New history book of Spider-Man's 60-plus years

C-Ville Weekly interviewed Patrick A. Reed, a pop culture historian originally from Charlottesville, VA, who's authored a history of Spider-Man's publication in over 6 decades:

Patrick A. Reed is a pop culture historian, curator, journalist, and DJ who grew up in Charlottesville and now lives in New York. He recently authored Spider-Man Total Universe: More Than 60 Years of Every Comic, Every Character, Every Story, which combines eye-popping archival images, character spotlights, and detailed story arcs from Spidey’s history into 800-plus pages. As comprehensive as it is entertaining, the book offers insights and reflections for longtime Spider-Verse fans as well as newcomers to the Marvel Universe. Reed spoke to C-VILLE ahead of his book talk on November 14 at New Dominion Bookshop.

The part in this short interview that's worth highlighting is what's told at the end:

How is it digging through archives, both as a curator and working on the book?

It’s wild. Marvel has a digital archive but they don’t have a publishing archive… but there were also a lot of things that weren’t in Marvel’s digital archive… To actually look at the original issues and the ads, the cultural context, most of that research was done going through boxes at conventions, picking up issues, going through my own collection and that was a pretty mammoth task.

As a reader and a fan, I grew up knowing that… Stan Lee and Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko and John Romita did the Marvel comics. These things were made by people. And in working with Marvel, it’s been fascinating because a lot of the names I knew growing up are suddenly actual people I’m speaking to about their work.

Ultimately, I hope this is a book that works as a reference, that you can pull off the shelf if you want to look something up… I tried to write it in a way that sets up the story and follows it more or less chronologically. So… hopefully it works as a thing for that nerdy kid that I was and, as you can tell, still am.

Well here's the thing: if this history book brings up the atrocity of One More/Brand New Day, and the deal with Mephisto to obliterate the Spider-marriage, does it discuss the topic objectively? Does it also discuss how dreadful J. Michael Straczynski's run actually was, in ways that make the Clone Saga look almost classic by comparison? And does it discuss how characters like Miles Morales were only created to serve a woke agenda for people too lazy to create their own stories? If this is just another superficial guide lacking objectivity and opinion, I'm not sure what the use is of producing a history book that won't make distinctions between good and bad. I guess that's what "working" with Marvel is telling - that he worked with modern staffers who couldn't care less how badly Spidey and the MCU were brought down by their political correctness. If Reed didn't do it independently, perhaps that's the mistake? If he'd added reference to the very recent storyline where Mary Jane Watson was turned into a female Venom, that's not "entertaining", and come to think of it, Straczynski's run was far from comprehensive as it distorted continuity, so I'm not sure if calling this new book "comprehensive" makes sense.

And depending when and how he first did the research, how come he didn't rely upon the Masterworks, Omnibuses and Epic Collection archives? I can't understand why, in an age where a lot of classics are finally getting their due in reprints, and DC's recently launched the similar Finest archives along with their own Omnibuses, some historians can't rely on what'd be easier to buy than back issues at a flea market. Yet that's probably nothing compared to the failure to take an objective viewpoint in these would-be history books. That's exactly what enabled Joe Quesada, Bill Jemas and Dan Buckley to get away with the worst of what they did to Spidey and MJ 2 decades ago, yet we still see only so many history books with no critical standing in sight, developed by people who won't do their research independently of the publishers involved. So what's the point?