Thread Drift: JMS' Amazing Spider-Man, Satellite Books, and the Supporting Cast

[QUOTE=Revolutionary_Jack;4363564]And people are acting as if Harry Osborn's death and the lead-up to that would have been the same in ASM as in Spec. if JMD had migrated there. The reason JMD was able to get that deep into Harry Osborn in the pages of Spectacular is precisely because of it being a satellite story where Peter doesn't have to always be the center. That wouldn't work consistently in the main title.

And again Harry Osborn had been long neglected and faded into obscurity in the main titles by then. Flash Thompson btw was Peter's best man at his wedding and not Harry...and Flash was the guy who told Peter to get married in the mini-bachelor's party they had in the Wedding Annual. Had it not been for JMD's stories, Harry would likely just have been some loose end and remained forgotten.[/QUOTE]

Exactly!
And to those saying JMS forgot/ignored the supporting cast, some evidence:
Issue 37: Peter calls Aunt Anna to check on May.
Issue 40: Aunt May visits J. Jonah Jameson and cancels her subscription to the Bugle because she knows Peter is Spidey.
Issue 47: Jonah once again shows up looking at the news story with Shathra telling lies about Peter.
Issue 49: Mary Jane is met in Peter's apartment hallway by Caryn (A character introduced in Paul Jenkins' run! She's even wearing her signature purple.)
Issue 500: Past versions of JJJ, Betty, and Gwen are shown.

Need I go on?

[QUOTE=Revolutionary_Jack;4363528]
Why do people act like this was ever not a thing? The tri-monthly and bi-monthly publication of ASM after BND and so on is basically the same principle as Spectacular, Web of Spider-Man and so on but just now they are all calling it ASM. It was all done to get people to spend more money per month on Spider-Man. Before it was at least honest and optional...you know that ASM had a distinct separate story that other runs are in principle take-it-or-leave-it except for crossovers like "The Other". Post-OMD, [B][I][U]to follow Spider-Man seriously you [I]had to[/I] triple-then-double-dip per month[/U][/I][/B] to keep up with the serial Spider-Man stuff. The only exception was stuff like Conway's Spiral with its unique ".1" titling trying to distinct it (basically a Spectacular Spider-Man story written by the guy who created that title to start with).

So to me, as far as asking readers to spend more money goes, OMD-BND is the freaking nadir not before. [/QUOTE]

i’m going to assume this was a tangential rant inspired by my comment but not a direct response

sometimes it’s not even just a money thing, it’s also distribution and availability. sometimes certain runs or stories aren’t translated into the local language etc etc

re authors; dellilo is excellent. [I]white noise[/I] is a personal favourite and was probably my gateway into conscious enjoyment of postmodernism

[QUOTE=WebSlingWonder;4363582]Exactly!
And to those saying JMS forgot/ignored the supporting cast, some evidence:
Issue 37: Peter calls Aunt Anna to check on May.
Issue 40: Aunt May visits J. Jonah Jameson and cancels her subscription to the Bugle because she knows Peter is Spidey.
Issue 47: Jonah once again shows up looking at the news story with Shathra telling lies about Peter.
Issue 49: Mary Jane is met in Peter's apartment hallway by Caryn (A character introduced in Paul Jenkins' run! She's even wearing her signature purple.)
Issue 500: Past versions of JJJ, Betty, and Gwen are shown.

Need I go on?[/QUOTE]

And also, I know people will be upset to have to mention this -- Mary Jane and Aunt May are also part of the supporting cast. Part of the moving goalposts game that people do is basically pretend and act as if people personally connected to Peter don't count as supporting casts. But here's the thing not everyone in the supporting cast is equal. Some will be more equal than others. Even before the marriage, Mary Jane was one of the most recurring and frequently featured supporting characters and that despite making her first appearance in #42, despite long absences put in by editors and others.

A Spider-Man title where May, MJ, or Jameson don't appear and feature more than others won't be true to the mythos (i.e. the patterns, norms, and conditions that existed in the period that's considered classical). I know people said that the supporting cast went on a backburner during the marriage, but all the marriage did was confirm the reality that already existed. For instance, Felicia Hardy made more appearances in Spectacular than in Amazing, while MJ appeared more often in Amazing than Felicia did in the period of Peter's "romance" with her.

