I guess in my mind, the difference is the intent.
In the USM clone saga, MJ was mutated for pure shock value. It was unnecessary to the plot of the story and only lasted for a couple of pages. It was basically to provide a cliff-hanger at the end of the issue. There have been no lasting effects or anything.
Aunt May and MJ in Iron Man armor was (i think) mostly for comic relief. It was also just a cheap way to explain how they could get into Doom's castle and use the time platform (which in and of itself was a rather dumb idea for a story).
The intent behind Spider-Island is to make an off-the wall summer blockbuster event that has interesting effects on Spider-Man (he's no longer unique) and his supporting cast:
Carlie's first reaction to her Spider powers is to tell Peter, whereas Peter hasn't told her that he is Spider-Man
JJJ faces his whole city and himself becoming what he hates most
MJ - who has dealt with the craziness of being with Spider-Man for years, and broke up with him because she couldn't handle being a victim all the time - now has Spider powers is probably going to play a large part in helping Spider-Man "save the day"
(Warning, a few paragraphs in this, I realized exactly how much I was meandering. This has turned into a gushing love letter to Slott's Spider-Man, but it all draws itself back to the core argument of Spider-Island. So bear with. Or scan. Or just ignore.
Blame pharmaceuticals.
P.S. I do this a lot. Is there some way we could create "digression tags" like the spoiler tags that I can wrap 75% of my post content in?
P.P.S. I've added headers to the paragraphs to make them easier to digest, or just scan to the parts that matter)
I: Crossovers are Stupid. Spider-Island Totally Sees That
I agree with Cap. In and of itself, it's a pretty uninspired idea. In fact, the premise reeks of the most insipid 90's crossover tropes imaginable. For that matter, the villains are characters who completely typified the overblown, superficial 90's style. The only thing more worrying would be if they made Carnage the villain. But here's the thing.... It's absolutely fantastic. And I'm 95% convinced it's a parody of 90's crossovers; and a brilliant one, at that.
II: You Know What Else Did? That One Story Where Punisher Became Frankenstein
To me, it's the same as Frankencastle. On the surface, it seems completely antithetical to the character. Punisher is supposed to be, according to hardliners, down-to-earth and street and "gritty" and whatever range of media buzzwords you want to use. And, yes, Ennis' run on the character is and always will be the absolute
definition of the character (insofar as, if his run was the only one that existed, it would be perfect and self-contained. It's the only Punisher story that really needs to be told. Hell. I need to sit down and read that whole thing all over again. I'm salivating at the thought). Frankencastle was quirky and weird and ran contrary to the typical version of Frank Castle. But it worked. By literally turning Frank into a monster, it underscored core values of the character and made the contradictions of his family's memory and his life's mission stand out at a time when that ****'s become tired cliche.
III: These Are Books About Men In Tights. Don't Get Pretentious
Similarly, Spider Island takes these fanboy notions of "what Spider-Man should be" and says "**** that. A good writer can provide
range to these characters" (See also Aaron's delightful little Wolverine/Spider-Man team up series, the name of which eludes me, in which he shows that characters on the opposite ends of the thematic spectrum can be thrown into a madcap cosmic time travel adventure and the result is heads and tails above most of these guys' traditional tales. I suspect the oddball looking "Wolverine and the X-Men" will follow a similar trail). On one hand, it reads almost like a parody of those insipid 90's crossovers. He takes a lead villain with the grim weight of self-important history and turns him into this gleeful ham of a villain.
IV: Wherein I Gush About Slott's Spider-Man Run
That tone is a big reason of why I've really liked Slott's ASM. When Slott was announced as the sole writer of ASM, I was upset. Shortly before they transitioned from weekly to bi-monthly, in the midst of a brief fit of joblessness, I caught up on all the stuff following OMD. At first it was a chore and I admit to skipping through swaths of the material. But by the time I hit that last year or so, I was in love. I wanted Van Lente or Joe Kelly to write the book. Desperately. And while I still think they'd be great for this book, I've been catching up on Slott's solo stuff and it's really, really great. These are stories that are fun, stories that veer between the sort of adventures the uptight fan boys say are the only acceptable ones (NYC based Spidey soap) and ones that roundly defy those conventions (Spidey as a teacher for kid heroes! Spidey and FF fight g-guh-ghost pirates! It's honestly the best I can remember Spider-Man being this good. Here's a cycle of stories that can swing (HAHAHAHAHAHA) in mood from the soapy melodramatic angst of Peter coping with a mass murderer and making a grim determination about his responsibilities as a hero, to a story where Spidey and the Avengers fight giant octo-robots. It's a narrative where Pete can have a well paying job with a cutting edge brain trust and a healthy relationship with believable but surmountable issues; where Spidey can be a respected member of the Avengers and Fantastic Four and spiking popularity amongst the general public; but where these new situations create new soap operatic conflicts that perfectly reflect that core soap operatic responsibility matrix that's always defined the character.
