Controversy Creates Something Something
We were all supposed to get really mad at The Amazing Spider-Man #1. In his letter column, Spider-Man editor Nick Lowe is practically begging for fans' forgiveness for the many pages of dramatic changes that took place in the pages previous to his. Meanwhile, the ever-irresponsible Rich Johnston, at Bleeding Cool, compared the issue to controversial Spidey stories of internet discourse legend like Sins Past and One More Day, in a news post so low-effort you could practically have titled it "Pay attention to me, for I am a pathetic worm hack piece of shit whose mercenary methods have demonstrably made the comic book industry a worse place for everyone in it, I have been granted access to rumors and retailer leaks, that I do not deserve, and I use it to rile up a reactionary mob of people desperately clinging to whatever little shred of gatekeeping power they still have, and everyone would be better off if I retired in disgrace, which the writer of this sentence is using as a euphemism for something far worse and more graphic, involving violence against myself and the people like me" without losing any of its substance.
People have been mad about comics before, of course. There's a proud tradition, going back to the early days of the internet, of men performing extreme anger at comics from their childhood and beyond, and that culture has blossomed into the culture wars of today. But the big targets of even the recent past were all characterized by failure, either on the part of creatives, like in the case of Secret Empire or Identity Crisis and the ways in which they carelessly used heavy themes and imagery as nothing more than fodder for pulpy schlock, or on the part of the audience, like when everyone decided Batman #50 was bad because speculators couldn't resell it ten years down the line as "the issue where Batman and Catwoman get married". But something seems to have changed now: whether it's the marketing, the pre-emptive apologies, or the pre-release reviews in what I'm supposed to call "the comics press", there seems to be an agreement that The Amazing Spider-Man #1 should make you angry, but this time it's by design. And that's a fucked up paradigm shift, right?
Let's be clear: I'm not saying you shouldn't be angry at comics. God knows some comics deserve it, and I'm not just talking about Jason Aaron's. Comics are just as likely to piss you off as they are to break your heart. But selling a comic on its capacity to make fans angry, selling a comic with the express purpose of creating controversy and hoping it's profitable enough for every link in the chain to accept playing along in making it go viral, feels wrong and dangerous to me. (Not as wrong and dangerous as tying your product to an earth-killing speculative asset shaped scam, but despite all the nonsense around Image's The Secret History Of The War on Weed and DC's recent BatCowls announcement, I told you that I will not write about NFTs anymore, and I'll hold myself to it.) We are in a place where some fascist recruiters are posing as men who are angry about comics. When a company release comics with the express purpose of making people angry, they create an environment in which they thrive, and it's all for the dumbest fucking reasons, and I don't like it.
If you're going to make people mad because of stuff in comics, please let it be for something good, like putting a little bit more of the actual people who exist in the actual world in starring roles. Please, never sell me that a comic on the basis that it's going to make people really really mad ever again. It's a waste of time, and now I have to do the review of it after the jump because this intro is long enough as is.
HUMBLE YOURSELF BEFORE COMICS: DON'T REVIEW COMICS MAD, JUST REVIEW COMICS
There is no job in comic harder and more thankless than relaunching The Amazing Spider-Man. Sure, you have the world's greatest superhero at your fingertips, but the Faustian bargain you've just struck involves having to create something that is at once entirely new and immediate and yet it must fit with the complex web of soap opera bullshit that has been built over the past 60 years, all of it being of such extreme importance to someone somewhere that contradicting it in any way is a one-way ticket to a total shitstorm, OR SO I AM TOLD. The easy answer, which is to say of course "the correct answer", would be to accept that relaunching Peter Parker is a lost cause, and make Miles Morales the main Spider-Man of the flagship book, an option that Marvel is dead set on not taking, probably because they don't want to make so many people so angry, right? (Pause for laughter, applause) We have fun, here in the newsletter.
