FROM THE LONGBOXES: Amazing Spider-Man #30-35 by JMS & JRJr – Part III

SOME FINAL THOUGHTS

One of the best things about J. Michael Straczynski’s run on Amazing Spider-Man (at least up to the point I stopped reading, which was when JRJr left the book and Mike Deodato came on as artist) was his characterization of Peter Parker. JMS had a firm hold on what makes this character tick.  Despite being older, Peter is still a person who takes very seriously his responsibility to his family (Aunt May and, though she is gone at this point, Mary Jane) as well as his responsibility, as Spider-Man, to the populace at large.  This does not mean his exploits as Spider-Man are not nerve-wracking.  This is why Spidey has always been a wise-cracker, spewing ridiculous jokes to cover up the fear he feels. It’s a common defense mechanism and one that has been a part of this character from the start.  And JMS’s dialogue smoothly fits into this aspect of the character. 

JMS also has Peter moving forward in his civilian life, having him become a science teacher at his old high school, as another way for him to give back to the community.  This is a natural extension of the Spider-Man template set forth by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko back in the early sixties where they had him graduate high school, move on to college, and have evolving relationships with the likes of Betty Brant and Gwen Stacy. Again, it fits the character and is a nice way of “showing” readers who Peter Parker/Spider-Man is rather than telling us through some dull expository caption boxes.  It’s a subtle bit of storytelling that too few writers in comics miss out on, even today.

The pacing of this story is also excellent.  There’s an ebb and flow to the narrative that allows readers to enjoy the story and experience the emotional crescendos when they arrive.  One of the best bits of writing advice I’ve gotten came from the DVD commentary by JMS for the final episode of season one of Babylon 5.  He discussed how one should have a quiet moment prior to a major disruption in the narrative – whether it be an emotional disruption or an alien attack or whatever – in order to make that emotional instance resonate with the audience.  And JMS deftly weaves the quiet moments with the “big” ones in this storyline. 

Straczynski also sets things up nicely.  He doesn’t have any resolutions come out of left field.  The way Spider-Man defeats Morlun is reached through a natural progression of events, none of which feels forced or hackneyed.  The way Morlun goes on about feeding on a pure totemistic host, and Ezekiel’s surprise arrival that catches the villain off-guard and bloodies his nose – offering Peter an opportunity to study what manner of creature Morlun is – all make sense and feel like the events they are (the villain monologuing, Ezekiel helping Peter) before you realize that they have secondary consequences (the opportunity for Peter to survive this primal force).  It’s wonderful storytelling.

And that brings me to another aspect JMS brought to his initial storyline.  He incorporated Peter’s scientific background when he had Peter take Morlun’s blood and analyze it for a possible way of defeating him.  This is something I have rarely seen utilized in Spider-Man comics.  It was refreshing.  This has always been a cornerstone of the character, and yet it is hardly used within the stories.  Peter’s webs were originally created by him, a scientific breakthrough that he tried to sell to some scientists way back in issue # 18 – a deal that fell through when they discovered the webs dissolved in minutes. 

Yeah, editors have made his webs organic – actually an extension of Peter and emanating from his wrists – and I can’t say where the “continuity” stands on this aspect right now, and I’d rather not think about that.  Ugh.

Bringing this aspect back into the book, accentuated by Peter’s decision to become a science teacher at his former high school, was something I greatly appreciated.

And John Romita, Jr’s artwork has never looked as good, in my opinion.  He draws a lithe, ballet-like Spider-Man who is wiry and able to contort his body in a manner reminiscent of a spider and, again, a body type that hearkens back to Steve Ditko’s seminal work. 

AN HISTORICAL NOTE:  Initially, Jack Kirby was tapped to draw Spider-Man and he finished five pages of an initial story.  But Stan Lee discarded that and chose to have Ditko draw the book.  He obviously made the right choice.  I don’t know the reasoning, but it seems to me that Kirby’s blocky style really would not fit with the character of Peter Parker – a teenage bookworm with a slight physical frame – whereas Ditko’s lithe artwork was a perfect match for the young hero. 

JRJr knows how to draw comics, especially action-packed ones like Spider-Man.  And he does not disappoint here.  When Spidey first faces Morlun, the double-page spread we get from JRJr is fantastic, a whirlwind of these two larger-than-life characters pummeling each other.  It’s a collage of images without panel borders that gets across the frenetic pace of the battle.  It really is a masterfully drawn spread that showcases the unique properties of comics storytelling. 