V: Spider-Island? Yeah.... Slott's Totally Trolling
And just as important, these shifts between the serious and comic don't feel like whiplash. Despite fluctuations in tone, one story always leads into the next, always reflects the next, and this succession of events, both minor and major, is cumulative. For the first time in a long time, the character is growing along a believable and interesting path, without changing the fundamental themes, and in doing so, he's proving all those pedantic fanboys wrong. "Peter can't be successful". "Peter must be single or must be entangled with this one love interest I grew up with". "Spidey can't be loved". SI is just the next, biggest link in that chain. It's Slott saying "Hey bro. I'm going to tell a big, bloated Spidey crossover that spawns tie-offs starring puzzlingly unrelated characters and features huge players from the greater universe in the central narrative. Nya nya!"..... And it's great because of it.
VI: The Jackal's Stupid. Also Stupid? Loeb
The Jackal perfectly typifies that kind of insipid storytelling and Slott's treatment of him perfectly typifies why this story is great. He was the villain of the Clone Saga, for Chrissakes, but it goes beyond that. A lot of writers who try to tell "serious" Spider-Man stories think the way to do it is to create as many parallels to the hero (either explicit or implicit but almost always bluntly. and yes, JMS, I AM looking at you. Ye of the Stacy/Osborn clones and the spider totems) as possible and usually that means mining the hero's history like they're quoting citations for a doctoral dissertation. (It's not an exclusive trope and it shows up eventually with almost all characters. Batman seems to be the worst victim of this. "Tommy Elliott was Bruce's pal. Except he KILLED his parents because he hated them and they weren't benevolent like the Waynes. And they played a strategy game together that helped influence Bruce's tactical mind. And the Scarecrow was his shrink as a kid! And his public identity is as a doctor who helps people, THE SAME JOB AS THOMAS WAYNE (and omigod, he also has the SAME NAME AS BRUCE'S DAD), while his secret identity is as a villain! And his jealousy of Bruce's "liberation" from his parents is an inversion of Bruce's loss driving him to become Batman!11!! So it's almost like Bruce CREATED Hush! And he's a DARK MIRROR of Batman!" Subtext that really isn't is the primary hacksaw of hack writers, but the audiences just seem to eat it up!) I think it's rooted in an inferiority complex a lot of these writers have compared to other professions, but that's just supposition. They think that by digging into the comparative psychology of superheroes, they'll somehow render "legitimacy" to their narrative. But the result is almost always heavy handed and shallow because, well, the origins of these characters are generally pretty simple and allegorical.
VII: Wherein I Make Fun of the Jackal and Clone Saga By Means of Shaky Recipe Metaphor, Then Forget About Shaky Recipe Metaphor, Then I Yell Obnoxiously For A Bit, Then I Pat Myself on the Back
Jackal's that to a tee.
- Start with a character retroactively injected into one of the character's defining moments: a professor who loved Gwen Stacy, the first great loss in Spidey's career.
- Add as much pathos as humanly possible: he LOVED Gwen, he BLAMED Spider-Man for her death, so in some ways SPIDEY IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS EVIL!
- Sprinkle in an obtuse inversion of the hero's origin: he uses his powers (brains) irresponsibly and in an act of cowardice becomes responsible for an innocent's death (kills a whistleblower), but rather than learning from his mistake and crafting it into a catch phrase that sounds like a public radio PSA slogan, he embraces his cowardice and becomes SPIDER-MAN'S GREATEST AND MOST PROFOUND NEW NEMESIS: THE JACKAL!!!!!!
