Is liking Slott's work a generational thing?

[MJS]

I'm sure Gerry Conway could tell you that the response from fans at the time of DoGS was not to praise him for crafting a classic tragedy but that he was a sadist, a horrible writer, a hack employing shock for shock's sake, and I bet all these fans called for his immediate dismissal from the book.

Where did fan response come in?

My point is the Death of Gwen Stacy affected the overall mythos of Peter Parker. Gwen's death was not mindless. It had a story purpose. It still serves a purpose.

Spider-Verse is mindless murder for mindless entertainment. None of the murders served a purpose other than to make fan wonder "who will be needlessly killed next?" Many of the deaths were played as jokes. Lots of the deaths were one-page or one-panel cameos. That's the definition of mindless murder.

As for the deaths in Spider-Verse, they're there to establish that there are high-level stakes involved, that no one is safe.

Morlun was established as nearly unbeatable except via stakes that can kill Spider-Man in the original JMS stories. One or two deaths that affect Peter personally and are meaningful to the reader because of the character's importance in the story (like Gwen in her death story) would have shown the same stakes. Instead Spider-Verse relied on reader nostalgia and outrage to create an impact. If the reader didn't already know who those Spider-Men were, the reader would care less about the deaths. They were senseless cannon fodder.

Death of Gwen is fans having an earned emotional reaction because they are involved with the characters and the story. Gwen's death counted and still has an impact on Peter Parker over forty years later.

Spider-Verse is Dan "Slaughter," as he changed his Twitter handle, killing off characters to provoke fan outrage. And to then poke fun at fans for being outraged because LULZ. The deaths had no impact on Peter Parker. Peter didn't know the victims or wasn't aware the deaths occurred for about 90% of them.

Slott is playing a lot of Peter's adjustment to corporate life as humorous, which may be grating to some readers, but think of it this way: if Peter was so terrible as a CEO, Parker Industries would've already crumbled, right?

Slott made it obvious Parker Industries is successful because "one magic day" Parker Industries stock rose while everything else tanked. My guess is Living Brain Octopus manipulated the market. He also made it obvious Parker Industries is successful because a terrorist bankrolled it and Peter had no clue, so much for spider-sense when Peter had meetings with his key investor. It's also obvious Living Brain Octopus is controlling much of the company without Peter's knowledge, again so much for spider-sense.

I think most readers would agree Peter is not cut out to be a successful billionaire industrialist the way Tony Stark is suited to be one. What is so annoying about Slott's take is he makes Peter deaf blind and dumb to his own strengths and weaknesses. Peter fails because he makes stupid calls and refuses to do work. Peter fails because he refuses to take responsibility and acts like a brat instead of a grown man. This may be humourous to you. I find it unsympathetic and unheroic.

It would be one thing for Peter to fail at being CEO because the stakes of him failing at being Spider-Man are even greater so his success as Spider-Man means failure at Parker Industries.

But that's not what Slott is doing.

[Stephen Wacker]

Personally I disagree with this considering how Wacker went on the record during interviews and said he viewed Spider-Man as a tragedy, which lead to Peter feeling down at the end of a lot of those arcs.

This is wildly inaccurate. You may be mixing up the many times I said that Spidey was born from tragedy. It's right there in his origin. The comic has always been darker than people remember.

His ability to move past that time and again is one of the reasons the character resonates so strongly.

I'm surprised that's even a debate given that it's right at the core of everything.


Best,
SW

[Pav]

Grim Hunt, apart from being needlessly violent and fridging Mattie Franklin (and having Spider-Man rip the skin off of a woman’s face because that’s so in character for him right?) reversed one of the best Spider-Man stories of all time and probably the most masterful Spider-Man stories purely in terms of literary merit. All to bring back a villain that Wacker liked so that he could…never appear again in Spider-Man and hold a vendetta against Kaine and also appear in Venom.

So we ruined a great Spider-Man story so this villain, who was pathetically lame until the previously mentioned great story, so that he could…contribute absolutely nothing to Spider-Man. Kraven can never be as good as a villain as he was in KLH precisely due to the specific circumstances of KLH. You cannot on any kind of regular basis have him grapple with his own mortality and dive deep into his Russian heritage every single time whilst placing more focus upon him than on Spider-Man. He also can’t do anything to Spider-Man as bad as KLH ever again. Bringing him back requires him to basically go back to what he was before KLH, i.e. a lame ass character who’s greatest victory over Spider-Man came courtesy of laser nipples.

