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Part 5 of Spider-Verse is out, and Dan Slott has reminded Peter Parker fans once again just how much he must truly despise the character.
Only in a Spider-Man comic written by Dan Slott will you see Peter Parker intellectually flail about as he attempts to inspire an alternate universe Uncle Ben into battle. Only in a Spider-Man comic written by Dan Slott will Uncle Ben receive the shot in the arm he needs to realize greatness — from Doctor Octopus. And only in a Spider-Man comic written by Dan Slott will his feckless Peter Parker then have the temerity to say “I’m running the show.”
Long story short, thanks to Dan Slott’s deus ex machina from Spider-Verse Part 4 (i.e., Master Weaver’s scrolls) and the sheer coincidence that a member of the team can read spider-totem hieroglyphics (Anya Corazon says it’s a “long story” — probably the kind that you can find out if you shell out another $4.00 for one of the ancillary books), the stage is set for everyone to head to Loomworld for a final showdown with The Inheritors. The entire cast is ready to go except Uncle Spider-Ben, who gave up the webs when “The Emerald Elf” killed his wife and nephew.
Peter’s response is to plead with Ben to put the suit on “one more time” — and he is rejected. Uncle Ben says, “No. A man with great power is still just a man. And men…men have feet of clay. They make mistakes. Great mistakes at great costs. I…I can’t fail again.”
Otto then steps up to the plate, and his response is to call Ben out for acting, ironically, like a mealy-mouthed Peter Parker written by Dan Slott.
“You’re pathetic, old man! … You’re afraid to fail again? Tough! I’ve lost more times than I’ve ever won, and every damn time I got back up. That’s all that matters! When victory is easy, it’s cheap. Every fight that’s ever been worth fighting has been against adversity! Against a so-called ‘unbeatable foe!’ But there is no such thing! Every enemy has a weakness! You just have to find it! Once! You just have to win one time! Say it!”
Ben is moved, agrees to say “One time,” and before long he is ready and willing to fight. Inexplicably, he thanks both Otto and Peter for the help, even though it was clearly Otto who roused him from his cowardly stupor.
Peter’s response to Doctor Octopus’ speech: “I don’t believe it.”
Fans of Peter Parker don’t believe it, either. That’s because any other writer of The Amazing Spider-Man would not have allowed Doctor Octopus to steal Peter Parker’s one chance to inspire Uncle Ben — even an alternate universe version of the man — to greatness.
Even worse, the whole ordeal only reminds fans that Doctor Octopus is performing an inverse-Winston Churchill; Doc Ock’s many failures weren’t rooted in a desire to save humanity, but to commit world-wide genocide on levels that surpassed “Pol Pot, Hitler, and Genghis Khan combined.”
Yes, Doctor Octopus failed many times — at killing Peter Parker for good. Unfortunately, writers like Dan Slott are doing more damage to Peter Parker than any super villain ever could.
At this point, if you’re a Peter Parker fan, you can only sit back and wonder what Dan Slott’s coup de grace will be in terms of castrating your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man in his own book.
Related: Spider-Verse Part 4: Side effects of Dan Slott’s Spider-Gluttony may include Spider-Diabetes
Related: Dan Slott’s Spider-Gump: Peter Parker is like a box of chocolates — you never know what you’re going to get
Related: Dan Slott’s Spider-Verse: Peter Parker sadly gives off ‘Where’s Waldo?’ vibe in his own book
Douglas Ernst Blog 
God, when will this idiotic storyline end? A better writer would be spending more time rebuilding Peter Parker after the stinker that was SSM, but instead he seems like he’s a guest star in his own book. Admittedly the idea of multiple Spider-Men battling evil (which is basically a retread of the final episodes of the 1990s Spider-Man cartoon and the video game “Shattered Dimensions, as I’ve noted in the past) is interesting, but they should’ve waited until after Peter is reestablished.
It’ll probably be rendered even more pointless than it already is because Marvel is rebooting this year:
http://www.newsarama.com/23276-the-marvel-universe-is-ending.html
As I noted at Colossus of Rhodey, rebooting is a sign you’ve run out of ideas.
Hasn’t Marvel rebooted at least several million times in the past?