[QUOTE=boots;4363587]i’m going to assume this was a tangential rant inspired by my comment but not a direct response[/quote]

I assumed the comment was in response to satellite titles being an attempt to gouge money. Well publishing ASM three times a month, and then two times a month is the same thing but less defensible. A satellite title was always optional except for the crossover event and so on. But now to follow Spider-man serially, you have to buy twice a month and so on. Anecdotally, I know that even people interested in BND didn't read regularly because of the demand made on the wallet. And most read in trade or libraries.

[quote]re authors; dellilo is excellent. white noise is a personal favourite and was probably my gateway into conscious enjoyment of postmodernism[/QUOTE]

My favorite is LIBRA, this book about Oswald. That's more straightforward among his stuff but yeah White Noise is cool. For me post-modernism and all that meta-stuff finally felt real when I read Auster's New York Trilogy, I got what that thing was about emotionally there, as a way to get into the characters, than as the usual stuff which is basically a kind of essay disguised as story and characters. I also like South American writers like Marquez and others.

[QUOTE=Revolutionary_Jack;4363612]
I assumed the comment was in response to satellite titles being an attempt to gouge money. Well publishing ASM three times a month, and then two times a month is the same thing but less defensible. A satellite title was always optional except for the crossover event and so on. But now to follow Spider-man serially, you have to buy twice a month and so on. Anecdotally, I know that even people interested in BND didn't read regularly because of the demand made on the wallet. And most read in trade or libraries. [/QUOTE]

sure.

my comment was that asking readers to spend more to get a complete picture is rich but also a common thing in superhero comics and your response was “this was always a common thing in comics!”

and then something something about BND. idk

i have zero interest in your crusade, leave me out of it.

[QUOTE]
My favorite is LIBRA, this book about Oswald. That's more straightforward among his stuff but yeah White Noise is cool. For me post-modernism and all that meta-stuff finally felt real when I read Auster's New York Trilogy, I got what that thing was about emotionally there, as a way to get into the characters, than as the usual stuff which is basically a kind of essay disguised as story and characters. I also like South American writers like Marquez and others.[/QUOTE]

haven’t read [I]libra[/I] or auster. i’ll put them on the (ever growing never shrinking) list. cheers

[QUOTE=Agent Z;4363551]Maybe I missed something, but what about the Raimi movies suggested May knew or guessed Peter was Spider-Man?[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=WebSlingWonder;4363556]"Spider-Man 2" strongly hinted that May knew. There's a scene where May is talking to Peter about needing a hero, which inadvertently inspires him to become Spider-Man again.[/QUOTE]

I don't think SM3 works very well if May knew or suspected.

[QUOTE=WebLurker;4363658]I don't think SM3 works very well if May knew or suspected.[/QUOTE]

When Peter says in SM-3 why not kill Sandman to May after the (sigh and groan) that he killed Uncle Ben, May slaps him and tells him "Ben would be ashamed of you". That works if May knows he's Spider-Man.

But I don't think that's the least of its problems.

I would say there no reason you can’t tell stories without your main protagonist in the main series. I guess the editors wouldn’t approve of it, being the main title and all. But that’s not my concern. A great story can appear anywhere. The title doesn’t matter. If b level stories occur in the satellite books that’s because you have b level writers on those books.

I guess that’s it for me. Jenkins wrote one of my favorite books ever in Inhumans but I didn’t care for his PP run. It doesn’t matter to me how many characters appeared if I don’t like it, y’know? I also love PAD’s Star Trek New Frontier books but his comics have always bored me. That’s the way the cookie crumbles.

And Rev, you’re right on the money about Gentlemen on the Road, or Chabon’s original title, Jews with Swords. That book is fantastic. Really, all of his books are but I go Kavalier and Klay for comic readers.

Cloud Atlas is on my list for one day but haven’t read it. I go older and classic for sci fi mostly. I’m big on Asimov and Clarke. For more modern stuff, relatively at least, we should all try Kim Stanley Robinson. He’s the bees knees.

[QUOTE=DT Winslow;4363836]And Rev, you’re right on the money about Gentlemen on the Road, or Chabon’s original title, Jews with Swords. That book is fantastic. Really, all of his books are but I go Kavalier and Klay for comic readers. [/quote]

Yeah. Chabon is quite inspired by comics. Chabon wrote the original draft for Spider-Man 2 although most of his ideas ended up being removed.

