Termite (Sequential) Art: Spider-Man: One More Day

Yeah, it's a film blog. Guess what: I like comics too.

Written by J. Michael Straczynski and Joe Quesada
Illustrated by Joe Quesada with Danny Miki

The greatest villainy in all of comics, the fiendish "illusion of change" strikes again, and this time it's erasing some twenty-odd years of continuity. In one misguided, poorly written, and downright upsetting storyline, all those decades of stories, including many of my personal favorites, have vanished as if they never happened in the first place. The reason seems clear, at least to me: in the eyes of some, Spider-Man was getting a bit too manly.

Editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics, Joe Quesada has, for years, argued that a married Spider-Man/Peter Parker (as the character has been since the late 1980s, when he wedded longtime girlfriend Mary Jane Watson) is less viable than a single Spider-Man/Peter Parker. A while back, Quesada helped launch the "Ultimate" line of comics, stripped-down versions of popular Marvel properties with streamlined continuity with no ties to the regular Marvel Universe. In other words, while the Amazing Spider-Man could remain married to Mary Jane the Ultimate Spider-Man was a high school teen dating Mary Jane (and other girls) for the first time. For readers like myself, it was a superb arrangement. The books were different but both, thanks to writers J. Michael Straczynski and Brian Michael Bendis, respectively, were good reads. One would have thought this an ideal compromise, particularly because it doubles the amount of money the company can get out of a rube like me.

The situation probably could have gone on forever were it not for one Sam Raimi and his remarkably successful and popular films about your friendly neighborhood wallcrawler. Suddenly the Spider-Man most familiar to people isn't the one gracing the monthly pages of Marvel Comics; it's the one gracing the biannual silver screens of multiplexes around the world. And that Spider-Man isn't married, has never been married. Now, in addition to whatever personal preference Quesada might have held, there was a clear commercial imperative for a breakup: the move alligns the world of the comics with the world of the films. At the end of One More Day, the story that tells the end of Peter and Mary Jane's marriage, Spider-Man's world has literally been transformed all around him, into one that looks remarkably like the one Raimi presented onscreen. In the final scene of Part 4, for example, Aunt May's house in Queens looks exactly like the one from the first two films, right down to the stairwell just behind the kitchen table. That sort of synergy has got to be good for business. From that perspective, the move makes a whole lot of sense.

From a story perspective, not so much. The concept Quesada and Straczynski cooked up to break the two apart is truly a bizarre one. It spins out of Marvel's recent Civil War series, where a new law required all super-heroes to surrender their identity to the federal government. Peter Parker revealed his secret on national television, but later decided to rebel against the so-called Super-Hero Registration Act, turning him and his family into fugitives. While on the run from both friends and enemies, a sniper aiming for Peter accidentally shoots Aunt May instead. In One More Day, Peter learns that Aunt May's injuries are fatal and there is nothing medical science can do for her. Feeling responsible for her impending death (just as he still feels responsible for his Uncle Ben's death years earlier), he seeks supernatural assistance and eventually encounters Mephisto, the Marvel Comics version of Satan. He offers Peter a choice: Aunt May's life for his marriage to Mary Jane. After a couple of pages of half-hearted hand-wringing the deal is done, the history of the world is rewritten and now it is as if Peter and MJ were never hitched at all (and as if Peter had never told Aunt May he was Spider-Man, and so on).

What might be most galling in this entire sordid affair is the fact that this storyline was pitched to readers as a grand send-off to Straczynski, the creator of Babylon 5 and the regular monthly writer of Amazing Spider-Man since 2000. After years of stories so dreadful even I, hardcore Spidey fan that I am, stopped reading the series, Straczynski gave the book a renewed sense of purpose and its central character a clear, expressive voice. Most importantly, he was willing (some might say too willing) to push Peter Parker in new directions. He eliminated most of Peter's time at the Daily Bugle, where he'd spent decades as a freelance photographer and set him up as a science teacher at his alma mater, Midtown High School. He pushed the character through an otherworldly metamorphosis (in a storyline called "The Other") giving him enhanced powers. Most significantly, he finally revealed Peter's secret identity to his Aunt May (this was prior to the series of events where he ripped off his mask in front of the entire world). As part of the bargain with Mephisto, all of these changes were wiped away, as if they'd never happened in the first place.