The universe-merge or reboot or flashpoint … whatever you want to call it, is another lame idea. I guess we’ll see how it pans out, but it’s a good bet that Marvel will just annoy more long-term fans. For what?
I honestly don’t get the argument that new readers can’t jump aboard with years of continuity to follow. That’s sort of insulting. Everyone my age jumped aboard in the mid-80s and we were completely happy doing so. There was plenty of Marvel history I wasn’t up on, but that didn’t matter. Good writing builds a strong customer base, but these days it’s just “Event!” after “Event!” after “Event!” It’s just sad.
I’ve never understand that argument, either. Especially now when all one has to do is go on the internet and look this stuff up on Wikipedia or the Marvel wiki or the DC wiki.
I was talking to my wife about this tonight. It seems as though the editors and writers will blame everyone and everything for declining sales…except themselves. They’ll make about the characters. They’ll make excuses about the continuity. They’ll make excuses about deadlines or a lack of diversity or the fans or a whole host of other reasons — but they won’t look in the mirror and say, “I need to do better.”
“I was talking to my wife about this tonight. It seems as though the editors and writers will blame everyone and everything for declining sales…except themselves. They’ll make about the characters. They’ll make excuses about the continuity. They’ll make excuses about deadlines or a lack of diversity or the fans or a whole host of other reasons — but they won’t look in the mirror and say, “I need to do better.”
I agree. They never think to look inward and consider that maybe they’re the problem, not continuity. Instead, it’s a “lack of diversity.” Never mind that comics have been reflecting diversity for a long while now, since the late 1960s/early 1970s. Or deadlines, which were never an issue to Stan Lee, who in his prime wrote at least 10 titles at once and turned his work in on time.
They like to think of themselves as smart and anyone who disagrees with them are “idiots who won’t accept new characters,” to quote one certain diversity-obsessed former commenter here.
Like I said, it takes all of a five seconds to log onto the internet and look stuff up if some reference has stumped you. When I first started reading comics in the late 1990s, continuity was not a barrier to me, and I didn’t even have decent internet at the time. I checked out encyclopedias from the library. I talked to people who knew more about comics than I did. And later, I looked stuff up online.
How will the Spider-Man titles be affected: hard reboot, or a swept-under-the-rug dustup a la Green Lantern, where you pretend everything still happened?
That really messed up the New 52.
They’ve got “Renew Your Vows” coming this summer, but I’m not sure how that’s going to fit in with Secret Wars. Does anyone have faith in the current creative team that they will handle this correctly?
You know, I have to ask: where did Dan Slott go bad?
I’m not sure what you’re asking. Are you saying that you are a fan of his work on The Amazing Spider-Man, or did you mean to say “When did Dan Slott go bad”?
The last one.
Let’s look at sort of the big picture of The Amazing Spider-Man under Dan Slott:
Notice anything? Dan Slott’s run is defined by huge “events” that garner attention even if the execution of those ideas turns out to be mediocre. Does anyone really not expect sales to be strong for the “death” of Peter Parker after 700 issues? Or the relaunch of ASM? Would sales be flat for a huge Marvel event like Spider-Verse that is hyped to no end? Of course not.
Readers who just want to giggle because “Leopardon” makes a cameo appearance will always eat that stuff up, but if you’re the kind of person who is offended by a literal deus ex machina moving the story to its conclusion, then Dan Slott isn’t for you. The writing didn’t matter — shoving 1,000 different variations of Spider-Man in your face was what mattered. At some point in time Marvel decided that it was going to go for the lowest common denominator and totally gave up trying to write a comic that works on multiple levels.
We may have talked about this regarding Christopher Nolan’s Batman films. For people who are more intellectual, his movies pack a punch. For people who just want to see Batman do cool things and not really think about much beyond a cursory level, they’ll be happy as well. Nolan directs cerebral summer blockbuster movies. I see no reason why comic books should be any different. The problem is that crafting the kind of quality work that Nolan puts forth requires hard work, and my reading on Dan Slott is that for the past few years he’s spent a lot more time on social media goofing off than on writing razor sharp Spider-Man tales.
We will probably never see Uncle Ben like this again.
That’s messed up. Dredging up the big man entails a poignant and touching reunion, not a vitriolic pep talk by “Peter Parker”.
