JMS on OMD

[Jan]

This post of JMS's seems to knock out the theory I'd come up with today.

I was sure that (highlight to read speculation that's probably wrong):

I was sure that the little girl that Peter met first is his future daughter, not MJ as I've been reading people speculate she is. That led me to think that maybe, just maybe Peter & MJ would choose to stay together. I love Aunt May but I think it's more important for them to stay together. Anyway, doesn't it seem just too planned that Joe Q has been railing about the marriage for so long? How better to rile up the fans?

Just my opinion...

Jan

[James_Oliva]

I just finished reading the trades on JMS's Spider-Man run. A little more mystical for my persoanl Spider-Man tastes, but the characterization was brilliant. I especially loved the way he handled the marriage. Very believeable, very much like a partnership. I loved it, I will miss it.

[Jan]

Hi, James, welcome.

I've liked it, too. From what I hear, I'm not alone in waiting for OMD to end before deciding whether to keep reading Spidey.

Jan

[frulad]

What I liked about the post was where JMS pointed out some of the more attrocious things about the "Sins Past" storyarc came down from Joey Q.

[Jan]

I noticed that. I think he's mentioned that at conventions but I'm not sure he's posted about it before.

I've got half a mind to print that post to give to my comics guy, though.

Jan

[SmileOfTheShadow]

I haven't read issue 3 of OMD..don't know if it's out even (haven't been to the shop in awhile). But what I read from JMS is really disconcerting. I'm scared that this is going to be one of those things where I'm going to say "Screw it, I'm dropping comics." Like I did when they made the horrible end to the clone saga for about 2 years (until JMS working for spidey was announced).

His insight on Sins Past was interesting to hear though. I think that would have been a much stronger story with lasting impact if those were Peter's kids.

[Jan]

I'm not a Joe Q hater at all, mind, but after 'Sins Past' and now OMD (yes, #3 came out last week) I have to wonder if perhaps he's taken the old saying about there being no such thing as bad publicity too seriously. Perhaps there are a few short term sales to be had from people curious about negative buzz but I'd think in the long run it'd hurt sales.

Jan

[Lunan]

to be fair, jms does point out that he is not the sole writer for spidy, and never would be, the spider-man image is bigger then jms, granted the only reason i started reading spidy again was cause joe was writing it, and i'm not reading OMD, and will likely not bother to pick up a spidy story for some time.

but as an x-men fan i can understand all three sides of the issue.
1, the story must go one with or without a specfic writer, the book(s) must come out, or the company can't stay in business
2, the fans are fans, some will ahte others will love, you CAN NOT please all the fans at the same time, and unlike the x-universe you have a very limited number of characters in the spider-man universe to call on, maybe 20 at max as opposed to several thousand. relationship issues need to be addresed in stories, and while i feel the marriage is good for spidy and for the story of spidy not all will agree with me (i'm also rather fond of the scott-emma relationship in the x world, and ALOT of fans are not)
3. writers are creative people, and thier creations will vary widely, and what they fel about the story will also vary widely. the next one on may feel it time for spidy to shack up with the black cat. also conversly even if mj and pete love eachother etc etc, think of the stressors on that kind of relationship what with being spiderman and all, jms did an ok job showing some of that but by no means all of it.

as to how i feel, i feel pretty much about spider-man as i do about batman and superman, it takes a REALLY!! good writer to make these characters interesting at all, because the mythos of them it too well established and "they have done it all already" (lets not quibble please its a point i'm making). so unless JMS, or Jeff Loeb, or another extremly talented writer picks up spidy i don't care much anyway

now if JMS would consent to working on an x-men project i'd be thru the roof (though i have to admit messiah complex is turning out much better then i expected so far)

[Joe Nazzaro]

I think the first year or two of JMS's Spidey run were probably the best, insofar as they were basically uninterrupted and Joe got a chance to really let the characters percolate. I found the last couple of years pretty unimpressive, because potentially major events were being introduced in Peter's life and then not really followed up. Putting aside the entire mystical/totem background that JMS created, which will almost certainly be dropped, what about the fact that he died and came back to life, even more powerful? That storyline alone would have been enough to drive several year's worth of plot, but that was basically abandoned because of Civil War. I may pick up an issue or two once Joe has finished, but I was perfectly happy not to read the book before he came along, and I'm perfectly happy to move on now that he's leaving.

[Garibaldi's Hair]

I find myself 100% in agreement with Joe N on this one. I read JMS' first couple of years on ASM quite avidly, and couldn't wait for the next issue to come along. I enjoyed Sins Past (with the advantage of knowing about, but not being a fan at the time, of what happened with Gwen Stacy), but it does seem to make more sense both in terms of continuity and drama for the two kids to have been Peter's rather than Osbourne's.

I thoroughly enjoyed the mystical totem thing (and Ezekiel was a brilliant character is his own right), and The Other, but Civil War (as a whole) was a bit of a damp squib, not to mention a lost opportunity, and when my credit card expired and auto-cancelled my standing subscription, I was just not interested enough to put the effort into re-starting it again and catching up.

For me ... somewhere between The Other and Civil War, Spidey stopped speaking in JMS "voice", as it were, and it was the worse for it.