With a series like Spider-Man it’s not just about whatever individual story you do because it’s not a series of one offs. It’s all one big narrative so you can’t undermine the past stuff like that unless you are doing it for justifiable reasons like generating more stories which are good enough to justify that. Kraven’s never done that and can never do that. And unlike Norman’s resurrection Kraven’s return to life was wholly unecesarry as the series never needed him in the first place and never missed him. Which is why everyone was fine with his death.

We also had Kraven successors coming out of our ears so having someone fill his role wasn’t a problem. Grim Hunter, Alyosha Kraven and even Sasha each in different ways were actually better than their Dad. Grim Hunter’s use of modern tech made him more versatile and dangerous, Alyosha as a character was actually more complex and not black-and-white evil whilst also being a lunatic and Sasha came from the Damien Wayne school of dangerous youngsters and as a female character helped provide representation in general and within Spider-Man’s male dominated rogue’s gallery.

This stuff goes beyond opinion but into legitimate narrative/character criticism as I mentioned above. Grim Hunt was one of the stronger arcs of BND but much like Web of Death from the Clone Saga (even though it’s nowhere nearly as good) it was a good story which was detrimental and damaging. So don’t do it. Editors and writers at Marvel ever since 2004 with Disassembled at the very least have seriously lost sight of this and instead embraced short term thinking most of the time. You can’t do that in long form fiction like this. You can’t just look to whatever will work for this quota but for the next one, and the one after that and also do your best to respect all the quotas before you which people still revist and love and make up the narrative.

If people were pissed off about the Clone Saga because of how it ruined the Death of Gwen Stacy (which I disagree about a Hell of a lot but that’s not the topic) then there is no reason as to why Grim Hunt is okay, especially when, I am sorry, as a piece of writing craftsmanship…Kraven’s Last Hunt is waaaaaaaaaaaaaay better than the Death of Gwen Stacy.

Dude…Shed depicted a child getting eaten by his Lizard Dad, was all about sex and also had a scene which invited you to potentially interpret it as rape. And it destroyed the character. Instead of a complex Jekyll/Hyde character who’s humanity and inner animal were in an externally played out conflict now he was just a smart monster. That was it. he has less psychological layers to him which unless you are Carnage and that really is the whole point of who you are from day 1, means they are by definition a less valuable and enriching character.

So, I originally had a much more detailed response, but then there was some sort of error and I lost it all.

Here's the long and short of it: I teach, among other things, literature and creative writing classes at the collegiate level. If you want to talk about "legitimate criticism" then I am always ready and willing to do so! And while I do agree with some of your points, much of your post is really just opinion and not legitimate criticism. For example, I don't think you've provided a compelling analysis explaining why the Lizard character is "destroyed." Personally, I find the status quo of the character to be more interesting now than he EVER has been because it further plays around with what aspects of Connors are humane and which are monstrous. Having his "human" brain in his monster body struck me as a fantastic decision, but even more clever, in my eyes, is having the Lizard brain in charge of Connors' human body.

Notice, of course, that I emphasize with my wording that this is my opinion. And I don't assume that everyone agrees with me.

Now, without a doubt, KLH is one of the greatest Spidey stories of all time. Anyone who understands the process of literary analysis and comic books as a medium will likely agree. I could spend time expressing the merits of KLH to show that, yes, from an "objective" view, KLH is one of the best stories.

But I liked Grim Hunt. I'm glad Kraven is back and, as with the Lizard's new status quo, I think that future writers can and will continue to craft interesting stories with him. (I've got a great one planned, actually.) The truth of the matter is that KLH isn't changed by the stories that come after. I can still go back and read it and enjoy it and understand it's merit. Kraven being brought back from the dead is irrelevant to KLH's greatness as a story.

-Pav, who gave his students tomorrow off to study for the exam on Thursday...

[Mister Mets]

Spidercide, your posts from earlier today have a combined 9,063 words (that includes signatures, and the sections of posts you're quoting.) There's no rule against that, but it's going to limit the responses you get.

[Spidercide]

So, I originally had a much more detailed response, but then there was some sort of error and I lost it all.

Here's the long and short of it: I teach, among other things, literature and creative writing classes at the collegiate level. If you want to talk about "legitimate criticism" then I am always ready and willing to do so! And while I do agree with some of your points, much of your post is really just opinion and not legitimate criticism. For example, I don't think you've provided a compelling analysis explaining why the Lizard character is "destroyed." Personally, I find the status quo of the character to be more interesting now than he EVER has been because it further plays around with what aspects of Connors are humane and which are monstrous. Having his "human" brain in his monster body struck me as a fantastic decision, but even more clever, in my eyes, is having the Lizard brain in charge of Connors' human body.