- Stir until the hero is forced to directly face his greatest tragedy in the bluntest way possible, preferably with the help of some dumb, tacky irony: He's created a clone of Gwen Stacy! SPIDER-MAN'S GREATEST AND MOST PROFOUND NEW NEMESIS: THE JACKAL,
A BRILLIANT DARK REFLECTION OF THE HERO'S CORE ETHOS HAS RESOLVED THE GREATEST MISTAKE OF SPIDEY'S CAREER!!!1!!111!!
- Cover
- Simmer
- Lower Heat and Let Cool
- Garnish with a high concept flavored for toy merchandising ventures, a sales inflating gimmick, and a metaphorical hook by which the writer(s) can "meditate" on the character's core themes (and when I say garnish, I mean BURY that crossover souffle in it. We really need to cover up that rancid meat that dominates this dish): Miles Warren has created clones of Peter with varying levels of success. What would happen to Pete if he had been raised differently?
ONE OF THEM REALLY THINKS HE'S SPIDER-MAN AND FOR ALL PURPOSES, HE MAY AS WELL BE!MIGHT PETER REALLY BE THE CLONE AND BEN THE ORIGINAL!?HAS THE JACKAL'S COWARDICE FINALLY RELIEVED PETE OF THE RESPONSIBILITY OF BEING A HERO? HOW MUCH OF CHARACTER IS GENETIC AND HOW MUCH IS UPBRINGING? OMIGOD, THAT'S POSITIVELY LITERARY YO!
- One dish serves dozens of issues over countless years.
- Mmmm. Look at that big plate of something just steaming right in front of your eyes. Take a taste. No. Careful. Choke down your gag reflex. Mm, yeah, baby. You taste that secret ingredient? That's a dash of shocking plot twist: Not only are there clones of Peter. There's also clones of Miles Warren, SPIDER-MAN'S GREATEST AND MOST PROFOUND NEW NEMESIS: THE JACKAL! And one of them is MARRIED TO GWEN STACY!
(Gawd. I should teach a seminar on writing dark foils)
VIII: Wherein I Rag On The Prevalence of "Foil" Characters in Superhero Fiction, Under the Tenuous Pretense of Being Related to This Story. There's Also Another Quick Jab at Loeb
There's plenty wrong with Miles Warren as a character, as well as with the Clone Saga, but a book could be written on that. But there's a few most directly relevant to SI's strength. One is the recursion of it, the idea that good stories are rooted both literally and allegorically in a character's history. Literally, in that you can ride in the slipstream of a pivotal event like, say, Gwen Stacy's death to milk additionally pathos from the title character. But the Death of Gwen Stacy was so pivotal because it wasn't rooted in the past. Sure, it had a slight parallel in that it reflected the death of Uncle Ben, but it was rooted in the relationship between Peter and his newest villain (Green Goblin) and his contemporary love interest (Gwen Stacy), and it fundamentally changed the character in a way that couldn't be reverted. It solidified the graveness of Spider-Man's GREAT RESPONSIBILITY and instilled in him an awareness that by using his GREAT POWERS, RESPONSIBLY, he's putting both his own happiness and the lives of his innocent loved ones at risk (Hey, JMS! You were the guy who decided Pete would decide to reveal his civilian identity, didn't you? What was that? Did you say something about Norman Osborne and Gwen Stacy having babies?). Inserting a new villain into this pivotal moment who blames Spidey for her death and bringing Gwen back to life don't add anything to the story because
we know Pete wasn't really to blame (either for her death, or, by proxy, the creation of the Jackal), so it adds no new depth to the event, and because, despite how iconic an image GG dangling the cute blonde over a bridge is, the fact that it was Gwen isn't important. It only matters that Pete's loved one died, and he was fundamentally changed by it. Allegorically in that, Miles' transformation is an inversion of Spidey's tragic transformation from profiteer to hero (and rooted in Spidey's second great tragedy. natch), in that the clone premise ideally reflects what could have happened if Peter's upbringing had been different and he hadn't learned the same lessons he had. But these gambits rarely if ever strengthen our understanding of the hero. These transformative moments are iconic because they're easily understood. Batman is a dude who saw his parents shot in front of him, who's traumatized by it, who channels this trauma in a positively insane manner, but who, despite a truly lunatic strategy, devotes his life to doing good. We understand this because we were all kids once. Spidey's a dude who's lost two loved ones to his own mistakes, but he strives to learn from those mistakes and do his best to let them never happen again. We understand that because we've all made mistakes and we aspire to be able to respond to them with the sort of grace and resolve he does. Showing that there was a kid like Bruce Wayne but he was a sociopath, or a guy like Miles Warren who didn't learn from his mistakes like Spidey, or hypothetical versions of Pete who could have made different choices rarely work. Telling us who the characters aren't doesn't provide much insight into who the characters are, particularly when those motivations are so easily understood. On a publishing level, events are problematic because they were created for one reason: to create high concept large enough to draw in as big an audience as possible, and to milk that high concept so they can retain that boost in readership as long as possible. This means long stories that drag an idea to death and tie-ins chosen solely to boost a fringe character's sales. Then there's the problem of dilution caused by characters being used so often that their histories become a tangled mess, and their core concept becomes diluted. SI is great because Slott manages to dodge all these pitfalls while also thumbing his nose at them.