Although, as KV will undoubtedly point out YMMV.

[Joe Nazzaro]

When I was a kid (back when comics were 12 cents a copy), Marvel really didn't do company-wide crossovers. What you'd get was the occasional guest star, or maybe a two-book crossover, but that's about it. I don't remember when they started doing the company-wide crossovers- maybe around the time of the deathly dull Secret Wars- but I remember being a bit annoyed, because I basically had to buy every book involved in the storyline, including books I wouldn't pick up otherwise. Nowadays I just buy whatever key books I would buy anywa; if there's some crappy Civil War subplot creeping into The Incredible Hulk-meets-Night Nurse Monthly, I just skip it, because none of these 'event' crossovers are really worth reading anyway, and I say that as somebody with more than four decades' worth of comic book reading experience.

The reason I bring this up is because I thought the JMS run on Spider-Man was extremely ompelling, but once the book got stuck in whatever the company-crossover-of-the-month was, the book would just run out of steam. In a way, I'm surprised that Joe was able to accomplish as much as he did.

And finally, I find myself incredibly relieved by JMS's post referencing Sins Past. I hated the Norman Osborne storyline and it always bothered me that a writer like Joe would introduce a plot that basically violated a couple of decades of continuity. To me, the only way that storyline made sense was if the kids in question belonged to Peter and Gwen, and knowing that was Joe's intention makes me feel a lot better.

[SmileOfTheShadow]

I think the first year or two of JMS's Spidey run were probably the best, insofar as they were basically uninterrupted and Joe got a chance to really let the characters percolate. I found the last couple of years pretty unimpressive, because potentially major events were being introduced in Peter's life and then not really followed up. Putting aside the entire mystical/totem background that JMS created, which will almost certainly be dropped, what about the fact that he died and came back to life, even more powerful? That storyline alone would have been enough to drive several year's worth of plot, but that was basically abandoned because of Civil War. I may pick up an issue or two once Joe has finished, but I was perfectly happy not to read the book before he came along, and I'm perfectly happy to move on now that he's leaving.

I've been an ASM reader since childhood, so JMS on it was just butter on the bread there for me. And yes, I think that JMS' first two years on the book were my favorite time for ASM in all that time, made me really excited to hit the comic shop every week. I'm sure a big part of the reason he's leaving is the civil war crossover mega super storyline things that he gets forced into writing (which he did say was the reason he was dropping FF). It's just not his style to do that. I just wonder how long before the Thor book gets sucked into the same editorial groove and we lose that too.

[Joe Nazzaro]

I was just thinking the same thing: JMS has a really nice, year-long story arc planned on Thor, and suddenly he has to interrupt it for Ultimate Secret Crisis II. After it's over, er, Thor gets new boots and nothing will ever be the same!

[Jan]

Good point, Joe. I wonder if JMS may have addressed that with Marvel, though. In this post last year JMS wrote:

I've been giving it a lot of thought, and what I've enjoyed writing the
most for Marvel have been the special projects, like Bullet Points, the
new one I'm writing, and I'm most especially happy with how Thor is
going. So I finally felt that the best thing I could do would be to
devote myself almost entirely to those projects...come up with really
cool 6, 12 or 18 issue special projects, in or out of ongoing titles,
or reviving titles, and keep Thor my own monthly mainstream Marvel
book, so I can give all of those the proper amount of attention.

The cool thing about this is that I get to play anywhere I want in the
Marvel universe, I can tell whatever stories I want without worrying
about continuity for the most part, and best of all the process calls
for the books to be fully written and drawn THEN solicited, so there
are no delays. So right now, on the new project, I'm 4 scripts in out
of 12, pencils are now coming in on issue 3, and we should have the
whole thing done before the first issue hits the stands. That, for me,
is the more satisfying way of doing things.

I don't recall his saying so online but he mentioned at one of the cons that he was dissatisfied with his stint on FF because of all of the ways he had to pull the story. Paraphrasing here, but what he said he'd told Joe Q was that if he couldn't be left alone to write what he wanted, he wanted off the book. I wonder if they couldn't see leaving him alone with Spidey and FF but might have given that assurance for Thor?

All of that is sheer speculation but I've started my annual request for a year-end roundup from JMS on the way to the newsgroup this morning so perhaps if he's inclined to answer in detail, we might learn more.

Jan

[Joe Nazzaro]

The problem with writing so-called 'tent pole' characters is that there are far too many cooks in the kitchen; editors, producers, studio executives, merchandising people, etc. That's why whenever you hear about fundamental changes being made to a character, you know that A) they're not true, or B) they're going to be short-lived. Do you really think they're going to change Spider-Man's costume permanently when some company has a license for Spider-Man underoos?

For a writer, the only alternatives are to create a brand new book with a clean slate of characters, or to take a third or fourth-string character that nobody gives a crap about and inject new life into them. Look at what Neil Gaiman did with Black Orchid for example, or to a certain extent, Alan Moore on Swamp Thing. The paradox of course is that if the character suddenly experiences a resurgence in popularity, it also becomes a character that draws the attention of those aforementioned cooks.

While JMS may have a deep-down fanboy hankering to write his definitive Superman someday, I suspect his talents are better suited to creating brand new stories, featuring characters that he created.