Notice, of course, that I emphasize with my wording that this is my opinion. And I don't assume that everyone agrees with me.

Now, without a doubt, KLH is one of the greatest Spidey stories of all time. Anyone who understands the process of literary analysis and comic books as a medium will likely agree. I could spend time expressing the merits of KLH to show that, yes, from an "objective" view, KLH is one of the best stories.

But I liked Grim Hunt. I'm glad Kraven is back and, as with the Lizard's new status quo, I think that future writers can and will continue to craft interesting stories with him. (I've got a great one planned, actually.) The truth of the matter is that KLH isn't changed by the stories that come after. I can still go back and read it and enjoy it and understand it's merit. Kraven being brought back from the dead is irrelevant to KLH's greatness as a story.

-Pav, who gave his students tomorrow off to study for the exam on Thursday...

Yeah okay, you can’t play around with who Connors/the Lizard is if you destroy all humanity to him. at that point he’s not the character anymore and it was done through overly violent, grimdark measures.

It’s not rocket science. A father devouring his son on panel doesn’t belong in a Spider-Man comic book due to who Marvel claim their target demographic is. And frankly it’s too gruesome a concept in general.

How precisely was the Lizard more interesting thereafter?

He was a smart monster.

Wow.

That’s sooooooooo much more compelling than...a human being being inside there. A human being struggling with the physical monstrous manifestation of his pent up frustrations and inadequacies stemming from losing his disability which consequently puts a strain on his attempts to maintain a family who are constantly endangered by his condition.

See, that’s not just opinion. Because now the character lacks humanity, which is just a weeeeee bit important to making your characters have a substantial hook to them. We also lose him as a supporting cast member for Spider-Man so the book loses a great supporting cast member (the latter of which can appear more often) in order to make him a less interesting villain (which by their nature appear less frequently than supporting cast members)? That is very plainly a bad trade off.

You are saying it plays around with what aspects of Lizard are humane and monstrous, but that was never new. All that was new was that it tied those to sex in an incredibly transparent way to appeal to juvenile mentalities much as Back in Black Cat was.

More than this, as I said, it removed Connor’s humanity. Even if his human side could reassert dominance he’s finished as a character because he cannot be rehabilitated after literally eating his own son. The moral event horizon for the character has been crossed rendering him unsympathetic and from a psychological perspective something like THAT on top of everything else he’s lived through would break him. He wouldn’t be human if it didn’t. You can’t go back to him being Peter’s science buddy because he’s always going remember what he did and the literal sensation of chewing his own son and seeing him die by his own hand. It would be PTSD up the wazoo and short of some cheap contrivance such as erasing his memories or cloning him Connors is finished as a character.

Also Connors mostly being in control of the Lizard when transformed isn’t a new story idea at all. Sometimes they’ve even been on the same page, see Spectacular Spider-Man #238-239.

You’re entitled to ENJOY whatever you wish.

But I’m sticking to what I said before about distinguishing between opinion and criticism.


Shed made Lizard less sympathetic, less human, overly villainous and facilitated him for FEWER stories not more. So bad was Shed in fact that Slott’s later Lizard stories operated almost as apologies for it.

Same with Grim Hunt. Glad you enjoyed it.

Dude of course KLH is changed by the stories which come after it. Spider-Man isn’t a series of individualized self-contained stories set in stone. It’s part of a larger scale narrative and mythology wherein the later parts will impact your reading, interpretations and experiences of the older ones.

What was once a fun adventurous scene involving a quirky magic ring in the Hobbit takes on new dark meaning when you realize what Bilbo finding that ring will set into motion.

Dumbledore is never the same all powerful, all knowing, lovable bad ass grandpa he is the first time you read the Philosopher’s Stone and Chamber of Secrets than when you read it after the Deathly Hallows and know how deeply flawed and even manipulative he is. Tom Riddle’s diary carries with it new weight once you know it’s a piece of Voldemort’s soul the destruction of which is part of a grander quest Harry will embark on. And needless to say re-reading every appearance of Snape is very different once you learn his history and how he loved Harry’s mother.

Obi Wan’s backstory on Luke’s Dad doesn’t come off the same way when you’ve seen the subsequent films and know he’s lying through his teeth. Vader seeing his son die by force lightning gains new meaning when you’ve seen Revenge of the Sith.