That’s a pretty good point. Dan Slott played the Uncle Ben card and essentially turned him into a failure face. Then, to add insult to injury, Peter needed Doctor Octopus to light a fire under the man’s butt.
Once again this shows that Slott only views Spider-man as a suit, he has put himself as Doc Oc and he has to be superior. Uncle Ben was an inspiration how cool would it have been for Peter to inspire him! Instead you get a narcissist nut bag that attempted mass murder acting as the key inspiration and the glue of the spider-universe. I am happy that everyone I know has stopped reading this poor excuse for a Spider-man book.
I just recently started working with another person in the comic industry and I will not say his name because I know how the industry can respond but I will say that he also feels the whole Spider-man legacy has been torn apart and tarnished. I guess it is good to know that at least some people that are still working in the comic industry admit that there are some really dumb moves such as a reboot going on.
Like Carl said it shows they are out of ideas, and as Douglas said maybe they should look at it from a business perspective which means they need to look at the staff to see where the problems really are.
I am currently considering dropping the 4 Marvel books that I still get that might not seem like much but if you remember in the past I purchased many each month. I have over 10K books so to say my purchase does not matter is really not accurate.
Marvel may claim they are trying to increase sales but are they doing more harm that good, stats would point to yes.
We’ve talked about this before, but I’m like you — I used to drop a pretty penny on Marvel comics. Not these days. Marvel’s business plan seems to be:
Sounds like old Slott is really trying to defend himself here:
People are not allowed to have an opinion, listen to the great Slott! What a narcissistic brat.
First of all, I’ve never even run across anyone who said they can’t watch old Indiana Jones movies anymore. However, if someone did say that, I think there is a certain amount of sound logic at work. If a writer or creative team poisons the well with a beloved character, then it makes the job that much harder for future writers to win back lost credibility. The classic example is the movie “Batman Forever.” Thank goodness Warner Bros. had Christopher Nolan, because they needed someone like him to knock it out of the park.
Likewise, even Sony with their Spider-Man reboot is having a tough time because they consistently can’t seem to do the character right. Yes, the first two Sam Raimi films will always be there, but with each misstep on Sony’s part they make it harder to convince audiences to shell out cash to see the next one. Does anyone think that if Sony was having massive success with its Spider-Man property that they would be talking to Marvel about allowing him into the next Captain America flick or future Avengers installments? Of course not. Sony sees the writing on the wall, so now they’re willing to deal.
Another on-point evaluation of this farcical event. I just came over from StillaNerd’s review of this (he gave it a C) and he was pointing out just about the same things. People often crack jokes about how ineffective the newspaper Spidey is in his own story, but nothing he’s rarely done matches what the one perceived by Spider-Man India to be the “real” Peter Parker has done, and that’s considerably little. Under any other sort of accomplished writer, Peter would have convinced Ben. Hell Tom DeFalco could’nt even get MAYDAY, the next logical choice, to spur Ben on in their team-up issue (the one saving grace of that story was DeFalco implying that this Mayday was not the “real” Mayday from the acclaimed 1998-2010 Spider-Girl series and was just an alternate double)
This is not a celebration of Ben’s ideals and how they function and mold our hero or heroes,Slott has been about one thing, and it’s a trick that is becoming all too withered in its practice because it’s shared by so many other heroes in the Marvel universe…that this is an intentional and metafictional deconstruction of the mythologies designed to upset long-term fans and get jollies out of counter-culture sycophantic rebel aspects, the type that glee at pop culture drops and feel nothing ever goes right for them in the world, so why should things be “on point” with the comics they read? They are “proud” characters abandon those they love in need like MJ and treat selfishness and lack of compromise as “taking control of their own lives”. It’s quite telling of them as people and what they feel about people
We all know what Slott feels about Spider-Man…part of me thinks the man never truly forgave Peter for making that deal with Mephisto and wants to show him up as a loser who can’t glue anything together…perhaps Renew Your Vows will further that concept, showing a Spider-Man who has it all balanced, and further showing up 616 Peter…and probably he’ll reward that more accomplished Peter, and presumably MJ, with…you guessed it, ANOTHER “shock” death like with “MC2” Peter and MJ, and leave the most shallow and selfish incarnations of Peter and MJ left having to look after his daughter or something
The name of this very long game is Deconstruction, and it’s unfortunately now been a very long time since we had so very, VERY little of it.
