Superman: Last Son, Wrath of Gog, Brand New Day, and the Rise of Dumpy Spider-Man

Let me just start by saying that Blogger has the most annoying method of importing pictures of all time. If any nerds are out there that might be able to simplify this for me, I think you're totally right and that if you and that really hot babe had just spent a couple afternoons alone together she would have seen how special you are and dated you. Now help me with these pictures.

Here's the pile from this weekend:

Superman: Last Son.

So this is the return of General Zod and those weirdos who follow him around in the Phantom Zone(?) Negative zone? I can never remember which is which. It probably doesn't matter. No kind of zone is good to be in if you're an adult, whether it be Phantom, Negative, or Discovery.

So a shitload of prisoners from Krypton are all trapped in this zone, but then they get free and start attacking earth. Luckily, Lex Luthor and Parasite and a couple other assholes are there to help Superman.

This brings up that annoying thing they deal with in comics a lot. How is it that Lex Luthor can put down a couple dozen Kryptonians, but not one Superman over a period of 60 years? It doesn't really make sense.

But rather than harp on that, I would like to take this moment to point out that I have had what some people would call "sex" before.

Superman: Wrath of Gog

The thing that surprised me is that Gog wasn't interesting at all. Okay, that wasn't a surprise. Some guy in a horn hat? Give me a break.

The surprise came that Lana Lang, long time Betty to Lois Lane's Veronica, bascially professed her undying love for Superman, but couched it in a way that made sense. She admitted she was into him, but also said she never does anything inappropriate or makes any moves on him or anything like that. She was kind of like me with every girl I knew as a friend. The word "friend" in high school had a different definition to me: Girl I would orbit until such time that I might be able to date her or was shut down with no possibility of comeback.

That Betty/Veronica is a classic thing, but I never really got it. They appear to be the same woman with different colors of hair. What the hell is the difference? Somehow I feel that Veronica is sluttier, but I don't know how I would have gotten that impression having never read an Archie comic. Probably from my bad childhood and experiences with women which have forever colored my opinions of the opposite sex, colored them dark black.

Spider-Man: Back in Black

So the Kingpin hires some dude to kill Aunt May because everyone knows that Peter Parker is Spider-Man. Then Spider-Man goes apeshit, which was great. There's something very satisfying about the Kingpin getting a beatdown.

Spider-Man puts on the black costume again. He says he put it away before because it sent the wrong message. I don't always have my comic book facts straight, but I thought he put it away because the black costume was an alien that was eating his brain. Maybe that was the wrong message? That a suit that eats your brain is cool?

Anyway, he beats the shit out of the Kingpin, which was cool, but then the story devolves into some bizarre shit with an Uncle Ben from the future who killed some bum and then turns out to not really be Uncle Ben but get his just desserts thanks to a helmet left behind by the Spider-Man of 2211. Which is lucky because solving this insane puzzle is key to saving Sandman's dad from getting the chair, for some reason.

I don't have much to say about it. The first half was great, and the second half, well, it made me feel like the coming reboot might be necessary. Uncle Ben from the future? C'mon. And if Spider-Man of 2211 has a magic helmet that can teleport and shit, why wouldn't he have just done that right away? He might be two-hundred years more advanced, but he's also two-hundred years more of an asshole.

Spider-Man: One More Day

Okay, for those who don't know...I don't know why you're even following this. But real quick: Spider-Man's precious Aunt May has been shot. She will die. But then the devil offers Spider-Man and his wife Mary Jane a deal: He will basically reboot time so that May is fine and Spider-Man's identity is again a secret, but the cost is that Peter and Mary Jane's relationship will be completely dissolved. They will have no memory of this relationship, but they will feel a distinct sense of loss.

That devil is a real asshole, huh?

This reboot has gotten heat, and I can see why. It's kind of dumb. Once you start making deals with the devil, what's the point of anything? Death has never had a lot of meaning in the world of comics, but when you can bargain with the devil the game changes quite a bit. Why wouldn't the devil bargain with the Kingpin to help him make Daredevil's life miserable? Or for hair? It kind of fucks with the system.

Also, Aunt May just needs to die. Seriously, enough already. She's like 400.

On the other hand, they had to do something. When Peter Parker unmasked himself to the entire Marvel Universe, part of the fun was wondering how they were going to write themselves out of this one.

I like the idea of setting up the storyline to be something fresh. That makes sense. But what doesn't make sense is writing out of it by bringing in the devil. Joe Q, Editor-in-Chief over at Marvel, said, "It's very easy to unmarry a character or fix something...you just do a huge universal retcon, and say a few events in history didn't happen. But that's really not the way we do it here at Marvel."

Oh really!? That quote sent my nerd siren off harder than a girl telling me she's really good at video games. (Sorry, ladies. Please see above. Send the angry emails to my father.)

What about the Ultimate line? Marvel Knights? How many X-Men reboots have there been? Writing yourself out is an option, but when we get it we still have four or five shitty issues to plow through that serve only the purpose of hitting the reset button. It would be like playing a video game and every time you wanted to reset you first had to play a really shitty bonus level.

I've never been a big continuity guy. One of my favorite old series was Untold Tales of Spider-Man which is exactly what it sounded like. The series stood on its own, and you didn't have fifty years of backlog to contend with, so the basic concept of Spider-Man was there but without all the baggage. Perfect for the casual comics reader who just wants to take a dump and read about some guy in a web costume.

So, did the Brand New Day idea work? Yes and No.

Yes, I like the place it took us to. I like J. Jonah Jameson having the Bugle sold out from under him. That's one of the more entertaining and realistic Bugle side stories we've had in a while. Yes, there is an appeal to a Spider-Man who can't afford to whip up a batch of webbing for a couple weeks. Overall, yes, I like where we were at the end of One More Day and going into Brand New Day.

But the No, the big No, is how we got there.

One More Day was the end of J. Michael Stracysinski's run on Spider-Man. It was a good run. The stories were definitely out there, but I think he was less afraid of pushing those buttons than a lot of other writers. He was more concerned with writing something good this month than what it meant for the stories from 1986, so I can respect that. He tried some shit, and some of it worked. That's good enough.

Oh, and dumpy Spider-Man was pretty much the best part of the entire weekend.

Anyway, that's about all for this week. Tune in next week when I'll have another batch, plus a special feature on writers and artists who came to comics from other professions.

Until then, enjoy Dumpy Spider-Man.