Or let’s use a Spider-Man centric example. In the Death of Gwen Stacy, Mary Jane closes the door on the very last page. Great moment unto itself but one enriched by later additions to the mythology.

When you learn about MJ’s backstory Peter saying she wouldn’t be upset even if her own mother died takes on new cruelly ironic meaning because now we know MJ’s mother had died and it cut deep for MJ. Similarly her closing the door and comfort Peter connects to her abandonment of her sister so that now she’s chosen to break her usual pattern of behaviour despite deep seated emotional issues about the nature of commitment, especially in times of grief.

When you read Parallel Lives though the scene changes again because in addition to all that, suddenly you know MJ is fully aware that he is Spider-Man. And with that knowledge the gravity of her decision to close the door increases and says much more about who Mary Jane is, which also then helps to further retroactively foreshadow her later relationship with him as the scene then grows a layer of Mary Jane accepting the burden and risks of being there for a superhero and this happens the night her friend paid the price for that, demonstrating Mary Jane knew and accepted what she was getting into and was capable of handling it.

The scene thus changes and becomes DEEPER because of later additions to the story and is no longer what it was originally.

So yes. Later additions to a narrative change the older stories, thus they are no longer the same because again this is one big narrative not individual standing stories.

You say future writers can craft interesting stories with him but they have yet to do that and yet to do any anywhere near as good as KLH or one which truly required/justified that they reverse KLH. And this is on top of Kraven being a dated villain with ONE good story to his name by 1987 and that was the story where he bought the farm. He was interesting ONLY in that story due to the specific circumstances of said story. We threw that away so that he could endlessly hunt Spider-Man over and over and over and over and over again, which we’ve seen plenty of times before and cannot make more interesting because again everything psychologically interesting or complex about Kraven stemmed directly from the extenuating circumstances of KLH. And pretty much anything else you could use him for could either work just as effectively with any of the THREE replacement Kraven characters we had or else doesn’t belong in a Spider-Man story, e.g. the crazy magic voodoo crap from Grim Hunt and Scarlet Spider which doesn’t belong in a street level down to Earth series like Spider-Man which is all about relatively real life.

[Peter Parker]

I salute your passion Spidercide!

[Spidercide]

Spidercide, your posts from earlier today have a combined 9,063 words (that includes signatures, and the sections of posts you're quoting.) There's no rule against that, but it's going to limit the responses you get.

I understand

[Pav]

Shed made Lizard less sympathetic,

I disagree with that assessment.

less human,

I disagree with that.

overly villainous

I disagree with that.

and facilitated him for FEWER stories not more.

I disagree.

So bad was Shed in fact that Slott’s later Lizard stories operated almost as apologies for it.

If you want to talk legitimate criticism, then I don't think you should bother with saying something is bad. Not one of my students has ever turned in a paper where the thesis was some story or poem being sucky - for a reason, obviously.

I understand your perspective on Shed, but it's not the only one. My appreciatation for the story and for the changes it made to the character of Curt Connors is just as valid, and the reason for that is because I have textual evidence for my view just as you do for yours.

And again, regarding KLH, I understand your perspective and grant you its logic. And yet, here's this: if a kid who has never read a Spidey comic in his life walks into a store and decides to purchase the trade for KLH, is that kid's enjoyment of the story going to be ruined by all the stories that came after? Or does the story, in a way, forever stand on its own just as much as it lives within the larger framework of the mythos?

It must be possible, because I can read KLH and don't feel it's ruined. And I read the original Grim Hunter blandness in the 90s! (That the Grim Hunter was bland is very much my opinion rather than legitimate criticism.) For what it's worth, I LOVED his resurrection during Grim Hunt into that beastly-thing. Fun choice by the writers, I think.

But then, I like a little magic in my Spidey comics now and again, and I especially like the idea of Kraven playing a large role in such areas. If you wanted, I could potentially provide a detailed explanation to you as to why there's an internal logic to my opinions on these matters stemming from the very mythos of the character.

I will say that I hope we eventually get a story that makes his ressurrection feel totally worth it for the majority of Spidey fans.

But I'm also the guy who thinks Spidercide still has a major story or two in him, as well, despite his originally appearing in some of the weaker Clone Saga stories.

-Pav, who honestly never did study rocket science...

[Spidercide]

I disagree with that assessment.

I disagree with that.

I disagree with that.

I disagree.