IX: Why "Cackling Cartoon" Is The Best Jackal Will Ever Be. And Why That's Great
Aaaaand, finally back to why Slott's Jackal is great. Dude loves these trash bin characters. He did it with Hobgoblin. Hell, his first big solo story, and Spidey's last big event, featured Alistair Smythe as the villain. But Slott makes them work because he boils them down to their essential values, without requiring you to dig through their backstories to understand them. His Jackal is a cackling, comical lunatic to ****ing with Spider-Man by any ridiculous means he can dream up. He's a foil for Spidey only in sofar as he somehow manages to crack WORSE jokes than him. He keeps a retinue of his docile, scholarly, white whiskered clones as his Bond villain infrastructure. He keeps two giant man-spiders as his bodyguards, calls them son, and slaps them around like the three stooges. Why? Because Slott looked at the character objectively. Who's Miles Warren? He's a gawky old college professor who's crush on his student drove him to INVENT CLONING and become a supervillain. He's ludicrous. He's the definition of a mad scientist. And by recognizing how ridiculous the character is, and lovingly embracing it, he's made him a worthwhile character. Slott makes these villains work because he realizes their histories only matter when they serve to push the narrative of the hero forward. Jackal's practically a metafictional character, a puppeteer who almost seems to recognize "Okay. It's my job to launch an event for this season" or "Okay. Time to shift course on the story before it gets stale" or "Okay. Time to give Venom something to do in his tie-in". And it works, because, well, look at dude's history. He really is that crazy!
X: Why E Is Wrong, Part One. Wherein I Don't Really Get Around to Answering E's Questions But Instead Become Ridiculous Diverted and Get Snarky on Specific Crossovers, And Set a Record For the Amount of Times "Batman" Is Said In One Post (The Clone Saga Bit May Actually Have Context)
So, I've ranted about the essential principles of crossovers and why I generally hate them. But I love Spider-Island. Why? In large part, because Slott gleefully embraces them. In larger part, because he manages to evade the pitfalls. Like I said earlier, crossovers are fundamentally about finding a high concept simple and iconic enough that the casual audience who only understands the basic principles of the character will understand and then milking it for as long as possible (by and large, you want something that could be pitched to a regular person on the street by means of one simple statement/question). Generally, the problem is the mutual exclusiveness of these ideas. The simple, iconic nature of the high concepts means that the outcome of the story and the thematic beats are easily predicted. Any shallow meaning the core conceit may have had is trampled to death in the amount of time any normal story would run, never mind the extended length and barrage of tie-ins, specials, preludes, and postludes that events typically encompass. Examples.
-The Death of Superman: What Would Happen If Superman Died? He'd live on inside all our hearts, because he's a symbol of everything we could ever hope to be and puppy dogs and rainbows. And when push comes to shove, we'll all step up and be supermen ourselves, in our own little ways, by helping little old ladies across the street or smiling at that sad looking guy on the train or not injecting AIDS into my ***** ex-girlfriend's drink (Wait, what?) because no rock man in bike shorts can take that away from us. Oh, and four totally rad dudes who could have been Superman if Siegel and Shuster invented him while they were middle schoolers in 1992 remind us of exactly what Superman means, through the strength of heroism and four books worth of awesome holofoil covers. And then he comes back. To remind us what Superman's really about. Merchandising.