Ouch. Devastating blow, Zariusii.
Like I was saying, what will be the coup de grace? Will Dan Slott make Peter Parker the Green Goblin for a year and have The Superior Spider-Man save New York from the original Spider-Man? Is that where we’re going? Peter has been killed…so genocidal maniac could don the tights…then Peter came back and turned into a bit player in his own book…so Doctor Octopus could show him up in front of an alternate universe Uncle Ben. Maybe it’s time to make Peter go full-goblin. 😉 Sigh…
That would be the particular icing on the cake, and given Doc Ock’s fate is still up in the air in the regular universe, I would not rule out Ock, in a revitalized original form, showing up Peter just as “plain old Doc Ock” and saving New York from an active and vengeful Osborn.
And Peter as the Green Goblin is a well-worn well Marvel have went to several times in short bursts here and there. For example, there was a five part story a while back in about late 2001 co-written by Roger Stern, Howard Mackie, and Paul Jenkins where Peter did become the Green Goblin for a short while (he was brainwashed by Osborn), in the Spider-Girl comics, Osborn again breifly took control of Peter’s mind after he triggered a booby trap and slowly transformed him into the “Goblin God” upon merging with his daughter and her symbiote clone, and there was a recent Conway penned Spider-Gwen story where an alternative Peter became the Green Goblin after “his” Gwen died.
I guess that’s my thing: I don’t mind if something like that is a short one-off effort just to explore those ideas, but when it’s long and drawn out it’s just not cool. I would have even been okay with The Superior Spider-Man if it was maybe three or four issues. That seems fair to me. But to extend it for over a year and rub it in the faces of Peter Parker fans was just ridiculous. It’s like the creators go out of their way to rub salt in the wounds (e.g., Doc Ock pleasuring himself to the thought of Mary Jane) and then when fans get upset they pull out the victim card.
Exactly. Superior, if condensed to about a six month or so time frame, with the spin-off books complimenting it, it would have been more bearable (although I feel this is still a story you could only have told in the 1970s and not now where more characters ought to know Peter inside and out), and the repugnant thing is, we could very well have had MORE than a year of this as Slott always intended Ock to be the hero of Spider-Verse anyway and had to be persuaded to bring Peter back, He was all set to continue his deconstructive devastation long after a point of proper resolution was past overdue, and his rallying Uncle Ben to the cause was bound to have been intended as the pinnacle achievement of his “superior” career thus far. No doubt we would have gotten some snarky, whiny back lip from “Ghost Peter” about this, playing the role of the dissatisfied fanbase that Slott constantly claims to be a victim of
Well, technically, I actually gave the issue a “C-“, so that qualifier makes all the difference. 😉
In any case, and as I stated in that review, I think that if you took this scene on its own, it’s actually a decent example in using dramatic irony and subverting the reader’s expectations, since the assumption is that would’ve been Peter who uses his Uncle Ben’s words to inspire this version of Uncle Ben in to action, not SpOck bolstering up this Uncle Ben as if he were General Patton addressing a shell-shocked soldier. Which is why I considered that particular scene “the best moment in all of ‘Spider-Verse.'”
However (and I think this echoes Douglas’ sentiment) within the full context of “Spider-Verse” and Slott’s characterization of Peter ever since the relaunch of Amazing Spider-Man, it’s yet one more glaring instance of Slott trying to TELL the reader how “great” or “special” Peter is, yet SHOWING how ineffective and weak he is as both a hero and a leader. To quote from my review: “… because Peter far too many times under Slott is made to be naïve, confused, outmatched, and outwitted, it gives the impression Peter is the “inferior Spider-Man” next to the “superior” Doctor Octopus. Also, let’s not forger how Peter Parker was able to get his body back: it was because Otto Octavious gave up, believing he had failed to live up to being a “Superior” Spider-Man. Which means we have the man who inspired Peter being given words of inspiration by someone who winds up proving himself to be a self-important hypocrite.”
