Tales from the Longbox #22: "One More Day"!

[Negative Zero]

Protoclown,

Your Tales from the Longbox reviews are awesome.
I love both comics and MST3K, so your reviews are spectacular. I like knowing which comics I'm missing, especially if they're bad. Keep up the great work.

I've never read Spiderman, but am familiar with him from working at a comic book store. What really sucks about Quesada is what he's done in general to Marvel's bigger franchises (M-Day for X-Men is particularly bad). I liked that he brought in high-profile writers and trimmed down unnecessary books at first (JMS for Spiderman, Grant Morrison and Chris Claremont in X-Men, etc), but after a while it's like he gets impatient with steady sales and decides to drop a bomb on us all.

The worst thing, though, is that clearly Marvel needs to capitalize on the popularity of the movies to build their fanbase. They didn't seem to mind the whole Back In Black storyline to coincide with Spiderman 3. If that's the case, why the hell would Quesada split up MJ and Peter, when in the movie they're on the verge of marriage? Any new reader of Spiderman will be annoyed (and hopefully, put off) by this storyline, and of course the hardcore fan will perform voodoo on Quesada.

As far as Aunt May is concerned, I totally agree. You don't want to mess with too much of Spiderman's core (like his costume or attitude), things that define the character's look and appeal. His relationships should evolve, and Aunt May, however beloved, needs to go. If Quesada wanted to rock the boat and do something interesting (and non-sucky), he should've killed her off.

Quesada's worst sin is the cheapness of it all. 20 years vs. 1 month just doesn't cut it. Instead of a realistic treatment of people separating or divorcing, we get a lazy Faust idea. Why not spend the time to make us believe something of this scale could happen? Who really feels glad that Aunt May is alive now? If they had reversed the roles of Aunt May and MJ in this story, it would've automatically become 10 times better.

I know stories like this get reversed all the time, and even though that can be a cheap thrill, it's not unusual. But we know that Quesada takes bad ideas and forces them to stick. Poor Spidey.

[Protoclown]

Sarcastro: Dave, that was brilliant! Seems to me we have to get you a new job at Marvel...

BakaGaijin: Wow, the Venture Bros reference seems totally obvious now, and looking back on it, I absolutely heard him saying the caption just like Orpheus. But like I said, it was totally subconscious. Thanks to the Venture Bros, I absolutely cannot read Dr. Strange's dialog without hearing it in the Dr. Orpheus voice (so he's become like ten times cooler than he used to be, and I've always liked ol' Doc Strange). So yeah, I've gotten to the point where I just think Strange talks like that and I don't even link it back to Dr. Orpheus anymore.

Sniperwulf: I doubt I'll be doing anything on "Messiah Complex". I've actually been enjoying it, so I don't think it's worth ripping apart in a Longbox column, but Max has a Weekly review of it coming up very soon. I disagree with his review, so I'm sure I'll post my thoughts in that comment thread when it pops up.

Negative Zero: I totally dig what you're saying about this alienating new readers rather than drawing them in. Sometimes I get the impression that Joe Quesada and Dan Didio over at DC are having a running contest to see who can implement the most horrible ideas. So far I think Joe is winning, but given Dan's record he could easily turn things around in his favor.

And in other news, today at my comic shop all the copies of the first "Brand New Day" issue were damaged by Diamond Distributors so there weren't any on the shelf. I had to laugh.

However, there WERE variant covers behind the counter that had $20 price tags, and one guy actually bought one in my presence. I so wanted to slap it out of his hand.