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| Amazing Spider-Man #300 (Todd McFarlane art) |
Amazing Spider-Man should change its title to Opposite-of-Amazing Spider-Man. Why? It's so...average. I remember back in the 80s how cool (and monthly) ASM was. It featured breakout artist Todd McFarlane, Peter Parker and his longtime crush Mary Jane married, and it introduced the black costume that would one day become Venom. Cool stuff.
Lately, ASM has been mediocre. I re-joined the series after the highly criticized "Brand New Day" storyline that apparently wiped everyone's memories of Spider-Man's secret identity and, with it, Peter Parker's marriage to Mary Jane. I've been fairly underwhelmed with the stories that are printed thrice monthly.
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| Amazing Spider-Man #641 |
At $3.99 each, Amazing Spider-Man issues are also higher priced than many other comics. Three times a month. That's $12 per month, which could possibly be some kid's monthly allowance. This past week, both issue #641 AND #642 were released. Why? Scheduling/printing conflict, Marvel says. Okay...but why not just push everything back then? Since it's published practically every week, I hardly doubt someone's going to miss it if a week goes by without a new issue of Not-So-Amazing Spider-Man. It's not like they have to wait another month; they'll just catch it the next week. What kind of logic is that? So, basically I spent $7 on crap this week. (#642 was only priced at $2.99 and, by the artwork alone, it's really only worth 99 cents. But I'll get to that in a moment (in time).)
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| From Amazing Spider-Man #642 |
The worst thing about printing an ongoing weekly comic series? The writing and art become very inconsistent issue to issue. To catch up, it seems like Marvel is hiring any old artist off the street for one of their oldest and most popular titles, not giving Spidey the respect he deserves. Cheap unknown writers, cheap unknown artists, figuring people will buy the title just based on the character Spider-Man alone. Check out a panel of the latest issue (#642). Is that Mary Jane and Peter Parker? What's wrong with them? Has Mary Jane contracted rickets and turned Asian? Does Peter have cerebral palsy and Frankenstein bolt-head disease?
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From Amazing Spider-Man #642 |
Trying to produce a comic that's published so often is really harming the image of Amazing Spider-Man. A little depth, good storytelling, and great art go a lonnnnnnng way.
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