Thursday, February 20, 2014

I Knew This Was Going to happen

A little over a year ago the long running comic book The Amazing Spider-man reached issue 700. Marvel comics decided to make it a huge milestone by having Peter Parker die, trapped in Dr. Octopus's failing body. Otto Octavious had taken control of Peter Parker's body. In the end Octavious declared himself The Superior Spider-man, which was the title of the replacement series.  Basically you have Peter Parker's body being controlled by Dr. Octopus, except part of Peter is still in there trying to keep Octavious in check.

I felt from the get go that this was a bad idea. I've read the first issue of The Superior Spider-man and was unimpressed with it. It just was not Spider-man and was not going to work.

Now Marvel has come out and announced that Superior Spider-man is coming to an end and they will be starting The Amazing Spider-man up again.

http://herocomplex.latimes.com/comics/peter-parker-to-return-in-new-amazing-spider-man-no-1-by-dan-slott

For me there is no surprise at all here. Comic books are notorious for not leaving characters dead. Every so often it looks like they might go through with it, but in the end it just doesn't happen. When they shot Captain America in the aftermath of the super hero Civil War, I truly though they were going to actually leave him dead. They went through a lot of trouble to confirm that he was dead and gave us a great storyline of how all the other heroes were dealing with it as well as his former sidekick Bucky taking on the mantle of Captain America. It really was one well put together death of a hero with a perfect set up for it all to move on in a new direction. It really did feel as if Marvel was going to once more set a new standard and let a major hero stay dead. I was disappointed when a few years later they went and brought Steve Rodgers back, ruining such a well constructed storyline.

I feel just the opposite regarding Peter Parker's death. Everything about how they killed off Peter was just the opposite of what they did with Captain America. The story didn't work, there was nothing emotional about his death, no follow through storyline of the other heroes dealing with his death (Since none of the other heroes even know he died.) and no sense that the new storylines were going be long lasting.

While I have had to give up collecting comics a few years back, I will be picking up the new Amazing Spider-man issue 1 when it comes out. I doubt Peter's return will be that good (The same writer who killed him off is bringing him back), I just want to know how it starts up again.

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