For better or worse — and, without question, Straczynski's run, particularly in the last couple years, had some lackluster moments — Straczynski's Spider-Man was one that ventured into new territory and explored new avenues. The status quo established at the end of One More Day by Quesada and his new writers is a deliberate return to the past. Even ignoring the troubling moral implications of having your company's most popular super-hero make a literal deal with the devil, the story establishes a new continuity that is not only old-fashioned, it completely erases the accomplishments of a particularly progressive writer. What kind of happy send off is that? The final page of Amazing Spider-Man #545 is stacked with quotes from J.M.S.' peers, celebrating his achievements on the book. This is the proverbial gold watch; he's barely out the door and they've already made it so he never even existed.

The obvious disconnect between the editorial intent and the writer's was made unusually clear during a rather candid message board post written recently by Straczynski in response to widespread displeasure with One More Day. He'd actually asked to have his name removed from this so-called "tribute":

"...there's a lot that I don't agree with, and I made this very clear to everybody within shouting distance at Marvel, especially [Quesada]. I'll be honest: there was a point where I made the decision, and told [Quesada], that I was going to take my name off the last two issues of the One Mre Day arc. Eventually [Quesada] talked me out of that decision because at the end of the day, I don't want to sabotage [Quesada] or Marvel, and I have a lot of respect for both of those."

Quesada responded by insisting that Straczynski knew full well what sort of story he was getting hired to write, and that they disagreed only in the particulars and not in the execution. He also explains that a lot of their differences grew out of the fact that much of One More Day's ending had to be rewritten to reflect the new Spider-Man books that were already being produced months before the series actually finished; to change the conclusion now would mean to scrap months of already completed work. Once again, it's a decision that makes perfect business sense and terrible story sense.


But then narrative corners were cut anywhere Quesada (and, yes, Straczynski) could. One More Day is a four issue story in which the first full issue (cover price $3.99) is little more than a well-illustrated prologue. According to the title ("One More Day"), this is a story about what someone does with the love of their life when they have only one more day to spend with each other. Straczynski and Quesada's space management is so bad, and the execution so poorly botched, that we don't actually get to see what Peter and Mary Jane would do with the day. Even if you resigned yourself to the story's outcome; heck, even if you wanted to see it because you agreed with Quesada's rationale, you couldn't even savor that last day the title promised because it wasn't in the book.

Now Amazing Spider-Man takes off in a new — or rather old, but made to look contemporary — direction with a host of new writers (the series will now appear three times a month, replacing the prior format where Amazing was joined by sister series Sensational and Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man). They will attempt to pick up the pieces and move on. These stories may be good. But if fan reaction remains as negative as mine (and if you do a Google search for "Spider-Man" "One More Day" and "sucks" you'll see what I mean) the comics franchise could be in long-term trouble. This shameless deus ex machina wiped away decades of stories in a single stroke, but the creators following it may find the damage caused in its wake a bit harder to erase.

Another Tale of Spidey and The Electric Company

Long-time Termite Art readers will remember when, tracing the roots of my lifelong love of Spider-Man, I got a copy of The Best of the Electric Company DVD and discovered an episode where Spidey helps the New York Mets win a baseball game, thereby connecting multiple obsessions to one source.

Anyway, this year at San Diego Comic-Con, I bought myself something of a lavish present: a really nice piece of original art from the Electric Company comic book, Spidey's Super Stories. Here's what the piece looked like in print (the actual artwork is out being framed):


And to make an even better display piece, I bought a copy of the issue, Spidey Super Stories #8, to mount on the wall next to it. My piece is that back cover, but if you're curious, here's the eye-catching front, which promises groovy music and a subterranean villain with bad eyesight (needless to say the comic delivers all that and more):


So out of curiosity I'm flipping through the issue. And what do I find but an adaptation of the very same TEC episode where Spidey hangs with the Metropolitans and foils the incredibly asinine machinations of The Wall, a super-villains whose power is limited to being made of bricks. How did he get this power you ask? A bunch of bricks fell on him of course! Remember that, kids, when things fall on you, you become them. Yeah this is great reading material for children.