But, though this may not be his strong suit, JRJr can also evoke emotion from the quieter moments of the story.  It’s these moments that help punctuate the action and give it the emotional tenor necessary in a story like this.  Thankfully, JRJr is not afraid to let these softer moments breathe within the larger narrative.  He understands, better than a lot of artists, how to tell a comic story effectively and give readers a full and satisfying experience.  Having a veteran of his stature, who can also hit deadlines, on this book with JMS was a good move on Marvel’s part. It really elevated the first half of Straczynski’s tenure as writer on Amazing Spider-Man and is a major reason why this first storyline won the 2002 Eisner award for best serialized story.

And finally – JMS went there.  He finally had Aunt May discover that her nephew is Spider-Man.  And the way JMS handled that was brilliant. 

But that’s best saved for another time.

-chris

To read more of Chris’s thoughts or to check out his short prose and comic work, go to www.warrior27.com, the online home for the comics/prose anthology, Warrior27, created by Chris and by Dan Fleming – with contributions from Matthew J. Constantine (half of In the Mouth of Dorkness), among others.

FROM THE LONGBOXES: Amazing Spider-Man #30-35 by JMS & JRJr – Part II

NOTE:  SPOILERS AHEAD!  BIG TIME!

First go read part I, then come back.

Okay. 

Peter, bloodied and severely bruised, goes to Ezekiel to accept the offer of sanctuary this enigmatic businessman with eerily similar spider powers had proffered earlier.  But it is too late.  Morlun has touched Spidey and can now track him no matter where he hides.  And, despite having extra-normal powers  – or maybe for that very reason – Ezekiel declines to assist Peter in his battle with Morlun.  If he did that, Morlun would be able to latch onto his scent, as he’s done to Peter, and he would come after Ezekiel next to leech him of his own totemistic powers.  Ezekiel has too much to lose.  He can’t forsake all he’s amassed for a fool’s errand. 

So Spider-Man returns to the maw of destruction created by Morlun, and he must save a young child from this primal force of nature before going on the attack with his fists and his webbing.   Nothing stops Morlun, and Peter realizes he needs to get some breathing room.  But he stays within his enemy’s field of vision so that Morlun will remain fixed on the prize and not go after anyone else. 

But first, in a nice touch by JMS, Peter calls the school to tell them he won’t be in.  Too often, questions within the hero’s private lives (such as why would Clark Kent not be missed from the Daily Planet if he was off in space for weeks at a time as Superman) are never confronted, let alone answered.  Having Peter do this in the middle of a battle not only firmly establishes this new status quo in Peter’s life, but it is also another example of JMS exhibiting Peter’s conscientiousness, which is a hallmark of the character. 

Then the battle continues, with Morlun devastating Spider-Man in his relentless onslaught.  Hardly able to move, after Morlun smashes him into a building with a lamppost, Spider-Man snags the bumper of a car with his webbing and lets it drag him along the paved road in order to get away, if only for a moment.  Once he’s put some distance between himself and Morlun, Peter takes a moment to call Aunt May and tell her how much he loves her.  He realizes it may be the last opportunity he has to do this.

And then Morlun is on him again, driving Spidey toward the docks.

But out of nowhere, Ezekiel knocks Morlun down from behind.  With the enemy momentarily confused, Spidey and Ezekiel pour it on, bloodying Morlun’s nose before he regains his edge and sucks the energy from Ezekiel, who falls into the bay.  Morlun, having quenched a bit of his thirst, leaves Spider-Man to look for his friend, content in the certainty that he will feed on him soon enough.  And he returns to his aide, Dexter – a human liaison who wished to be close to power and has been helping Morlun make his way through New York – in order to prepare for the final battle.

But this altercation gives Peter something he hadn’t had before.  He takes the bloodied timber from the dock and examines it at home.  In so doing, he discovers that Morlun’s cells are made up of an amalgam of every kind of animal cell – the purest forms of DNA Peter’s ever seen.  That is why Morlun needs to feed on a pure totemistic life-form, so that he can recharge those cells before they break down. 

And that’s the key for Peter.  He needs to dilute the purity of his Spider powers.  To do that, he considers seriously Ezekiel’s earlier question:  “Which came first, the radiation or the power?”  Which is to say, did the radiation give the spider the power with which Peter was infected, or did the spider already have that totemistic power and inject Peter with it when it knew the radiation was going to kill it?

