Maybe OMD wasn't such a bad idea afte rall..

[alschroeder.insanejournal.com]

Okay, don't jump all over me. I think it was a horrible idea---at least DC sacrificed its continuity to a multiversal Crisis rather than a guy who can't take the idea of his ninety-year-old aunt finally dying. Who literally rewrote history by making a deal with the devil to save a woman who by all rights should have been dead years ago, and only had a few years left.

Still..

It could be worse.

I innocently clicked on a link from comicbookresources to CRACKED's 5 Superhoes Rendered Ridiculous by Gritty Reboots and found REIGN, from Marvel, which I had no idea existed.

Brace yourselves for the worst Spider-Man idea ever, as we look in on a sixty-year-old Spider-Man, who...

...Accidentally killed Mary Jane with radioactive semen.

The evidence below.

I have no words for how horrified I am at this idea, even though yes, it makes sense---if he could poison Aunt May with radioactivity with a blood sample, yes, it makes sense...

But no, I don't ever, ever, want to read REIGN or contemplate such a repugnant idea again.

I'm just curious. Those of you who DID read it...

Were there ANY redeeming features to it?

See, Box in a Box? It COULD be worse. Honest.

Comments

[lieut_kettch.insanejournal.com]

MJ should've listened to the answer to the question, "Is he strong?"

[blakeyrat.insanejournal.com]

Yah but that just mentioned the blood. I guess, "listen, bub, he's got radioactive semen and presumably urine too!" didn't rhyme or something.

[angelophile.insanejournal.com]

Reign was a great series. It's a good idea to read it rather than base your opinions on a Cracked.com article, in my opinion. In many respects it was fantastic and the story arc with the Sandman's daughter breaks my heart completely and utterly every time I read it.

I also think the whole "radioactive semen" broohaha is an unfortunate reading of this scene. "Every fluid" to me meant stuff like sweat, saliva, all those things that a married couple would exchange from everyday physical contact. I mean it SAYS "every fluid" right there in the scan. It doesn't say semen.

[alschroeder.insanejournal.com]

Good to know. The way they described it sounded utterly awful, and the other things they mentioned, were pretty spot on, so I could only assumed...

Glad to know it was much better than they let on.

Hmmm. Black Cat better restrict these quickies with Spider-Man, then...

[comicoz.insanejournal.com]

Seconding this, it's a great series. While I certainly cringed a bit at the radioactive semen (and that was WHILE I was reading it), my wife actually wandered by me and gave me a kiss shortly after I was reading that scene, and I thought "Ohh wait...". Think of how many times a signifigant other and you have passed a cold/etc back and forth. It doesn't always have to be creepy.

That said, it's possibly the only part of a great series that would shake it.

[fredneil.livejournal.com (from insanejournal.com)]

There's a basic flaw in this, though. We've already seen the effect this particular type of radiation has on the human body. It doesn't cause cancer, it creates superpowers. Aunt May was too old to handle the radiation, that's why she was dying, but when Mary Jane started to be exposed to it, she wasn't in worse physical shape than a somewhat frail 15 year old boy. Besides, the amount of radiation she was exposed to caused cancer in her had to have been several orders of magnitude less than the amount still inside Peter's body.

[va1tyr.insanejournal.com]

I also think the whole "radioactive semen" broohaha is an unfortunate reading of this scene. "Every fluid" to me meant stuff like sweat, saliva, all those things that a married couple would exchange from everyday physical contact.

Didn't he also use a phrase like 'like a million little spiders crawling up inside you and laying their eggs'? I remember having trouble uncrossing my legs after reading that. D:

[mugiwara.insanejournal.com]

Reign was one of the best Spiderman stories ever, and one of the few that actually made Peter and MJ's relationship worth existing.

[angelophile.insanejournal.com]

I wouldn't quite go that far, but the series did wonderfully highlight the relationship and explored how intrinsically MJ and Peter were soulmates. There's the scene with the "You never let me finish I was going to say "Go... get them, tiger" which has my eyes prickling as I think of it. Brilliantly evocative.

[werehawk.insanejournal.com]

I really liked Spiderman: Reign. Maybe you should try and read it.

As for Superman at World's End (#4 on the list). My library had it and I tried to read it. I actually had to put it down and I never do that, even bad comics (like Claremont's New Exiles and the free issues of post-OMD Spiderman on Marvel digital). It was that bad. I don't even like talking about it.