But who cares about the incredible lameness! Because now I have a print version of this:


Amazing! Hey Spidey -- what do you say? Do you want the Mets to get A-Rod?


Er. Okay...you could go, like, fight crime or something too y'know. Dude, when did Spider-Man become such a layabout?

My Spider-Man 3 Review

In case you're dying to know what I thought of Spidey 3 (and I'm sure you are), my review for The Reeler is up right now. Get clicking!

(You can also read R.'s review of something I've never heard of called Civic Duty over there too!)

Spider-Man: The Musical?!?

For anyone who heard this week's announcement that Marvel is planning a musical version of Spider-Man and wondered, "How bad could it be?"

This is how bad:



Oy.

Termite Games: Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects (2005)

Pretty much the only video games I have time for at this stage of my life are the ones based on the comic books of my youth, which are also the comic books of my immature adulthood. Basically if the game has Spider-Man in it, I have to play it. And so I rented the awkwardly titled, awkwardly constructed and awkward-to-play Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects.

Essentially, this is a fighting game that lets you (and a buddy, if you're the sort of nerd that has other nerd friends) beat the crap out of each other as an assortment of Marvel heroes and villains, along with a roster of characters created by Electronic Arts specifically for the game. Most of the EA characters are thinly veiled doppelgangers of the Marvels; for instance you've got some doof named Hazmat, formerly Dr. Keith Kilham (!!!), who injected himself with five different untested vaccines to survive a chemical attack by terrorists and eventually turned into a green guy who swings around on lines and crawls on the walls just like Spider-Man. Solara is basically a female version of The Human Torch, Johnny Ohm has electricity powers like Storm, Brigade is a big tough guy like The Thing, and so on. Paragon, who is sort of the focus of the story (more on that in a second) is not only a rip off of one of the Marvel characters (Wolverine) but also of the Top Cow character Witchblade, who she looks like almost exactly.

Look, I'm all for a game where I can play as a whole mess of characters and though I'd rather play with established guys I know, I'm not against the concept of these "Imperfects" (though their name sure says it all, doesn't it?). But by showing a total lack of creativity in "original" characters, by piggybacking off the Marvel guys that are already playable in the game, you're basically cutting the amount of different playable guys in half. And would you rather play as the real Spider-Man or the crappy guy you've never heard of that acts just like him and looks like Ecto Cooler colored ass? Exactly.


Though the characters are somewhat lacking (the full Marvel roster tops out at ten: Thing, Wolverine, Elektra, Daredevil, Storm, Venom, Spider-Man, Human Torch, Iron Man, and Magneto), the fighting's pretty good. The characters' moves are somewhat limited but they're well-animated, and attention has been paid to their unique attributes and styles. For my money, a few of these characters — particularly Daredevil, who's a karate-fighting, billy-club-throwing badass — have never been better represented, or fun to play as, in a video game. Once you get the hang of it, it's pretty enjoyable to land in one of the seven different arenas and pummel some poor Imperfect into submission. Most of the in-game artwork is by Jae Lee, and man do I loves me some Jae Lee comics. The character design is pretty good too, though most of the women are alarmingly whored up. Here's Storm, who has worn some pretty slutty outfits in comics, but never anything this bad:


Can you imagine trying to stop an alien invasion wearing nothing by a thong? What happens if someone shoots you in the butt? Should that be EXTRA protected instead of less well-protected than normal? Yikes. She is going to catch a cold dressing like that. A cold, and possibly herpes.

Anyway, the game's creators make only a couple of characters available when you pop the Marvel Nemesis in for the first time; the rest you need to unlock by playing the odious "story mode," and here is where the game really begins to stink. First off, calling it "story mode" is generous; if this shambolic collections of cutscenes assembled seemingly at random were a comic, it would certainly the worst comic ever made in the history of the world. From what I could gather — and some of this is probably conjecture — a well-dressed but eeeeeevil scientist whose skin is covered in lacquer named Niles Van Roekel wishes to create a new army, and so creates the Imperfects. Meanwhile, simultaneously, a loose collection of Marvel's heroes (the ones listed above) stumble onto an alien invasion of Earth. Their plan? To wander around between the same seven locations (there's only seven different levels remember), punching every alien they come across. Eventually either they'll punch all the aliens back to their home planet or they'll die. TREMBLE IN ANTICIPATION GAMERS!

