Showing posts with label Brand New Day. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Brand New Day. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Ten Reasons "One More Day" Is the Worst Spider-Man Story Ever

#1 - Continuity, Shmontinuity

The biggest thing wrong with "One More Day" is that it throws at least twenty years of Spider-Man continuity out the window. Ask Joe Quesada or even Dan Slott and they'll tell you that it doesn't. That every story is still completely intact. That it all still happened, only people remember it differently. Well, that argument falls apart after examining a couple of the key new developments of "Brand New Day". Even accepting the memory change, things simply could not have happened exactly as the last twenty years worth of Spider-Man comics says they did and still arrived at "Brand New Day."

First off, Spidey's organic web shooters. After mutating into a giant spider, he managed to revert to human form but retained the ability to shoot webs without the aid of his mechanical shooters. If that all still happened exactly the same way, then why does Spider-Man need the web shooters again? Does he still have the organic webbing ability, he just doesn't remember he has it? Or does he not have it anymore, which would mean that the story in which he got the ability never took place?

Harry Osbourne. Is he back from the dead or did he never die? Or did he die and people just don't remember that he died so the Harry walking around now is simply a figment of everyone's imagination?

What about all the people who knew Spider-Man's secret identity, even those who learned it before Civil War? How can those characters still have the same relationship with Spidey when they suddenly forget who he is? (Side Rant: And aren't people like Dr. Strange and Charles Xavier going to question why they suddenly had one particular memory erased? It's not as if they never knew, as the first issue of "Brand New Day' states that Spider-Man did in fact unmask during the Civil War, but now for some reason no one remembers his name or what his face looks like. They seriously aren't going to try to get to the bottom of that?)

Those are only a few examples. There are many more continuity questions raised by "One More Day" and the resulting "Brand New Day". What parts of Spider-Man's history have been changed? What parts are the same? The story opens up that last twenty years of continuity and allows any writer to go in and change anything they see fit and simply point to "One More Day" when a fan asks for an explanation. I didn't like it when DC did it with Infinite Crisis and I certainly don't like it when it happens to my favorite character.

Ten Reasons "One More Day" Is the Worst Spider-Man Story Ever

#3 - Who Ordered the Single Spider-Man?

The average comic book reader is 20-25 years old. The average age a which child learns to read is five years old. Do the math and that means that the majority of people who're reading new issues of Spider-Man now (not back issues, trades, or reprints) and have been for any extended period have been reading married Spider-Man the entire time. (That's exactly where I fit in, by the way.) Mary Jane is a huge part of the Spider-Man mythos to these readers. So who were the readers calling for her to get the boot? I'm not saying they don't exist, but I don't recall reading or hearing about it. Except, of course, in interviews with Joe Quesada. He's always been clear that he wanted Mary Jane out of the picture. Now, I understand that Quesada runs the Marvel Comics and that he can do what ever he wants, but surely there must be some impetus for drastically changing a character's history other than Joe Quesada wanted it to happen. With fan backlash and even one of the most well respected writers in the business telling him it was a bad idea, he must've had a damn good reason to go through with it.

There's two main reasons, that I can think of, for doing something in comics:
1-It's what the fans want. Give people what they ask for, they'll pay money for it.
2-There's a good story in it. Even if people criticize at first, if the resulting story turns out to be good they'll enjoy it.

Well, "One More Day" certainly wasn't what the majority of Spider-Man fans wanted. That said, there had better be some damn good stories coming out of the newly established "Brand New Day" status quo.