So, Peter injects himself with that same radiation, in order to dilute his totemistic purity and give Morlun something poisonous to feed on instead.  And when Morlun tries to take Peter’s spider force, he burns with the radiation.  Spider-Man now has a weapon, and with every punch he pours more radiation into Morlun – weakening him, changing him, making him vulnerable. 

As Peter pounds on Morlun, he realizes that just defeating him isn’t enough.  Morlun is a primal force that cannot be stopped in any conventional manner.  Only through such an extreme scenario as this one, in which Peter injects himself with a near-lethal dose of radiation, is there any hope of defeating him. 

Peter realizes Morlun must die.  But can he do it?

And then Dexter, Morlun’s aide, comes out of the shadows and shoots him, wrenching the decision away from Peter.  Part of Dexter’s services to Morlun included providing sustenance for the centuries-old vampiric being.  It may have made Dexter feel important at first, but it hurt – a lot – and the toll it took on him was overwhelming.  So, seeing his opportunity to be free, Dexter takes it.

And we, and Peter, will never know if he would have made that ultimate choice.  It is a question that will haunt Peter for a long time, and it’s a perfect, emotional ending for this initial story from JMS and JRJr. 

Except that this wasn’t the end.  There still needs to be a cliffhanger, a reason for readers to come back and buy the next issue.  There has to be the denouement.  And JMS provided one helluva denouement.

When Peter had called Aunt May earlier to tell her he loved her, she had offered to pick up his clothes and take them to the cleaners.  But, with Morlun on his trail, he didn’t have time to answer then. 

So Aunt May decides to go to Peter’s and pick up his clothes – always wanting to do for her nephew, it makes complete sense.  Peter is sleeping, and had taken no time to put away his tattered costume when he arrived home earlier.  He is so exhausted from his battle with Morlun, that his spider sense does not warn him of Aunt May’s arrival. 

And she sees his bloodied body and his Spider-Man costume, and realization hits her like a lightning bolt from a clear sky. 

But that story is reserved for another day.

-chris

To read more of Chris’s thoughts or to check out his short prose and comic work, go to www.warrior27.com, the online home for the comics/prose anthology, Warrior27, created by Chris and by Dan Fleming – with contributions from Matthew J. Constantine (half of In the Mouth of Dorkness), among others.

Nic Cage is The Amazing Spider-Man

Can't wait to hit up Comic Con next week and see Nicolas Cage promoting his take on The Amazing Spider-Man, he is gonna go all Port of Call New Orleans on Stan Lee's creation.  "Till The Break of Dawn!!!!"  In all serious, I just saw this over at Live For Films and I just lost it.  Too darn funny.  Thanks for setting the mood for my awesome Sunday.

--Brad

FROM THE LONGBOXES: Amazing Spider-Man #30-35 by JMS & JRJr – PART I

In 2001, Marvel decided to make a big splash with their books and re-energize a number of titles.  These included New X-Men from Grant Morrison & Frank Quitely, Daredevil from Brian Michael Bendis & Alex Maleev, and Amazing Spider-Man from J. Michael Straczynski & John Romita, Jr.  It was a great time to be reading comics, and, for me, this was the first time since John Byrne was working regularly for them that I took any notice of Marvel comics.  I mean, come on – Grant Morrison did Animal Man and Bendis did Torso, and I loved those books.  How could I not pay attention?

But, for me, the biggest news was that JMS was going to be writing Amazing Spider-Man.  This was huge.  I love Babylon 5, and, for my money, it is the best science fiction television show ever to hit the airwaves.  The evolution of characters, the laying down of story seeds in the first season that payoff two or three or four seasons later, the big ideas coupled with fully realized alien races and political intrigue – JMS kept me excited and wanting more throughout the entire five seasons of this seminal science fiction show.

So when he was hired for Spidey, I was all in.

And the first storyline, encompassing issues 30-35 and entitled “Coming Home,” did not disappoint and ended up winning the Eisner award for best serialized story that year.

In interviews, I remember JMS stating he wanted to stay away from the typical Spider-Man villains and create new characters for his run.  And he dropped everyone into the deep end of the pool with the first issue when he introduced Ezekiel. 