[quote]Cloud Atlas is on my list for one day but haven’t read it. I go older and classic for sci fi mostly. [/quote]

I am not as familiar with that. Just read a few books by Leguin, Dick (I read Ubik last year and that was awesome), and others. One rarity I recommend...A Voyage to Arcturus. That novel, which is a short read is pretty trippy. It's also I'd argue a secret influence on Ditko's Doctor Strange and especially The Eternity Saga.

We don't talk as much about Spider-Man's literary references and influences. Like I am pretty sure that Stan Lee (who was an aspiring novelist) was quite inspired by Dickens with that sense of larger-than-life characters (Jameson is basically a Dickensian character) and above all, The Catcher in the Rye which was "the" teen novel in the post-war period. DeMatteis said that KLH was inspired by Dostoevsky and that the reason he latched on to Kraven for the plot was him being Russian so he could use all kinds of tropes from that. It's interesting that Crime and Punishment has this villain Svidrigailov who says "I'm going to America" and kills himself while KLH has Kraven, a Russian who has settled in America after leaving the Bolsheviks, and it ends with him shooting himself.

[QUOTE=Snoop Dogg;4363065]ASM is the primary flagship title. It always continues and spearheads the franchise while other books end. It is the book that should have the most important things happen in it, it is the book that should have all of the thing that make Spider-Man Spider-Man. This was understood in the 70's because they knew these other books only existed to make more money, became less understood in the 80's, and then not understood in the 90's, which is coincidentally when the line became a clusterfuck where nonsense like Sidekick's Revenge and Assassination Plot are getting published in the main book while Child Within is relegated to the B-Book. If you are writing ASM and can't fit in pages for the supporting cast, which is so fleshed out in comparison to other superheroes that it's fundamental, it is a flaw with your run.[/QUOTE] The problem with establishing ASM as the only book in which important things happen is that it's a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy in terms of making readers not care about the other books.

There has sometimes been a balance with ASM focusing on some facets of Peter's life, and the satellites capturing another.

[QUOTE=boots;4363164]it’s also a bit rich to ask readers to spend more money to get a complete experience, but that’s not something superhero comics are above[/QUOTE] This gets messy. The titles should be satisfactory experiences by themselves, but they lose any sense of identity when each provides the same thing.

[QUOTE=Lee;4363320]Agreed. It's a problem when an important long-time Amazing Spider-Man cast member is killed off in another series, like happened with Harry. I don't like that Marvel have reverted to this model (big events like Jonah learning Spider-Man's secret ID happening in other titles), especially while still expecting readers to buy 2-3 issues of Amazing Spider-Man a month.[/QUOTE] The alternative to having important things happen in the satellite books is that these just become books for readers to ignore (granted, sales suggest that this is what happened.)

I don't think there's anything wrong with the Harry Osborn saga occurring within the pages of [I]Spectacular Spider-Man[/I] since that book could devote two years to his downfall and redemption, especially when [I]Amazing Spider-Man [/I]wasn't using him at the time.

[QUOTE=Revolutionary_Jack;4363528]The idea that Spider-Man is some large ensemble story and that a good Spider-Man story involves every supporting cast member at the same time is simply bull-crap. That was something that BND and Slott people foisted but that's not actually true and in fact the way they used the supporting cast is often counter-intuitive. Spider-Man has a great supporting cast and so on but most of his best stories in the classic run and period only focused on a few characters at a time while others were at the side. Read the Lee-Romita era for instance, most of the stories focused on Peter, Gwen, and George Stacy until Stacy's death. When that happened, you had the Harry Osborn Drug Trilogy and the motivation for that was that Gwen was absent from the books at the time. Liz Allan was gone for some 100 issues between ASM#30 to the Conway run, Flash Thompson was in Vietnam from ASM#47 aside from some furlough visits for special issues, and then returning to the Spider-Man titles shortly before Gwen died, where he formed a brief romantic triangle between Peter, Flash, and Gwen because at that time Harry Osborn was a little decommissioned and not in use all that much as a supporting character.



That's the Brevoort manifesto talking and not you. In the 80s, the attitude towards satellite titles was in fact to make them distinct and unique and allow for interesting stories there. Jim Salicrup considered the best Spider-Man editor by both Roger Stern and David Michelinie also said that he wanted every Spider-Man title, main, satellite, and so on to be unique and capture the flavor. The creation of the satellite titles in the 70s, i.e. Spectacular Spider-Man was precisely to put in more work with supporting cast stuff there than in the main title. That's what Stan Lee (then the publisher) and Gerry Conway (in his very brief tenure as EIC) decided on.



