The big news in comics this past week or so has been the "oops" reset of Spider-man continuity over at Marvel. The core of the story is that Peter Parker and Mary Jane, in a bid to save Aunt May's life, make a deal with the devil (Mephisto). The price of this deal is that they never married and never will marry, so are giving up a future of happiness and hope. Which is why Mephisto is making the deal – it helps cement his status as Evil ™. Apparently a side effect of Peter and Mary Jane never getting married is Harry Osborne (son of Norman Osborne and the second Green Goblin) never died or married Liz Allen; instead, he vacation in Europe and has opened a coffee shop in New York now. Oh, and the organic web-shooters Peter developed have reverted, and he's back to using mechanical web-shooters. Plus, he's not very successful, so he's moved back in with Aunt May and he's broke all the time.
In other words, welcome to 1976, I hope you enjoy the visit.
It's been said that the Golden Age of Comics is when you first started reading them (for me, somewhere around 1974 or 75, thanks to long drives in the car). I suspect 1976 played a big role in Joe Quesada's comic book development, because that's effectively what he's brought back. Given he would have been about 14, it seems a likely explanation. I return to my Golden Age by reading the old comics again – Marvel's gone a long way to make this easier with the Essential collections and putting out CD-ROMs with comics collected on them. DC has followed suit with Showcase collections. I recognize that my enjoyment of these older stories is driven partly by nostalgia, though some of them hold up really well even today. In any case, it's not like I could bring back the old days – that's why they're the old days.
The difference between me and Joe Quesada (one difference, anyway) is that Joe is the Editor-in-Chief of Marvel. If he wants to roll the clock back to when he remembers reading and enjoying Spider-man comics, he can and will. Everyone will just have to follow along.
Am I outraged? Not really. I'm mostly curious how much these storylines and changes were driven by a personal nostalgia dressed up in marketing-speak.
I skipped yesterday's entry, as the cold wiped me out for the most part. Hopefully that won't happen too often.
I see Hillary is suddenly on top and in charge and leading the pack after a "surprise" win in New Hampshire. From what I could tell, she and Obama were only a few percentage points apart, so it promises to remain an interesting battle for the nomination in the next month. On the Republican side, I wonder if we'll see a rally to McCain, as perhaps the more middle of the road members of the party realize they may accidentally turn the GOP into a theocratic party if they don't pay attention.
Plus, its sounding more and more like the depression that should have hit the U.S. a year or two ago is finally arriving. I suspect the sub-prime mortgage market which is leading the pack on the current recession indicators was also responsible for delaying it – easy credit to people who previously couldn't qualify could hide and mask the economic downturn, after all. Surprise, surprise, though – extending credit to people who can't afford to pay it off isn't a great business model. Now there's a sudden drain of buying power out of the economy, matched with the slowdown of job creation and the slow death of actually producing anything (replaced by the "service industry"), and it looks like some lean times are coming. I'm curious to see how wide-spread the effects are, however – is the US really that vital to the world economy, or has its previous privileged position been replaced by some other *cough* China *cough* country?
A Scrabble update: I finally won an actually game, by 1 whole point. This will not likely happen again this month. Or this year.
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