- Knightfall: What Tragedy Could Possibly Make Batman Stop Being Batman And What Sort of Legacy Would He Leave Behind? For everyone who was a kid after Tim Burton's Batman came out but before the Chuck Norris meme hit, this dude is the embodiment of tenacity and perseverance. Turns out it takes twenty or so issues, each featuring Batman fighting a villain the public recognizes (or at least that DC would like them to!), all organized by BATMAN'S GREATEST AND MOST PROFOUND NEW NEMESIS, who focus groups say is going to be the hot new thing, and who represents a dark reflection of the Dark Knight's own psyche, and this years before Jeph Loeb would patent the formula! But that's only the appetizer. Because, after all, stories are about building characters up, not just tearing them down. And Batman is a deep and nuanced character, who still, after decades of storytelling, has countless facets worth exploring. And after all, the question of a Gotham without Bruce Wayne is tantalizing, given how much Gotham is a character in its own right. And hey, it could be milked for years, over a line of some dozen titles, launch new ones, and stretch across a trilogy of events, as well as introducing the exciting new premise of interim mini-events, and this years before Marvel patented the idea! So what happens in a Gotham without Batman? Batman is so Batman that he insures there will never be a Gotham City without Batman, even if this Batman isn't Batman, not as long as Batman's around! Intense focus testing at Wayne Enterprises reminds Batman that the two boy soldiers he trained to be Batman when Batman can no longer be Batman already have their own ongoing series' and them being Batmen might kill their marketability as non-Batman when Batman inevitably becomes Batman again. Batman resolves that, from a perspective of literary credibility, the new Batman should be a dark reflection of Batman to shed light on why Batman was Batman to begin with, and from a perspective of marketability, Batman should have wicked red eyes and a razor Dracula collar. After Batmanning around for a profitable number of issues, the new Batman begins to fall apart. It turns out only Batman could ever Batman and anyone else who tried to Batman would turn out to not be Batman material at all, but instead a psychotic assassin secretly trained by subliminal hypnosis to be a trained killer in a very non-Batman like way. We all learn a valuable lesson about the intrinsic nature of Batman, and it only took us a couple dozen issues to get there. Batmanning is about investing the billionaire wealth you inherited from your philanthropist-doctor father into Bat-weapons, Bat-gear, Bat-cars, and Bat-technology that would put a small military to shame, it's about proving that the one solution to crime isn't economic or sociological
, it's about revealing the inherent flaws and corruption in the American psychological system: that it's all a scam, that crazies are crazy and no therapy or medicine will help that (at least not when they're a brand name). But there's one line that Batman won't cross: Batman doesn't kill. Batman proves to all of us who grew up loving Batman that Batman is and always will be Batman (and proves a valuable lesson to all of us about perseverance and overcoming adversity, if you're Batman) by Batmanning through his disability. Batman fights Batman in Batman's secret hideout and proves that only Batman will ever be Batman and that Batman and Robin will never die. While the audience and Batman reflect on all the valuable lessons this three year event has taught us about Batman, Batman slaps his oldest (living) boy soldier on the ass and lets him run a victory lap as Batman. Weighted down by the lessons taught through this grueling sequence of events, his mettle tested, his Batmanity tested, forced to reflect on the ambiguous questions of morality, of the responsibilities of the wealthy to society, of the role and ethical limitations of the individual in society, of whether privilege constitutes right, Batman pauses. He considers what Batman the Batman who survives this crucible burnt but alive should be. He considers what Batman Gotham deserves. He considers what Batman will win Batman back the respect of the police and the public. Then he funnels a bunch of money into building new secret Bat-bases.
- Secret Wars: What happens when-----OH WICKED! DOES THAT SPIDER-MAN FIGURE ACTUALLY SHOOT WEB OUT OF HIS HANDS? Hulk could totally beat Doctor Doom! "Nuh-uh!" Yeah huh! "No way!" Yeah way! "Well, they're my toys, and if you don't like it, you don't have to play with them. And my mom says you don't have any of your own because your dad spends them all on booze and your mom's a lazy whore." ..... I don't wanna play anymore....
- Civil War: What would happen if heroes existed in the real world, and were faced with the genuine and legitimate question of how much accountability they owe the public? It would be dominated by shallowly informed arguments as everyone took advantage of their own pet issues and somehow found a way to shoehorn its relevance into the argument. There would be nowhere to go without hearing
something related to the argument and everywhere you looked, there would be talking heads. Meanwhile, pundits would dominate the issue by breaking it down into basic rhetoric, easily sloganized, that offered no real solutions to the problem. The two sides would clash, one would eventually manage through their piece of legislation that made no attempt at appeasement and didn't provide any strong policy of achieving their means, but which made them look strong to their side. Then eventually both sides would get bored and forget about it. And we all learn a valuable lesson about how heroes will always be heroes regardless of the circumstances.
