(no subject)
Nov. 19th, 2017 11:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sidewaysI've spent the last few weeks wandering into the world of actual big name comics. Prior to this I've only had short, selective dabbling under my belt: Watchmen, Matt Fraction's Hawkeye, some of the early Kamala Khan stuff, Saga (which I'm still following even though I'm getting tired of people dying all the time for no reason). It has therefore been a bit of a wild leap into the deep end to start poking around the literal dozens and dozens of titles connected to Spider-Man.
I've had fun with my browsing nonetheless! My secret is that I am ruthlessly willing to abandon anything that starts to bug me, and have subsequently been bouncing around all over the place. I've been a Spidey fan for a very long time, I know what I like, and I'm quite happy to enjoy the character as a general amalgamation rather than try to reconcile 50+ years of reboots, retcons, AUs, crossovers, and rotating writers. Plus I already have my favourite distillation in the Spectacular Spider-Man cartoon.
I will say I've found myself enjoying some of the classic comics more than I expected. They're a little hokey, sure, but there are a lot of cute character moments outside the obligatory villain of the issue/s and some pretty snappy writing too. I can see why Kraven's Last Hunt is so well-regarded for sure; it actually gave me weird sensory flashbacks to a comic issue I read as a child, about the Swamp Thing, I think? Similar dark, dramatic tone and art style. Meanwhile I am still cackling gleefully over the discovery that Peter once proposed to MJ with a pound of M&Ms, while she was in the middle of packing to leave on a mysterious trip and while they weren't even dating. His bafflement at her initial refusal is incredible. "But I introspected about this all day! What do you mean we aren't on the same page?" Truly the relatable everyman.
At the same time, this experience has done little to shake my opinion of big name western comics as an irredeemable shitshow. It has always been my belief that a story can have absolutely anything in it, but to be a story it needs a beginning, a middle, and an end. The nature of comics means there is no end, and the storytelling absolutely suffers for it the same way soap operas suffer. Victories are regularly undermined, tragedies pile up past the point of reasonable belief, and Peter never gets to age past 30 outside of a couple of AUs because it's impossible to keep the character development on a linear line. Throw in the constant changeover of writers/artists and the existence of multiple timelines and it's just...a mess. I loathe everything about the One More Day reboot, but I can understand the temptation to try and drag things back to their roots and start over fresh in an attempt to mop some of the chaos up. Unfortunately, it invariably just makes things more complicated.
On the upside, there is little chance of me running out of Spidey material any time soon, which has been a nice salve for a long-standing itch that fanfic has failed to scratch, since for years now 90% of the fics have been either Spideypool or Peter starring as a generic cute kid in a Tony/Steve setting. Oy.
I've had fun with my browsing nonetheless! My secret is that I am ruthlessly willing to abandon anything that starts to bug me, and have subsequently been bouncing around all over the place. I've been a Spidey fan for a very long time, I know what I like, and I'm quite happy to enjoy the character as a general amalgamation rather than try to reconcile 50+ years of reboots, retcons, AUs, crossovers, and rotating writers. Plus I already have my favourite distillation in the Spectacular Spider-Man cartoon.
I will say I've found myself enjoying some of the classic comics more than I expected. They're a little hokey, sure, but there are a lot of cute character moments outside the obligatory villain of the issue/s and some pretty snappy writing too. I can see why Kraven's Last Hunt is so well-regarded for sure; it actually gave me weird sensory flashbacks to a comic issue I read as a child, about the Swamp Thing, I think? Similar dark, dramatic tone and art style. Meanwhile I am still cackling gleefully over the discovery that Peter once proposed to MJ with a pound of M&Ms, while she was in the middle of packing to leave on a mysterious trip and while they weren't even dating. His bafflement at her initial refusal is incredible. "But I introspected about this all day! What do you mean we aren't on the same page?" Truly the relatable everyman.
At the same time, this experience has done little to shake my opinion of big name western comics as an irredeemable shitshow. It has always been my belief that a story can have absolutely anything in it, but to be a story it needs a beginning, a middle, and an end. The nature of comics means there is no end, and the storytelling absolutely suffers for it the same way soap operas suffer. Victories are regularly undermined, tragedies pile up past the point of reasonable belief, and Peter never gets to age past 30 outside of a couple of AUs because it's impossible to keep the character development on a linear line. Throw in the constant changeover of writers/artists and the existence of multiple timelines and it's just...a mess. I loathe everything about the One More Day reboot, but I can understand the temptation to try and drag things back to their roots and start over fresh in an attempt to mop some of the chaos up. Unfortunately, it invariably just makes things more complicated.
On the upside, there is little chance of me running out of Spidey material any time soon, which has been a nice salve for a long-standing itch that fanfic has failed to scratch, since for years now 90% of the fics have been either Spideypool or Peter starring as a generic cute kid in a Tony/Steve setting. Oy.