Since progressing through the story unlocks the characters (most of the good ones too, like the aforementioned Hornhead, plus Iron Man and Thong Song Storm), you're sort of beholden to trudge through to the end, meeting the faceless, generic villainry head-on. You're not even allowed to select the hero you want to use; each hero is assigned to certain levels, and after you clear those, you'll pick up the adventure with a different guy. That's good when you get to a character who kinda stinks (like, say, Venom), but that means when you're using a character you really enjoy, you'll eventually have to put him down to replace him with a character who kind of stinks (like, say, Venom). Each time you beat all of a hero's missions you'll have to play as an Imperfect and defeat the Marvel hero, turning them eeeeeevil. Cause, you know, a ballet dancing woman who can create earthquakes with the giant syringes on her hands called Fault Zone could totally beat up The Human Torch.

Occassionally, your forward progress stops so you can play "training" levels with a Van Roekel experiment gone wrong named Paragon ("DAMN YOU VAN ROEKEL!!! DAMN YOU TO HELL!!"). She's basically the perfect Imperfect, and at the end of the game, the Marvel characters are completely abandoned, so that you can fight Van Roekel in his BAD GUY ROCKET ARMOR OF DOOM (TM) as Paragon. You do, he sucks, you kill him, and the game is over. There is no resolution for the Marvel characters, who, last we saw, were mostly mind-controlled and eeeeeeevil. As game resolutions go, this one's about as satisfying as a hard kick to the babymaker.


It's pretty frustrating; to really enjoy the fun part of the game you have to survive the masochistic tortures of the boring first player mode. Reading about the game online I see EA's planning a sequel to come out later this year. I am not looking forward to that. But you know I'll play it. It's bound to have Spider-Man in there.

We interrupt our regularly scheduled Don Siegel appreciation...

...to share this eerie story of childhood development.

Though I have no recollection of it, I have been told I was quite a fan of The Electric Company as a child. And recently I learned that my lifelong love of Spider-Man began with his guest appearances on TEC. So when The Best of The Electric Company arrived at The Voice I naturally had to take it home and see just what about it fascinated my 5-year-old mind.

The collection contains two episodes that feature Spidey. What I found in the second one blew my mind. In it, Spider-Man takes a day off from fighting crime and goes (in costume, go figure) to a New York Mets game.

(You may have noticed the various Mets web pages listed amongst the Termite Art links; that's because Sweeney and I are both Mets fans of somewhat obsessive proportions.)

Trying to uncover the roots of one obsession, I seem to have stumbled onto the key to all of them. Take a look for yourself:

I'm pretty sure I've had dreams that looked like this.

Imagine discovering the Rosetta Stone to your own life. Seriously: if Orson Welles was in this thing, you could pretty much seal up the nature vs. nuture debate permanently. But, alas, no Orson. Morgan Freeman does play an angry umpire though.

I began rethinking everything about myself while I watched this TEC: do I like hot dogs because Spidey likes hot dogs?

Do I shove hot dogs in strangers' faces because Spidey shoves hot dogs in strangers' faces?

The story makes absolutely no sense: the villain Spidey fights is called The Wall. He is...he is a man who looks a wall, and he moves into position to make a fly ball look like a home run. The Mets are made to look even more pathetic than they normally did in the late 1970s and The Wall, clearly a Braves fan, sabotages the Web-Crawler's favorite team. Uh oh. Spidey doesn't couch no cheaters, and neither does Morgan Freeman.

After some minor kid-friendly scuffling, the problem is solved (thanks, in part, to hot dogs), and the game can continue and we get our requisite happpy ending. And I'm left wondering: What else about me came from this show??? Until I solve that one true believers — keep reading! Take us out Spidey!