The Big Picture: The Devil & Mr. Parker

[LazyAza]

Yeah one of the main reasons I've never gotten in to american comics is because this isn't an abnormal thing for them to do. Every few years its 'oh shit the readers want something new' and they answer that by just hitting a big reset button or jumping in to some alternate universe bs or something equally stupid, screwing up sometimes decades worth of story like they did with spidey.

Meanwhile in manga comics (the good ones anyway) a consistent story that ends, when it ends is all too common. Bleach has been running for a number of years and the 2nd last story arc just started recently and the creator is already saying it'll be nice to finally do something new and this perfectly acceptable in the japanese comics industry. They don't pull oh shit changes or alternate timeline crap, they just move on and make something new.

 

[Kwatsu]

The idea that a simple gunshot wound can't be solved by Dr Strange, who probably has gods as Facebook friends...

Yikes. Just imagine the status updates.

 

[Lord Krunk]

I don't hate BND because it erased continuity, I don't give a shit - I think every comic should have a period reboot to keep shit from getting too complex.

While it went on a tangent, I think you're missing the point as well - the opening remark was about the decline in comic sales.

Retcons are the reason. No one really wants to read a series just to have it all deemed non-canon and redone. Seems like a waste of time and money to me.

If I'm gonna read/watch/play anything, it should all be part of continuity. Unless it states it's non-canon from the get go, like the Red Alert series in C&C, or in comics' case alternate history titles like Superman: Red Son.

 

[MovieBob]

Um... correct me if i'm wrong, but didn't they retcon the retcon. The Devil didn't do it, Iron Man, Doctor Strange & Reed Richards did it. They erased all of the memories of spiderman being Peter Parker, except for the memories of MJ & Peter Parker. MJ found that she just couldn't deal with the whole spiderman thing anymore... Eventually someone would figure out his ID & the cycle would start again.

It was structured so that they'd BOTH still "work"... sort of.

The "mechanics" of Mephisto's deal was that he'd change one detail of the past - i.e. them getting married - and in doing so the ripple-effect would eventually lead to the the events following Civil War "working out" differently.

So while the events in O.M.I.T. have the secret identity reveal being erased by Stark, Richards and Strange and Aunt May avoiding death through a series of coincidences; the alterations are only happening in the first place because of Mephisto's influences - so even though "they" did it... The Devil STILL did it, too. In fact, most of the continuity-changing events are shown being "driven" by people (and animals) implied to be Mephisto in disguise.

 

[Necromancer1991]

Linkara didn't like this either, and really this was a massive brainfart for both sides IMO

Linakra's a screechy voiced tool, who knows jack shit about anything but pretends to be an expert while hiding behind bad early 90s image comics and free hand outs

Your point being what exactly, it's not like we pay to watch his videos, and besides he's still entertaining as hell, secondly what does that have to do with this? Really though I mean the whole event is just stupid IMO, I mean hell he actually talks to Aunt May after she dies and she tells him NOT to revive her.

Id find Hell far more entertaining than someone spout memes and steal other peoples gags

Again you post nothing relevant to the actual video and just rage about how much you hate Linkara, to which I reply "So what, who gives a damn if you don't like Linkara, I do and that's all that matters (to me anyway)!". Another big thing I hate about this event is the fact that they decided "Oh people knowing Spiderman's secret identity is too interesting, let's manage to sneak in a retcon along with breaking up his marriage. Why hell let's just remove all the character development that that decision to announce is identity entailed as well!"

 

[Redd the Sock]

I was out of Spider-Man for years before this but I remember hating the idea. Check that. I hated how the idea was pulled off. The rushed storyline. The fanfiction level plot device. The fanfiction level motives. Comics have enough trouble being taken seriously without that level of lazy writing. And overall it might have worked, but as you say, you aren't supposed to come out better off for dealing with the devil. As I recall there was some implication he got the soul of the baby that was killed/kidnapped at the end of the clone saga, but that still seemed cheap.

That aside, you're not the only one to think that even a small percentage of the Dark Knight viewers going into reading an issue of Batman would raise sales exponentionaly. The things is two problems aside from the normal comic stigma: fans are lazy, and writers can't write serialized stories anyway. I'll admit the fan things is sour grapes, but I got into spider-man just prior to his 30th anniversery. I didn't have the internet to tell me who Harry Osborn or Gwen Stacy were, or what the black suit was about, or the Hobgobblin's story. I figured it out on my own and took it as a challenge. Today, even with the internet in their pocket, some people just can't read a wiki page to catch up.

