Amazing Spider-Man #3

[cyberghostface]

Comments

[insolent_one]

"Did I really talk like that for months and no one noticed?"
Pretty much Spidey... Pretty much...

[shadowpsykie]

that moment is cut down for me by felicia actin like a regular criminal "The SPIDER took me down, now no one will respect me!" i mean really, her and Zuko should form a club....

[althechi]

You don't get to lampshade your own sloppy writing, Slott.

[shadowpsykie]

why is Felicia acting like a secondrate badguy?

[drtechnobabel]

Because Dan Slott is a second-rate writer.

[captainbellman]

Come now, that's uncalled for. "Second-rate" is way, way too generous.

[akodo_rokku]

Here's the thing.

I love the majority of Slott's pre-Spidey work. She-Hulk? Mighty Avengers? Great, fun comics. And his new Silver Surfer series is great so far.

But with Spider-Man, it's just like oil and water. They don't mix, for some reason. I half suspect that it's just Quesada sockpuppeting him.

[his_spiffynesss]

Yeah, Quesada is clearly taking his mid-life crisis out on Peter.

[fredneil.livejournal.com]

Sometimes Slott is so good that I can't believe he ever did anything bad. Other times he's so bad, I can't believe he ever did anything good.

[kevinroc]

Here's the thing.

I love the majority of Slott's pre-Spidey work. She-Hulk? Mighty Avengers? Great, fun comics. And his new Silver Surfer series is great so far.

But with Spider-Man, it's just like oil and water. They don't mix, for some reason. I half suspect that it's just Quesada sockpuppeting him

I think it's having them, again, reiterate the story points of OMIT getting really, really old. Imagine if every story since Sins Past had to make mention of "that time Gwen slept with Norman, and then had his hyper-aged Goblin babies."

Even if OMIT wasn't as hated as it was (and I know it is), it just dredges up bad memories of a terrible storyline. A story which in itself dredges up terrible memories of OMD.

[lbd_nytetrayn]

What about Sonic? ;P

[drtechnobabel]

That... makes a lot of sense, actually. With an IP as popular as Spider-Man, I wouldn't be surprised if the higher-ups in Marvel (including Quesada) insist on keeping a tighter leash on their stories than most. I can see how being so heavily constrained like that would negatively affect one's writing.

[tugrul]

Not like she had integrity before. It's not hard for me to imagine her being pushed to the dark side by a beating like the one SpOc gave her.

[captainbellman]

So, apart from the Black Cat apparently not having any of the character traits actually associated with the Black Cat, we also have Spider-Man physically having to spell out for us, "One More Day and One Moment In Time were GREAT storylines! I sure am glad THEY happened! MJ is BETTER OFF now! And so. am. I. fuckyyouspiderfans SO AM I! WHEEEEEEE"

That is, when he's not unwittingly imitating idiot-moves from Grizzly, the founder of a team literally called the Legion of Losers:

[drtechnobabel]

On top of that, his reasoning for saying MJ's better off is complete bullshit. According to him, the best way for MJ to avoid a life of worrying for her lover's safety every night is for her to get together with a FIREFIGHTER. Because surely that is a safer occupation than 'Spider-Man', especially in a place like New York City. Honestly, I feel like even implying that is an insult to firefighters everywhere.

[cyberghostface]

A firefighter doesn't have to worry about the Green Goblin throwing his girlfriend off a bridge.

[drtechnobabel]

Touche. But the way he worded it here makes it sound like the reason MJ couldn't take being with him wasn't because she was in constant danger, but because HE was. A small, but distinct difference. Sure, a firefighter's significant other may not have to worry about being thrown off bridges, but they DO have to worry about the firefighter never coming home again every time they go to work.

[silicondream]

Especially in Marvel NYC, where supervillains like the Green Goblin (ironically enough) are constantly tossing around incendiary weapons.

[fredneil.livejournal.com]

I'm guessing he did that on purpose. He wanted to scare Felicia, not actually kill her.

[cyberghostface]

Yep.

[starwolf_oakley]

Shouldn't Peter be a little more bitter about this? That MJ can get a boyfriend but he can't get a girlfriend because of Spider-Man.

[lbd_nytetrayn]

I like to think that while it may still bug him, he's also come to begrudgingly accept it and just roll with it when he can.

That's one way a developed character might react, so it obviously doesn't apply here, but I'm just saying.

[steverodgers5]

I would have liked the Ock joke if it wasn't for the fact that it's all at that the expense of turning Felicia into a shallow pathetic shadow of the character that she used to be, in what's seeming more and more like a severely misguided story. Dammit. I like Dan Slott but this is just too far. Though I suppose it's karma for me, in that I guess I get to feel now what a lot of folk have been complaining about MJ. (I never cared for the marriage, so I wasn't bothered by it ending..)

I'm having difficulty believeing that the mind-wipe of Peter's identity would have this much of an effect on her character. Plus I'm really not sure that her own alter ego wasn't known by the cops previously. And I can't even begin to understand how her team ups with Photon, Firestar, etc are supposed to have happened now if she's been a criminal..