[alschroeder.insanejournal.com]

I agree. In fact, I agreed with most every other mention made...so when he mentioned REIGN, which I had never read, I assumed he was on the money.

But hey, that's why I asked for reactons from people who HAD read it. Good to know.

[sherkahn.insanejournal.com]

No, I could live with Reign, cause I always saw it as an attempt to do Dark Knight returns What If with Spidey.

OMD is still crap and a big f-u to the fans.

Hey Pete, have you talked to Felicia and the others, too?

[alschroeder.insanejournal.com]

Good point. Now that he's sleeping around, he may be unleashing something worst than AIDS...

How come the super-heroes who are exposed to radioactivity never die of cancer? Bruce Banner, Peter Parker, Flint Marko, Matt Murduck...

[mullon.insanejournal.com]

What happened to that posting over at no_scans daily anyway?

[angelophile.insanejournal.com]

I KNEW I wasn't imagining it. There was one on this subject, wasn't there? Shame, had some good posts in it.

[halloweenjack.insanejournal.com]

I haven't read it, and don't know that I ever would, recommendations here notwithstanding, because of this premise. I don't see how, unless the spider bite was infused with pure plutonium, there would be enough radioactive material in Peter's system to give someone else cancer, unless he was basically turned into Radioactive Man with a few extra tricks. At the very least, you might expect Reed Richards to mention that some of the Baxter Building's sensors tended to redline whenever Peter came over to taunt Johnny.

[werehawk.insanejournal.com]

Maybe wherever he gets his power from is some kind of nuclear reaction caused by the radioactivity and shed in new cells. Which in turn, targeted the radiation and gave MJ uterine cancer.

[colonel_green.insanejournal.com]

"Reign" and that Superman story don't really belong on this (actually, I don't know that any of those really count as a "reboot") - they're not changes made to the mainline versions, they're AUs. I doubt the writers of either would suggest this is what the regular Spider-Man/Superman should be like.

[ninjapeps.insanejournal.com]

neither do Iron Man and Speedball/Penance. Wonder Dog would count since he's a previously existing character from a different continuity.

[arbre_rieur.insanejournal.com]

Who literally rewrote history by making a deal with the devil to save a woman who by all rights should have been dead years ago, and only had a few years left.

Oh god, don't get me started on this. It baffles me that anyone could think that it would be in character for Spider-Man to put less value on anyone's life just because the person was old, much less his own aunt's. Writing him as doing so would have been a far bigger act of character assassination than anything BND could have wrought.

[darkknightjrk.insanejournal.com]

I don't think he would have put it in those terms--but I'd think Peter would think that she wouldn't want to be revived if it meant sacrificing his relationship with MJ.

[zechs27.insanejournal.com]

Yes it had many redeeming features. It had Venom be his most frightening worst and a great Sandman subplot. Plus what happened to Doc Ock was sickening eeire. And to negate the sad baw moment have this sad gaw moment.

[scottyquick.insanejournal.com]

I LOVE YOU MJ ;_;
NOW AND FOREVER

[pyrotwilight.insanejournal.com]

All I liked about it was Sandman having a daughter and then that went to shit too. I HATE Reign.

[(Anonymous)]

I read Reign a long time ago, so my memory is a bit fuzzy. But from what I remember it was a decent story. Nothing too special, but nothing horrible either. And as has been previously stated, this is all alternate continuity stuff anyway. Some days it feels like that's the only way you can tell a good story with these characters...

Actually of all of these Speedball seems to be the worst by far. Not only do they completely change the character, not only is it canon, but... it's just so freakin' DUMB! I keep waiting for him to start screaming out the lyrics to Linkin Park's "Crawling."*



* I like Linkin Park - at least what I've heard on the radio. But those lyrics are pretty over the top!

[cyberghostface.insanejournal.com]

Reign is a much better story than anything in OMD/BND. Even though MJ is dead in it she's arguably one of the biggest characters in the story and her relationship with Spidey is one of his driving factors later on. And, despite what the internet would have you believe, there's a lot more to it than "spider-spunk". The story's far from perfect but it's not as nearly as bad as people are making it out to be.

Really, this hardly takes the cake for "the worst Spider-Man idea ever". Maybe if MJ was killed off in ASM this way, but taken in its full context of the larger story, this pales in comparision to Spider-Man actively making a deal with the Marvel version of Satan.

