The Big Picture: The Devil & Mr. Parker

[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.

 

[370999]

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.

The thing that got me about it was that it could of been easily about the pain of seeing a loved one die, having to deal with that and accepting that loss and death are real even if you do have spidy powers. Except they had him make a deal with the devil, which is a straight out bad guy thing to do, especially when against someones wishes. Yeah the terms were pretty slack but still, you shouldn't dick around with reality.

I don't accept it being impossible to keep a married man interesting. Marriage is just as filled with petty squabbles and moments when you realise how in love you are, as dating, in fact more so as you tend to be living together.

The reason I prefer manga though is that manga has a definite beginning, middle and end. Becuase of that franchise characters don't get built up and thus impossible to kill off. And crucially, it doesn't drag on forever.

 

[enclsam]

cool videos (or presintations) now i will watch them all

 

[angel85]

popular internet comic reviewer Linkara hates one more day with incredible passion. He even went so far as to call the writer an absolute hack. I personally love comics, but I don't have much money or storage space, so I limit myself to only one series, a comic I have been collecting for over 15 years now, and love with a passion, but most "comic" nerds don't give any respect to. I'm referring to the Sonic the Hedgehog comic published by archie. If I had a bigger place and more money I'd probably collect some of your precious marvel DC Darkhorse stuff too because I do think they're cool, but no, I can only afford my favorite, and I will support it to the end.

Of course, lots of weird stuff happened in the Sonic comic too, at one point he WAS engaged to be married, but they broke it up by having ALIENS invade, which launched him clear across the galaxy with some super weapon...I WISH I was kidding, that proved to be one of the comic's worst story arcs in ten years, but at least they didn't fire a retcon beam at everything.

 

[JoJo]

I think these sort of plot problems are mostly unavoidable if you have a canon that runs for a very long time, the only way to really avoid it is to keep the story and characters moving like they would in real life. Of course that would mean letting popular characters grow old and die, which financally is too much of a risk to take for many series.

 

[Birthe]

I really liked this episode of "The Big Picture", now I just wonder how I can meet the Marvel Devil 'cause he seems a pretty fine fellow.

 

[Irony's Acolyte]

Yeah see this is the thing with long running comic book characters. I mean most stories end eventually. The bad guy is beat, the cure is found, they get together, blah, blah, blah. Not with comic book stories. Nope, some of these have been going on for decades now. The writers keep having to try to make the stories interesting, but as they progress down certain paths they find it isn't leading to somewhere that they like. So they retcon it, or do something silly like this, and "start a-new". So you end up with multiple universes, time-lines, and plots which can get very confusing to anyone who doesn't devote the proper time to figuring it all out.

Although its nice to know that if I ever want to sell my soul (or something similar), there's someone out there who actually does a fair deal. I sold my soul (well more like leased it for a set period of time) with a devil (and a demon, and a daemon) and let me tell you, things got out of hand fast. I sure learned my lesson.

 

[Technicka]

To everyone that's still using the tired old, "Comics have been around too long, it's way too confusing for us 'normal' folk": Wikipedia exists for a reason. 5 minutes, and you're caught up on a character that you're mildly interested in.

That aside, Queseda used OMD/BND was his flashy red sports car for a mid-life crisis. How convenient it was that as he was going through a divorce, that he was suddenly on the warpath to end one of the few long-lasting, and healthier (by comic standards) relationships out there. The argument that marriage dulled the character down is nothing but BS, because Reed Richards and Luke Cage are still married. Hell, Marvel refuses to end the marriages that actually do bring a character down (looking at you Black Panther/Storm).


The whole thing was just another example of writers/editors letting their own lives influence their work too much.

 

[Arcane Azmadi]

Ugh. I think you went a bit too easy on this, Bob. One More Day is quite possibly the worst comic ever written and I think merely dimsissing it as "weird" doesn't even BEGIN to cover the mutilation it inflicted on the Spider-Man books. For one thing, it is unquestionably the most out of character thing Peter Parker ever did. He made a deal with the motherfucking devil because he was too much of a whiny mama's boy to accept the consequences of his decisions- way to go Mr. "Power and Responsibility". The story itself is irredeemably stupid to an order of magnitude that cannot be exaggerated- Aunt May gets shot by a sniper and Spider-Man, one of the most well-connected superheroes on an entire planet full of fucking superheroes can't find ANYONE capable of saving her life. Reed Richards builds time machines. Dr Strange has gods on speed dial. Loki, a literal physical GOD, owes Peter a favour. The mutant Elixer has powers that basically boils down to "heals shit" and once regrew a guy's torn-out heart with a touch. And even if YOU think it's nonsense to think that Peter would want to settle down and get married rather than spend his life fucking hot superheroines like Black Cat, well, that's completely contrary to the way Peter Parker had been written for the first 20 years of his comic life- a serious-minded guy who only falls in love a few times, falls hard, and sincerely wants to be married. But as you pointed out the Spider-Marriage was a wasted opportunity because the writers just didn't know what to do with it. That's not to say there wasn't anything that COULD be done with it, it just means that the books were afflicted with a lot of poor writers who couldn't think of anything for MJ to do other than sit around worrying about Peter all the time.

And since OMD and the dissolution of the Spider-Marriage, has it done anything to improve the story? NO! Brand New Day has been one of the most wretched lows in Spider-Man's history as he's been written out of character, the stories have been tasteless, dull and stupid and practically NO stories have been told that couldn't have been done perfectly well with a married Peter Parker (apart from the ones about him banging random girls who no-one gives a shit about), showing that Marvel's claims that being married "restricted" Spider-Man and that they had so much they wanted to do with a single Peter were completely full of crap.

Marvel have completely lost their shit over the last few years. It's truly tragic to watch, especially the horrible abuse they've heaped on what was once their flagship character. Quesada has to go.

 

[Phantom64]

Joe Quesada just needs to fucking die.

I liked Peter and MJ married, it added some maturity to him. But according to Marvel a man with a healthy marriage isn't relatable to kids so they decided to do a major asspull and make him a 30something bachelour who's still shacking up with several minor characters. Hey Quesada, why don't you listen to the fans when they say SPIDER-MAN.IS.NOT.FUCKING.BATMAN.

He is a Goddamn role model and what are you telling the readers with this bullshit? "marrigage is bad, be single and have many half-assed relationships!" or "Screw accepting death, make a deal with the fucking devil to bring them back to life!"

Quesada needs to go if Marvel hopes to get ANY credibility back in its name.

 

[MorteTheSkull]

The Marvel Devil is indeed incompetent. A stark contrast from the DC Devil, who is in fact David Bowie with wings.

 

[Jenx]

And it's shit like this why I never even get within 50 miles of a superhero comic book. Here's my solution to all these problems - you people should stop reading superhero comics and go read something that has a beginning and an end and is not retconed or changed every few years.