Amazing Spider-Man #650: Context

[stolisomancer]

cyberghostface's continued posts on Amazing Spider-Man are the single greatest example of Accentuate the Negative I have ever seen in my life, but today's post on the topic of issue #650 really pushed it too far.


By posting two panels without context from issue #650, cyberghostface managed to create a scene that reads entirely differently than what is actually in the issue itself. cyberghostface's post from earlier today is, in short, a hit piece; it is divorcing a scene from its surroundings to make it look worse than it actually is.





There's a lot you can say about this scene. The first thing that jumped out at me when I read it was eating a donut and a hamburger at the same time, because that does not sound good at all, but somebody's eating those fucking Krispy Kreme burgers so who cares.

Second, there's that first page, where Mary Jane is thinking faster on her feet than Peter is, and is doing more than her share to help maintain the secret identity. That is not a stupid woman.

Third, the second page, when you get the follow-up panel with Mary Jane, just makes Dan Slott look like a moron. I'm not sure what that was meant to accomplish, aside from Slott not taking the time to research pseudo-scientific gobbledygook or something that sounded like a fashion term; the scene isn't from either MJ or Peter or Carlie's perspective as written. It's like the omniscient narrator isn't paying any attention.

The scene as written just doesn't work very well. It happens.

Yanking the first two panels off of the second page and using it as yet another batch of grist for the "hey guys, let's all sit around and hate on Quesada/Amazing Spider-Man/Dan Slott" mill, though, is simply dishonest. It's the exact opposite of thoughtful critique, it irritates the hell out of me, and it represents just about ninety fucking percent of the reactions to Amazing Spider-Man on s_d since "One More Day": people taking one or two or four pages out of any semblance of context and using it to wail about how much the book sucks now.

I figure I like about thirty-five to forty percent of the issues since "One More Day"; I jump on and off depending on the creative team. (Waid, Wells, and Van Lente have done great work. Guggenheim, not so much. Slott usually has good jokes and action scenes but lousy characterization, but even he did great on "Mysterioso" with Marcos Martin.) "One More Day" was a mistake; "One Moment in Time" compounded it; and everything Quesada has said about it or Mary Jane has been accompanied by him corkscrewing his foot further into his mouth.

Thus, it's not that I'm a big fan of the character, the company, or the creators. It's that people are still passing this crap around, absorbing just as little of the book as they can to maintain the illusion that it's a black hole of pure suck (rather than the "throw everything at the wall and hope something sticks" smorgasbord it's been for the last few years), spinning the facts as hard as they can (Amazing Spider-Man has been in the top twenty comics of the month, every month, for the entirety of 2010, usually holding down two to three spots, but no, go ahead and pretend that it's a failure) to maintain that perfect air of jaded comic-book-fan ennui. This is pointless, intellectually dishonest bullshit that does a disservice to just about everyone and everything that participates in it, and people in this community have not only done better, but do better every single day.

Comments

[tsunamiwombat]

It's a Rookie mistake, and you hate to see it. Protip: If your ex girlfriend was a supermodel, never ever invite her to meet your new girlfriend, unless she is ALSO a supermodel. Never, ever, ever, ever. Ever.

Ever.

And don't REMINEISCE WITH HER INFRONT OF YOUR NEW GIRLFRIEND.

Least not till one of them's got a ring.

[stillanerd]

And another thing about this scene--notice that Carlie tells Peter she's mainly there to investigate the "superhuman crime scene" as part of her job and that her stopping by to bring him lunch is really an afterthought. Yet it's actually Mary Jane who stops by because (knowing that he's Spider-Man) she "wanted to know if he was okay" after the Hobgoblin's attack. Hmm...under any other circumstances, it looks like not only does Peter's ex still care about him but that his current girlfriend places greater priority on her career than their relationship.