i don't owe him nothing

I was so out of it last night that I know I watched tv but except for Josh Charles on my tv with a guitar, I don't even know what I watched.

I did manage to add 300 words onto the story I'm writing, and they actually make sense in the cold light of morning, so that's good.

I spent most of Saturday dicking around with the Remix FAQ (which mostly stayed the same, but...) and reading the first four volumes of J. Michael Straczynski's run on Amazing Spider-Man. I've said it before, but Spider-man is my all-time favoritest superhero and that remains true despite my current affection for (many) others.

So far, I mostly like what I've read, though I'm skeptical of this idea that Peter's powers have some connection to some mystical spider spirit, and I'm actively annoyed at how much time is spent on reconciling Peter and MJ (whom I absolutely ship), knowing that the last volume is going to retcon their whole marriage away. SO ANNOYING. GRAR. I especially like that Peter is an adult, that he has a job he's good at (I wish he were my science teacher), but it makes me sad that he has no friends. Like, in four volumes, literally the only people he spends time with aside from the people he's helping and his students (often the same group) or people helping him fight crime, are MJ and Aunt May, with a guest appearance by Captain America in one issue. PETER, WHERE ARE YOUR FRIENDS? At least in Ultimate Spider-man, as depressing as it is (and dear god, it was depressing), he has MJ and Gwen and Kitty and Johnny Storm and Bobby Drake and Kenny what's his face. He has friends. Oh, Peter, I would be your friend. The other part that I liked was Aunt May finally discovers he's Spidey. I love her coping mechanisms, even though she's not as wholly supportive as I'd like. I maybe kind of sobbed through that whole issue. So I'm going to keep reading, though I might just skip over some of the bad stuff I know is coming.

I also read Batman Inc.: Leviathan Strikes, which probably would have made more sense if I'd read the earlier issues? But mostly I just read it for the first story with Steph-as-Batgirl in all-girls assassin training school, because Steph in a schoolgirl uniform and working with Bruce makes me want ALL the bad wrong hot Bruce/Steph naughty schoolgirl roleplaying porn EVER. Jesus that would be hot. Ahem.

I spent my morning outlining fic via text with

angelgazing, but I'm still not sure how to write the main part of the story. How do you make epistolary fic work? I have never been able to. Writing is hard, yo.

***

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Although the Clone Saga or Clone Wars (or whatever the heck it was) was terrible in terms of plot, I really enjoyed the Ben Reilly Spider-Man for precisely the reason you mentioned - he had a job! He had friends! Friends who weren't love interests or supervillains! It was so refreshing... although doubtless it would never have lasted.

Poor Peter. Everyone always talks about how Batman is ~forever alone~ but he's got this whole network of family and friends he's built for himself, while Peter, who is a bright, friendly guy who should have an active social life in between superheroing, has almost no friends. It makes me so sad for him!

I liked how they did the clone thing in Ultimate Spider-man though I haven't heard good things about the regular version of it. But Peter having friends is definitely an enticement.

Edited (oy, typos) 2012-03-05 17:41 (UTC)

Batman Inc is definitely something you have to read at once. In fact, sometimes it doesn't make sense even then (but I enjoy the non-sensemaking, too). BUT. Morrison wrote Steph so well! I wish we could have more of it!

Yeah, I guess I just didn't really have interest in most of it? I did read Bilal's introduction, but I think that's it.

But Steph! SO GOOD.

Peter actually has a LOT of friends -- the biggest majority-civilian supporting cast in comics, by a long shot. (Batman might have a larger supporting cast, period, but very few of them aren't either crimefighters or crimecausers -- Peter has normal friends and a semi-normal social life, albeit one in which basically his entire social circle thinks he's a bit of a flake.)

The reason most of them don't show up during JMS' run is that during the run previous there was so much supporting cast drama that Peter himself wasn't getting much attention and even a lot of Spidey's plotlines were very heavy on "so-and-so is actually the descendant of a ninja clan"/"the new Spider-Woman is actually Jonah's niece"/"older mentor dude vs. his arch-nemesis and btw OMD is Gwen's uncle and he has two kids and one of them hates Peter and the other one has an obvious crush on him and is just like Gwen with black hair" ... type stuff. So yeah. I'm unclear on whether it was the editorial team or JMS himself -- I've heard it both ways -- who made the call to focus just on Peter, MJ, and May for a while, but it made sense. Except then it went on waaaaay too long and we'd barely seen Jonah and the Bugle folks/Flash, Liz and Normie/anyone else in years. The other titles helped with that somewhat (I would def recommend Peter Parker: Spider-Man and Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man if you enjoy JMS' run), but not really enough until right before One More Day.

And then the biggest change that Brand New Day brought about, besides the obvious, was bringing all the supporting cast back and adding even more characters, leading to insta-bloat.

Comics: there's no such thing as a happy medium!

Peter has normal friends and a semi-normal social life, albeit one in which basically his entire social circle thinks he's a bit of a flake.

You would never know it by these issues, which made me very sad for him. I thought that was one of many things Ultimate Spider-man did well. Of course, I also liked that MJ and Gwen were in on the secret fairly early.

I would def recommend Peter Parker: Spider-Man and Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man if you enjoy JMS' run

I will look into it!

Comics: there's no such thing as a happy medium!

Yeah, I'm seeing that. *shakes head*

i don't owe him nothing

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

me, backreading your Spidey tag? No, you don't say

Re: me, backreading your Spidey tag? No, you don't say