- Identity Crisis: What if rapeyrapeyraperapityraperape........... Sorry. I really don't know what to say about this one.
- Clone Saga: What Happened If There Was More Than One Spider-Man? This one's infamous. We don't need to talk about the length, or how tangled and convoluted it got, or how "It would have been profound if it hadn't been shanghaied by those fat cats upstairs!" Basically it's the same high concept as Knightfall, the big question is really "Why can only Peter Parker be Spider-Man?" and they never really seem to figure it out. Might it have been a good premise for a shorter story? Maybe, but as I've said, I don't think telling us who Pete could have been tells us much about Pete. But they show us anyway. If someone else was given Pete's memories and powers, would he still be Spider-Man? Would they essentially be the same person, with one just given the bad luck of not being the original? The answer seems to be yes, except the clone doesn't smack his wife around. The superhero antics are underscored by a current of existential questions that make both men reconsider their lives, until they decide that since Pete called dibs, Ben should wander off and become Spider-Ronin.
Wow.... I'm really sorry that just happened, guys. But there's no point in erasing it now.
XI: Why E Is Wrong, Part Two. Seriously This Time, Yo
Heh. Seriously. Sorry. Here's the thing, there's nothing special about the high concept of Spider-Island. It's just as insipid as any of the questions above. If you told any average joe off the streets the name or premise of the stories above, they could probably tell you what the message would be and how it would resolve itself. If you asked them "What would happen if everyone in New York got Spider-Man's powers?" they'd shrug and say "They wouldn't be Spider-Man". But here's the thing. The story isn't ABOUT that question. It's a question that gets cleanly resolved in the second issue. Slott gives us the premise in the prelude. "AN ISLAND OF SPIDERS!" In the first issue proper, he gives us the expected payoff. What happens when New York gets Spider-Man's power? Exactly what you'd expect. Some people say "Hey cool! What's this about?" and others exploit it. Yeah. We all saw that coming. Halfway through issue three, it's resolved. "What happens when New York gets spider powers and a gang of douches inevitably uses the situation to take advantage of others? Eventually people get sick of the injustice and do something about it." The bit with Pete being the one to give his power and responsibility speech, outside his costume, is a nice little wrinkle on the formula, if a little sentimental, but the outcome is inevitable to anyone who knew the premise. And we're not even a third of the way through. Here's the thing. We've been conditioned as readers to expect a formula out of events. The publisher provides us with a pretentious question we already know the answer to that's supposed to explain to us why this character matters, then we slog through seven issues of them laboring for ways to stretch it into a story. But that's not the point. Slott isn't interested in the question of "What would happen if ordinary people got spider powers?" He knows the answer to that question and he knows his audience does too. He goes through the motions. He shows us the bad guys being dicks. He shows us the regular guys being ambivalent. He shows us Pete saving the day, but even then, they're resolved before the event is even a third over, and they take back seats to characterization. Ordinary people getting powers isn't the core of the story. It's a backdrop for the story, a vehicle for the story. And it's a premise that Slott recognizes as silly, and he gleefully embraces that silliness. A few pages after Pete gives his speech, JJ is giving his, you know, the big rallying cry that would normally come at the end of the event where some figure of respect and authority summarizes the event's sentimental theme in case we were too slow to get it and then explains how ordinary people are the REAL HEROES. And you can practically see Slott smirking and thumbing his nose at you. A few pages after that, we see these New Yorkers back to the routine, swinging their way through the city, just going back about their days, enjoying it while they can but knowing it's not going to stick around. Cuz this is just the ordinary sort of **** that happens in New York every day. And Pete's got this big grin on his face, Spider-Manning it up in public.
XII: So What IS the Point, You Smug ****? Characters, Yo. And The Loving Tapestry of Long Form Narrative
The point is, you should be invested in this story precisely because it
isn't weak writing. It's the opposite of weak writing. The dialogue is crisp and clever. As stated in the last bit, it's a pretty sharp reversal of the event format we ALWAYS SEE. And even when he goes through the motions of fulfilling those expectations, the writing is sharp and there are clever little wrinkles that make you smile. How you could call this writing bad after having read it is beyond me. From a perspective of dialogue, it's as good as Slott's has ever been, and from a perspective of narrative, it's dense and complicated. It's not the story of New York getting spider powers. It's the story of what happens when these characters who Dan Slott has lovingly created or nurtured are put in a situation where they either have powers or are surrounded by people with powers. And for everyone in this (absolutely huge) cast, he manages to spin it in a compelling and believable way.
