JanMSchroeder wrote:
> It's beautifully written.  And beautifully drawn.  And I *hate* it
> because what JMS wrote about Peter and MJ's relationship was so
> *true*.  I'm going to read it again and see if I can move along to
> 'acceptance' and because the writing deserves better than reading
> quickly at lunchtime.

> There are a couple of other 'features' to this issue and, I'm sorry if
> this makes me sound like the poutiest fangirl but *WHO the frak*
> thought that, after the story that makes the marriage 'didn't happen',
> it would be a good idea to reprint the original marriage?!?  That
> wasn't a tribute, that was a slap in the face to the fans.  I just
> can't see it as anything more than Joe Q sticking his tongue out at
> those of us who cared.

I don't think you need to think that. You just have to pull back and see
Spider-Man as an artifact. (Which, to be fair, all art is, on one level.
Even "King Lear" was written to put butts in seats.) But, yeah, Q should
have realized that fans (except, perhaps, for the few who are already
planning to go into the business) would take it differently.

I have my own objections, as a Christian, and in this case it's no fair
for JMS to object that he isn't a Christian -- you put the Christian
devil into a story, you gotta take the consequences. ("Voices in the
Dark: Over Here", I think, may have left the question open as to whether
Asmodeus was a demon in the Christian sense, but this one doesn't.) And
from a Christian viewpoint, you never /ever/ give the Devil what he asks
for. No matter what he offers, no matter how beneficent or "noble" or
"unselfish" it seems, you never give him what he wants, because it
/always/ bites you in the ass. (Whether this will bite Peter Parker in
the ass is, of course, up to Joe Quesada, for as long as he's E-i-C.)

I can understand why our Joe felt himself obliged to finish up the
story; truly, I do. But this is gonna make people forget the "clone"
disaster. I wonder, too, what will happen in the newspaper strip; the
continuity there is headed in a direction where it could lead to a
breakup, but it reads as forced, and I think /those/ readers may be
turned off completely by seeing the #182 twine working these marionettes.
-- 
John W. Kennedy
"Information is light. Information, in itself, about anything, is light."
   -- Tom Stoppard. "Night and Day"
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