Amazing Spider-Man #656
Mar. 16th, 2011 06:53 pm![[personal profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cyberghostface posting in ![[community profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
scans_dailySo after Marla's death, Spidey has taken on a vow that no one will ever die under his watch. Just as he says that, a new villain called Massacre is holding a group of people hostage and has lined them up with explosives. To make a point, he's already killed one. His backstory is that a piece of shrapnel lodged its way into his brain, taking away his ability for empathy or morals.
Spider-Man gets shot by Massacre, leading him to build a new armored suit.
Meanwhile, Mayor Jonah in response to the tragedy has declared "no tolerance" for murderers and wants Massacre dead.
So Spider-Man arrives into the scene, and webs up the hostages. Massacre tells him that he's sealed their fate and sets off the detonator, only for Spidey to tell him that his new webbing is magnetic and has blocked the detonator's radio frequencies. Massacre asks him if the new webbing is bulletproof and proceeds to fire.
Massacre claims he has other hostages wired a block away but Spidey webs up his detonator, once again preventing him from blowing anyone up. Now powerless, Massacre apparently tries to commit suicide by going up to the window where the police are about to shoot him.
Spider-Man gets shot by Massacre, leading him to build a new armored suit.
Meanwhile, Mayor Jonah in response to the tragedy has declared "no tolerance" for murderers and wants Massacre dead.
So Spider-Man arrives into the scene, and webs up the hostages. Massacre tells him that he's sealed their fate and sets off the detonator, only for Spidey to tell him that his new webbing is magnetic and has blocked the detonator's radio frequencies. Massacre asks him if the new webbing is bulletproof and proceeds to fire.
Massacre claims he has other hostages wired a block away but Spidey webs up his detonator, once again preventing him from blowing anyone up. Now powerless, Massacre apparently tries to commit suicide by going up to the window where the police are about to shoot him.
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Date: 2011-03-17 06:58 am (UTC)--LBD "Nytetrayn"
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Date: 2011-03-17 08:14 am (UTC)It sounds like he's doing this more for himself then for any desire to help people.
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Date: 2011-03-17 10:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-17 11:36 am (UTC)Pretty short-lived vow, then.
His backstory is that a piece of shrapnel lodged its way into his brain, taking away his ability for empathy or morals.
Was he there to rob those people, or did he just want to kill them?
Because if he just wanted to kill them, the backstory doesn't work. Most sociopaths in the world refrain from killing people for crap and giggles simply because they don't want to go to jail. Empathy and morals have nothing to do with self-preservation.
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Date: 2011-03-17 12:40 pm (UTC)"So...you were what? Not giving a damn before and letting people die? You menace!"
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Date: 2011-03-17 12:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-17 01:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-17 03:30 pm (UTC)I was about to say.
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Date: 2011-03-17 03:31 pm (UTC)I honestly don't know what he wanted.
Re: New Story
Date: 2011-03-17 03:38 pm (UTC)Yeah, that's exactly why for the last two issues in a row I was giving them praise.
Re: New Story
Date: 2011-03-17 03:40 pm (UTC)The pseudoscience bugs me (more than usual), the entire way Spider-man is acting bugs me (hard to see this as heroic when it seems like he's snapping), costume bugs me (in a way that I am not liable to get used to), JJ bugs me...
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Date: 2011-03-17 07:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-17 09:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-17 11:48 pm (UTC)Also, this is what? Costume #3 in the past two months?
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Date: 2011-03-17 11:54 pm (UTC)...Waitaminute....when the hell did J.J. become MAYOR?!?! Talk about art imitating life (Bloomberg does remind me of Jonah...)
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Date: 2011-03-18 02:17 am (UTC)Can't unsee it now!
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Date: 2011-03-18 06:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-18 06:06 am (UTC)Re: New Story
Date: 2011-03-18 06:09 am (UTC)And - forgive me, I can't quite tell how you meant that line (sarcasm doesn't translate well on the computer screen) so if your were being serious, then once again thank you, it was a nice change of pace. And if you were being sarcastic, well, you weren't one of those people, so that line wasn't directed at you
Vow
Date: 2011-03-18 06:14 am (UTC)He wasn't there when it happened, so they didn't die under his watch. He's not that obsessed.
Re: Vow
Date: 2011-03-18 02:00 pm (UTC)Jonah said that Massacre would get out and murder more people. Spidey replied that people wouldn't die, because when Massacre gets out Spidey will be there. But since it's physically impossible for Spidey to immediately get to Massacre after the break out, that means that Massacre would have plenty of time between his break out and Spidey's arrival to murder people, therefore people would indeed die just like Massacre's first hostage did.
I'm not saying that Spidey should have let Massacre die. Putting aside the obvious "superheroes don't kill" matter, you can just bet that if Spidey had let the villain die, Jonah would have been all ZOMG YOU MENACE!!!111. Spidey did the right thing here.
I'm saying that this specific justification for saving Massacre is stupid, because Spidey's vow doesn't mean squat if it only counts when he is physically present and Massacre can murder people when Spidey isn't there. And I'm saying that his vow doesn't even make any sense because saving people is what Spidey has been doing ever since he became a superhero, it would be like Batman making a vow that "from now onwards, I will fight the Joker!"
And again, Massacre's motivations don't make any sense either, because sociopathy doesn't comport a lack of self-preservation. He wasn't a character, he was a forced plot device.
I understand that you are frustrated by people's hatred for post-OMD Spidey. But your frustration is blinding you to the fact that people DO have very valid reasons for hating it. You keep saying that we are complaining just because we can't let go of that one event, but I've already listed several perfectly legitimate reason to think that this story is a poor one.
Re: Vow
Date: 2011-03-18 08:33 pm (UTC)I was just pointing out that people dying somewhere else doesn't affect Spidey's vow. If it did, then Spider-Man would have to have given up his vow the moment some poor guy got caught in a car crash, or have been overwhelmed with guilt for failing to live up to his vow the moment he learned Massacre killed someone. Obviously he did neither of these things, so he's not counting it when he's not there.
Yes, his statement to Jonah is a stupid statement; I think that's rather the point. Peter recently went through a minor mental crises when Jameson's wife died, deciding that he had failed far too often to save lives and vowing to never fail again. The way this story is going, it looks like it ends with Peter having to accept that this is impossible; matter how hard he tries, he can't save everybody all the time. It's less "Batman vowing to fight the Joker" and more "Batman vowing to never let the Joker kill anyone ever again" - nice sentiment, but it's not going to happen. And seeing as how Massacre tries to commit suicide at the end, he doesn't have much in the way of self-preservation either.
Yes, there are people who do have legitimate beefs with this; I was overgeneralizing when I posted earlier, and I apologize for that. But by the same token, me responding to another person's criticism of Spider-Man doesn't automatically mean that I think they're "complaining just because we can't let go of that one event."
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Date: 2011-03-19 01:35 am (UTC)