- What happens when Peter's girl gets powers? (Canuck has mentioned this, but for the sake of completion....) She's a gin-you-wine hero. After spending her first few years as one of "the new girls" in ASM, and a particularly underdeveloped milquetoast of one at that, she's really started to develop into something special as a character. I look at her in this story and I'm like, "Aw yeah, Pete! You go, you imaginary character! This is just the girl you deserve!" It's a smart and believable evolution for the character and while there's that underlying melodrama of Pete seeing his lady in danger when he clearly has background issues with that, it's not overstated, and it's conflicted with this clear and equally understated sense of pride he has in her playing the hero. It's a clear relationship turning point and a compelling one, and that's all due to the strength of the narrative Slott has been writing since he started.
- What happens when Norah Winters sees the city in pandemonium? She runs into the thick of it and she drags her boyfriend Robbie. What happens when her incognito Hobgoblin stalker finds out? He snaps. What happens when Robbie gets powers? He beats ass then stomps out on her. And now what could have been a tired love triangle is instead a pairing of two of the cast's slimiest characters. It's not a conflict that got that much build up, but it's a believable and interesting outcome given the implicit characterization that led into it.
- JJJ is JJJ, and we wouldn't want it any other way. I think CC is being a little dramatic. Jonah briefly with spider powers isn't really a great irony and it's not something that's going to change anything, but it's a cute little gag and Slott still manages to slide some interesting wrinkles to the formula. Jonah's approval sinking as Spidey's rises, then having his own climb back up as there's suddenly a use for his ridiculous investments of city funds into "spider slayers" is a clever little reversal of a joke that's been going on for ages. It's refreshing to see him still finding powers distasteful in the wake of the epidemic, and refreshing to see him as the one sane man in the craziness.
- MJ, well... Too early to say.
- And as for Peter, his own conflict at the heart of it is interesting, but again implicit, at once relieved at the thought of being normal in an abnormal world, on the other hand, worried about his lady and still duty-bound to uphold order.
You should care about this story not because of the central conceit but in spite of it. Slott gives us a story the premise of which we initially roll our eyes at, convinced that we can predict exactly what will happen but surprising us by having all the varying members of the cast react in surprising but totally believable fashions.
Why should you care? Because he takes a silly concept and isn't afraid to be silly with it. He lets the inherently hammy characters like the central villains and Anti-Venom be hammy. He lets the Avengers be blaise because this is just another day in the city for them. And in a crossover which necessitates crossover with the greater universe, he still lets his ensemble cast take center stage, from Carlie and MJ to Jameson, to the Horizon cats. Because, despite everything you say about it being cliched and redundant, it's a story that isn't afraid to surprise you. It's a story that pretends to be about Manhattan infected with Spider-Men, then becomes a story about Manhattan infected with mutant spiders. It has Spider-Man fighting crooks back to back with Mayor Jameson on one page and then Jameson tearing open the neck of the villain who killed his wife with mayor mandibles a few pages later. It's a story prefaced by omens that surprises you with its light-heartedness, enough to make you forget the promises of gloom and doom, then whiplashes you into suddenly believing things are getting to get genuinely ugly. It's a story where the genuinely interesting web of lies (Again! Hah!) Peter Parker has been weaving to his various friends and associates begin to fringe and you're forced to believe there might
actually be consequences. And Slott makes you care enough about his newest relationship to actually kind of want Carlie to find out. I don't know how the story's going to end. By which I mean, yes, the city will revert to normal and yes, Spider-Man will still be Spider-Man, but I care enough about the characters to know how these relationships will have changed by the end of it. You should care because it's a good story, a well written story, a story with an ensemble cast of believable characters who have been lovingly crafted then sent to interesting places. You should like it because sometimes there's a lot more to a story than its tag line, and a lot more to a character than geek prejudices about what types of stories are and aren't appropriate.
XIII: And the Tie-Ins Are Good Too
The tie-ins are good too!