If you want to talk legitimate criticism, then I don't think you should bother with saying something is bad. Not one of my students has ever turned in a paper where the thesis was some story or poem being sucky - for a reason, obviously.

I understand your perspective on Shed, but it's not the only one. My appreciatation for the story and for the changes it made to the character of Curt Connors is just as valid, and the reason for that is because I have textual evidence for my view just as you do for yours.

And again, regarding KLH, I understand your perspective and grant you its logic. And yet, here's this: if a kid who has never read a Spidey comic in his life walks into a store and decides to purchase the trade for KLH, is that kid's enjoyment of the story going to be ruined by all the stories that came after? Or does the story, in a way, forever stand on its own just as much as it lives within the larger framework of the mythos?

It must be possible, because I can read KLH and don't feel it's ruined. And I read the original Grim Hunter blandness in the 90s! (That the Grim Hunter was bland is very much my opinion rather than legitimate criticism.) For what it's worth, I LOVED his resurrection during Grim Hunt into that beastly-thing. Fun choice by the writers, I think.

But then, I like a little magic in my Spidey comics now and again, and I especially like the idea of Kraven playing a large role in such areas. If you wanted, I could potentially provide a detailed explanation to you as to why there's an internal logic to my opinions on these matters stemming from the very mythos of the character.

I will say that I hope we eventually get a story that makes his ressurrection feel totally worth it for the majority of Spidey fans.

But I'm also the guy who thinks Spidercide still has a major story or two in him, as well, despite his originally appearing in some of the weaker Clone Saga stories.

-Pav, who honestly never did study rocket science...

Yeah okay, you disagree.

Can you maybe, back up your points in regards to you specific disagreements though?

In all the things I quoted, I never said it was bad therefore it sucks. I listed off several problems with it which then amounted to it being bad.

Being less sympathetic IS a bad thing from a storytelling POV.

Being less human IS a bad thing from a storytelling POV.

Eating your own child is overly villainous and therefore again BAD from a storytelling POV.

Villains objectively appear less often than supporting characters therefore there are FEWER stories to tell with them if you make the latter a former and that too is BAD in long form fiction like this.

Again, I’m not saying this is my opinion on Shed. I’m stating actual chasm sized flaws in the story and direction they took the Lizard in.

Like it as much as you want just as I liked Torment even though that too was a bad story for obvious reasons.

Liking or disliking something is not a voluntary action.

We are discussing actual stuff you can back up with evidence. You’ve yet to do that.

The story stands as part of the larger framework of the mythos. Not as a standalone story. Because it isn’t a standalone story. It was created as part of an ongoing narrative to serve that ongoing narrative.

Your basically arguing that any random episode of Game of Thrones is equally valid on it’s own as it is part of 6 seasons of TV.

It’s not. Because it wasn’t supposed to be viewed that way or else there is no point to the ongoing nature of the narrative.

The kid walking in cold to KLH is entitled to enjoy it but they are walking in uninformed, like if you walked into One More Day or One Moment in Time and found everything the characters did to be in character. It isn’t but you don’t know that because your new to the game.

In short if something is part of an ongoing narrative then it should be written in such a way wherein it’s accessible to newcomers for sure (hence recap pages) but taking it out of context and looking at it in isolation is at most a mere academic exercise but no not the way it should be or was supposed to be viewed. That new reader you spoke about will read it and enjoy it and then read more and what happens to KLH when they get to Grim Hunt? Same thing I was talking about.

So no it is not isolated reading=context reading. It’s context reading>isolation reading.

We’re not talking about personal enjoyment here. Individual people can have different thresholds for ignoring stuff. YOU can ignore Grim Hunt and still enjoy KLH unto itself.

But you have something established and depicted in a narrative and in a mythology which is then being retroactively reversed and invalidated thus undermining it’s place within the mythos. Objectively it’s no longer the final denoument on Kraven but merely the last word for a while. That is what it’s place is within the big picture of the narrative, thus robbing it of it’s power and weight much as people are against resurrecting Gwen Stacy.

And frankly given how much emotional investment goes into continuity by fans and creators (or at least used to be by the latter) it’s very obvious that the past and the future IS supposed to matter and impact upon one another. If they were supposed to be viewed in isolation we wouldn’t even have continuity.

So whilst you personally might not feel the story is tarnished in any way, in reality it has been.

Grim Hunter was bland because he was a rip off of an already bland villain. Because Kraven never contributed anything to Spider-Man beyond making up 1/6 of the Sinister Six and laser nipples.