A successful businessman – something we don’t discover until shortly after we first meet him – Ezekiel knows an awful lot about Spider-Man, including his origin, his powers, and who it is beneath the mask.  Ezekiel also has very similar powers to those of Spidery.  And, to top it all off, he tells Pete that maybe everything he believed about his life as Spider-Man is wrong. 

Ezekiel claims that Peter’s transition into Spider-Man isn’t merely a random occurrence.  He asks Peter, as the two of them stand atop the Empire State Building:

“Did the radiation enable the spider to give you these powers? 
Or was the spider trying to give you those powers before the radiation killed it?”
And Peter’s mind is blown.  This puts everything he’s believed since that fateful day into question, and Peter doesn’t know what to think.  And then, Ezekiel is gone.

A few days later, Ezekiel finds Peter at his new job, science teacher at his old high school.  He invites Peter for pizza to discuss what he thinks he knows about his powers.  Ezekiel tells Peter about these totemistic forces that used to walk the earth, race memories that still haunt our DNA.  These forces could bridge the gap between humans and other species.  Ezekiel claims that Spider-Man is one of these totemistic forces.  As he explains, you can judge a hero (or man) by his enemies.  One type of hero attracts the same type of enemy, and in the case of Spidey, he’s attracted a lot of totemistic pretenders – Doctor Octopus, the Vulture, the Rhino, the Lizard, and the Scorpion, to name a few of his rogues.  

After their pizza, Ezekiel invites Peter to his office building.  He offers Peter sanctuary in a specially built panic room where he can hide from the evil that is coming to hunt him down.  Peter declines, worried that whoever may be after him would put innocents in danger in order to draw him out.  And, having battled numerous enemies through the years as Spider-Man, he feels no need to run and hide.  He’s done this before.  He will do it again.  And he always comes out on top.   

AN ASIDE:
I loved this new perspective JMS took with regard to Spider-Man’s powers and origin.  There was an outcry from loyal Spidey fans who denigrated such a reworking of Peter Parker’s story – and many posited a strong argument that this new idea took away the strength of the character, i.e. a forlorn teenager accidentally endowed with great power who must come to terms with his new reality and realize that with such power comes great responsibility.  The randomness of the spider bite plays into this depiction of the character very strongly, and I can understand how some might perceive this as undermining the character.  But, for me, I always took Ezekiel’s story with a heavy grain of salt, intrigued by this notion but content to believe it was only a possibility and nothing more.

But I digress

The evil coming to hunt down and feed on Spider-Man is the other major character JMS introduces in this first story arc, Morlun.  A vampiric creature who feeds on the life-force of those who have totemistic powers, Morlun believes, as Ezekiel does, that Spider-Man is one of these totemistic forces.  It has been a long time, possibly centuries, since Morlun fed on a pure totemistic force.  So he is determined to capture Spider-Man.  And he is a badass.  With inhuman strength on a level that allows him to effortlessly shake off Spider-Man’s strongest punches, unyielding stamina, and the ability to track his prey anywhere once he’s come in to contact with them, Morlun does not stop for anything.  This is something Spidey learns very quickly, when Morlun uses Spider-Man as a rag doll in their initial confrontation.

Worn down and fearing for his life, Peter goes back to Ezekiel.  He is ready to take the sanctuary now.  But it is too late.  Morlun has touched Peter.  He can track him anywhere, sensing him even within a full-proof hideaway such as Ezekiel constructed.  Sanctuary is no longer an option. 

It is at this point, that things look bleakest for our hero.

To be continued …

-chris

To read more of Chris’s thoughts or to check out his short prose and comic work, go to www.warrior27.com, the online home for the comics/prose anthology, Warrior27, created by Chris and by Dan Fleming – with contributions from Matthew J. Constantine (half of In the Mouth of Dorkness), among others.

Ultimate Spider-Man Reborn

So, I've been falling behind in my Ultimate Spider-Man but it's been impossible not to catch a few glimpses from this whole Death of Spider-Man thing Marvel maestro Brian Michael Bendis has been cooking up these last few months.  I absolutely loved his Bagley run of the series, thought the second volume was so-so and just faded away for a bit.  I should be picking it back up shortly.  Anyway, that above image is for the third volume in the Ultimate Spider-Man saga, and look at Spidey's new duds.  I gotta say "meh" but I won't seriously judge i.e. condemn until I've read it.  I will say that I'm loving what Mark Millar is doing with Ultimate Avengers, that Blade story had me in stitches.

--Brad