Either way, if you are going to be given the arduous task of relaunching the adventures of ol' Web-Head, doing it the way John Romita Jr. and Zeb Wells have done it is pretty smart. Spider-Man having dome something explosive and very horrible outside of York, PA isn't just fodder for mystery-box-based storytelling, it's a way to provide a nice clean break with ten exhausting years or so of big time superhero bullshit, world-ending crises and impossible super-villains that are closer to Peter Parker than he might think. In all of three pages, including a two-page title card, they have done what so many creative teams have failed to do in this era, and fully justified a very necessary return to the Spider-Man basics. At last, Peter Parker is an outsider again, having to juggle the many little indignities of life with the responsibilities of weird spider powers. That's the best thing this comic could do, and that's what it has done.
This back to basics approach also applies to his foes: gone are the convoluted schemes of undead cyborg magic demons with incomprehensibly convoluted grudges against Peter Parker, and back are the machinations of weird gangsters with compelling inner lives. Admittedly, this issue is rather light on the action, preferring instead to use the extra pages to double down on the interpersonal drama and the many mysteries buried in its six month time skip, but what's there is a nice little tease, something that is as smart and as funny as you should expect from a Spider-Man book, with a bit of perfectly timed slapstick in there for good measure. And as for the character drama, it's appropriately melodramatic without being overwrought, thanks to deft pacing and Romita's incredibly expressive work. Yes, the man has his quirks, and sure, some of it might look a bit funny, but one needs only look at that first double page spread, the one where Aunt May confronts Peter, and feel all kinds of ways about her very visible heartbreak, to realize that yeah, obviously the guy is good.
When I look at The Amazing Spider-Man #1, all I see is one really good comic. Which raises the question: what is everyone so mad about anyway? Is it the MJ stuff? The thing about Peter being an outcast again? That he's expressing sadness? Is it that this is a comic that is not exactly what you wanted? Jesus Christ you sad fucks need to get over yourselves and get angry about the shit that really matters, like Jason Aaron's completely awful Punisher comics.
It's hard to make anything out of Justice League #75, because, despite everything that it has going for it, it is a book entirely focused on the immediacy of one thing, and one thing only, which is the death of the Justice League. There is nothing else to be found there, other than the death of the Justice League. It is about nothing but the death of the Justice League. If you take away something from this comic, called "The Death of the Justice League", it should be that the Justice League dies in it, and that is the only piece of information you're going to get. Supposedly, it is the starting point for the third act of Joshua Williamson's Infinite Frontier saga, which has been more interesting than most critics will give it credit for. (The hot take goes like this: it's about a fanboy trying to force his favorite characters into the supposedly timeless and innocent picture that exists in his memory, and bringing about the death of all comics in order to do so) (If you want the even hotter take, do consider that the first one he traps into a bespoke universe of pure nostalgia is Barry Goddamn Allen) But that whole thing is basically dealt with in a single page, because the point of the comic is that the Justice League dies.
Interestingly, it wants to put itself in the same conversation as Superman #75, from 1993. Which you probably know as The Death of Superman. Except it's not, not really. The numbers are the same, Superman dies in both, and, heck, it even has Doomsday fatally injuring someone. But Superman #75 is deliberately iconic from beginning to end. It's one definitive full-page splash after the other, all loaded with imagery as important as Dan Jurgens can make it. It's one haymaker after another, and it can still knock you down on your fucking ass. Justice League #75, meanwhile, looks and feels like a normal comic. Rafa Sandoval does a great job, don't get me wrong. He's got the energy and the emotion of the piece right. On basic craft, this is a great comic about the death of the Justice League, filled with great pictures of the death of the Justice League. But there's no big swing. Nothing about the way this comic is put together makes it feel special, beyond its acetate cover, which reads in big, bold, transparent letters, "The Death of the Justice League".
Ultimately, this is the least interesting part of a forthcoming event that promises nothing but to be interesting. The important part is that the Justice League is dead. It is also the only part.
And that'll do it for a pretty late, not shipping on May Day because I'm not about to scab, newsletter! Hope you enjoyed the goofs, and the spoofs, about last week's biggest comics! I've decided we'll be waiting on Legion of X before doing the big X-Men piece, so that's what's been going on. In the mean time, please, don't be so angry all the time, take a load off, relax, and then, do what you do best: HUMBLE YOURSELF BEFORE COMICS!