Jim Salicrup who I quoted above was one of Spider-Man's editors (among other titles) in the '80s and during the early 90s as well. So your argument is invalid in terms of "not understood".



By the arbitary rules you invented (actually invented by Brevoort without acknowledgement on your part), sure. By the actual context and understanding of Spider-Man's publication history across time, no. It's not consistent with the patterns, with the past judgments of previous respected editors on Spider-Man titles and the general reading experiences.

This whole ASM-Supremacist attitudes people have ignores blatantly the fact that Felicia Hardy among others got the majority of her defining stories in the pages of Spectacular. Aside from Roger Stern's Black Cat 2-Parter and "The Daydreamers", most of what we know of Felicia comes from Bill Mantlo's work in Spectacular. Most of PAD's work was also in Spectacular. Including the Death of Jean Dewolff and so on.

As for JMS. His opening story arc was called "Coming Home". In other words, trying to get Peter back to something like his roots after the mess that the Clone Saga and the Post-Clone Saga did. Reifying the main leads of the Spider-Titles (the Parker family) was absolutely crucial at the time. Especially since you had this great movie blockbuster coming in which Peter, Mary Jane, Aunt May have crucial roles. Raimi wanted an Aunt May who sorta knew-guessed that Peter was Spider-Man, so that was in-synch with what JMS wrote. Peter becoming a high school teacher was the most grounded he had been and in that entire time as school teacher, he interacted with a cool supporting cast that brought realism and kept things grounded after a half-decade of Osborn cults and cabals. The Spider-Totem stuff isn't mysticism...it's magic realism. I.e. an elaboration of the everyday. And the everyday remained a consistent part of JMS' run. The problem with JMS was that as great as his highs are (Coming Home, The Conversation, Doomed Affairs, Spider-Man #500, the early New Avengers era, the Civil War tie-ins with Spider-Man and Cap, Back in Black) his lows are really low (Sins' Past). So I get that his run is controversial. Still his version of Peter Parker is the last real time he really worked as a character, and that applies to MJ and Aunt May as well.



Why do people act like this was ever not a thing? The tri-monthly and bi-monthly publication of ASM after BND and so on is basically the same principle as Spectacular, Web of Spider-Man and so on but just now they are all calling it ASM. It was all done to get people to spend more money per month on Spider-Man. Before it was at least honest and optional...you know that ASM had a distinct separate story that other runs are in principle take-it-or-leave-it except for crossovers like "The Other". Post-OMD, [B][I][U]to follow Spider-Man seriously you [I]had to[/I] triple-then-double-dip per month[/U][/I][/B] to keep up with the serial Spider-Man stuff. The only exception was stuff like Conway's Spiral with its unique ".1" titling trying to distinct it (basically a Spectacular Spider-Man story written by the guy who created that title to start with).

So to me, as far as asking readers to spend more money goes, OMD-BND is the freaking nadir not before.



I"d like to recommend Chabon's [I]Gentlemen on the Road[/I], a cool historical novel about a period nobody even knew existed. It's great. As for McCarthy, I don't like the "cult of Blood Meridian". I just don't think he succeeded in trying to do a literary masterpiece about ethnic cleansing, and all he did was tell a horror story with political-military trappings. I like Don Delillo and Paul Auster best among that group and style of novelists.[/QUOTE] During the 70s, [I]Amazing Spider-Man[/I] still focused on the supporting cast. The idea was that it would cover the Bugle more, while Spec would cover Peter's college adventures.

There were some complications. Spec went though five different writers in its first year, which limited the ability to build subplots. This was also not a great period for [I]Amazing Spider-Man[/I].

They have sometimes figured out a decent balance with the satellite books, but it is difficult and requires consistency and deliberation.

I do also wonder if it was easier during the marriage, when there is one aspect of Peter's life that is consistent in all the titles, which allows for references to other books (IE- It goes a long way towards making the other books matter when Mary Jane can tell Peter in ASM that she's worried about the toll that events in Web and Spec took on him.)

The modern publishing era might not be a good fit for satellite books either since it's tougher to figure out how everything works together when there are multiple longer arcs published simultaneously. When most stories max out at 3 issues, it's easier to reference other titles.

It's worth considering the history of how the titles worked together. Sometimes it was effective; sometimes not.

During the first chunk of Michelinie's run, there was a good balance when he focused on splashy adventures, while Conway had two titles to give his spin, which did mean readers of his books pretty much had to buy two books but got a deeper experience out of it. Todd McFarlane kicked off his Spider-Man run, but had self-contained stories with a unique focus (Spider-Man as monster title.)

