College newspaper seems to understand what's gone wrong
Published by Avi Green on Thursday, September 06, 2007 at 6:53 AM.
The college newspaper The Equinox is telling what they find wrong with the comic book industry lately. I'll take the part about overhyped events as an example:
It's a good example of what kind of crap is being dumped in stores today, but there's still a lot more this article could've tackled. Nevertheless, the above is a start in describing the problems of recent. But I'd still be a lot happier if these college newspapers were willing to do more!
Every year, we hear of a story that will "change the character's life forever." Most of the time, the stories are either forgotten, or have no impact on the main character at all. A good example is the crossover event "Spider-Man: The Other". This was billed by Marvel Comics as an event that will have permanent effects on the old webslinger. What happened was that Spider-Man dies and then comes back with new powers. But if you read the books today, it is like the story never even happened.Seems to me that the only thing they could think of that could supposedly have lasting effects on the legendary wall-crawler was that he'd be dead! Does he have to be in order to get new powers? Of course not, but regardless, I still find the Other's premise perfectly...dumb. So ironically, that could be why it's not being referenced, because it wasn't any good to begin with! All they were surely trying to do was to turn Spidey into some kind of larger-than-life figure he's not, and that doesn't work well at all with Peter Parker.
"Spider-Man: The Other" was previously mentioned in the article about the top five worst comic book stories ever written. Peter David, a co-writer of the story actually responded online saying that the then current storyline of "Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man" had a reference to "the Other". After reading this, I went to my local comic shop and picked up the issue. And what was the reference?
Spider-man looked at the Sand Man and said "I was dead once". That was it. No more, no less. Sorry Mr. David, "I was dead once" doesn't count. Heck, Matt Murdock could say "I could see once", but does that directly reference the time he went to the movie theaters when he was seven?
It's a good example of what kind of crap is being dumped in stores today, but there's still a lot more this article could've tackled. Nevertheless, the above is a start in describing the problems of recent. But I'd still be a lot happier if these college newspapers were willing to do more!
Labels: marvel comics
