The latest issue of NS Amazing proves to me why he is one of the greatest heroes of the Marvel U.
Agreed. I think it has to do with a misconception that you can't have fun and be working at the same time. Also I think a small but loud minority of people will always interpret an adult Spider-Man as a childish loser no matter what. Some people have a false sense of maturity and feel like the very nature of acting quirky and jokey all the time the way Peter does when in costume is just him being immature. I don't think most people see it that way, though.
Last edited by Kaitou D. Kid; 09-09-2020 at 08:23 PM.
That's actually one of my problems with Post-OMD, maybe i'm reading too much into it (i have my own bias, i won't deny it) but many writers ideas about youth is that Spidey is well an incompetent idiot, many of the post-OMD reeks of that to me. Is why Conway Spiral was like a breath of fresh air, that story wasn't anything special, but man it feel good to have a Spider-Man that acted like well, Spider-Man.
"Wow. You made Spider-Man sad, congratulations. I stabbed The Hulk last week"
Wolverine, Venom Annual # 1 (2018)
Nobody does it better by Jeff Loveness
"I am Thou, Thou Art I"
Persona
I think that's part of the dichotomy of Spider-Man.
Because...obviously there's a lot to love about being Spider-Man and swinging through New York, helping people, and having an outlet for oneself. But at the same time the burden of being Spider-Man and the sheer responsibility is more than most people could probably bear and the impact it has on Peter's life outside being Spider-Man and on his loved ones.
I think this is kind of showcased with Chris Pine's Peter in Into the Spider-Verse where he seems like the classic, can do anything, Spider-Man who has his life together but you see some of the strain of having to continue getting back up again no matter what that eventually weighed on Jake Johnson's Peter.
I think part of the problem with Post-OMD Spider-Man is that it is reactionary to JMS Spider-Man. The writers had to constantly "make Spider-Man sound younger", but pre-OMD writers weren't focused on "making him sound older", if that makes sense. They just wrote Spider-Man.
I spent so many mountains of posts laying out what you so elegantly summed up in two lines.
Leo Gatsby Rex.jpg
It was Sin Eater. Eddie interviewed someone who claimed to be Sin Eater but wasn't. At first Eddie was lauded for getting the interview...but then Spidey proved the Sin Eater was Stan Carter and not the guy Eddie interviewed.
Personally I would like to see Eddie have a professionally redemptive arc. He uses his investigative reporter skills...and has all his sources lined up and un-impeachable....and breaks a big story.
Honestly, all of OMD/BND can be summed up with the word "reactionary". The idea was essentially that Spider-Man has been "ruined" in the prior years to OMD, and that Marvel must therefore course-correct and return the character to a vague status quo of "the old days". What else do we call that but reactionary?
Plus, if we look at all the reasons given for why a married Spider-Man is unrealistic or blasphemous (or both), they're all based on ageist notions of how high school/college are the best years of your life and how "the story is over" and all downhill from there. The "crime" committed by JMS Spider-Man and other Spider-Man writers between 1987-2007 is that they dared show that you can grow up, get married, and not lose the positive qualities from the coming-of-age period of your life. Everyone knows that's just not possible, right? Peasants working 9-to-5 jobs like Peter are obviously doomed to an unhappy lifeless marriage with a nagging wife and will also become bitter and uptight after the age of 25 no matter what they do. Every sitcom and romcom on TV understands this is the natural order of things, why couldn't those silly Spider-Man comics get on board too?
Last edited by Kaitou D. Kid; 09-13-2020 at 06:55 PM.
What else can I say, you got it in one.
Like all reactionaries, they clung to a version of the continuity that never really existed, to a take on the character that wasn't really what they assumed was there, and which they misread to the extent it existed, and in the process of going back, they actually created something new and totally inorganic.
In a very real sense, and this applies to Quesada's overall editorial, the Marvel Universe isn't really the house of Stan, Jack and Steve anymore. It's the house Quesada redecorated with his tacky decors and tastes. To me, since OMD, 616 Spider-Man isn't really the character Lee and Ditko created. To me JMS was the last writer of that, while Matt Fraction wrote the last story with those characters but to me BND Spider-Man, Slott's Spider-Man, and despite my liking it, even Spencer's Spider-Man, is not really the original Peter Parker anymore.
Curiously enough, thanks to Axis: Carnage, we know that Emil Gregg (the guy who Eddie exposed) was the actual, original Sin-Eater whom Stan Carter based himself off, yet nobody believed him but Brock and he took that with him to the grave. So in the end, Eddie did get the correct guy and was unjustifiably framed, but no story has actually done anything with that. It's just a curious detail.
Also, he did get something similar to that...kinda. In Venom #16, since he didn't have the Symbiote, he had to do some work for some of his old contacts where he found several disappeared kids that were abducted by Carnage cultists. He didn't get his name cleaned sadly, and it wasn't a big story. But it sounds similar to what you infer, and it works as a sort of exorcism of Eddie Brock's (the person, the man. Not Venom) flaws.
"Wow. You made Spider-Man sad, congratulations. I stabbed The Hulk last week"
Wolverine, Venom Annual # 1 (2018)
Nobody does it better by Jeff Loveness
"I am Thou, Thou Art I"
Persona