not being any less of a superhero. He just has more duties and obligations than before. If the important point in Q's argument is that Peter's life would become too safe and same-ish, I'd say the point was unsupportable.
All the comparisons with the FF & DD were just waffle and bullcrap, but boy did they ake for a lot of waffle!
That's the argument against divorce. It's a good one, based on Peter the hero. Not sure how well it squares up with making deals with the devil, though! Apparently that's something heroes do, is it? ;D And for purely selfish reasons, yet!
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Post by Elliot Kane on Jan 3, 2008 19:30:24 GMT
JMS speaks!. He clearly knew what he was doing... Which is why Marvel hated his story, I guess... ;D
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Post by Gray Lensman on Jan 3, 2008 19:49:57 GMT
Hmm. Very interesting.
JMS was very polite by calling Q's portrayal of the situation an oversight. From where I stand, it really looks like Quesada is trying to shift the blame over to JMS for his lousy writing. It certainly doesn't look like an honest portrayal of the situation.
As for the substance of his comments, JMS is absolutely right. You don't just use magic as a "quick fix", and you can't just wave your magic editorial wand and say it happened a certain way. Well, you can, but the artifice is going to show, and it'll look like the sloppy deus ex machina that it is.
And some of the things that Q wants this spell to establish are just stupid. Strange can't just see through the spell with the Eye of Agamotto? That makes even less sense than this story already did. It's one thing to change memories and another to rewrite reality entirely, including raising the dead, rewriting Peter's biology and eliminating all trace of the marriage without the world's most powerful mystic being aware of it.
Edit: Also, now I think about it... wasn't one of the reasons Quesada had problems with Dr. Strange as a character because he could wave his hands and do anything without any rules to his magic? How is that any different from what Q is doing now? Hypocrisy, thy name is Quesada...
I can't blame JMS for wanting his name off this train wreck. At all.
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Post by Elliot Kane on Jan 3, 2008 20:04:42 GMT
I doubt the end result would have pleased Spider-fans any better, but at least it would have been coherent the JMS way.
I'm glad he's not letting Q use him as a human shield.
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Post by Gray Lensman on Jan 4, 2008 2:18:01 GMT
Part 4 of Quesada's Rationalization is up. ![:)](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/smiley.png) Well, this interview is officially a puff piece. The interviewer comes across as siding with Quesada several times in this section. Not that I'm stunned or anything, but still. But leaving that aside, Quesada is up to his same old tricks. For instance... In the past -- and this is just off the top of my head -- Peter has made deals or gone into uneasy partnerships with the Kingpin, the Punisher and even his most psychotic villain, Venom -- and all of these were done under considerably less duress than when he was approached by Mephisto.All of which were cases of "team up with a bad guy to stop the even worse guy". That isn't even remotely equivalent. None of them asked Peter to throw away his his marriage, his entire future, and the future of his family in exchange to save Aunt May. If they had, I can't imagine Peter accepting that either. What do you think Peter would do if Mephisto came to him and said, “Do you see that woman standing there on the street corner? I know you don’t know her, but I’m going to kill her. Or, perhaps “She’s dying of cancer and I can save her.” However, if you give me your marriage, it’ll save her life.”
How would you feel, how would fandom feel if Peter said, “Nope, sorry, go ahead and let her die.” Not really a great argument. In the first place, what Peter would do in that case is go call Dr. Strange and try to stop him. ;D In the second place, it's not a question just of Peter selling away his marriage. It's selling away the future of his wife and any children he might someday have. Mephisto is, in the case of the cancer patient, still asking Peter to sacrifice innocent people that he is responsible for protecting, in exchange for someone else who is dying a natural death. It would still undermine who Peter is to make that bargain. Q can frame this any way he wants, but it's still a bad move. Also, as I stated, they didn’t conjur up Mephisto nor did they seek him out. They also didn’t go looking for him in order to fulfill some selfish needs. It’s Mephisto who presents himself to them.Honestly... what does it matter who sought who out? It doesn't change the result. Peter still made the deal. And frankly, I don't see how this is not selfish. Or does anyone honestly think Aunt May would approve of her nephew and his wife throwing away their life together to save her? Some of my favorite remarks are when I’m accused of playing god with Spider-Man. Ummmm, yeah, all of us who create these stories are playing god with the characters with every single story we create. That’s what all of us in comics do for a living, we play god in the lives of the characters.Umm... who said that, exactly? I don't remember seeing a single comment from a reviewer, commentator, or poster anywhere accusing him of playing God. I suspect that Quesada is playing "straw man" again on this one. And, of course, Quesada still denies that he's retconning 20+ years of comic book history, which is frankly laughable. But that's nothing new...
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Post by Elliot Kane on Jan 4, 2008 3:40:21 GMT
Well, it's lucky Meph doesn't walk down the average high street with Spidey offering him deals according to Joe! Poor old Spidey wouldn't have much left of anything by the time he'd gone a couple hundred yards, would he? Coz I'd bet that's it all it would take to find a lot of heartbreaking problems. Sometimes there's nothing you can reasonably do, and that's that. I think Q misses the entire point about dealing with the Devil - which is that it's always a bad thing. Doesn't matter how you spin it or anything else, it's doing a deal with ultimate evil. There's no possible way to win those things. Meph is not a nice guy doing all this stuff because he loves Peter or MJ or May - he's got an angle and no-one involved ever gets out without paying for it. That's the whole point of that kind of character in the first place. As for Peter being under 'duress' - of course he isn't. Meph does not force him into anything. He willingly accepts. It's also a complete lie when he says Peter makes the deal for unselfish reasons. The reasoning from everything I've read is all about how Peter feels and how he would feel and how he couldn't handle May dying - her feelings and wishes aren't even considered. He's being completely selfish. Except that as JMS points out, it absolutely IS the case. Oops, eh? ![:D](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/grin.png)
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Post by hector on Jan 4, 2008 5:33:52 GMT
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