Steve McNiven is spinning in his grave. His luxurious, velvet ensconced grave.
FIVE
FOUR
SIX.
SECOND PRINT?!?
The worst numbers in history. The worst NUMBER in history. The number where “everything changes” and “nothing will ever be the same again” and “this is probably fine, not really different, but we’re slapping some new tires on the car and telling you the whole thing is a 2004 model.” Why the vitriol? Because in Amazing Spider-Man, it was time for a ‘BRAND NEW DAY’.
‘Hark! A Variant!’
After allowing? Requiring? a story by J. Michael Straczynski that had Norman Osborne and Gwen Stacy as consensual parents of twins, Marvel decided that their flagship title, The Amazing Spider-Man, wasn’t performing as well as it should. They were in the middle of Civil War, and Peter had announced his secret identity to the world. That Genie needed to go back into the bottle, and the best way to do that was magic.
‘Mephisto’
A main character, likely Peter, was going to have to make a deal with the devil. With his identity public knowledge, every single fear he’d ever had about doing that had come true (wait, Peter is smart? But how?). Things were so low he was back in his black costume (oooo scaryyyyy) seeking revenge against the Kingpin for SHOOTING Aunt May. Go through the weakest to get back at your enemies. Always works. Maybe shoot John Wick’s dog.
‘This looks nothing like Randy Quaid, Woody Harrelson, or Bill Murray’
BUT, the grand maker of wheat cakes would not see anything again, aside from the pearly gates, unless someone did some dirty deeds with Mephisto. The deeds were done for a price above ‘dirt cheap’, where a loving Mary Jane sacrificed her marriage, her history of happiness, because Mephisto is the kind of devil who’s down for following up on little bits of pain, as long as they last a lifetime. That pain won’t be Pete’s. It will be MJs! Fun loving, party girl, model MJ will remember every bit of good they ever had together, and her suffering will feed Mephisto like a healthy breakfast feeds Squirrely Dan.
‘Mephisto’
We didn’t know all the details, but long story short, red magic man makes marriages disappear like the toughest rust stains. That meant Peter would be, and this was the big appeal for Marvel, be able to date again. Tired of seeing a happy, sustained relationship between two characters who’ve grown, and grown together, since high school? Good news! She gone. Now Peter can be freed from the prison of his marital obligations and date such exciting new characters as…. Or he can revisit past loves that never got to be explored, like…. They remain as memorable today as they were then, I can assure you.
‘Sizzle fingers are “Marriage Fizzle” fingers.’
I’d been a Spidey fan since the 70’s. One of the great things about the title was that you followed a character, from high school, thru college, into adult life, just like every **$*##! reader would be doing. In a book that features enough guilt over decades to fuel a thousand sermons, it had, on its margins, some attachment to reality that readers of any age could recognize. I wonder if Marvel considered any of the efforts JMS had put into revitalizing the Peter/MJ relationship over the previous years when he dug them out of the sales gutter with his take on ASM?
I felt like they didn’t. I voted with my dollars. I got out. I stopped buying a title I’d followed regularly since 1982. I’d read the occasional issue. Working in a comic shop gave me access. Often times, it was a hate read though. “Well, what’s this nonsense?” I asked at nearly every scenario. There were a couple of standout stories though, a couple of issues with Mark Waid writing here, a couple of issues with Lee Weeks drawing there, a nice anniversary issue with #600 being a Doc Ock story.
But nothing that got me buying again. Until.
There’s always an ‘until’, right?
‘I’m Peter…’
It turned out that the #600 I’d enjoyed just fine had been a carefully orchestrated part of an over 100 issue long plan Dan Slott had been writing, just real quiet like, a panel here, a page there, a hint over behind that bush, and blammo, the news breaks that Spider-Man is dying, Doc Ock has inserted his mind into Peter’s body, and insert Godfather III quote here. The chutzpah, the planning, the payoff…it was just b***sy as ****. Pardon my asterisks. That led to the utterly great Superior Spider-Man, back to ASM, back to my first love. I even wound up going back to fill in those gaps in my run, when I could find them at a significant discount. Consider that your first advertisement for our Summer Sale! 50% off most back issues, coming this June.