Mike, I stayed up until I think around 11:30 p.m. the other night for your review and it wasn’t up. I beat you to it this week, but that’s only because you wrote a thoroughly awesome, top-to-bottom analysis of Part 5.
Long story short, I totally agree with you. You can see Doc Ock’s dialogue and see that Dan Slott really enjoys the character. As I’ve said before, Dan Slott loves “Spider-Man” but he does not love Peter Parker.
Last week you were spot on with the deus ex machina and this week you rightly point out that Slott is telling instead of showing. Question: Did he drop out of Creative writing 101? I’m joking…but I’m not. It’s incredibly frustrating to see that sort of thing mixed in with giant plot holes, etc. in The Amazing Spider-Man. But I guess it doesn’t matter because we have “Peter Parked-Car” cameos, right? Who needs tight writing when you can just jam a bunch of spider-totems in everyone’s face and count on websites like io9 and Gawker to write glowing reviews?
Once again, great commentary. Since Otto was intended to be the hero of Spider-Verse at first, I have to wonder if this is a scene that he had planned out originally, and wanted to keep it for this scene. It’s more than just another case of Peter being reduced to a bit player in his own book while Otto is glorified, but there’s also the fact that, at least thanks to Otto’s relationship with Anna Maria, Superior ended up being a sort of “test” for Otto.
This would have been a moment to truly “redeem” Otto by showing him go a level beyond Peter. Ben inspired Peter, and so Otto, through this alternate Ben, has a substitute through which he can inspire Ben, effectively making it so that we could believe that the very heroism Peter based on his life on can REALLY be seen as the efforts of Otto all along. Or something. I don’t know, it makes Otto look good in some attempt to show how far he’s come after that Godwinning moment in Ends of the Earth, but really, all it does is show that Slott cares about writing Spider-Man not because of Peter Parker himself, but rather that it allows Slott an opportunity to write someone he feels is “misunderstood”.
As with Secret Wars, the biggest fear I’ve seen is that it will be used to bring back the marriage, but not in a way that it will actually address One More Day. Like you said, Marvel is incapable of just having the guts to look at themselves and say “I messed up.” It’s not about admitting that the deal with Mephisto was wrong, and frankly, while I like what Zariusii was getting at in regards to Slott not being able to forgive Peter for it, given Slott’s comments about how Peter has shallow taste in women, and that he does seem like the kind of guy who would think that Peter was ruined not by dealing with Mephisto, but rather by marrying Mary Jane, I highly doubt that Slott would want to address the deal at all. He and Stephen Wacker constantly berated the fans for not “getting over” One More Day, but really, that’s cowardice on their parts. People want them to go back and admit that the story was a mistake, but for the sake of preserving professionalism – something that you would think Slott would know nothing about, given his behavior on social media – they’re unwilling to “fix” the story, or however you’d like to put it.
The only story I can think of for Slott after Renew Your Vows would be yet another Doc Ock story. If anything, Renew Your Vows just sounds like it will be a story that Slott has been actively trying to avoid, but he needs to put a smile on a do it happily so he can keep his job.
I think that’s the main point right there. It seems like the problems with Slott’s writing (and the One More Day era of Spider-Man) are a lot less complex then they ought to be.
If someone doesn’t like the direction a TV Show or book series is heading, usually they won’t watch the next episode or buy the next book in the series. In regards to Spider-Man, people didn’t like One More Day and the subsequent storylines with critics pretty much universally panning this entire era.
Usually when producers/writers find themselves in this sort of situations, they’ll usually acknowledge some of the criticism to keep the series going. This is why you’ll often get situations where “the sequel is better” usually because the follow-up installment acknowledges problems of the previous installment (and smart producers want to generate more sales).
Marvel and Dan Slott’s problems at the moment appears to be a failure to acknowledge the criticisms of the Spider-Man product their producing and that’s the reason why “readers” are walking away. Telling people to “get over” One More Day (or hope they forget about One More Day) whilst trying to mitigate sales with poorly planned events won’t solve their problems. What’s odd is that Marvel has previously acknowledged the mistakes of the Clone Saga and they undid the damage after a year or so yet One More Day has persisted far longer than the Clone Saga. Maybe the real reason they’re rebooting the Marvel Universe is because Marvel secretly acknowledges that One More Day broke Spider-Man beyond repair and retconning it would be very hard.
