I started reading American comics with Spider-Man, during the McFarlane run. I’ve followed it through the Clone Saga, but stopped reading after the relaunch with Byrne.
I’ve never been a big fan, it just didn’t excite me like the X-Men did. However I did enjoy those stories and art and remember them fondly. Since I stopped reading Spider-Man comics I was never that interested anymore. I was mildly curious about JMS’s run, but it got so long that I gave up on it.
However things are going to change drastically, so I thought it’d be a good time to jump back on the wagon. Unfortunately the method in which Marvel decided to reset things doesn’t make sense.
SPOILERS FOLLOW!
The story of OMD itself is not bad. Peter is trying to save May’s life, but things look pretty bad for him. First he goes to Tony for help, which he gets, then he goes to Doc Strange, in which he relives the last few issues’ events (which I haven’t read, so it was nice for me).
But then the story turns almost psychedelic, where he meets alternate versions of himself and MJ, not to mention little May (I knew it was her!). And finally we get to Mephisto. I don’t like the reason behind Peter’s decision, he basically said that he doesn’t want May to die because he would feel responsible for it. Which is such a selfish reason.
But I can understand that MJ believes so much in them that she thinks they will be back together sooner or later. On one hand is the life of May, on the other is their love, but they would still be alive and healthy. I did like their last few moments, I thought it was a touching scene.
I also like the art. I think Quesada did a good job trying to differentiate his style between the beginning of the story and the Mephisto scenes. And again with another different style for the “Brand New Day” scene at the end.
This last scene was very confusing to me, it felt like an alternate reality to me. Harry is back, the organic web shooters are back and Spidey identity is a secret again. This I didn’t like at all. They just decided to erase/retcon things without any actual explanation (and I don’t think any explanation is coming).
To me this basically removes all previous Spider-Man stories, some of them really important for the whole Marvel U. Reading an interview with Quesada he explains an important point: MJ and Peter never married, but they were still together during all those years. So all past stories didn’t change, except for Harry, the webshooters and Civil War!! And who knows what else.
This just doesn’t make sense at all. I also don’t like the fact that they outright lied about the unmasking being a permanent thing. They already knew that OMD would retcon that storyline so that it never happened!!
I think I’ve gone long enough about this, so I will stop here.
I do look forward to Brand New Day. I think the idea of Amazing Spider-Man coming out 3 times a month is brilliant, even better there will be one creative team for each story arc. So we will get sequential arcs by one creative team (as opposed to parallel arcs in 3 different monthlies, or one arc by 4 different creative teams).
So basically there is one version of Spider-Man, plus Ultimate which is separate. I really like this arrangement. I will read each arc once it’s completed and review it here.