Not that it would matter if they did. Comic writers just suck at ongoing serialized stories. The marrage got focus because after a while you just can't suspend disbeleif that Doc Ock will kill Spider-Man, and you run out of ideas to even try and make the vulture threatening. So focus goes to peter's private life, but even that gets stale fast. I won't say it's entirely the writer's fault. That Poochie episode of the simpsons had it right in how fans get bored with the status quo, but can't stand it being changed either. Demand for stories to be bigger and have more impact rather than be stand alone has also gummed up the works (and all this doesn't get into events and crossovers forcibly altering direction). But still, they decided to pander to the base rather than letting new fans rotate in as old fans leave. That changes the necessary writing dynamic from one of episodic fun, to one that really needs to think far down the line, and with pages counts being what they are, that could go into years.

Strangely, post BND stories seem to have done it to a degree, but I don't think they needed a retcon to do it. They just needed to get their act together and get things back into suspending disbeleif in the action parts, particualry since in light of the motives of OMD/BND, we can no longer suspend disbeleif that any relationship Spidey has might work out. We know they'll make it end badly.

 

[MovieBob]

Hey Bob, if you happen to have a list of toppics to discuss in this show, even if you put my suggestion at the bottom of such list, I would really like to hear your point of view between comic books and manga. The good and bad things that come from franchices that never end, go from writer to writer and mostly consist of the so called super hero who gets some power in a very convenient way (cursed with awesome), and franchices created and ended almost always by the same person (or group) and about 50% are "shonen" who have increasingly started to rely on unnecesary underage fanservice.
I think I have yet to hear you talk about manga, don't even really know if you read any. But I heard you talk about some intresting things from Japan so please consider my request.

I'm not well-versed enough in Manga culture to really offer a full opinion on it, but my "broad sense" of it in comparison to American comic culture is that it has different versions of the same problems - i.e. American comics have too many retcons and too much static continuity; but I'm not sure how different that is from the Manga/Anime where, yes, you have "complete stories"... which then get retold with slight variation again and again. That said, I think that the "bulk digest" format of a lot of Manga - i.e. one ginormous magazine featuring multiple continuing series as opposed to multiple seperate monthly books - is the way American comics should be going in the future.

Just to clarify... I really hope this episode doesn't read as "Bob hates Comic Continuity," because that's just about the furthest thing from the the truth. Done WELL, I love the stuff. I'm the quintessential geek who loves continuity and linked-canon and universe-building. I adore the fact that Spider-Man lives in the same world as The X-Men and Ghost-Rider and whoever, that "their" version of Earth is visited by aliens on a near-weekly basis, that if The Punisher goes for a boat ride he may run into someone the race of amphibious Atlanteans living in an undersea soveriegn state while he's out there and that The Devil is just ONE of HUNDREDS of supernatural figures one can expect to just "bump into" in the day-to-day. Yes, it's also so ABSURD that you can make a comedy video just by summarizing it, but for me it's a big part of the charm... except when it's not.

The thing is, comic-continuity used to be a BONUS for the reader... and now it's become the sole focus of waaaaay too many books. IMO, that's the real problem. When I first got into comics as a little kid in the 80s, it was because I liked Spider-Man, Batman etc. from cartoons... then I'd read an issue and go "whoa.. who're all these other guys they hang out with? They have their OWN books? Maybe I should check those out, they seem cool!" or "Wait... the footnote says this bad guy showed up in such-and-such issue five years ago? WOW! This story is waaaaay more sprawling than I thought, cool!" It made the experience more fun, and the more of it you "got" the more you felt like you "in on" some big awesome secret club.

BUT! The difference was, if you DIDN'T care about that stuff, they still tried to make the book itself worth reading. One issue would still tell a complete short story and the bigger continuity would play itself out in the footnotes and side-moments. You'd get, for example, a complete self-contained main-story where Spider-Man fought and defeated the Villain of The Month; and then in the "side-story" stuff like conversations with the supporting cast or cut-asides to other characters with their own agenda you'd get bits and pieces of whatever the big over-arching story of the time was. Casual readers got a good one-off comic, hardcore fans got massive, sprawling multi-issue "sagas" to follow, everybody wins. That first part doesn't happen anymore, and it leads directly to BAD continuity-focused stuff like what's described in the video.

 

[nothri]

So the issue is that if spider-man is married he can't go out with other women? I'm guessing open relationships, threesomes, and polyamory don't exist in the marvel universe? Okay, sure, its not PC by any measure....but your supposed hero is already making deals with the goddamned (literally) morningstar to erase his marriage, so you clearly aren't that concerned with what other people are going to think anyway. And this way you could pretend to be tackling topical and controversial subjects.

Okay, maybe not. Just saying there are many, many options open to you to 'solve' this 'problem', and out of all of them you decide to magic it away with a demonic pact.

Was Quesada born retarded, or was all this brought about as a result of some tragic accident?

 

[Drummah]

"It's magic, we don't have to explain it."

Good job Bob.
I was on a Spider-Man Podcast when this stuff went down, and there was a gloriously epic amount of face-palming.

It was fun to hear a summary of it all again.