I think retconning it would only be hard for those who have invested a lot of time and effort into defending the indefensible.
I thought one way they could have redeemed Doctor Octopus and retconned One More Day would have been to use The Superior Spider-Man’s run. With Doc Ock having access to Peter’s mind, they could have easily come up with a situation where he comes across the memories that Peter didn’t have access to because of Mephisto’s magic, etc. Doc Ock could have either a.) stepped aside like he did at the end of SSM’s run, with the only difference being that he would inform Peter of the truth, or b.) he could have taken on Mephisto on himself and won back Peter’s true love, which would have served Dan Slott’s purposes of redeeming Doctor Octopus for many of his “sins past.” ** cough, cough **
The point is, Marvel’s creators are so wrapped in their own tiny buddy-buddy bubble that they don’t know how to give each other honest criticism. They won’t say, “Yeah, that idea is horrible,” because they’re all friends they just basically let each other do whatever the heck they want. That is how you get things like Master Weaver literally going full deus ex machina in Spider-Verse.
It will be interesting to see how Marvel handles “Renew Your Vows.” Based on its track record over the past decade or so, I’m not confident that the company will be able to pull it off in a way that unifies the vast majority of Peter Parker fans.
I think your fear is well founded. If I were a betting man, then I’d put a nice stack of chips in with you on this one, Phantomroxas.
Also, the wording of the recently announced Battelworld brand line teaser hints that there will be deaths in the story (because WHY NOT EH?), so that adds to my concern that “Renew Your Vows” Peter and MJ will take over the main book for the summer, but then they may be bumped off, and their daughter ends up being looked after by 616 Peter and MJ, who will not necessarily get back together, but will have to stick around each other to take care of the child, and then you call tell “broken home” stories with the daughter being all angsty that one version of her mother is too stubborn to return to Peter’s side and her father is always too busy with running a company and fighting crime to take notice of her.
A while back, there was a story during Civil War where a spiritual representation of “he who Mephisto hates most”, showed us a glimpse of the future where Peter and MJ were together with two children, Benjy and Mary Junior. I assume Mary Junior is the girl from Renew Your Vows, with Benjy possibly even being the Scion of Spider-Verse (which would indicate Mayday could still die next month in Spider-Verse’s climax), assuming all stories “still count”, this future will come to pass, the question is, how do we reach it? I’m looking to the nature of the current beast for clues.
Nick Lowe also confirmed Slott and him had discussed “resolving” Peter’s relationship issues for the forseeable future, and that Renew Your Vows will surprise fans…though the last time editorial “surprised” me in the slightest when they got the designations for the Ultimate Universe wrong in one issue of Spider-Verse…
Also: Nothing SpOck says in that sequence reflects Peter’s philosophy of life. SpOck’s mentality could be considered Objectivist, or at the very least existentialist (life is a series of battles, and the authentic man fights to make his mark and authenticate himself in spite of life’s basic cruelty and meaninglessness). SpOck could have broken out into the song,. “My Way.”
The problem is, I am willing to bet this is Dan Slott’s actual philosophy about life. It is not Peter’s. If I’m right, then this is a big reason why Dan Slott does not comprehend Peter. It’s also why he incessantly proclaims his superior love and understanding for Peter — because he in reality does not love or understand Peter.
Peter would say, “We press on because other people matter, and we love them, and because we love them more than we love ourselves, we will not let down.” SpOck essentially says, “The point of fighting is winning, and the point of winning is to prove something great about yourself”, which is pure narcissism. Slott has Uncle Ben heed SpOck and brush off Peter, which tells me that SpOck speaks for Slott, which is a rotten philosophy of life.
If we were playing the “Hot or Cold” game right now, then you’d be on fire. Anyone who is familiar with how Dan Slott has handled himself online over the course of the past several years should ask the question: “Is this a man who could really hone in and articulate the values Peter Parker lives by?” I really do not think he understands the character, and to the extent he does he seems to highlight Peter’s worst qualities so fans see a fun house mirror version of him.