I wonder what would happen now if Peter did reveal his identity to her. Would she automatically flip back to her old personality? Argh! This is making my head hurt just thinking about it!

[starwolf_oakley]

Well, Peter Parker was a very good influence on Felicia. As was Mary Jane really. Peter would give Felicia "watch over Mary Jane" duties a few times in the 1990s. Plus there's the whole "romance Flash Thompson" when she stared falling for Flash "for realsies."

All this "never happening" would do a real number on her.

[steverodgers5]

I suppose so. Still feels a bit of a dramatic switch though. But I guess it's early days yet, and I guees I should see where they go with it..

[kevinroc]

I think it's hard to care about MJ's new boyfriend because the Amazing Spider-Man 3 movie is coming out in a few years. And while Marvel doesn't seem to care much about non-Marvel studios films based on their characters, it just brings the point home that we'll eventually see more ship teasing between Peter and MJ in the future. (As we have been down this road before. The houses may have a different coat of paint on them, but it is still the same road.)

This also means that whatever new love interest they create for Peter will go down in flames.

So... Yawn... Don't care.

(The most interesting thing is Jonah getting a new job as a cable news host.)

[arilou_skiff]

I'm not sure they're going for MJ though, considering they name-dropped Felicia.

[kevinroc]

The creative team of the new movies have openly discussed using MJ, and even cut her scenes from the second one. (Ironically, the cut-MJ storyline would have probably been the most coherent plotline in that movie.)

The reason they would go with MJ over Felicia is pretty simple, though. MJ's the most famous Spidey love interest. She's a creation of Stan Lee, Steve Ditko, and John Romita, Sr. She carries with her the history that makes creators want to use her. She appears more often in movies, video games, Broadway plays, cartoons, etc. than any other potential love interest.

For a non-Lee, Ditko, Romita character, Felicia's hung in there pretty well. But her biggest problem is that she is perceived as a Catwoman clone. She's a cat-themed burglar who flirts with our animal-themed superhero. And while we could enter into a debate on how Felicia actually isn't a Catwoman clone, it's hard to overcome that perception. (And Felicia, as she was used in Amazing 2, seemed more of an "in-name only" shout-out than actually planting the seeds for a future important character. They never even called her "Felicia Hardy" in the movie. She was just "Felicia.")

[starwolf_oakley]

This also means that whatever new love interest they create for Peter will go down in flames.

If Slott and Co. are even going to bother with a new love interest for Peter. At some point, Peter Parker is going to say "I can't be with anyone because someone is always going to need Spider-Man to save them."

[kevinroc]

If Slott and Co. are even going to bother with a new love interest for Peter. At some point, Peter Parker is going to say "I can't be with anyone because someone is always going to need Spider-Man to save them."

I could see them trying because the romance angle is supposed to be important to Spider-Man. Even though Slott is... very bad at it. We were supposed to be sad when Carlie broke up with Peter, and nobody acted that way at all.

(Incidentally, I thought Carlie had more chemistry with MJ than she did with Peter.)

[daningram.insanejournal.com]

"Did I really talk like that for months and no one noticed?"

Can someone please tell Slot that lampshading his own bad writing does not make it better?

[benuben]

I think it could have worked if the majority of Superior was just "lol, supervillain is trying to be a superhero, cue the wacky hijinks". But Slott just took it way too seriously (for good and for bad) so it's little too late to be like "hey, I know there is this huge flaw in my premise so let's laugh at it".

[silverhammerman]

That's exactly why Superior Spider-Man Team-Up was such a good series. It took the idea of a dickish supervillain trying to superhero and actually had fun with it; that they also managed to extract some real drama and emotion at times is just a testament to the fact that the creative team on that book was much better at handling the concept than Slott himself.

[mrstatham]

Those pages with Felicia were the fucking stupidest set of superhero pages I've read in a long time. It just makes her look like a fucking psycho when she should be able to tell the difference between Ock!Spidey and Peter!Spidey fairly well; Not as well as MJ or whatever, but she still KNOWS him.

And it makes Peter look like a huge piece of shit, but making Spider-Man look like a piece of shit is par for the course in Slott's run. Are we meant to find that scene vaguely funny because he's impersonating SpOck, because... Yeah. Felicia's depicted terribly but she did get the shit beaten out of her, and now he's threatening to kill her. Great.

Can we have someone else on this book now, please?

[cyberghostface]

He's scaring her off because he's trying to rescue someone trapped under a burning piece of rubble and she's trying to kill him.

[mrstatham]

It's still a terrible depiction of both characters. He could easily web her up and get her outside rather than pretend to be the person who previously beat the shit out of her, threatening to murder her. By contrast, Felicia shouldn't be so reckless and utterly irrational as to assault him while he's trying to save people. It's terrible writing.

[big_daddy_d]

Wait..so Felicia knows it was Doc Ock but doesn't care?... Well my love for her character just decreased a ton.