The only thing I liked that Joe Q said was that you don't need MJ to have all these stories.

Alas, I HATE how they took her out. I would have supported a death much more.

 

[Urh]

"Comics are weird" - is this Bob's subtle way of saying "Comics regularly do crazy, stupid-ass shit with writing that no self-respecting writer would ever hope to get away with in any other format?" And I think part of this is because there are enough fans who are willing to tolerate it that the publishers just go along with it. A similar argument can be made with video games - too many consumers are tolerating (and even praising) mediocrity and crapiness, and as a result the bar gets lowered another notch or two.

 

[EchetusXe]

I knew there was a reason I didn't read comics.

Haven't they heard of 'divorce'? lol

 

[ZombieGenesis]

I didn't even know Marvel had a devil! But I suppose he looks cooler than any alternatives I've seen, so I'll let the quandry of beelzebub appearing in spiderman slide. Weird to think Harry had been dead for that long- what with the movies and everything! My generation was sadly never that into comic books, we just missed the trend
(Turned 20 yesterday, woo!)

Oh and hey, Bob...
So tell me this. Rock is megamans real name right? And a lot of the inspiration came from Osaku Tsukas work, right? Well in the 2001 anime Metropolis one of the main characters is called Rock. Only he never existed in the manga, he was just made for the movie...
Is that a weird coincidence? Or is something else going on there?
1927+2001 Metropolis FTW.

 

[NeoShinGundam]

Actually, I just went to Midtown Comics's new store on the Lower East Side, and there was a free book called "Spider-Man Saga." Basically, it's "What the F&CK is going on with Spider-Man?!?" And frankly, BND is nowhere near as WTF as the Gauntlet/Kraven Saga.

 

[AcacianLeaves]

Spider-Man makes a deal with the Devil.

SPIDER-MAN, the hero who represents moral certainty and personal responsibility, makes a DEAL WITH THE DEVIL.

THIS. IS. NOT. OKAY.

I don't care how many pervy Spidey fans get to write Black Cat erotic fan fiction, Marvel turned Peter Parker into a Satanist.

And why? Because their writers are too stupid to make a married man interesting to a potentially single fanbase? They already had Ultimate Spider-Man to appeal to that crowd, what the hell did they need to go and ruin the real Spider-Man for?

Editors should NEVER be in charge of these kinds of decisions. That's what's wrong with the comics industry these days. Its not run by writers and artists, its run by marketing departments and editors who don't care about the character or the fans and only want to sell out to whoever is the biggest market at the moment.

 

[TheSchaef]

You may have found the one retcon move dumber than the one that made Hal Jordan a super heroic nice guy once again (and this from a comic publisher that pushes the reset button every ten years with another "crisis" series).

As mad as it made me to watch Hal betray and destroy the Green Lantern Corps, to set him up as the omgsurprayz big bad in the 90's crisis, it made me even more mad to take a story line like that and toss it aside by saying, oh, he had a yellow alien in his brain. And the writer won some kind of freaking omg awesome writer award for that drek.

But, since that fruitcake Kyle Rayner got marginalized and Hal returned to prominence, sales of GL went from dismal lows to record highs, so I guess you win, DC.

Jerks.

 

[Onyx Oblivion]

My theory?

Comics require a significant financial investment, and you'll have a massive backlog to go through for the full story.

Those are why I didn't get into comics.

And manga is mostly for the first reason, since it doesn't tend to drag on as long, the second reason rarely applies.

Also, Mephisto is an idiot.

 

[LockandKey]

See stuff like this is why Vertigo comics are the best.
They have awesome stories, great/good art and they actually finish. None of this reboots or executive meddling and stuff.

And when you told someone "You just don't get it, that's why you don't like it" It didn't always sound pretentious cause there was a good chance that they didn't actually get it.
Though of course it also made it easier for people who had valid reasons for disliking them to dislike them without people going "But why?"

 

[untouchabledragon]

actually the devil removed the baby they were about to have as well as their marriage, which was quite cruel...

check your sources next time bob

 

[vanthebaron]

black cat isn't a cat girl...wish she was hot damn...I'm just nitpicking their over all I completely agree

 

[Clockwork Scarecrow.]

Ah yes, I've read about One More Day; Marvel's massive fuck up. I could link you but I'd rather talk through it. Okay, so as Bob said Aunt May got shot and was dieing (due to him un-masking himself), the thing was, she was ok with it and everyone (including May) was telling Peter to just let her die in piece. So he forgoed the "with great power come great responsibility" thing, you know, that little motto that has been the secondary trademark of the entire Spider-man franchise since Uncle Ben got shot, and made his deal with the devil and gets to be a free man and date girls again. You know what happened next? The editor at this time, who Bob mentioned, wrote Peter in a new love interest who has the exact same name as his daughter. Outstanding. This is the kinda stuff that gives me my schizophrenic relationship with comics.