When Conway left Web, it lacked a consistent writer, so it basically became a filler book. A two issue story by Danny Fingeroth was followed by four issues by Tony Isabella (and one by John Byrne) which was followed by two two-parters by Terry Kavanaugh and three issues by Kurt Busiek, before Mackie took over for an year, followed by Kavanaugh. When McFarlane left Spider-Man, it essentially became a series of standalone arcs where writers did follow-ups to earlier adventures (Steven Grant covered the Punisher, Ann Nocenti did the return to the Mad Dog Ward, Erik Larsen did a new Sinister Six story) before Mackie took over.

When the Clone Saga came, the books really lost their identity, since there were so many crossovers, you pretty much had to buy every title.

During the intermediate era between the Clone Saga and the reboot, there was a focus on books having their own identities (ASM was the bright flagship, Sensational was a bit wackier, Peter Parker was the street-level, and Spec was psychological), helped by creative teams sticking around for more than an year. There were still plenty of crossovers.

Then Howard Mackie was in charge of ASM and Peter Parker during the relaunch, and readers pretty much had to follow both books to get a sense of what was going on.

When JMS came to ASM he had a clear identity for the book (new villains, focus on MJ & May) but he pretty much ignored what was going on in the other books, which created the sense that they didn't matter. It also took some time for big events in ASM to be reflected in the other titles. This was when sales of satellite books started tanking, so even if the focus on ASM post-OMD suggests that the other books aren't that important, readers had already picked up on that.

[QUOTE=Mister Mets;4363985]...

When JMS came to ASM he had a clear identity for the book (new villains, focus on MJ & May) but he pretty much ignored what was going on in the other books, which created the sense that they didn't matter. It also took some time for big events in ASM to be reflected in the other titles. This was when sales of satellite books started tanking, so even if the focus on ASM post-OMD suggests that the other books aren't that important, readers had already picked up on that.[/QUOTE]

That history of different runs between ASM and satellites is superb.

I do think that the Jenkins runs on Spectacular in the JMS era was pretty great. Then after he finished, you had Millar's Marvel Knights which because Hudlin's and then Sacassia's Sensational while you had FNSM by PAD (which is considered weak). In the meantime you had Kirkman's MTU and Spider-Man as a supporting character in Bendis' The Pulse and New Avengers.

Anyway, I think satellites titles being its separate standalone thing is fine and dandy.

[video=youtube;GyJNEZPm-pQ]https://youtube.com/watch?v=GyJNEZPm-pQ[/video]

[video=youtube;CzJRx3vaApA]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzJRx3vaApA[/video]

I think there're no absolute formulas to what the main title should be, same with satellites (without entering in extreme examples, because they tend to dhrift conversations in never ending circles). If a writer has a great story, he can tell it wherever he's working at the moment and if he wants to take chances with risked decisions, be my guest. I would rather have a book that tries and fails that a book I don't care in checking out because I think is doing the same old stuff. Straczynski took chances and his is a well celebrated run, but of course it won't appeal to everyone. I'm not a big fan of the totemic aspect of Spidey's powers as a concept, but I think he did a good work with it in his time with John Romita Jr as a penciler. Does it has its lows going forward? Yes. But many writers I like in Spider-Man (JMS, JM Dematteis & Dan Slott) has done some of my favorite stories with the character and also some of my least favorites (Soul of the Hunter; OMD; That first arc after Goblin Nation; Clone Saga; etc). As I tried to explain before, it's part of having authors taking chances, sometimes they will stick the landing, other times they won't.

[QUOTE=WebSlingWonder;4363546]Who honestly cares if Harry dies in SPEC and not ASM?[/QUOTE]

Anyone who reads Amazing Spider-Man, and suddenly a major character is dead and they missed it because it happened in another comic.

[QUOTE=Revolutionary_Jack;4363528]The tri-monthly and bi-monthly publication of ASM after BND and so on is basically the same principle as Spectacular, Web of Spider-Man and so on but just now they are all calling it ASM.[/QUOTE]

Nah. When there were 2/3 issues of ASM a month, it was a linear reading experience. You read #555 then #556, then #557. Missing out on important plot developments because you weren't reading a separate series is bullshit.

Imagine watching Frasier, then getting to season 3 episode 5 and suddenly Niles is dead and you missed it because you weren't watching Cheers: The Next Generation.