Magic ever so often is not a sin or anything depending upon how it’s done. But not when you make it something chiefly associated with one of the main Spider-Man rogue’s gallery. Because again it’s antithetical to some of the core concepts and philosophies underpinning the character and his creation.

It’s the reason why the Goblin was a gangster and not a reincarnated Egyptian spirit. Because Spider-Man in his roots was a crime noir soap opera.

Frankly with Kraven the compromise solution would be just to just muddy the waters enough to imply that maybe this isn’t the legit Kraven who came back to life. That way KLH fans can take it as he really did die the guy right now is a pretender but Grim Hunt fans can take it as no he is the real deal.

Yeah...I can...totally see Spidercide having good stuff left in him...???...

[Batman Begins 2005]

By coincidence Iv recently rewatched Spectacular Spiderman and it still holds up to this day, both for kids and adults. Great writing and voice acting, it's such a shame it was pulled after only 2 seasons It deserved more.

One of the best Spider-Man be it film, tv, books ever. Awesome show culled too soon.

[David Walton]

I'm not enthusiastic about the concept of the Lizard eating his son, but I enjoyed what Slott did with Lizard during the Spider-Slayer arc in Superior Spider-Man.

There's almost no concept that can't be salvaged, as that's just the nature of serial storytelling. And ten years from now someone might do a story where they reveal that the Lizard didn't actually eat Connors' son for...reasons.

I don't think that enjoying Slott's work is a generational thing, except in the sense that we all carry our baggage to characters that have been around since before we were born. I have a certain way of looking at Spider-Man, and it doesn't always line up with the writers' vision for him at any given time, but I pay to read the comics someone else wrote, not to write them.

I'd love to write a Spidey story for Marvel someday, but it would be an entirely different kind of experience. I deeply enjoy just letting go and enjoying what's on the page, not the story as I'd have written it.

As for Slott, I like his crazy plotting style, the way some things come together like the last chapter of a clever mystery novel and other stuff just keeps snowballing in the mighty Marvel tradition.

[cyberhubbs]

In fairness, Shed had the Lizard eat his son. It wasn't even a graphic scene, but it was powerful. Then the Lizard got hit with a dose of humanity and was a lizard struggling to understand what it's like to have a human brain and human knowledge. During Waid's story he taught himself science with all the information Curt had shoved into his brain. He became a smart monster. That's pretty cool to me and a welcome change in the usual Jekyll and Hyde format.

[ijacksparrow]

I'm 35, and Dan Slott has me buying the single monthly comics on Marvel right now. So I don't think it's a generational thing, I'd argue that both Dan Slott and Gerry Conway are two of the best Spider-Man writers of all time, so while I don't really like the new direction for Spidey, Dan has more than enough credit with me to take this story wherever he wants, I don't think no one out there other than him gets Spidey as much as he does right now. I've bought Spider-Man/Deadpool #1 and love it, so I'm probably getting that on a monthly basis as well, since I'm buying some DC Rebirth titles but I'm not confident that I'm buying Superman after the Rebirth issue, like I am with Batman and whatever Jonathan Hickman is cooking for DC.

[Spidercide]

In fairness, Shed had the Lizard eat his son. It wasn't even a graphic scene, but it was powerful. Then the Lizard got hit with a dose of humanity and was a lizard struggling to understand what it's like to have a human brain and human knowledge. During Waid's story he taught himself science with all the information Curt had shoved into his brain. He became a smart monster. That's pretty cool to me and a welcome change in the usual Jekyll and Hyde format.

But it still renders him less complex as a character. He isn't human just a monster with humanity. There is no human internal struggle going on and we've still lost a valuable supporting character and had Spider-Man fail in an egregious way. 45 years of saving the Billy from his father and in the end it was all for nothing.

The graphic nature of the scene is irrelvent to what literally happens within the context of the story.

[cyberhubbs]

But it still renders him less complex as a character. He isn't human just a monster with humanity. There is no human internal struggle going on and we've still lost a valuable supporting character and had Spider-Man fail in an egregious way. 45 years of saving the Billy from his father and in the end it was all for nothing.

The graphic nature of the scene is irrelvent to what literally happens within the context of the story.

I don't think it's less complex at all. Simply different than what came before. The Lizard was left with Curt's legacy and could've chosen to be a hero or a villain, or something in-between. Even better that it's the result of the larger Gauntlet storyline because it's not how things were supposed to go down.