I may do a blog post on this, but Superior Spider-Man is the perfect character for a lazy or overstretched writer — the kind who literally puts in a deus ex machina into his big event story of the year. Because of Doc Ock’s history, he can literally say and do anything as “The Superior Spider-Man.” If he sounds like a genocidal maniac, then Dan Slott can defend it. If he acts like Peter Parker, then that’s because he’s trying to be a hero. If he’s all over the map, it’s because he’s struggling to find the man he truly wants to be (i.e., a superhero in the mold of Spider-Man, or a megalomaniac who wants to rival “Pol Pot, Hitler, and Genghis Khan!”).
You can’t play that game with Peter Parker. He is who he is, and it’s well established. And if you are going to change something about his personality, then it’s going to take time and some serious finesse. When you think “finesse,” does Dan Slott come to mind? Magic 8 Ball says: “Not likely.”
I think Dan Slott is perfect for something like “Squirrel Girl” or another goofy book. Give him “Slapstick” and tell him to have a ball. I just think he is ill-equipped to handle Peter Parker.
Found a spot on review online and immediately thought of you. Here it is:
http://www.spidermancrawlspace.com/2015/01/22/amazing-spider-man-2014-13-review-stillanerds-take/
Not sure if you read Spider-Man Crawlspace any but although it’s a long read, it highlights SO many of the problems with Part 5 of Spider-Verse as you do and also includes several gaps in logic with the flow of the story.
Does Spider-Verse matter in the long term? For better or worse, I’m a bit of a completist when it comes to Spidey centric events so I’ve done the unthinkable and decided to pick up every single tie in to the story. Quite expensive, but then again, if you read the main ASM without all the tie ins, the story makes no sense at all. That’s saying a lot given the story barely makes sense with all the tie ins. Talk about missed opportunities: how crazy is it that SpOck is the one that inspires Uncle Ben to put on the costume. NOT Peter. THAT is how ineffective Peter is now. This book literally could have been titled “Superior Spider-Man #35”.
I’ll be taking a bit of a break from ASM after part 6 of Spider Verse wraps up, I’m afraid. At least until “Renew Your Vows”. I’m not missing the excitement that goes with picking up an ASM book. Even with Superior Spider-Man, I think people bought the book to see the wild crazy things that SpOck was going to do next, but ASM has definitely lost its spark. Spider Verse is a reflection of poor execution, not just for this story arc, but so far for this entire volume of ASM.
Check it out, TheOrangeMask — the man, the myth, the legend himself commented on these boards. 🙂
As I’ve said before, I’m a big fan of StillANerd’s work. I sometimes have minor issues here and there, but in general the guy writes some seriously solid work. Impressive.
Zing! Very, very true on the point about having to buy all the extra books. Spider-Verse should be able to be read as a self-contained story with ASM, with the other books supplementing the work. In this case Marvel basically forces you to get the book. They’re counting on guys like you (and that isn’t an insult) to plunk down that extra cash. The problem is that when guys like you get fed up…they walk away with all their money. I know because I’m one of those guys. Carl, Truthwillwin1, Hube, Patrick, and a slew of others who have commented along the way have had similar experiences.
The thing is about event comics is that they used to be largely self-contained. You didn’t have to worry about having to track down a million different side issues just to understand what was going on. The earlier event comics were actually decent stories. But nowadays? Not so much. Every single character is shoehorned into the latest Crisis or Secret War, and there are plot holes in the stories created by the writers so you can track down some tie-in miniseries. It’s just not worth it.
Plus event comics disrupt the development of individual characters in their own books.
Hi, Mr. Ernst. I am the guy who just passing your blog and I want to say thank you for the nice thoughts about Spider-Verse going on right now. I have been a huge fan of Spider-man since 2000s when the Reimi’s movie was shown.
Like you, I also kind of upset about how peter was becaming outsider character in his own issue and it was Otto who convinced Ben, not a Peter.
I hope at least Peter got some action or shown leadership in the final chapters of Spider-Verse and hopes Dan Slott at least tries to give Peter a chance to do something.
Thanks for taking the time to read and comment, guestfan. I appreciate it. If nothing else, I hope this blog post shows you that you are not alone out there with your thoughts on Spider-Verse.
Feel free to stop in here any time I write a review on The Amazing Spider-Man. I’m always happy to hear what you have to say.