[va1tyr.insanejournal.com]

That article says Iron Man isn't homoerotic. That's some serious fail right there.

[starwolf_oakley.insanejournal.com]

The Iron Man article also mentions how Iron Man never really fights super-villains anymore, outside of when he's with the Avengers. If he fights Iron Patriot soon, that will be his first "official" super-villain fight in a long time.

Iron Man: The Inevitable actually covers Iron Man not fighting super-villains as a plot point. I haven't read the miniseries yet, though.

[math_camel.insanejournal.com]

I read it a few years ago, and it was totally mediocre. I didn't like the art very much, I didn't much like the story, and it just wasn't any *fun*. Then again, I'm not a huge fan of Spider Man, and I only bought the trade because I was hard up for reading material, but it still managed to let me down, even with those expectations.

There was the one good part with MJ in the hospital, Peter hears a siren and MJ sends him off to help people. I really felt their love, but even this was hampered because there was some kind of tragic mix up or something, and the fact that she was hardly ever in the book.
(Also, I didn't assume it was the spidey-sperm, I assumed it was just close proximity, like Dr. Manhattan. But this is Cracked after all...)

So yeah, it killed a few hours, and it didn't burn my eyeballs from my sockets, but it definitely wasn't worth the money.

[heat16.insanejournal.com]

I liked REIGN. Altough confusing at times (and a few moments of weird art), I allways enjoy re-reading it.

[darkknightjrk.insanejournal.com]

The story is pretty much DKR with Spidey in it, but there are some cool parts--like the aforementioned great scenes with Pete and MJ, and crazy homeless JJJ leading a resistance movement.

[joysweeper.insanejournal.com]

...Yyyeah. A future what-could-happen comic with a weird squicky note is so much vastly worse than OMD, which actually did change the status quo without telling an interesting story in the process.

This is textbook Complaining About Comics You've Never Read, Or Even Know Anything About Beyond What A Comedy Article Has Said. Might as well say that since the Hulk is green and green symbolizes greed, The Incredible Hulk is about someone who made it way too big and is terrible at handling the stresses that come with too much money all at once.

I hate it when people do that. Darth Vader playing with a small boy looks terrible without context, and when that panel was put up the comments were full of this, and then context was put up and people said "Oh. Damn." Finding out-of-context subtexty panels is one thing. Assuming the quality of a series based on a tiny sample is another.

[cyberghostface.insanejournal.com]

Exactly. "Context for the weak" is fun to get chuckles and snark from but it should never be used to judge the merits of a particular story.

Even with "MJ got cancer from the Amazing Spider-Spunk", Reign's characterization of Pete and MJ and their relationship is still more spot-on than anything from the current status quo.

[sandoz_iscariot.insanejournal.com]

I don't know, the fact that the book has nice moments that show how important and special Peter and MJ's love was makes scenes like this even more grotesque to me. Which is probably the intended reaction, but Peter holding MJ's exhumed, rotting corpse and talking about how his fluids killed her (and I really hate the "loved ones die by the same thing that a gave a hero superpowers" trope, especially since it's so often used against female characters) is something that just makes me go "gross" and put the book down.

[psychop_rex.insanejournal.com]

Yeah, I don't buy that. While it HAS been established that Peter has at least a small radioactive element in his blood, it makes NO sense that he'd have enough of it in him to give someone cancer. If he had that much radioactivity in him, he wouldn't have survived his teenage years - he would've dropped dead years ago. Besides, Peter has worked as a scientist at least two or three times in his life so far, often in laboratories where there would be all kinds of radiation-monitoring devices - geiger counters, things like that. Those things would have been going off like popcorn if he'd had that much of it inside him.
The way I look at it is as follows: Peter was GIVEN his powers through a radioactive spider, but that doesn't mean his powers themselves are fueled through radioactivity. The radiation somehow acted as a transformative agent to briefly turn the spider into a sort of power-transferrer. "Somehow - in some miraculous way, his bite has transferred his own power... to ME!", remember? In short, the radiation may have passed on the powers, but effectively, the powers are the result of a mutation brought on by the combination of radiation and spider-bite. Any radiation in his blood is there as a slight, lingering residue from the bite, nothing more. It may have been a bit stronger earlier in his career, back when Aunt May got sick from it, but surely it would have all but dissappeared by the time he reached his sixth decade. I refuse to believe it was ever strong enough to give anyone cancer.